Everyone wants to be on the first page of Google. It’s understandable why because it’s not much use being any other page. Nobody goes past page one, in fact 20% of the people don’t even know you can scroll down!

Although that seems hard to believe, it’s true. What’s also true is that the Yellow Pages are dead. I asked someone recently how much they spent per month on advertising in the Yellow Pages. They said about $600. I then asked him how many phone calls they’ve gotten over the past month from the Yellow Pages ad. He said two. So in essence he was paying $300 per lead by advertising in the Yellow Pages.

In the past, about 15 years ago, I also advertised in the Yellow Pages and spent about $1200 a month. I don’t think we ever got more than five calls a month from that ad. But that’s just the nature of things, things change. And things are changing dramatically for those who want to advertise and market their business.

All of the old mediums of advertising are suffering right now. Newspapers, television, radio, direct mail, etc. all have declining revenues because of one main reason: the Internet. Of course there are other factors such as the economy but the Internet is growing dramatically in advertising revenues. Google’s revenue last year was $22,000,000,000 just in advertising. The next closest one was Time Warner, the mega-opulous of traditional media and it had $9,000,000,000 in advertising revenue. And Google’s revenue is up substantially from the previous year.

Internet advertising has one over-arching, overwhelming advantage over all other forms of advertising: traceability. You can track down to the penny how much money a person makes from any given ad. They know exactly where it came from, what keywords they used to find it, what the resolution of their monitor was (I’m not sure why they bother with that one), what documents referred them to it, what domains they came from, etc.

No other form of advertising has this capability. Everything else is just guesswork. The Nielsen ratings, as good as they try to be, are never as accurate. And that’s the advantage of the Internet.

Not only does it track it all, in many ways it’s free. But free is a bit of a misnomer. Anyone now can write a blog or an article and have the whole world able to view it. Whether they do it or not is an entirely different issue and that’s where the problem with Internet marketing lies-it’s so easy that it’s become very crowded.

To print a newspaper you have to have massive expensive machines and elaborate distribution channels. Much of the same things are true regarding television and radio. But with the Internet, all you have to have is a connection. You can even access it from your phone nowadays. And I predict even more dramatic changes in the near future.

But the Internet has also come of age because now local search marketing is the new rage, or at least a fairly new phenomenon of the last two years. The ability to target a specific industry in a single zip code, town, city, county and/or state has never really been viable before. Now it is and it is very cost effective.

You can easily target a few specific phrases for your business that you think people are typing in the search for you. Because that’s where people are going to search for you anyway. They’re not going to the phonebook anymore.

So the key question here is not IF you will become involved in local search marketing, but WHEN? It will be a rare business that survives in the future without using this technology. You simply must have a website and it must be properly formatted. But you must also drive traffic to it because it’s very very difficult to be found on its own. Most people don’t have the time, energy, or money to to compete with the big boys and their elaborate websites.

But a simple, SEO-friendly and optimized website is an absolute necessity and as long as it’s effectively marketed, it can be your best lead generator possible.

Its also a lot less expensive than the Yellow Pages!

Contact me when you’re ready to increase your sales and find new customers. Just use the form on the right or call me at 702-726-2427.

Unfortunately I also had to sever a relationship because of this same issue. This person even asked me to work for free, not even offering anything in return for my work. The thing they would not listen to me and the advice I gave as to what they needed to do. And after 6 trips to their office, I got a whopping $300 for work on a new project. Obviously it was not an economical relationship, well maybe it was for them!

Anyway, the thing to remember is that everyone suffers when the economy is down. I have seen some mighty big companies go under in the internet marketing world and we all just have to keep our heads held high and have faith in the future.

And PLEASE vote out that bunch of idiots in Washington who are determined to destroy our constitution at all costs! The economy can easily be fixed by following the rules of economics: make it profitable to be in business! Its that simple.

OK, Kelly, back on track. Get back to the business at hand-internet marketing. Please enjoy the post below from a very frustrated and passionate individual. I’m sorry but I don’t even know his name. (I didn’t bother with a link because it won’t be there in a few weeks anyway.)

Yep, I hear you! All these people who can’t develop themselves, apparently, never stop to realize that developers are CAPABLE of building the “next big thing” on their own and earn all the profits. Problem is, we’re too busy trying to find REAL WORK from people who will INVEST in the MONTHS involved in developing a social networking site for them.

If I had a dime for every low-life cheapskate who offered “profit” sharing when their “idea” is developed in the MONTHS it takes, I’d actually be quite financially stable.

I don’t get it. These people don’t care enough about their “ideas” to see the person developing it FOR THEM live and work comfortably. How exactly does one do that when their time is expended, kids are hungry and bills are piling up?

I, too, and sick of these people. They either need to learn how to develop their ideas and reap ALL the “rewards” when it becomes bigger than all the other ideas people had and couldn’t make it work, or PAY for the time of a developer.

These morons see the end result of something like Facebook and have absolutely NO IDEA that developers don’t just wave a magic wand to create something similar, and POOF, in a couple of “weeks”, it’s miraculously done!

Hey, dreamers and “idea-weavers”: If your ideas are so great, write a business plan, get an investor to invest in YOUR IDEA, then INVEST in THE VERY DEVELOPERS who will make your “idea” come to life!

In 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…

Some “know it all” NON-Developer will contact me privately to tell me how “egotistical” I am because I expect to be paid for my time, put food on table and cover the very electric bill that keeps my PC powered. Happens all the time! These people are slave-drivers who go through life thinking we “OWE” our skills and time to them.

To the person seeking a “non-paid, passionate web designer and marketer”.

Let me get this straight: You want a “designer” to DEVELOP a social networking website for you, plus have knowledge of internet marketing, meaning, you not only want your “designer” to DEVELOP the site for you, but also market it when it’s completed, so that you can grant part ownership in a site that has the “potential” to get millions of members?

Let me ask you, something: What exactly is it that YOU plan to do for YOUR “idea” to ensure its a success? Having someone perform slave labor for you for the next SEVERAL MONTHS to DEVELOP something GREAT on a domain you’ve invested $7.99 into registering, means, among other things, you have no conception of reality. Furthermore, what you’re describing indicates that you need THREE separate professionals to rip off:

1. A WEB DEVELOPER. 2. A WEB DESIGNER. 3. AN SEO and SEM EXPERT.

How’s that for “passionate”?

Why cut off the source of future growth?

Any company who adopts this mentality is doomed until it realizes what it’s done. I know there are accountants and bean counters and boards to answer to, and at first it may look like a good decision: an instant drop of expenses of anywhere from 2 to 15%. But the question is, how are they going to replace it?

As an illustration let’s say a company spends 10% of its revenue on advertising (remember this is only an example). A $2,000,000 a year company would then spend approximately $200,000 generating new business. So by eliminating this expense how are they going to generate that $2,000,000 per year?

For a time it will seem to work. They have existing customers and top of the mind awareness at the moment. But that moment is short lied. Top of the mind awareness is obviously key to any advertising program. The next company that advertises in their market will achieve that top of the mind awareness and the customer will be gone.

In a very short time the company that eliminated its advertising budget will be far worse off and really scrambling as to what to do now. If there was anything that should be increased during an economic downturn is the advertising and marketing budgets.

Well, enough of this analysis, let’s figure out our next step of action. You need to find leads. You need new customers. You need more sales.

My name is Kelly Smith and I created this website to introduce myself to you and share with you how I can help your company achieve its marketing goals. My story can be accessed on another page but I will just tell you shortly that I have been involved in some sort of marketing all my life.

I now focused almost exclusively on Internet marketing for companies like yours. The Internet provides the most interesting and powerful resource available to anyone seeking to do any kind of marketing: instantaneous accurate feedback.

If someone buys a yellow page ad they will know when someone calls from that ad because it usually mentioned in the conversation. But what they don’t know is how many people saw the ad. The same is true with a billboard, a radio ad, a newspaper ad or a direct mail program, etc.

Yes there are all kinds of statistics generated to try to show if you are within the “norm” of expectations regarding the program. But you don’t know exactly what is happening. That is not true with Internet advertising or marketing.

I know I’m probably preaching to the choir here but I will remind you that with powerful tracking programs you can know exactly how many people saw your advertisement, what country they live in, what state or even zip code they live in, which website they saw it on, what keywords they used to find you and even what was the resolution of their monitor be viewed on (which I’ve never really figured out why they even bother with that one!).

The fact of the matter is that you can know to the penny how much profit you have made from that advertisement and it is at least 99% accurate. There is no other method of marketing they can reach anywhere close to that statistic.

That is why I have devoted the last couple years investing in the education of what Internet marketing can do. Along the way has been an amazing journey, a fluid one with many changes and surprises.

I have found that some of the simplest things can reap millions of dollars. I have also found that many of the things promising great results produced little.

Here’s a simple hard-nosed fact: no one in the world knows exactly how to market your site. Anybody who tells you that they do is lying. Now of course there are some that have devoted quite a bit of time and effort to us particular market and they may know something important about it but I’m here to tell you that they still do not know 100% the best way to market your website, business, products or service.

I suppose there are a number of reasons for that but I would liken it unto going fishing in the ocean. You have a fast almost infinite horizon of possibilities and you’re trying to narrow it down to a single school of fish. It’s impossible to finish the entire ocean it once. Everyone who has tried has gone broke.

The first thing is to determine exactly what type of fish you wish to attract. Are we going after Sardines? Dolphins? Swordfish? Octopus? Clams? Halibut? Tuna? Whales? And what exact type of any of those “fish” are the most desirable or profitable?

I have seen many a company, parenthetically speaking, rent a boat and head out into the Internet ocean loaded with bait, come back empty-handed. But unlike the traditional fishing industry where experienced fishermen can tell you exactly where to go and what type of bait to use, in our Internet ocean analogy, there is hardly anyone who knows the answer.

Why am I telling you this? Why am I who have created a website telling you I can help you in your business by marketing on the Internet but there aren’t any experienced guides to go to?

I may not know exactly where to go to find the fish you are looking for but I know how to find out where to go. Of course we all have some idea where to go and we will explore all of those possibilities but experience has shown that a surprise awaits you. And it’s always a fun experience.

And here’s the really interesting thing: the Internet isn’t just one thing. Yellow Pages are. So are billboards and direct mail pieces. But the Internet is still vastly untapped. There are many many ways to market on the Internet and MILLIONS of places to go! Once we find that “school of fish” that is your target market, we will help you pull in netloads of customers over and over again!

So what is the next step here? What is the next plan of action? Send me your basic information and I will contact you about how I think I can serve you best. Please be assured I’m not here to send you spam or junk mail any kind. I’m not sell your information to anyone, this is for my company’s eyes only.

My team is here and ready to help you increase your profits and improve your business in more ways than one. You will see what I mean as soon as you start working with us. And it also doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to reach people in a single zip code or multiple countries at once, we know how to do what is needed to find those leads and customers you are looking for.

What would your business be like if you could increase the number of new customers you have by 2%? How about 5%? How about 25%? Or even 150%? Anything is possible with the correct marketing campaign. We are here to help you create that campaign and although we certainly have to put in a disclaimer that we can’t promise results like that, we do promise we will do everything we can to help you reach your goals.

Thank you. I look forward to visiting with you and I mostly look forward to seeing a smile on your face knowing that this was an excellent decision in hiring our company.