My Buy Essay

Posts Tagged ‘Internet marketing’

Googles newest algo changes with some reports stating reciprocal linking holds less weight than one way linking.

Reciprocal linking for your Internet Marketing should you or shouldn’t you exchange?

The answer to that question is both yes and no. Let me explain.

When it comes down to deciding whether to exchange links or begin a reciprocal link campaign you have you have to be careful of the black hat label.

First – stay away from sites with low or zero page rank ( 0-2 ) if possible. These sites need to show value to google before you should consider exchanging links.

Make sure not to link exchange with direct competitors or similar products. You want to separate yourself from the clutter of same products or service. Try to look for sites that have complimentary items – example: you sell film for cameras so it may be a great idea to do reciprocal linking with a site that sells cameras. Do

Deep research about your potential linking exchange partner by using Alexa (free tool). See if your potential link partners website is generating real traffic at all. A stale site with no real attraction to visitors will not do much for your Internet Marketing Strategy.

Note: Make sure you only exchange links with websites that are related to your business. Do not exchange links with a gambling site if you have a camera film

website, Google can smell a rat from a mile away so do not put your website in a bad position for black hat techniques.

But don’t just exchange links for Googles Search Engine. Do reciprocal linking because you and your link partner can benefit from the exchange like cross marketing, helping both websites generate more traffic and supply more options for your visitors which may help you both grow your business online.

How do I exchange links with other webmasters?

When you go to a website you would like to exchange links with see if they have a links page, if so contact the webmaster. Make sure that you look over the website carefully looking for red flags that may hurt your ranking in search or hurt your reputation online. When you contact the webmaster let him know you looked at his site and explain why you think both of you can benefit from this partnership of exchanging links. It is usually helpful to place his link on your site before contacting him and when you send your request inform the webmaster that you already placed link on your site and it will only remain for 10 days. If there is no response remove this link from your links page.

So even thou one way linking seems to hold more weight in search, reciprocal linking still has a place and value in you Internee Marketing.

I was at a meeting the other day when one member of the audience came up to chat to me after I had given my presentation. ‘I agree with what you told us,’ she said, ‘but it only applies to some people. After all in my business there’s nothing I can turn into an ebook.’ Within a minute of chatting to me she had developed two ideas for ebooks.

Now, I’m not saying I’m some kind of miracle worker. However, often I discover that many people who run their own business can’t see the wood for the trees. They are so tied up in delivering solutions to their existing customers, they can’t see what else might be possible. As an example, I was talking to a chap from the Midlands the other day who runs a plastic mouldings company. He said to me that my ideas for ebooks only work in the service industry and they they couldn’t possibly work within his sector.

A few minutes later we had developed an idea for an ebook which he is now going off to get written. As a search term, “plastic mouldings” gets around 45 searches a day in the UK. At the moment his web site gets almost none of those searches; instead his web site exists as a brochure to people in the know – largely existing customers. What this means is, his web site is missing important traffic that could provide business.

So, now he is writing an ebook on the theme of ‘how to use plastic and save the environment’. He will be making this available free of charge – but he could add future ebooks for which he will charge, such as ‘how to specif icy projects using plastic’. Now, he’s not going to become a millionaire selling such ebooks. But the free ebook will attract traffic he might otherwise have lost and the paid for ebook will finance his Google AdWords campaigns. The result will be much more traffic to his web site at no cost, perhaps even at a profit. Suddenly, my chap from the Midlands realised that the key to unlocking the future success of his company was selling information.

Like many people, he has begun to realise that Internet users are mostly searching for information. We sometimes forget that when the Internet really started to take off, just ten years ago, it was called ‘the Information Superhighway’. Nowadays, it is largely the ‘brochure superhighway’. Having a web site which is just a brochure for your business is only going to get you so far. To take that next step upwards to greater online success you need to be trading in information.

Much of the information you provide could be free; but it needs to be practical, useful information targeted specifically to particular groups of people. Some of the information you provide could be sold; that will provide you with an additional income stream you previously might not have thought about.

Information marketing is an essential component of any business online these days. Without marketing information you will not gain as much success as you would do. Indeed, I spoke with one marketing guru the other day who has dramatically changed his business, based on just two months of testing online. He had one web site where he tweaked the keywords and did all the optimisation tricks he could. He had another web site which he didn’t optimise but for which he wrote several articles and got them published widely around the Internet. Guess what? The information won hands down against optimisation; more links, more clicks, higher ranking.

Providing information is essential online. Whether it’s in the form of ebooks, specialist web sites, email courses or traditional books and reports is neither here nor there. You need to be in the information business to attract interest in your main business.

There are three basic rights you should know about when it comes to resale rights marketing. These are resale rights, master resale rights and private label rights

Whenever you purchase a product with resale rights, you will only have the license to sell the said product to other people. When you purchase a product with master resale rights, you will have the license to sell the product to other people, and you will also have the option to sell the resale right for the same product as well. This means that the people to whom you sell the resale rights of the product whose master resale rights you own will consequently acquire the license to sell the said product to other people.

Confusing as this may sound, our focus for this article are private label rights which, of the three rights enumerated above, is undoubtedly the most empowering and the most profitable.

Private label rights are embodied in a license that comes with an information product you may be able to purchase. These rights would allow you to alter, modify, enhance and rearrange the contents of the said product to suit your own needs and wishes. What exactly does this mean?

With private label rights, you could divide the chapters of, say, an eBook, and sell them as a series of articles. The reverse is also true. If you purchased a set of articles with accompanying private label rights, you could compile them into one nifty and seemingly novel eBook or special report.

Better yet, you could add any information on the said information product, without having to seek the permission of the original author. You feel that one section is wanting in details? You could freely insert your own additions!

But the best part of information products with private label rights is that, in most cases, you could put your name as the author of the work, without having to pay royalties or ghostwriting charges to the original author.

There are many benefits to private label rights. Some are quite apparent. Others only manifest after a deeper scrutiny. Let’s take a look at some of them

Private label rights would allow you to come up with a variety of new products from the original source. Being empowered to alter the contents to suit your needs, you have the liberty to repackage them as novel offers for different markets.

Private label rights would allow you to improve on a work that you may have found lacking. Tired of purchasing products to sell, when such products do not meet your standards of quality and they are disappointingly unalterable? You won’t have to worry about such with private label rights. You have the freedom to change and improve on what is written as you see fit.

Private label rights are perfect for branding yourself and your business. You need to get the word out about your online venture. Purchasing a number of information products with private label rights and naming them as your own would impress upon the online world that you are an expert in your chosen field, and they would trust you more easily when the need arises to procure your services or avail of your products.

The purchaser is not the only person who stands to earn from private label rights, however. An information product creator can also consider this route if he wishes to make some fast money. The information product creator can offer the private label rights to his works at a substantially higher price, considering all the perks that are attached to it.

There has been an age old debate as to whether or not a creator should sell the private label rights for his products. Though there are many schools of thought on the matter, the following scenario seems to be the most beneficial for the information product creator: he should sell the private label rights for his products only when the same is nearing the end of its market life.

At this point, it is widely believed that the product has already been squeezed dry of its moneymaking potentials, and by allowing other people to alter it in creative ways, the said product might find new life in different markets.

Private label rights are excellent offerings in the world of Internet marketing. When you encounter a hot commodity that would give you the liberty to alter its essence and call it your own, it is very much worth your time to study the profitability of purchasing the same. Offers this good don’t come everyday.

Viral Marketing is all about giving away your own free product or service along with your ad copy (contact information, link, email, etc.). In turn, recipients of your free product are allowed to pass it along to their own clients, prospects, visitors and others as a freebie. This is a quick way to multiple your marketing at no extra expense and without extra effort on your part.

Here are some popular viral marketing techniques to follow:

1. Ebooks &ndash Share your no cost ebook with your website visitors. Include a nice full-color ad for your most popular product line with links to your website and email. Tell recipients to share copies of the ebook with their own site visitors and other contacts.

2. Software – Share a trial or “lite” version of your software with your website visitors as a freebie. Don’t forget to include that ad for your most popular product line with links to your website and email. And tell recipients to share copies of the software with their own site visitors and other contacts. For help creating software, hire help from online bid sites like Elance.com.

3. Web Host &ndash Offer to host small business web sites on your server at no charge. In exchange, place your own banner ad at the top of the site for viral marketing. You can setup a fold for their site and they can choose their own domain name and have it redirected to that folder.

4. Templates &ndash Design your own website or other templates, include your own marketing information on them and give them away as free downloads or as an electronic package. Grant permission for recipients to pass them along.

5. Articles &ndash Write articles about your industry. Include your website and contact information in the byline and grant permission for others to publish as long as they keep the byline in tact. Then people can use your contact on websites, in ezines, newsletters and other places where once again, viral marketing will speed the spread of information about your business.

6. Discussion Board – Set up a Discussion Board on your website with your banner ad attached at the top. And invite others to link to it and use it for their own sites.

In summary, by using viral marketing strategies, you can reach out all over the Internet with much less effort. See which methods work best for you and repeat them as often as needed.

A few years ago it seemed that every time one opened a web page one would be bombarded with offers for this or that. Pop Windows had arrived with a vengeance.

As time elapsed the point was reached where surfing the Internet was almost like playing a video game; when the ad appeared one would try to close it before another one arose. This annoyance factor is precisely why we have seen the decline in the use of pop-up windows on today’s Internet; surfers simply do not even look at pop-ups anymore. They close the window out before even reading the ad. Very often, a surfer will even leave your site if there are too many pop-up ads. It is simply not worth the hassle of closing those windows while trying to obtain the information that your site has to offer. This information, while valuable, is not as valuable as the surfer’s time.

Studies have shown however, that even with these setbacks, pop-up windows are still an effective method of Internet marketing. Is there some way that pop-up windows can be less irritating and still be effective? Yes! What if the pop-up ad were seen upon exiting your site instead of entering? This would allow the surfer to obtain the information needed from your site, feeling that they were able to come and go quickly without being hassled by other ads and offers, all the while making the surfer happy. You have left the surfer with a positive attitude and he or she are therefore more likely to respond to the pop advertisement.

This is being accomplished more and more by using what is being called pop-under windows. When the surfer comes to your site, the ad is opened discretely behind your web page. Then, upon leaving your site, after obtaining all the information needed, the ad will be seen and is therefore more likely to initiate a response. Since the surfer has the information initially required, he has achieved his objective and is now open to do other things; ideally respond to the pop under advertisement.

Not all pop-windows are created equal however. There are some things that you can do to make your pop-windows, whether pop-up or pop-under more effective. The pop-window should be easy to “escape” from. If the surfer does not want to see the ad, but has a hard time closing it out, they will likely become frustrated and could leave your site all together. You should either use a button that will allow the surfers to close the window. Make sure that the “x” is easily visible. Another good idea is to use a script that utilizes cookies. Cookies will prevent pop-windows from overloading the surfer since you can decide the frequency of the pop-windows, rather than each time a page is opened. Also be sure that there is no more than one pop-window per page.

When creating a pop-window, you will be asked to fill out a short information form, select the length of cookies, and choose the layout of the pop-window. When choosing the design of the pop-window, you can increase the effectiveness by creating a large headline that includes benefits that will be most appealing to the customer. You should also consider using incentives, and lastly do not ask the customer to read a long and drawn out advertisement. Keep the message simple yet powerful and your pop-ads will be sure to generate profits for your site.

Everyone who uses the web knows that advertising is a huge part of the entire experience. The internet is full of advertising for every possible company and product you can imagine. Although many complain about the forms of advertising, there is not much difference in internet advertising and telemarketing phone calls to your home. The interesting thing is however that web users prefer to be annoyed by internet ads over unexpected phone calls. This acceptance of ads has created a breeding ground for millions of pop-ups and banner ads on the internet. Sites use them individually or together, but some still wonder which is better for increased website traffic. Consumers have offered a response, perhaps not verbally, but with statistics of effectiveness.

Pop-ups are typically seen as annoying advertisements. Those that include blinking lights can even be hazardous to some users with certain medical conditions. They have been considered the most hated form of web advertising available. With pop-ups being so annoying however, consumers may wonder why they are still being used so frequently. The truth is that pop-ups are terribly aggravating, but they are indeed effective overall. For some crazy reason, there are millions of people who actually utilize them when they appear on their screen. This is partially due to many sites using pop-up ads as an excuse and reason for offering free services to site users. They will state that they must use these forms of ads in order to offer the site for free. Users, who don’t want to pay, but still want to use the site, will likely accept the excuse without question.

The trouble with pop-up ads these days are that there are many programs to install on a computer that will not allow pop-ups through. This means that when a pop-up is meant to appear on your screen, your installed “pop-up blocker” program does not allow it to happen and instead blocks the advertisement from reaching you, the user. These programs are very effective most of the time and can cost advertisers a great deal of money if the ad is not reaching the intended target. Advertisers are now coming up with newly programmed pop-ups however that can bypass these “blocker” programs and still deliver the ads to your screen, whether you like it or not.

Banner ads began to appear on websites in response to the annoyance consumers felt from pop-ups. Advertisers thought that if banner ads were not as bothersome, they may offer even better results than the pop-up ads. Sites began sticking banner ads in every free area of their site. Upon doing so, they soon realized that although banner ads are not typically as bothersome as pop-ups, they are also not as effective. Users were less likely to utilize banner ads for their purpose. Many of the banner ads were perhaps not as noticeable as an aggressive pop-up ad right in the user’s line of vision. Some are off to the side of the screen and out of the direct eye contact.

Many users prefer banner ads when asked, because they claim they are easier on the eye and they are often unnoticeable. This may mean more comfortable use for the user, but it means something completely different to the advertiser. An advertiser wants their ad to be noticed, even at the user’s expense. They would rather annoy the user and get the ads noticed than the ads simply sit being unnoticed. In whole, advertisers were not seeing a large turnout with banner ads, and therefore many sites no longer use them for advertising purposes.

The answer to whether or not pop-ups or banner ads are best really lies with who you speak with. Consumers will likely tell you banner ads are much better than troublesome pop-ups. Advertisers however would tell you the exact opposite. They both have a place on the internet and their own group of “fans”. The conclusion is however that unless users completely boycott pop-ups in an extremely dramatic way, they will likely continue to replace banner ads. The power of the choice lies in the hands of the advertisers at this time and until users want to force them to change their ways, the advertisers will continue to support pop-ups over banner ads.

There are ways to increase your profits by using pop-ups as a website tool. More than likely, you have heard of pop-ups, but there is new software on the market that will amaze you. It has never been as easy to use pop-ups to market your website as it is today. You might be glad that you took a few free minutes to learn about pop-up marketing.

The new pop-up marketing software is not just your standard pop-up anymore. Today, you can market in a much less intrusive and irritating way to your customers. The prevalence of pop-up blockers in web browsers is huge and very affective. In the older days, it was a necessary tool because computers would literally freeze up because of p pop-up. Your job as a marketer is to draw in customers and keep them. However, you do not want to drive traffic away by having huge amounts of pop-up that take over their screen. When using the software, you will need to decide which type of pop-ups you want to use. Be sure to check out several of them before making a decision.

Pressure Pop-up – These types of pop-up have a countdown button that appears after your customer is on the web site for a while. The great thing about these is that they are set to give your customer time to look over the site, and will leave the screen once the count down runs out. You can put anything on your pop-up to entice customers to buy.

Instant Opt &ndash In Pop-up – A new software feature of pop-ups is opting in by clicking either yes or no. Using this feature is good for capturing potential customer’s email address. All business depend on lists to make future contacts about products, discount and special offers or drawings &ndash and not just the typical tasks of order taking and receipts.

Conditional Timed Pop-ups – Timing is everything in business. With this feature, you can decide when you want a pop-up to appear. A pop-up that appears too early may not give your customer time to thoroughly taken in the site, or a pop-up appearing when they were about to order without a discount will damage your profits a lot.

Changing Pop-ups – If you want to keep your customers from being bored every time they come to your site &ndash then use different pop-ups. The new type of software for pop-ups allows you to stage different pop-ups to appear with new information. It can be offering them a new product, information, or even close outs on certain products. You can make it to fit your customer’s needs and that spells more profit for you.

Generalized Pop-ups &ndash This software configures pop-ups to look exactly the way you want, and timed the way you see fit.

There are numerous places online where you can order the new pop-up software. Many times, you can order them with different features separately, like the changing pop-up software. In the end, it will cost more though so you might want to consider buying a package deal with the other software included. As you can see, there are great benefits with the new pop-up software. In addition, most of the software has other features that you will like. They are fully integrated with to work with other types of web design software. You don not have to be a computer scientist to run them either. Most of it is WYSIWYG, or what you see is what you get type programming.

Other features are just as valuable with the new software of pop-ups. You can edit to your hearts content any aspect of your pop-ups. If you want the color or shape to be unique, you can change it. You can change the wording to suit any style of customer you have too. In most programs, you do not have to dispose of any past work that you have created. There are numerous save features for wording and designs. This alone saves you lots of time for the other important business aspects that you have to do. And that is the part that is important &ndash getting down to business on the Internet.

Over-spending, this is possibly the easiest and most damaging trap to fall into when starting out on your Internet Marketing venture. Not having a clear idea of your budget.

This is not only the AMOUNT of MONEY that you want to spend (or have available to spend), but just as importantly your TIME allocation and the HOW and WHEN you are going to spend it.

It is after all pointless to spend a hundred dollars on a product or service if you realistically are only going to see returns from the investment in a year &ndash be it increased visibility or actual sales. What you want to do is work out where to do your spend to get ‘the most bang for your buck’ &ndash equally for money and time. One of the great things about marketing on the net is that there are still ways to promote and start earning income that will cost either very little or are for free. So, the idea is to get the business to PAY for itself as soon as possible &ndash via sales, commissions, whatever.

One part of the problem in going in and denting your credit card is that at the end of the day, you have to fund that spend &ndash you have to first recover the initial outlay BEFORE you can say that you are in profit. Another part is that if you have spent this months grocery money on your start-up, the pressure to perform and get results makes this venture no longer a pleasurable journey, but becomes a slog and very stressful for all.

This leads on to the allocation of time. Your body and mind function best if they have diversion, so it is vitally important to balance the time you spend setting up your Internet Marketing business with family time or time with friends or even ‘me’ time &ndash you know, when you go to a movie or out to the wild places to recharge your spirit. This is critical to your success and well-being.

As with any business venture, the driving motivation should be to get cash positive as soon as possible. After all, that is why we are doing this &ndash to make money! So the main thing is to ‘box smart’ &ndash know what you want and where to spend to get it.

This sounds a bit trite, but in this article and others to follow, I share with you techniques that will enable you to operate on a realistic budget &ndash a budget of MONEY and TIME – and this will go a long way in shaping your success on the internet &ndash but more importantly, will get you into the ‘cash-positive’ scenario easier and most times sooner.

Another of the pitfalls of starting out on the Internet Marketing arena (whether it is to promote ‘brain tools’ like books etc, or if you are selling sun-beds for hamsters), is that we all tend to take on too much and become overwhelmed with information and advertising as well as a multitude of marketers wanting you to join/buy/use/sign-up. This can create havoc in your life &ndash all these decisions &ndash “Should I?” “Shouldn’t I?” “But if I did then I could….”

Taking on too much can be the downfall of your business right at the outset.

Make no mistake; there is a lot of work to be done and knowledge to acquire &ndash THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH! The secret is being able to sift through all of the ‘stuff’ and then making a good decision based on your understanding. What most of us do though is try to ‘do-it-all’ and do it quickly &ndash this is so typical of how our lives are run. My best advice is to identify someone who has done it and is prepared to show you how you can do it &ndash I do not mean Joe Schmooze around the corner &ndash I mean an actual marketer who is making money on the internet.

Yes, I know, “How do you identify such a person?” especially as I said earlier, there is so much garbage out there. Unfortunately, that is going to be up to you &ndash advice and recommendation I can offer, but in the long run, it is up to you to see where you feel comfortable and with what vehicle you feel you can earn money.

If I can leave you with one thought for today:

Have a clear goal of what you want to achieve (financial freedom, family time, giving to others, whatever) and try to build a plan on how to get there &ndash like a road map. This is not as simple as it sounds, but once you build the discipline to plan your future, the rest really does start to just drop into place.

As I mentioned in the last entry, I’ve been speaking with people who are making $5000 – $10,000 or more a month online, and I’m beginning to see some common factors.

You have to understand how difficult it is to get people to talk to you about their successes. They remind me of the inventors I’ve spoken to about financing their products &ndash they are deathly afraid that someone will steal their ideas, not realizing that their talent is part of the success of that idea. Sometimes it took several emails, an IM and a lot of promises, but I got people to talk.

One of the factors that struck me very early is the fact that most of the successful people I spoke with use some form of viral marketing in their advertising and marketing plan.

Viral Marketing is a marketing strategy that encourages other people to spread your marketing message, which grows your exposure exponentially. Link exchanges are a good example of viral marketing, because people take the link to your site and put it on theirs. When people link to their sites, they see yours. Then they may take your link and add it to their site. Just for fun I ran the SEOElite backlink checker on a successful web entrepreneur’s site. There were 1498 different sites that had his URL in them. Not bad. Affiiate programs are also viral in nature.

The guru of viral marketing has to be Dr. Ralph Wilson. You should definitely visit his WilsonWeb site. There are many terrific articles there.

These are Dr. Wilson’s six elements of a viral marketing strategy:

1. Give away products or services

2. Provide for effortless transfer to others

3. Scale easily from small to very large

4. Exploit common motivations and behaviors

5. Utilize existing communication networks

6. Leverage the resources of others

Viral Marketing seems to be an integral part of making a lot of money online. It could be as simple as trading a small banner or button for a directory listing (Income: $8000 a month), or offering webmasters a cut of your earnings to get them to your website to view your content and then buy (Income: $4000 a month). In fact, doesn’t that second business model describe Chitika, the ill-fated PPC network?

Multiple tier affiliate programs, where you get a cut of the income from people you get to sign up, are other examples of viral marketing.

You don’t have to do anything quite as dramatic, but I think it would be a smart idea to come up with some viral marketing elements for your own web site. Here are a few suggestions:

1. Write articles and get them posted on free article sites. Make the content compelling and the title provocative and interesting. Make sure at least one link appears in the article.

2. Install a ‘email this page to a friend’ script or plugin. There are plenty of them out there on the Internet.

3. Come up with a free product, utility or service that will promote your business, and encourage people to distribute it. Even if you have to pay for one to be made, it will be worth it.

4. Write for free on a well-known site in your area of expertise, especially one with a newsletter or free article distribution. This is a terrific way to perpetuate your site virally.

5. Put together an affiliate program that gets your banner on websites. If you have a unique utility, service or information source, you can get webmasters to put up a small box, banner or chicklet that has a link to your site.

Viral marketing can make you rich…I’ve seen the examples. The reason is simple…you are giving people something for free that they perceive as valuable, and they are telling other people how smart they are for getting something for free. In order to tell other people they have to mention you. It’s brilliant.

I’ll bet you thought you knew all about Paul Revere. He was, of course, responsible for inventing the Internet…uh, no… sorry, wrong turn.

Not that he couldn’t have used Internet marketing principles, however, had the Internet been available. Putting an ad up on Google sure would have made life a lot easier than, say, getting captured by the British…not to mention a greater impact, as Internet marketing goes.

But, his famous ride to awaken the colonists has historians – but not marketers &ndash utterly baffled. Why? Let’s see first the problem … then how marketing (particularly Internet marketing principles) solves the problem.

Most historians don’t understand the 80/20 Rule. Don’t get me wrong. A lot of people don’t understand the implications of the 80/20 Rule. They don’t understand its recursive nature, the “64 &ndash 4 Rule,” the “51.2 -0.8 Rule,” “Sierpinski Triangles,” and so on.

But, it’s really not necessary to understand all of that, anyway. What you should know is simple: the 80/20 Rule simply means 80% of your results will flow from 20% of your efforts. That’s the simplicity of the 80/20 Rule for Internet marketing…or anything else.

Paul Revere understood the 80/20 Rule well, in concept. I bet he would have taken to Internet marketing too.

You see, historians can’t understand why Paul Revere’s ride produced a word- of &ndashmouth- epidemic (“buzz”) and why fellow yeller William Dawes’ ride did not. After all, Dawes traveled 17 miles on horseback that night. But, almost no one from the southerly circuit of towns he visited &ndash towns like Roxbury, Brookline, Watertown, and Waltham &ndash responded to the call.

That’s the reason he goes as an unsung hero in our history.

I am a wandering, bitter shade,

Never of me was a hero made;

Poets have never sung my praise,

Nobody crowned my brow with bays;

And if you ask me the fatal cause,

I answer only, “My name was Dawes”

‘Tis all very well for the children to hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere;

But why should my name be quite forgot,

Who rode as boldly and well, God wot?

Why should I ask? The reason is clear –

My name was Dawes and his Revere.

History rings with his silvery name;

Closed to me are the portals of fame.

Had he been Dawes and I Revere,

No one had heard of him, I fear.

No one has heard of me because

He was Revere and I was Dawes.

(The Midnight Ride of William Dawes

by Helen F. Moore -Century Magazine, 1896).

Seems unfair. Many historians lament Dawes, the unrecognized hero. But, then again, the 80/20 Rule shows us that life is disproportionate in its results.

That wasn’t Paul Revere’s only ride:

You see, the 80/20 Rule teaches us one simple lesson and …several very powerful ones. So don’t go away.

The simple lesson? That’s easy. Focus and prioritize on what you do best. Each of us is, or should be, a specialist in a particular niche. In other words, very good in one area &ndash and a “duck out of water” elsewhere.

That was Paul Revere. As renowned historian David Hackett Fischer put it, unlike Dawes, Revere had an “uncanny genius for being in the center of events.”

• From the Boston Tea Party to the Revolution, committees and congresses sprang up all over New England. Revere rode from one city to another, bearing messages and linking to each other. Consequently, he was well known.

• He rode to Philadelphia from Boston regularly carrying organizational messages. He rode from Boston to New Hampshire, from Boston to New York, and from Boston to just about anywhere in New England.

• He connected people to people, and people to news and events. And he did it well. While 80% of the leadership belonged to but one committee, he was only one of two men who served on almost all of the committees in Boston. (80/20 Rule: The most accomplish the least. The least accomplish the most.) More popularly known as: “If you want something done well, give it to a busy person.”

• He was a clearinghouse for information about the British. In other words, if you knew something and didn’t know who to tell, you went to Paul Revere.

So, when the stable boy overheard the conversation of the two British officers, he went to Paul Revere.

When Paul Revere mounted his horse that fateful night, his travels were strategic…He knew who the town fathers, militia commanders, Minutemen officers, key ministers, opposition lawyers, merchant leadership, and other strategically placed individuals were… and where they lived.

Dawes did not have that gift. He was not well known. He had not traveled widely. Consequently, his efforts that night were spent on arousing common folk, no doubt, but most people didn’t know where to go, or who to contact, or what the next step should be.

Paul Revere knew the leadership. What they needed was what we all call in Internet marketing, a “message to market match,” (when and where specifically the British were moving).

Paul Revere supplied that match. The 80/20 Rule is a filter for precision matches between effort and result. He supplied that filter:

• Preparation and research? His “keywords” were people, places and events learned over three years…

• Key knowledge? The information from the stable boy… and when the British would move …

• Strategic “niches”? Most “profitable” towns to alarm in the shortest amount of time…

• “Pre-qualified traffic”? The individuals who were prepared to respond to his call, did so, like clockwork.

• “Message to market match”? They would act in direct response to his focused message… and …

• Call to action? “The British are coming. Resist them…now.”

Revere was less a rider and more a “guided missile” that night. Specific. Targeted. Effective. Those are the ingredients for successful Internet marketing…and the call to Lexington Green that next day was an 80/20 Rule “in play”.

Every Internet marketer knows from the 80/20 Rule, that Internet marketing is a process, broken down into steps, each step catering to the comfort zone of different kinds of individuals. The days of “one stop, one purchase” are over. Most people will NOT purchase in one stop…so devise other kinds of response (email follow-up, mini-courses, opt ins, surveys, etc.)

As any Internet marketing specialist knows, if people are confused, they take no action, except to leave the issue (or website) alone.

If Dawes had had a website, they would’ve left it confused with no way to respond to any call to action.

So, people didn’t act under his call … until days later, after Lexington and Concord were history.

Yes, William Dawes was a hero. But, his ride took so much more effort, accomplished much less, and took much longer to finish … Mixed results, at best.

History and Internet marketing turn on hinges produced by the 80/20 Rule.

About the Author

Wayne Sedlak is an Internet Marketer and Radio Talk Show host. Hear archived shows on Internet marketing, 80/20 Rule, Ebay and many other subjects at .worldtalkradio.com/show.asp?sid=216 . For Internet marketing training: .Icanmarketonline.com. Questions? Email: NetPublishDirecway.com Call Toll Free: 1866.735.5871

Keywords: Internet Marketing, 80/20 rule, Paul Revere 1147 words poem