More New Stuff - Marketing Your Products

by Bob Nunn

Durn, they did it again. Just when I think that the American public has gotten a little more educated, someone adds a bit of detergent base and coloring to water and markets it to clean vegetables. Notice how they compare how well it does against just rinsing in water? Let’s see them compare it to a few drops of your normal dish washing soap.

What really kills me is I didn’t think of it. Even if I had, I would figure that no one was dumb enough to fall for it.

This Month’s Sleeper Tip:

What has this got to do with web sites? Well, I have a concept for you. Give away your product and cover the costs and margin in the shipping and handling. A good example would be a Free Set of 3, Solingen Steel Paring Knives. All the customer pays is the $9.95 shipping and handling. You stick the knives in an envelope and mail them to the customer. You make 40% margin. Better yet, require a coupon to do that and get the coupon sites to advertise your coupon number. So you get traffic from the free stuff sites and the coupon sites.

Sometimes I guess you take advantage of what opportunities are before you. Figure out a promotion that works for you and advertise it. I have updated my weblog of Free Stuff and Coupon Sites at: http://headgap.com/coupons.spml.

Looking for a domain name (part 2)?

Back in July, I recommended domainmonger.com, which is not a bad place to register your domain since they charge $17. Since then I have found what I consider a superior one called http://dotster.com (thanks to my new boss) and they only charge $15 and they seem to be a bit more on the ball. dotster does have one problem. Once you register a name it brings up the same contact data over and over. If you’re not registering it for the same folks, you have to overwrite the data.

You might also remember http://nameboy.com. By putting in a few keywords, it will help you make up a domain name and also tell you if it’s available or for sale. I also mentioned registering and pointing multiple domain names to the same site. Put yourself in the public’s place and think of how people will be searching for you. For example: ParingKnives.com may be your company name, but people may search for you by searching for knives, kitchen knives etc. Why not consider registering KitchenKnives.com or FreeKitchenKnives.com and pointing them all to your ParingKnives.com site? That gives you more opportunities for folks to find you, and it is likely you will come up more often in the search engines since your domain name contains some of the keyword elements.

Name Brand?

I had a chance to listen to some folks talk about branding. I gathered from the talk that they were old school marketing folks. They talked about the importance of having that name. On the web I would like to point out something to people who think this way. One word: Amazon.com. A few years ago no one had heard of Amazon. Barnes and Noble was a better brand name, since they had all the brick and mortar stores and most folks had either shopped them or heard of them. All of a sudden Amazon. No need to say more.

I would rather have my off brand domain name show up at the #1 spot on Yahoo than have any type of brand name recognition. Having both would be better, but getting net traffic doesn’t have to be based on a brand. I have trouble when talking to the advertising agencies and marketing types who say they are net savvy but really don’t have a clue. This ain’t the same and you need to think outside that old box. Of course, the corporate types they are selling still like to hear that old rhetoric. The traditional forms of advertising are not necessarily required to do business on the web.

Search Engine Tip

looksmart is now advertising itself as the quality web directory. I really don’t know if it is any better than any other, but I do know that good placement in this engine will do wonders for your site. If you go to my Add Url page http://headgap.com/addurl/ you will notice I have added a link and given it more prominence. They have added Express Listing and for $199 you get placement within 48 hours by one of their professional editors. They have a basic submit $49. Why would you want to spend money when so many are for free? looksmart feeds the search engines of MSN, excite, alta-vista, and CNN.com.

To prioritize things: spend time and money getting your Yahoo listing, they still are the top traffic director. Spend time getting listed in DMOZ.org, they feed a multitude of search engines. Spend time and money getting listed with looksmart.

New Resource - http://the1000.com/

One of our webmasters gave me a tip and boy what a good one! (thanks Brian) The folks at JimWorld have put together a sophisticated version of my http://headgap.com/addurl page. They list lots of the specialty search engines and other traffic builders all on one site and are constantly changing the content as new opportunities present themselves. This site is definitely worth a look or two and perhaps spending some time on.

Still working on that content?

There are many sources for “neat” stuff to add to your site. Much of this stuff is public domain; just check to make sure. Don’t forget, I add and update both my Funstuff page and my Webcontent pages all the time at: http://headgap.com/fortune.spml and http://headgap.com/webcontent.spml. You’re welcome to borrow my links and materials.


Bob Nunn is owner, Operator Headgap Systems, http://headgap.com, http://tfbbs.com
Board Member, AppleCore of Memphis, Inc., http://memphisapplecore.com
Email: headgap@headgap.com