Small Business Website Design
Devising a well-structured plan is the first step in every small business website design process. The best way is to approach a new small business website design is to first decide what are the objectives of your website, what kind of products or services is the site going to provide and what sort of budget you have available. After determining all these factors you will be better positioned to begin your small business website designer search.
There is no shortage of business website designers in Australia. All the major cities of Australia, including Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide etc boast a large number of website design companies. Of course finding a designer is often easier than making sure they are going to produce you a quality website for your small business.
With that in mind here are some tips and things to consider when it comes to small business website design:
Keep It Simple and User Friendly
When it comes to small business website design, simple, clean and focussed designs prove to be most effective as they are more user friendly and create a low friction environments for potential customers. Things to avoid are harsh colours, heavy flash, extremely graphics-intensive designs, overcrowding of elements and trying to sell everything at once.
Website Navigation: Keep it obvious and logical
Website navigation is critical in minimising visitor abandonment and allowing them to get to where they want to be as quickly as possible. It’s important to remember that when it comes to small business website designs, if a visitor cannot navigate a website effectively they’ll become frustrated which is a big problem when they are only a Google search away from becoming your competition’s customer.
With this in mind, the navigation should be simple, clear and obvious so that the visitors can find it easily and probably more important is that the visitors can get to the page they want to be on in the fewest possible clicks without getting lost or frustrated.
Content: It’s what visitors value
It is the content of your website that search engines rank and what visitors come to your site for. It divulges more details about your products or services and helps inform them as to whether you are the company they want to give their hard earned money to.
Well written content grabs more visitors attention and encourages them to further explore your site helping to build customer familiarity with your business. Content helps start and build customer relationships, which will help bring in a lot of business, so content integration into your website should be a very important consideration.
At the same time search engines love content, particularly search engine optimised content, making SEO one of the most critical elements of a small business website design. SEO friendly content basically means that content that is easily indexable for the search engines and being viewed by the search engines as being of high potential value to their searchers.
SEO: Design your site for search engines as well as people
SEO or search engine optimisation is argued by many to one of the biggest factors in the success of most business websites. As such, your small business website design should always be considering the SEO implications of design elements. So make sure that your site is not only designed for visitors, but also designed for search engines. It’s important to realise that SEO is a specialisation in itself and often it is prudent to opt for a professional SEO consultant to consult on the SEO of your website design while it’s still in the design phase.
Conversion Optimisation Strategy: Traffic is great; but sales are better
At the end of the day websites should be working assets within a business, not just a billboard to show off some design flare. So it’s important that the business objectives are not lost in a web designer’s vision of creating a visual masterpiece. Remember to integrate prominent calls to action through all of your pages, this includes prominent positioning of business phone numbers, obvious email contact forms, content that is not just designed to rank well search engines but also designed to turn those visitors into leads or sales. Both the design and content of the site should be looking to minimise elements that cause buying friction as well as look to address the concerns of your potential customers.
If you consider and implement these elements into your small business website design you will be taking a number of steps towards improving your online business’s effectiveness.
Types of Small Business Web Hosting
It does not matter whether you have a home-based business or you own a company the running a business website is a modern day necessity. One of the biggest factors in getting your business website operational is setting up some web hosting for the site.
Basics of Small Business Web Hosting
A web hosting service can be described as a process of getting a website live on the Internet. A hosting company puts a website on a server and connects the server to the Internet and your small business website becomes live. However there are many different options you have available when it comes to small business web hosting.
Different Types of Web Hosting Packages
There are various web hosting packages available in market including;
- Shared Web Hosting - If your business website is simple and doesn’t require loads of disk space or bandwidth then shared web hosting will often be adequate and is the cheapest option available. With this sort of hosting your website will be put on a server that is shared with lots of other clients of that company and you will share the resources of that web server. This web hosting option is the most affordable, but has several drawbacks, the biggest being that like all shared resources, the condition of the server is largely dependent on those who you are sharing with. So if there are other resource intensive sites on your web server you could find your website’s loading speed and performance significantly affected.
- Ecommerce Hosting -If you are planning to run an online store selling your business products or services then ecommerce hosting might be a good option. This form of hosting is tailored for those looking to sell products directly online. Ecommerce hosting package often come with installation of shopping cart software and SSL certificates. Given that you will be conducting business online, you should also look to make sure that prospective ecommerce hosting providers guarantee uptime so that your downtime (and therefore lost sales) are minimised.
- Dedicated Hosting – Unlike shared hosting, dedicated hosting is more secure, advanced and reliable. If you are operating a large business website or want to guarantee web server resource availability then dedicated web hosting is the top of the range in web hosting. You will be able to rent your own server from a provider and you will be provided with your personal IP. It will enable you to fully control your web server and make all of those web server resources available to only your sites. Of course the drawback is price, you are essentially rent an entire server that is dedicated to making sure your website is accessible to everyone, and the reality is the vast majority of websites would never fully utilise all the server’s resources. Nonetheless the few extra dollars a month can be worth the peace of mind, especially given website downtime can be very expensive.
- Virtual Private Server Hosting (VPS) – A VPS server can be described as one server being divided into several virtual servers of which each client is entitled to their section of the server resource. This setup combines the beneficial feature of not having to share server resources with other server users, much like a dedicated server setup, with the added benefit of not needing to pay to rent an entire server just for one business website, much like a share web hosting setup. This is a highly recommend web hosting options for small businesses because it offers many of the benefits of a dedicated server at a price that isn’t that much more expensive than shared hosting.
- Cloud Hosting – cloud hosting in one of the latest developments in web hosting, which basically offers a much more dynamic hosting option which focuses on offering hosting based on resource consumption of a website rather than a fixed server cost. So in the dedicated server example you might buy a server that is larger than your website requirements because you don’t want to reach your servers resource limit during peak periods otherwise your users will experience a slowdown in site performance and potentially downtime. Of course this means paying for resources your don’t use regularly, if at all. With cloud hosting you have the ability to quickly add and remove server resources as required which can greatly help reduce web hosting operating costs. So if for example you start a big marketing campaign that is only going to last a month, you can add the necessary server resource to cater for the boost in traffic for one month then remove them at the end of the campaign without the downtime involved with upgrading server hardware or moving your site to a different server.
How to choose a Package for Small Business Web Hosting
Choosing an appropriate plan for small business web hosting requires careful consideration. Therefore, while looking for a package, you should consider the following:
- Web location: The speed of your website depends on the hosting location of your website. It is better to host a website in the place where most of your website visitors reside as it helps ensure quick page loading. So if you customers are from the US then have your site hosted in the US, if your visitors are from Australia then Australian based servers are the fastest.
- Important features: While choosing a web hosting plan, you should carefully check whether you are getting all the necessary features in the plan. Disk space, RAM and bandwidth are the three most considered features of a hosting server and should be checked for. Also make sure that there aren’t any extra fees and charges tied into the hosting contract for industry standard web hosting features.
- Good Customer Support: Many hosting companies offer a round-the-clock technical support facility. This is invaluable for small businesses that often don’t have dedicated IT staff. It will enable anyone in the business to solve any problem related to server.
In Australia, many renowned web hosting companies are available in the cities like Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. The reviews of most of these companies are available on the Internet which offer as a good guide. Some popular international web hosts include are Bluehost, HostMonster, FastDomain, Yahoo Hosting. Some Australian based small business web hosts include Web24, Webcity Web Hosting, Melbourne IT and Crazy Domains.
The Value Of Internet Marketing Consultants
In recent times advertising of products or services through the Internet has become a major focus for small business. However, the success of such campaigns relies on the strategic application of an internet marketing plan. Obviously if a small business lacks the in house experience to spearhead an online marketing campaign then an Internet marketing consultant will greatly aid the success of any online marketing plan.
Responsibility of an Internet Marketing Consultant
An internet marketing consultant improves the likelihood of the successful application of an internet marketing strategy by performing various tasks including;
- Planning a business’s online marketing strategy: Through highlighting the strategic objectives of a business and how best to achieve this objectives via online opportunities. The marketing plan will not only take into consideration business goals, but also budget constraints.
- Market research: One of the many advantages of the internet is the volume of market information that is available which experienced internet marketing consultants can utilise to better set and reach business goals. An internet marketing consultant’s analysis and market research might include keyword research, volume of searches, your website, competitors websites, pay per click value, link building strategies and other opportunities.
- Building a website: It is essential to make a website well optimised for both search engines and user friendly, yet at the same time has the main objective of achieving business goals. An internet marketing consultant can help with finding the right balance.
- Common Internet marketing strategies: The success of Internet marketing strategy is normally focussed on driving more traffic to a website and then optimising the conversion rates of that traffic once it has reached the site. Common methods of driving additional traffic to business website include, search engine optimisation, pay per click advertising, email marketing, viral marketing, social media optimisation, link building and affiliate marketing.
- Competitors’ website analysis: Often the most valuable information an Internet marketing consultant can provide is the analysis of your competitor’s websites. When it comes to internet marketing the name of the game is being better than your competitors. A few positions higher in the search engine rankings and a better conversion rate makes an exponential difference online.
Internet Marketing Consultants – A Must Have for Small Business
Whether it’s about promoting their products or services online, getting traffic to your websites or ranking well on major search engines, an expert internet marketing consultant can make all these things possible and will help differentiate your business from your online competitors and leverage your current business assets.
Australian Internet Marketing Consultants
In Australia, a number of expert Internet marketing consultants and firms are based in the major cities like Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth etc. The rates charge by consultants obviously varies according to their services and expertise. Whilst there are internet marketing consultants that offer cheap rates, when it comes to internet marketing you tend to get more than what you pay for, and remember that in many cases small improvements can yield exponential rewards.
In Conclusions
Hiring Internet marketing consultant will help you analyse the various aspects of your online business, evaluate your needs and devise an innovative strategic plan that suits your business objectives and budget. This strategic plan will enable you to drive more traffic, for less expenditure and will strengthen your online presence.
Cheap SEO: Not As Cost Effective As You Might Think
Online business success is often determined by its visibility on the major search engines. Good search engine rankings generate more visitors which produces more sales. Search engine optimisation or SEO for short is the process of optimising a site to achieve better rankings in the search engines.
Whilst many SEO firms and services are reputable, increasingly, potential SEO customers need to be wary of cheap SEO services which don’t offer genuine longer term value. The rising demand for SEO services coupled with the budget constraints of small business has produced the emergence of relatively automated, basic and cheap SEO packages.
Despite being attractively priced, cheap SEO services often produce questionable results, which may not be both sustainable in the long run and not detrimental to the website’s integrity in the eyes of the search engines. Getting a good ranking in all major search engines is time consuming and requires a great deal of expertise and often quality content development. It’s well understood that any time consuming task is going to cost more. Under these circumstances, the concept of cheap SEO is very sceptical.
Automated SEO Often Lacks Quality
Often these cheap SEO packages centre around automated link building, automated directory and search engine submissions, optimising only the homepage of a site, no content development and few quality inbound links. For the most part they rely on targeting unproductive keywords that have relatively low levels of competition in online markets at the moment. However low levels of competition won’t be present forever, thus the need for a more long term strategy that is focused on quality and not low quality ranking factors that the search engines themselves are likely to discount in the future.
Unfortunately, any way you look at it, SEO takes time. It’s process should include keyword research and keyword selection based on potential value, content analysis and development, onsite reconstruction as well as optimisation, quality link building as well competitor analysis. Also, SEO isn’t not an overnight process, it takes time before you’ll get to see the results of your efforts, due to the time it takes for the search engines to recognise the changes in both your site and the new sites that are hopefully now linking to you. So beware of companies that talk about getting result within two weeks with their cheap SEO methodologies.
The higher price does not mean the availability of a better service all the time; however, real SEO approaches for which much effort is required are rarely offered by cheap SEO companies. Indeed, these cheap SEO methodologies are not the most effective ones and a number of reasons can be established in support of the view. These include:
- Quality SEO companies and consultants will focus on long term value.
- Often an ongoing SEO commitment is required because the reality is the web is always being updated and as such the ranking change all the time along with your competitors online marketing strategies.
- Many cheap SEO packages utilising automated techniques, which search engines are likely to discount for in the future.
- Attempts to manipulate search rankings via automated process can result in your website being penalised in the search engines, so cheap SEO services might end up costing you dearly.
- SEO is not as simple as the application of the right keywords in the right places. An expert SEO consultants should be engaged, they will cost more but they will have the experience to help you avoid the pitfalls as well as give you the advantage over your competitors. Remember that small improvement in rankings can lead to exponential improvements in your traffic.
- Look for an SEO that actually has a presence in the SEO industry, rather than just offering cheap SEO services without any industry reputation.
In Australia, you will find a number of renowned SEO companies in all major cities including Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide and others. Many of these companies offer end-to-end SEO solutions. However, before hiring their SEO services, you should do some research work on which will definitely bring an effective result for you. Feel free to ask potential SEO firms what differentiates them from the competition, and if their biggest point of differentiation is “price” it might be worth moving on.
Email Marketing and Email Marketing Services
Email marketing is essentially the use of emails as a direct mail marketing tool for prospective and past customers. However, email marketing services are not to be confused with unsolicited email distribution. Unsolicited bulk emails (also known as spam) is sent indiscriminately to internet users. Direct emails and retention emails are sent via email marketing services to email addresses collected in an authentic manner (known as an opt in) and contain information that is useful to the recipient and for which they requested for at the time of contact.
The two primary purposes of utilizing email marketing services are:
- To send advertisements or promotional messages. These are sent to email addresses collected by the sender or from rented lists.
- To retain and build customer relationships via regular email contact. These are similar to newsletters and are generally information based and often include promotional messages within the email.
Pros of email marketing and email marketing services
- Cost effective technique of retaining contact with customer base and to provide opportunity to up sell and resell products or services to existing customer base.
- Cheapest form of communication.
- Saves time and offers a great way to track engagement.
- Faster deployment of campaign often with instant delivery time.
- Easy segmentation opportunities to target specific groups and send relevant information.
- Greater personalisation improves response rates.
- Increasing sales as regular newsletters double as opportunities to include promotional messages.
- Effective feedback mechansism for customer to provide information through.
- Diversification away from more dominant customer sources such as search engines helping to create a more defensible online business.
- Wider marketing reach that’s not limited by geography.
- Enhances relationship with client base which builds loyalty and better facilitates longer sales cycles.
Cons of using email marketing services:
- Often difficult for recipients to differentiate between legitimate marketing emails and unsolicited mails.
- Highly sensitive email filters sometimes catch legitimate commercial emails as well.
- Renderability issues with different recipients email display systems rendering the mail differently.
- Email response decay and difficulty in keeping clients engaged after initial email
- Additional resources, manpower and use of sophisticated email marketing software may be required for massive email campaigns.
With more and more people growing increasingly wary of SPAM emails creating an effective email marketing campaign has become increasing more difficult. However despite the threat of even your legitimate emails being blocked by spam filters and overlooked by recipients as junk mail, the effectiveness of this internet marketing tool cannot be denied. For years it has proven to yield one of the highest ROI of all internet marketing strategies. So it’s vital that any online business invest in a good email marketing service provider who can effectively help businesses to navigate the many pitfalls of email marketing such as making sure your emails reach the recipients rather than being filters by spam filters.
Email Marketing Services
Hiring a reliable email marketing service provider is the best bet to ensure success in your email campaign. With a dependable service, you can enjoy access to a database of potential clients, get assistance on setting up and managing email directories, creating templates and launching the email campaign.
What to Look for in an Email Marketing Service?
• Feature Set - your email marketing service should be able to offer useful features such as creating emails, developing contact lists and monitoring results.
• Ease of Use – their website should be easy to navigate and user-friendly, especially when it comes to setting up an email list.
• Email Campaign Templates – email newsletter design is an important aspect of email campaigns.
• Reports and Tracking – tracking the effectiveness of your email campaigns is critical. So your email marketing service should offer a range of tracking features and reports.
• Good Support – this includes the availability of tutorials, live chat supports, online knowledgebase and email support.
Top 3 Email Marketing Service Providers
1. Aweber – very popular among internet marketers because of its ease of use and superb features such as email newsletter designs, website sign-up forms, email web analytics, follow up auto responders and a world class delivery rate. Highly recommended.
2. Get Response – definitely one of the leading email marketing service providers with over 300 HTML templates, social media integration, great tracking, testing and analytics.
3. Benchmark Email – this email service has everything you’d expect; templates, sign up forms, email personalization options, tracking, scheduling. Not a good the two above, but definitely good value.
These providers have monthly pricing options and their software can import mailing lists, remove unsubscribed contacts, group email contacts, automatically detect duplicate emails, require opt-in, add hyperlinks, add images and have many other features. Companies like Aweber communications can create newsletters and sign up forms for a business along with providing follow up autoresponders and email web analytics.
If there is only one thing you do today it should be commit to starting your email marketing campaign. It’s totally inexpensive, low maintenance, offers high ROI and will be a launching pad for greater online success.
Brisbane SEO Company’s Website SEO Review
This post is a part of the Best SEO Company website review series. It contains reviews of 10 SEO company websites that ranked well for the search term “SEO Brisbane”. To review other city results please visit:
- Sydney SEO Company
- Melbourne SEO Company
- Brisbane SEO Company
- Perth SEO Company
- Adelaide SEO Company
- Gold Coast SEO Company
Top 5 Organic Search Results for ‘SEO Brisbane’ – Company Website Review
Dejan SEO : 
The website is simply design and makes good use of basic SEO elements. It’s quick loading, with good informative images and original content. However, they could have made better use of their title tags. Also, by adding newsletter subscription and free analysis report, and prominent calls to action they have no doubt have a reasonable conversion rate. Overall, this site is well optimized from both the SEO point of view and conversion point of view.
SEO Works : 
This firms SEO team have done well utilising all the major ranking elements in it. The biggest thing that the website lacks is a focus on conversion or at least making their contact information prominent. As it stands their contact details are in the footer of the website. Adding a prominent contact form along with newsletter subscription and free analysis report would increased their conversion rate, but they do have great SEO.
Search Tempo : 
This website has a simple design and loads quickly. They make good use of anchor text in their navigation, yet use of title tags and keywords in URLs is poor. Their contact information is visible though they haven’t utilised a quality call to action or offered any incentive for visitors to contact them.
Reload Media : 
This website has a very flash/graphic based design though still makes reasonable use of major SEO techniques. They have made appropriate use of the title tags and alt tags. They could have improved their conversion optimization by making contact numbers and forms more readily available and prominent.
Organic With SEO :
This website has made appropriate use of alt tags but the use of title tags isn’t ideal. The anchor text used for the international navigation is also isn’t great. Though with that said the site is laid out reasonably clearly with some calls to actions, but their phone number isn’t even on their homepage.
Top 3 Local Search Results for ‘SEO Brisbane’ – Company Website Review
Get More Traffic : 
This site lacks the many of the essential elements of SEO and there are uses of iframe, which is not great for search engine optimization. Moreover, the website doesn’t have any back links. Though with that said they make use of very impressive conversion optimization techniques. So whilst the SEO might be poor it’s likely that their website is still quite successful.
Search Tempo :
This website has already been featured in the organic listing above which is a good sign that a SEO firm that knows what they are doing. However their site still has some obvious SEO flaws.
SEO Hub :
Whilst the site utilizes most of the major elements of SEO it definitely could have made better use of them. However for a site that has been around for awhile there are relatively few back links. In addition to this calls to action and contact information are difficult to find.
Top 2 Sponsored Links Results for ‘SEO Brisbane’ – Company Website Review
Web Marketing Experts :
This website has made good use of the major SEO elements such as proper use of alt tags and meaningful anchor texts in navigation. It could have made better use of title tags and images rather than flash which has caused high load times. That said they it’s likely they have opted for this to improve conversion rates.
Web Marketing Experts :
This site has used title tags well and also makes use of good anchor text in their navigation. However the contact details are in the footer, which would be missed by a lot of visitors. Also they don’t offer any incentives like a free analysis report for visitors to contact them which would produce a better conversion rate.
Finding Internet Marketing Services Worth Hiring
I have already spoken at length about signs a SEO company is bad, but I thought I’d flip it the other way and offer you some tips for finding internet marketing services worth hiring. Below are some things you can look for when hiring an internet marketing service.
14 Tips For Finding Internet Marketing Services Worth Hiring
- Do they rank well for their major terms? So if they were based in Sydney they should rank well for terms like “Internet Marketing Sydney”, “SEO Sydney” and “Email Marketing Sydney”. Ideally they should rank well for the broad terms of “Internet Marketing”, “SEO”, “PPC” and “Email Marketing” without the local term of “Sydney” being added to the search query.
- Do they have Google, Yahoo and Bing accreditation? Yes internet marketing service providers can get search engine accreditation signifying their proficiency with search engine marketing platforms.
- Do they offer a broad range of online marketing methods? These days the best internet marketing strategies will include a combinations of internet marketing disciplines such as SEO, PPC, email marketing, conversion optimisation, social media optimisation, affiliate marketing, local listings, etc. So it’s best if the internet marketing firm offers and is experienced with at least a couple of these internet marketing specialisations.
- Do they have a good portfolio of past/present clients that they have achieved good rankings for with industry competitive terms?
- Do they have informative and positive testimonials from happy customers? This shows they can not only can achieve good rankings but are good to work with. If you’re serious about finding the best internet marketing agency then you could even consider contacting some of their past clients and request further details about their performance and how they were to do business with.
- Is their own site neatly laid out, with the good use of headings and relevant information in a readable format coupled with multiple calls to actions? If they don’t look after their own website and use best website usability practices they are unlike to employ them on yours.
- Make sure they don’t use a lot of flash. A small amount of flash (maybe a flash header image) is OK, but a site made largely in flash is a sign that they don’t understand a lot about online marketing and making their site both user and search engine friendly.
- Do they have a couple of years experience in the internet marketing industry? Though working in the internet marketing industry for longer than five years would be preferred.
- Do they specialise in internet marketing or just offer the service on the side? Most web designers claim to offer internet marketing services like SEO with their designs, but most rarely integrate SEO best practices into their design nor do they understand that off page elements are often more important than the onpage web design.
- Do they offer informative articles on their own site that explain elements of internet marketing like SEO, PPC, email marketing, social media optimisation, etc? If they don’t they probably don’t understand the simple concept of quality content is king on the internet.
- Do they have a fair and justified payment structure? Assess the value of the service not the price, because like most things in life you get what you pay for and you should be looking to maximise value not minimise price. Whilst you need to consider what is best for your business, when it comes to internet marketing services the difference between ranking first and fifth can be huge often making the cheapest service the worst option.
- Do they offer free site analysis or reports? If so get one. Many internet marketing services offer these. So you can look at the detail and information supplied in the reports to compare and contrast between the quality of services.
- What makes them different from the competition? Sometimes asking the prospective internet marketing agency the blunt question of “what makes you better or differentiates you from your competition” will reveal a lot. If they try to sell you spin they are probably talkers not walkers, if they give an articulate and honest answer about what their strengths and weaknesses are then you can assess their viability from their response. Good businesses understand they can’t be everything for everybody and shouldn’t try to be.
- Do they set realistic time frames? Internet marketing is generally a gradual process. There are things you can do instantly, but a lot of it takes at least a few weeks to produce good results and often even longer to perform quality testing and optimisation.
So that’s a good starting point for choosing an internet marketing service, but be sure to also be on the look out for signs that they are a bad at SEO.
BEWARE of Free Internet Marketing Seminars Promising Riches
As the old sayings goes, if it seems too good to be true it probably is.
Someone recently forwarded me an article from the local newspaper which after reading I felt compelled to write about; free internet marketing seminars claiming to be able to fulfill your dreams of making money while you sleep.
The internet marketing industry is being inundated with new internet marketing seminars and training programs promising to make you a fortune with websites that are on autopilot. Now I have no problem with individuals and companies making money offering internet marketing workshops and training programs, these are not the problem, the problem is the internet marketing training companies locking their clients into training course contracts under which they can’t realistically get out of once they realise the course information is weak.
These sham internet marketing seminars operate like most shallow get rich quick schemes. They stage a FREE seminar which attracts a large gullible audience then after a day of building trust they move into a well crafted sales pitch that plays on the hopes and dreams of the unwitting, pitching the “potential” rather than the “reality”, selling how “easy” it is rather informing them of “the years of experience and system building” required to truly make it “easy”.
Of course despite the hard sell and obvious holes in these training products dozens of audience members end up handing over credit card numbers paying hundreds sometimes thousands of dollars a month for the “privilege” to have repackaged information that’s freely available online sent to them monthly over their 12 month contract.
But How Quickly These Shams Fall From Grace
It was only a couple of months ago when Geedversity was being featured in the news positively:
Mr Stenning teaches people how to make money from the web; how to rank in Google “within 24 hours of launching a web product” and how to market a business – sometimes without spending a cent.
“In the past 18 months we have had around 2000 participants (in the seminars) with 27 per cent (of participants) seeing returns in the first six weeks of start-up and 42 per cent making enough money to quit their day job after six months,” claims Mr Stenning.
Now, according to the courier mail, the company is facing legal threats from disgruntled customers who were sold hope but purchased a nightmare.
A company promising to teach internet marketing techniques that would let people quit their jobs is facing cancellations and threats of legal action. Internet marketing company Geekdom spent months spruiking the benefits of its course in Australia, New Zealand and the UK.
Clients paid up to $21,000 to learn of internet marketing strategies including trading advertising traffic, affiliate marketing and domain name trading.
One client said, “we were not making money to the extent we were told. We were told we would make our money back in the first six months. We were paying $1,800 a month, a total of $8,000, plus other costs up to $9,000!”
“It could work however there is more work involved than they ever suggested. They said it would take a few hours a week to maintain, we were working 10 – 12 hours a day”
Geekdom’s chief executive officer then goes on to say “we are doing our utmost to offer refunds to people who qualify, those people who have put in the work.
My Recent Get Rich Quick Internet Marketing Seminar Experience
Intrigued, I personally went to one of these free internet marketing seminars a couple of weeks ago (though I won’t name names). I was of course skeptical given the cost of the seminar was the princely sum of nothing (I’m a big believer in you generally get what you pay for). Nonetheless I wanted to see the up sell, and maybe learn thing or two, and most importantly meet the seminar leader who I felt might be a good joint venture partner in the future.
The seminar targeted beginners (real beginners) though there were even one or two valuable insights even for an old dog like me, but in whole the outline of internet marketing that they pitched was VERY incomplete, not that a beginner would know that. The concept of making money online was pushed as being “easy”, “simple”, “anyone could do it” which of course prompted the question from a skeptical audience member, as to why wasn’t he doing it himself if it was so easy, but he dodged that bullet very well.
The Money Is In Selling The Sizzle Not The Sausage
Of course the real reason the speaker no longer focused on scraping together a living selling ebooks (he did at one point but no doubt his markets got saturated) is that he could make a fortune selling hopes and dream for thousands of dollars to people who wanted to know the “secret” method of how you make ebooks and sell them online.
At the end of the day I tried to count the number of people that signed onto the $4000 course, it was close to 45. Making $150,000+ in a day never looked so easy. It truly was eye opening.
Warning Signs That A Internet Marketing Training Course Is A Sham
Of course amongst all sales hype there were a number of obvious warnings signs that clearly weren’t registering amongst the masses of individuals who were too busy stampeding towards the back of the room to sign up.
Firstly the guarantee was very conditional. This to me just screamed of a lock in contract with little opportunity for recourse.
Secondly, the limited time offer and the hard sell. I mean if their training course is legit they shouldn’t care if you sign up today, tomorrow or next week. It makes no difference when you are selling a pre-packaged info product.
Thirdly, the speaker himself wasn’t involved in the training process. Sure he put together some materials, ebooks, audio, videos etc – but once you signed the dotted line he cashed the check and walked away. If you had any problem you could always ask an under trained outsourced assistant or post your question on a forum that was provided.
Finally, and most alarming, as a “bonus” for “buying now” each member would receive the same couple of already packaged mini online ebook businesses ready to go. Of course the head smackingly obvious problem with his was that 45 people were going to get the exact same ebooks and landing pages. Last time I studied economics competitors selling an identical product cause price competition destroying profits for all firms. Not to mention Google doesn’t look fondly on duplicate content.
Know Who Your Buying From And Selling To
Despite my opinion that the product was incredibly over priced, I wasn’t there to buy it; I wanted to speak with the seminar leader personally. I wanted the opportunity to introduce myself and meet a peer in the industry. So I hung around and waited for the masses of new students to disperse from around the seminar leader. Though what I heard as I hung around waiting for the chance to chat to him blew my mind.
One individual asked point blank “what are the chances I’ll fail at doing this”, which floored me, I don’t know why anyone would ask such a subjective question. It’s like asking “what are the chances I won’t be able to run 100m in under 11 seconds”. Unfortunately many people just don’t have the genetics to run that fast not matter how good the training.
The real tragedy was that I was sitting near this individual in the seminar and watched him ask a number of relatively simple and in some cases blatantly obvious questions throughout the seminar. This young kid clearly wasn’t the brightest bulb in the pack and if I had to make a snap judgement I’d say he was going to struggle with the course, but of course the response from the seminar leader was a very unconditional “you won’t fail if you just do what I tell you”.
I cringed and watched that kid walk away with the look of renewed confidence that he wouldn’t be burned again on another get rich quick scheme.
At the end of the day I got my couple of moments with the seminar leader and in those few moments I realised he wasn’t the guy I thought he was. He wasn’t as altruistic as he claimed. He wasn’t as informed as he claimed. He wasn’t as experienced as he claimed and he had just made $150,000 selling a prepackaged info product. I walked away jaded, but it gave me the inspiration to start this blog.
You CAN Make Money Online
The internet provides many money making opportunities, but the fundamentals of business on the internet apply virtually the same way they apply in the real world, you just have greater opportunity for scale and distribution online. And just like traditional get rich quick schemes don’t’ work; they don’t work on the internet either.
Competition is fierce and what were great ways of making money in 2007 are not today. Everything evolves online, and quickly, website are made redundant and market positions are difficult to defend given the few barriers to entry. However there is lots of money to be made for those willing put their head down work hard and be smart.
I’ve been working for myself online since 2005, but it’s only been achievable through working hard and working smart. There’s no silver bullet and there definitely aren’t any internet marketing courses out there that will make you millionaires themselves – a lot of it is up to you. At some point you are going to have to do what every other successful person on this planet does – work hard and work smart.
I’m not saying going to conferences, buying ebooks and even joining internet marketing training courses are a bad idea (I’ve attended, read and tried lots myself) but there sure are a lot of junk products out there so make sure you’re learning off those that are worth learning off when it comes to internet marketing. Or better yet wet your appetite with the HUGE range of free ebooks and blogs scattered all over the web on how to make money online so that you can differentiate the wheat from the chaff.
You can start by subscribe to this blog now. It’s FREE.
Good to Great by Jim Collins – Book Review
This book took me quite awhile to read, not because it was too big or difficult, but rather it’s one of those books that you constantly set it down to reflect on the implications of what you have just read. Good to Great by Jim Collins goes on the must read list for anyone involved in running or managing a business and is the premier source of what’s required to make your good business great.
Good to Great Insights
Jim Collins has packed this book with volumes of insightful yet simple concepts about what exactly differentiates the best companies from the rest. The biggest takeaways from the book are:
- Who you bring into your business is far more important than what you do in your business. Great employees can be great at anything.
- Great companies are realists. They confront and deal with reality rather than hide in hope.
- Great companies find and focus on their core competency rather than are lured into diversification.
- Great companies don’t get caught up with being at the forefront of technology they make sure the technology compliments their business.
- Success comes through consistent direction and dedication; not one time innovations and breakthroughs. Great success is built on a daily basis.
I loved the book’s format; it is practical, filled with examples and even has great summaries at the end of each chapter. More importantly than all this is the quality of the information the book.
Overall Good to Great Review
There’s a reason why this book has sold over two million copies and has been a best seller in the business section for years – it’s a well researched, insightful, practical guide to building a great business. It should be on the shelf of anyone that owns or manages any business or aspires to. I give it 4.5/5!
Purple Cow by Seth Godin – Book Review
Let me start by saying this book is good without being great, which ironically is the premise of the book itself – don’t be good, be remarkable.
Purple Cow Insights
Whilst I wouldn’t call the book great, it is a short and fairly easy read and does have some valuable insights:
- The old method of advertising and marketing is dying. Consumer don’t engage with mass marketing mediums of TV advertising, newspaper ads, direct mail etc. More and more consumers are avoiding the noise and turning to recommendations from peers as to what products are worth investing the time and energy into.
- These days, it’s just not good enough to be good. Products need to be remarkable so that they stand out in the sea of alternative products. If they are boring they won’t get people talking.
- Marketing to the masses isn’t as effective as marketing to the innovators and early adopters who are people that pride themselves on being cutting edge. Let them evangelise your products rather than plugging the product yourself through traditional mass media.
- Continue to produce innovative and remarkable products rather than rest on the laurels of past product successes.
Despite the good insights this book is all theory back up a few old examples. It’s not a very practical book as it doesn’t offer any “how to” style steps. Though marketing has always been a bit more of an art than a science, and I can concede that the notion that there is a simple and set formula to apply to being “remarkable” would be a bit of an oxymoron.
Overall Purple Cow Review
All in all I’d give this book a 3.5/5 but it’s short enough that the couple of hours it’d take you to read it would be well spent.