Internet Marketing Evolution

By: Steve Robertson
Submitted: 2007-01-17 13:22:30
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The Web is often a high speed laboratory of evolution. If you add information to the Web and do nothing to promote it, your information will sleep quietly on a server and never traverse the fibers that make up the Web’s interconnectivity. On the other hand, some Web destinations become very popular with only a small amount of initial publicity. The first users – spreading the word through e-mail – can produce a tidal wave of visitors in no time. The vast majority of information on the Web falls somewhere between those extremes.

Early on, most folks with something to sell recognized the potential inherent in the Web. Print ads and TV ads were expensive and the space for your message was limited. A web site can be just the opposite – an inexpensive advertisement with virtually unlimited space for your message. The only drawback was the problem of “impressions.” With a print ad, everyone accepted the fantasy that every reader would study every ad. With a web site, the site sells your product or service, but you are faced with a completely separate selling job (or perhaps it would be best characterized as a marketing job) to persuade the public to visit your web site and spend some time there.

Today, just about everything under the sun is being sold on the Web. Among those sellers is a subset of merchants who are developing and selling tools designed to make life easier for all those other sellers. Just as with the California Gold Rush, the highest probability of making a fortune lies not with the gold miners, but with the merchants selling the picks, shovels and new, improved sluice boxes. The merchants selling tools to Internet marketers can charge high prices for two reasons:

because the products being sold, if used properly, will actually generate income far exceeding their cost, and

because the cost of these tools is fully tax deductible if used in a bona fide business.

This subset of salespeople who sell to Internet marketers seems to be more attuned to the Web’s evolutionary potential. Their modus operandi is to test competing techniques against each other, keep the best, then test it against a newcomer. When you find a technique that works well, stick with it. Once you compile some impressive performance data, turn it into a training course to sell to new Internet marketers.

That’s why virtually every product in this category is sold through a lengthy “landing page” – with many testimonials and impressive claims about how well the product has performed in the past. If you are not persuaded to buy after reading this first page, at least give them your e-mail address and they will give you a free PDF book on the subject (which formerly sold for $97, of course!).

Now, I’m not saying there’s anything inherently wrong with this approach. For the last six months, I’ve been handing out my e-mail address to any seller of Internet marketing tools who seemed to have a promising product or newsletter. As a result, I’ve acquired a mountain of (mostly) helpful free information on the subject. I’ve even purchased a few of the products. And not a one of these merchants has mis-used my e-mail address. For the most part, I’m happy to receive their occasional messages.

But, in this case, is it possible that Web evolution has veered off on a tangent that’s doomed for extinction? Has anyone actually read every word on one of those landing pages? Many merchants selling to Internet marketers will preach that you must build a quality mailing list, because the mailing list will be the source of most of your sales. But is it possible that this focus on mailing lists is akin to “Inbreeding” – with a small number of prospects, each on many lists? Is it possible that many potential customers are being missed just because they don’t want to hand out their e-mail address?

In the course of my research, I’ve located a few tools that would be of real help to Internet marketers and AdSense publishers. Most of these merchants have shortened their landing pages considerably through the use of whiteboard and screenshot videos. We’ll be taking a close look at the use of streaming video in Internet marketing at the new site YourBiz.tv

Steve Robertson is the editor of YourBiz.tv. Download your free copy of Power Tools for AdSense Publishers at YourBiz.tv. Copyright © 2006 J. Stephen Robertson.

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