Essential Strategies for Technopreneurs

Chapter Three

The Internet, Your Empire

I'm proud to be one of the Internet society. There is something with the Internet I've not experienced with other environments. It is ever developing and by the minute and out of control.

It is the only place you can get out any time and find another firm with shared interest, connecting to people on the other side of the globe with the online translator and still sell them your products. It is especially important to note there it is without the limitations of the local papers or media who charge you a full rate while they charge some arm's length business a ridiculous discounted rate or an endless wait for that annual show catalog or that greedy exporter alliances who will not add you to their list, except you adopted the same underground society ideology like them., It eliminated many mediums, broke many SWW rules and brought many people from the black list to the front line again.

Here is my Internet Golden rule................................

You can set in the net exchanging hundreds of megabytes per day, but by the end of the day it will matter only by looking at your Revenue, customers data list, or at least a testimonial from appreciative customers

Set a goal for every activity and try to achieve it in the shortest period with smarter efforts and long lasting results so you can go on the next achievement.

Your Internet Presence

As if you move into new city, I guess it all depends on what you are doing or going to offer, and here is some of the Internet interesting demography:

Websites; Main domains, malls, auctions, stores,

Search Engines,

Directories

Link pages

News groups; General news groups, your own

Forums and ; general, groups, your own

Webrings

RSS and atom XML news feeds

You need to plan your Internet Empire before things get out of hand. It may get out of control for example as follows:

Outdated mirror/introductory pages with missing passwords and non active emails.

Why Referrals and Subdomains?

They give solutions to the long Internet addresses to be remembered, unless you can afford a Subdomain for every webpage in your website, many of your webpages will probably look like this: http://www.yourdomain.com/your-folder/your-subfolder/You.htm  and some times a longer address. Well, interested customers can barely remember you domain with the Internet abbreviation, so you need smaller address, but your server doesn't allow you for 1000 Subdomains because of  space limitation, or simply it becomes very expensive, so what about http://You.123etc.com you got the point, after building the Subdomains or the referrals add them to your search engine registration and optimization software and check them at least monthly.

·         Territorial reasons. Many Internet surfers search the net territorially, so if you are interested in doing business in certain areas that are not your local business territory, Subdomain in a server with abbreviation for this area is your key, like many businesses who advertise in the international yellow pages,

·         Language reasons; many business directories in certain languages have the own popular webspace. Being part of this in their language is just a key to be introduced to their culture.

Search engines

Understanding search engines and the ranking policy is essential for Internet success. According to the last statistics, 85% of Internet traffic comes from search engines, either categorized or algorithmic search engines. You need to submit your whole website, not the first URL, to at least 1000 search engine once a month to maintain decent traffic to your site and thus decent income. You may ask, why the whole site as long many search engines crawl and scan the whole site, links, photo, Audio/video/flash/XML Media. Well when you submit a photo for example, you’ll tell the search engine what is it and your comments on it as every other file. This way you’ll get the search engine focusing on your operation. The search engine will offer every file according to your comments and you will have better control on how your files will be presented to the Internet surfers and in respond to which key-word.

Search engine optimization, SEO

It is important to optimize your site and its network for different search engines. Some of them look at the title tag, others look at the page content. Even some considers your Internet age “how many years a particular site been on the net!” for ranking,

........

Your Main Website,

You need a main website, a site that will authenticate your Internet presence Mostly, it is your Domain. It will always carry your latest news, updates, direct contacts, and take suggestions and complaints, even if you decided to allow agents and web malls to sell for you,

You still need an official site to at least handle new agents and receive direct contact from end customers, it is very essential not to be blocked by an agent, as not having a direct contact with your end users is a dangerous thing, I used to know which Wal-Mart store is out of stock through my website before Wal-Mart establishing their real-time online stock monitor! This was told to me just by the mail I received through my website.

The Ideal website is ....................

·         Every webmaster is just striving to make his first page a masterpiece forgetting that many serious clients use firewall that prevent loading embedded objects., 3rd party cookies and even Java some times, This makes many masterpiece pages literally blank. They sacrifice the thrill of your web genius to their protection from other illusive websites. For this type of clients and many of them are serious businesses you must include plain clean HTML links to all your pages and easy navigation simple links. They have no time to admire the painting all they want to get are the facts and take the decision. Mind the firewall in your design and always consider including alternatives in your site - specially the first page.

·         Add simple access improvement links as; add us to you favorites, make us your start page, tell a friend or email this page to a friend, link unfamiliar phrases to pages in your site that explain them, to get the procedure of many hints mentioned here, simple type the phrase in any search engine and I'm sure you'll get many results that one of them would suite you.

·         Color the important text .............................

Also you can take them automatically from any error page to your site map by changing the setting of your server or by planting the following simple code in your previously mentioned special page.

<HTML>

<HEAD>

<META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" content="5;URL=http://www.yourwebsite.com">

<TITLE>You Message!</TITLE>

</HEAD>

<BODY>

The number 5 is the amount of time in seconds before your visitors get referred to the new destination

Change “Your Message” to your own words, and the URL to your URL

Always Offer your visitors a Safe Landing

Power-words

Power-words are the sign of superiority in your field, Self-confidence, but it also a promise.

Powerful words like, unsurpassed, greatest, the Only, the First, End of the line, State-of-the-art, Superior, etc.... can hold the customer for a while to think about your product and also buying it. Trusting your business professionalism and also because they didn't hear anybody firing back at you, it is like enslaving the buyers. Their mind at least, until purchase is done, well.... Thanks Again!

Many Automotive/jewelry dealers got their questionable reputation because they use power-words that prove false sometimes only minutes after completing the deal.

Use the keywords wisely

Some Internet webpages creates traffic/entrance/referral/forwarding pages with tones of Keywords to attract search engines and customers. Once you access the page it will take you the target website. It is OK as long you are getting the right interested customer He/she will appreciate that you made their browsing easier, watch for these mistakes:

Do not over do it. A customer will tolerate you being in the first 10 ranks even out of 20 but will not tolerate getting your very same page 10 times under different links. Another solution is to change the content make of every page describing your product/service from different aspects with links or auto transfer to you site after 5~60 seconds to allow the client reading the different contents.

Never use ....................................

Marketing, Advertising, Sales, Promotion, and Public Relations

I remember seeing a falsely proud Marketing firm with the following insulting slogan " any fool can make soap, only a genius can market them." Well..... if a fool will make soap he will not add anti-oxidant to prevent discoloration and foul smell, also no pH controller or even the adequate measuring, simply because he is a fool.  This product does not need a genius to market it, it needs a con. You get the point. So this marketing firm is advertising products of fools to sell them to more fools. You now know what kind of clients are there. When I started to analyze their testimonials, many of them in unverifiable like Mr. Jones, B.C... Really!, Get real now. The only verifiable testimonial was from individuals who sold shelf stalling books, Been on shelf for years. Get reach quickly scams. Value stock market dispirits investors and silk screen printed cellular phone booster that is nothing but a cheap scam " printing an antenna symbol on plastic label and sticking it on your cell. phone internal wall will never improve your wireless reception." They sell it for $ 29.99. You do not want to deal with firm like this.  If you ever deal with marketing firm or even allow them to sell you their marketing strategy for even $19.99, donate those 20 dollars and you will get more blessing from GOD.

"Squeaky wheel has got to get the Oil"

One of the problems of the Internet is Trust. You find people coming out of the blue. Trying to sell you a product/service or asking you questions. Any one on the net can hide behind deferent identity, but not in Business and here is how:

Put your contact information on all websites so customers can locate and talk to you. If you have no time for unwanted calls forward them to a call center or set a number with immediate answer service. You can get online free phone number with answer service and fax number to give the customer your contacts

Set a live customer service on all your websites/Dynamic Sub Domains, customer will know that there is a real person behind this website

Share your opinion on related news groups when people search for you, they will know you are there.

Answer .........................................