A Cheap Thrill or a Lasting Memory... Who Will Remember You?
Open source content management solutions like Drupal get more powerful each day. But everyone has access to it.
Firefox has extensions like Firebug that allow you to test modifying page layout or CSS in real time.
Custom feeds, leading blogs, personalization, recommendations, aggregators, filters, and alerts allow us to consume a firehose of information.
Search engines are giving away a lot of valuable data to try to win marketshare. But everyone has access to it.
You can buy full feature affiliate software for under $300.
About 40% of retailers do not have a physical store location.
Companies like 1ShoppingCart offer an affiliate program and hook into on demand publishing and fulfillment companies like Vervante. Selling an information product means no shipping is required.
Amazon reduces hosting costs to virtually nothing, offers an order fulfillment service, and now they are pushing their WebStores aggressively, which really automates a big piece of the workload of most businesses. Amazon also owns BookSurge, a print on demand publishing company.
Lots of people are solving common problems and giving publishers a wide array of choices that keep driving costs down. Just about everything is getting cheaper and easier - except marketing. Audiences fragment, people ignore advertising, and everyone is so busy that they have no time for you.
Public relations and search marketing are the new advertising because unlike most ads they are not ignored. They are seen as editorial content even if it is bought and sold on a per article basis or per ranking basis. And so you have smart business deals where you slap Lance Armstrong's name on a bunch of user generated content. Generate the PR buzz and watch the ad dollars roll in:
The Lance Armstrong Foundation, which spends about $40 million a year on health programs and cancer research, is teaming up with Web-site operator Demand Media Inc. to launch a health-and-wellness Web site funded by advertising. The site, called "livestrong.com," is expected to go live this year.
How does the Google view of spam and editing out non-editorial link buys stand up in a world where companies like Demand Media recycle the web and cross link it all, while companies like Pay Per Clip offer:
WEB MEDIA placements can range from $450 for a brief appearance in an online article, to $2,750 for a full feature, including a link to your web site, in a top tier web publication.
Google needs to realize that public relations, promotions, and advertising are a normal part of the business process. After all, ads only account for 99% of their revenue. But Google engineers can dictate arbitrary mandates based on a broken understanding of the business world because Google's founders thought big.
Value your time properly and think big. You can not invest too much in learning, clean organic looking marketing (like domain names, site design, and public relations), or brand building.
The mind can adapt itself to do whatever you want it to. But if you wait too long to act, nobody cares what you do.
Comments
The links you put in your posts are excellent. I always find great resources by visiting those websites!
I like the way it was all sorted, A great refresher on all the services I used and some new ones for me. I have been thinking between Drupal or Joomla. Any thoughts which one will be better for a basic site in terms of SEO and CMS?
I run sites using Joomla and run sites using Drupal. I can't say one is better than the other. It really depends on your skill level and type of site you are building.
Getting started Joomla is easier out of the box. Content organization is more logical. I prefer the way Joomla handles video, forums and directories. In 6-9 months when all the components I rely on are native to Joomla 1.5 it will really rock.
Drupal is more powerful, oriented to community building, and less user friendly for new users. That being said I am leaning to drupal for the sites I am working on right now. The things I want the site to do Drupal is the easier way to get there.
Which one you should use is really dependent on what you want your site to do and not do. If this is your first CMS site I would start playing with Joomla and see if it has the capabilitiesyou need. If not then try Drupal and go with the one that comes closest with the least pulling your hair out.
I have never used Joomla but Drupal is good if you know how to fix it up, although there were some duplicate content issues until I chatted with my programmer about them.
guruofsales,Both Joomla and Drupal are good open source products. Joomla's a little more eye appealing out of the box, but Drupal is much better set up for SEO. Although like Aaron said theres a couple of modules you need to install if you are going make sure you don't have duplicate content on your site.
Hey aaron, I just used the forgot my password link on your page and caused me to see a page that has the default drupal theme, not sure if you knew that already or not.
Actually Aaron, I was looking for your contact info so I could throw you a heads up on some Drupal SEO issues (very, very small ones) I saw with this site.
seobook.com/node actually redirects to www.seobook.com/blog instead of the homepage. As for the homepage, www.seobook.com/index.php doesn't redirect to just the domain either.
I love Drupal, but out of the box it fails miserably with SEO. You just need to know how to fix all the little issues.
Really enjoyed this read Aaron.
Awesome.
Seriously I don't know how you find the time to do it all - plus do the amount of research add value to the web etc. on top of it all.
Do you actually ever sleep?
I actually need to exercise and play more...have been doing too much web recently.
Thanks for the kind comment.
You mentioned iDev as an affiliate program for under $300, but you may be interested in seeing Omnistar's full feature affiliate software that sells for just $99.95.
The great thing about Omnistar's OSI Affiliate program is that it provides all the extras other higher priced web apps have, but at only a fraction of the cost.
Plus, as a php developer with Omnistar who's just getting started on SEO, you'll be glad to know that one of my first decisions was to purchase SEO Book for the company. It's been a godsend. (c;
See that is exactly what I mean...the price of everything is going down due to competition.
BTW...your site has a bit too much gray on it I think. Perhaps a white background and larger headings and subheadings would help make it look less monochromatic and grayed out
Just wanted to say thanks for the mention today!
I spend a lot of time watching for mentions of 1ShoppingCart and it's nice to see us pop up on a site that I'm reading regularly anyway!
Michael Valiant
1ShoppingCart
Hi Aaron,
I'm going to be adding idevaffiliate to my company website after seeing it action on your site.
Just curious, I noticed when starting to purchase, they have a spot for a coupon code, but I couldn't find any valid ones anywhere.
Do you happen to have a valid coupon code for them? (I'm buying from your affiliate link, of course... :)
Thanks again
Chris
www.PalaestraTraining.com
Hi Chris
Sorry but I do not have a coupon code. :(
If any of you folks haven;t used Firebug yet I strongly suggest you download the add-in ASAP. I make trouble-shooting websites (especially wordpress blogs) much easier. I also suggest you download an add-in that lets to grab the code for the exact color that is used on a screen. I have found it very useful when matching affiliate links to my blog background.
Hope this helps!
Charles
First Wordpress, then Joomla and now Drupal. That's it, I can no longer keep up. I give up - I'm throwing out my computer ;-)
I like Wordpress and Drupal, but have not yet used Joomla.
Is SEObook.com using Drupal as the back end? thanks in advance, I LOVE your book and am considering joining the training program.
Yes this site is using Drupal (with many modules, and vBulletin for our forums).
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