Pro Guide To Earning More Online!

Three Reasons Why A Good Looking Website Will Increase Traffic

Your Mentor — Thu, 17 May 2012 10:36:08 +0000

If you really want to increase traffic on your website, you may want to step back and take a look at the site from a visitor's point of view. A good looking website increases its traffic naturally because those who visit it will likely come back and tell their friends about it as well. The presentation of your website says a lot about your business. If you want to have a highly successful web business then it is necessary to have a nice website. With more than half of the world logging in web time each week, it is important for today's businesses to maintain interesting and effective websites that pertain to their businesses. If you are interested in learning why a good looking website is important when trying to increase traffic, take a look at these three reasons.

Professionalism

The first view of your website by a visitor says a lot about your business as a whole. If your website looks cheap and self-made, then it is likely the visitor will not think your business operates in a professional manner. When it comes to dealing with customers on the web, you certainly want to look professional on all levels. If you are an online retailer, you want customers to feel comfortable ordering from you. If they do not think your website looks professional, they may not feel comfortable doing so. It is not necessary to have your website professionally created in order to appear professional. All you need to do is play around with different approaches to see which templates work best for your business. The more you read and learn about website creation, the better your site will look. Educating yourself on the issue of website development is important when you are trying to do it on your own. If you find yourself overwhelmed, then you can always turn to a professional for the creation of your site. Therefore, to maintain a high level of professionalism, you need to have a good looking website. In turn, but creating the professional atmosphere, the consumers will likely return and bring their friends as well.

Entertaining

Not only should your website look professional, but it should also have an entertaining value. Entertainment is something that will draw visitors into your site in a deeper way. If they see an interesting link, they will likely examine your site in more detail. By offering things like contests and free giveaways, you can easily draw in more traffic. If your site is boring however, it is unlikely you will be able to keep anyone there for more than two seconds. Offering games to play on your site that may pertain to your business, you can keep the traffic flowing. You can even offer links to other exciting and informative websites, in order to act as an "in-between" for the fun. Anyone would rather visit a fun and entertaining site than a boring and plain website. If you offer enough excitement it is likely the regular visitors will advertise your site to everyone they know!

Easy On the Eyes

A good looking website will also increase traffic if it is easy on the eyes. In addition to being professional and fun, your website should be easy on the eyes. This essentially means that it should be attractive as well as easy to function within. Choose colors and an arrangement that will appeal to a wide variety of people. Using really bold colors will possibly hurt the eyes of viewers if they look at them for extended periods of time. You can always add splashes of colors in graphics and borders, but it is best to keep text in dark colors. Create an interesting layout, but not one that is so unique that it is difficult to use. If your website is easy to look at and visitors can navigate easily around it, they will want to come back.

If you focus on these three reasons to create a good looking website, your traffic will surely increase. Having a website that looks professional, entertaining, and is easy on the eyes is the key to inviting and maintaining web traffic for your website. So, if you are creating your site now, or if you want to overhaul your existing site, keep these three tips in mind to get the most traffic to your site as possible.

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The Write Way To Better Website Traffic Results

Your Mentor — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:38:11 +0000

When you are trying to develop a successful website, you soon realize that your website content is very important. Websites with great content are more likely to have great traffic results than those with lousy articles and headings. The more interesting and diverse your content, the better traffic results you will have. When trying to get the right mixture of content, you may become frustrated. This is especially true if you are not a strong writer. Use these tips to help you find out more about website content and the decisions you can make to create the best text on the web.

Care about Content

Many times, website operators don't give content much thought. This happens more frequently than one might expect and the repercussions are immediate. If you want better website traffic results, you should always be sure that you make content a priority. Whether you write the content yourself, or hire professional writers to develop it for you, it should be quality writing. Someone who has passion for the subject should write it. The more passion the writer has, the better the writing will likely be. Usually, this is the website owner and operator, because no one will want the site to succeed as much as this individual. However, if you are not a great writer, you can always hire professionals to help you with the task.

Quality over Quantity

When it comes to website content, there are obviously guidelines. When trying to fill up a specific amount of area on a website, it may be necessary to set limits on word count. As a whole however, you should always strive for quality over quantity. Having too much content can drive viewers away because they are likely to get bored. Knowing exactly how much content you need for your site can also be a challenge. You should always view your site like a potential visitor would, which means that many of your decisions may be made by instinct. You will know when you have too much content on your site. The main goal is to have specific and direct content that is not too "wordy". When there are excessive words in the content, you will quickly lose your audience. Be direct and to the point with your writing and you will be more efficient overall.

Natural Flow

Like discussed before, much of the content decisions for your website will be done with instinct. You need to be sure the content flows naturally. Natural flowing content leads easily to other issues. One subject should flow into the other seamlessly. The same is true with the placement of other website functions. When you are writing, consider the placement of "submit" buttons or other links on the page. This can help you develop content that looks great on the page as well as sounds great to the reader. If a piece feels unnatural when it's being written, it will likely look uncomfortable to the reader and will be a disaster on your website.

Proofread

Some of the most unnecessary mistakes made with website content writing are grammatical. Websites that contain articles with spelling and grammar mistakes come can look ridiculous. If you want your site to be taken seriously, you should always be sure that your articles are proofread many times. This will help ensure you are delivering information that is intelligent and complete. It may help you to read your text out loud, in order to hear what it actually sounds like. Although it may seem unnecessary, you will find that the response will be greater when your text is without mistake.

As you can see, there are several important aspects to developing website content that will boost and maintain your website traffic. You should focus on passion, quality, and flow of your content. If you would rather not worry about these issues, hiring a professional is the way to go. However, if you are up to the challenge, try it yourself. Just relax and begin writing. Let the content come to you without effort. Try different approaches with your writing and you will quickly learn what works best for your site and its traffic. As long as it feels right to you when you read it on the site, it will likely look great to your site's visitors as well.

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The Ultimate Web Traffic Myth

Your Mentor — Sun, 13 May 2012 13:20:59 +0000

Have you noticed the many internet marketing books using the word "secret" in their title, headline or copy?

Why do they do this?

Is their actually one or two online marketing methods or strategies that are going to bring to your site an ever growing consistent stream of willing to buy targeted clients?

The simple answer is NO.

Unfortunately many website owners think this is not the case and continue to accumulate book after book and software package after software package looking for "the ultimate web traffic method".

The fact is that there is no one single marketing method that will make your online business successful, period. Only continual application of the right methods will see your business grow and expand.

The main reasons why most people think there is one main method is because of the following four elements:

- If you wanted to be a "plumber", you would do your apprenticeship and then work for someone or then start your own business. If you wanted to own a "milk bar" you get a business loan, buy the "milk bar" and start running the business. Why do we know this and why are there no so called "secrets" regarding being a plumber or running a milk bar? Because these businesses have been around for a long time, to start them is "common knowledge".

- Therefore because the internet is new and evolving, how to start an internet business has yet to become "common knowledge" and there is still many unknown aspects regarding the subject unlike traditional business. Unfortunately, many now capitalize on this "unknown aspect" by selling so called "secret information" type products thus only increasing the myth regarding internet business.

- Even if starting an internet business was "common knowledge", there is simply too much information to decipher. Unlike going to the local library, finding the business section and picking one or two of the five books on "starting your own business"; you are now on the internet. You have a world library, the business section is as big as a football stadium and books on "starting your own business online" are in the thousands (including many misleading ones).

- This final point is the most important one. People want to believe there is an easy way to get a lot of web traffic and make a fortune without any work; they just have to find it! This is just human nature.

So now you know that you must use more than one internet marketing method to make your online business successful.

Stick with the main tried and true methods -

SEO
Content
Linking
Articles
Sales Copy
List Building
Joint Ventures

and your traffic will continue to increase rapidly.

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The Top Five Ways You Can Generate Low Cost Website Traffic

Your Mentor — Fri, 11 May 2012 09:51:56 +0000

There is one hard and fast rule in generating income for your website: You need a steady flow of website traffic. If no one goes to your site, it hardly has a chance of generating any income. Many sites have tried and failed in doing so, and this results in the sites demise. It takes money to maintain an income generating site; it also takes money to make money.

BUT, it doesn't take a whole bundle of cash to generate website traffic for your site.

Ever wonder how does big hit sites drive traffic top their site? Most of them are spending tons of money to drive the traffic to their sites, investing in many advertising campaigns and different forms of marketing schemes and gimmicks. This is all worthwhile because, well, they are what they are now, high earning, big hitting websites.

You can't do this if you don't have their resources. There are many ways to generate low cost website traffic without having to spend what you don't have or can't afford. Many people have banked on high cost methods and have ended up losing their shirt over it.

Here I present to you the top five ways to generate low cost website traffic that could help your site a whole lot. Even if you only get a small percentage of successful visitors in to client ratio it still works especially if you get a high number of website traffic.

Exchange Links
This is a sure and proven method. Rarely would you see a site where there is no link to another site. Many webmasters are willing to exchange links with one another so that they could produce more public awareness about their sites. You'll soon see and feel the sudden upsurge of the traffic coming in to your site from other sites.

A major prerequisite in exchanging links with other sites is having the same niche or content as the other site. They should share a common subject so that there is continuity in the providing of service and information to what interests your target traffic.

Exchanging links also boosts your chances of getting a high ranking in search engine results. It is common knowledge that search engines rank high sites that have inbound and outbound theme-related links. With a good ranking position in the search engines, you will generate more traffic to your website without the high costs.

Traffic Exchange
This is like exchanging links but on a different higher level. This may cost a bit more than exchanging or trading links but could be made cheaper because you get to earn credits. You can use those credits when viewing others traffic, while you earn credits when someone views yours.

Traffic exchange services are the viewing of another's site or page. This is done vice versa where a site can use your sites contents and so can you to his or her site. You both benefit from each others efforts to generate traffic. The other sites visitors can go to your pages and know more about your site as well as theirs. Once again the public awareness of your sites existence is boosted.

Write and Submit Articles
There are many e-zines and online encyclopedias in the internet which provides free space for articles to be submitted. If you want to save costs, you can write the articles yourself. There are many freelance writers who are willing to write for you for a small fee, but to save money, it is wise to write those articles yourself.

Write articles that are themed along with the niche content of your site. Write something about which you have some expertise on so that when they read it, they can feel your knowledge about the subject and will be eager to go to your site. Write articles that produce tips and guidelines to the subject or niche your site has.

Include a resource box at the end of your article that can link them back to your site. Write a little about yourself and your site. If you provide a light, information-laden and interesting article, they will go to your site for more.

Create a Newsletter.
This may sound like hard work because of all the articles you may need to use to build a newsletter but on the contrary, this is not so. There are many writers and sites that are willing to provide free articles as long as they can get their name in on your newsletter. This will also provide free advertising for them as well.

As your newsletter gets passed around, you can widen your public awareness and build an opt-in list that can regularly visit your site.

Join Online Communities and Forums
This only requires your time and nothing else. You can share your knowledge and expertise with many online communities as well as your website. You can get free advertising when you go to forums that have the same subject or niche as your site.

Share your two cents and let them see how knowledgeable you are with the subject. As you build your reputation, you also build the reputation of your site, making it a reputable and honest business that could be frequented and trusted by many people.

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The Top 2 Points You Must Definitely Consider About Tag And Ping To Get Masses Of Traffic To Your Site

Your Mentor — Wed, 09 May 2012 17:19:51 +0000

Have you heard all the buzz about Tag and Ping? Tag And Ping is the latest craze hitting the net – bringing immediate exposure and back back links to sites. A whole new way of finding information, and a whole new ballgame for webmasters to play!
Tagging is a new way to mark things on the internet. In the old days search engines would spider a page and decide what it was about; with tagging, people decide what the content is about and "tag it". This tag then serves the purpose as a short description of a webpage, or the category it fits in.

No more relying on old out-of-date search engine algorithms. Real individuals tagging real sites bringing real targeted traffic. No more squandering time searching through search engines for relevant information. Just enter your topics and see what other individuals have found interesting!

The development of tagging has brought about the term "Social Book-Marking". People are now starting to create bookmarks on central websites, instead of on their private computers. People surfing the web "tag" the sites they find fascinating and they then appear on bookmark search engines. Other individuals interested in the same topics can then come and find real pages, voted for by real humans.

This brings about a whole new system for web masters to find out what people are looking for, and then creating pages that are deserving of attention, and easy to find. Bookmarking pages are a great tool for web masters to do research. Just take a look at popular tags and then look at what pages are being bookmarked the most. Pay attention to those pages to get an idea of what you should be writing about. Put a new twist on it and you will find that your web-site will gain in popularity as well. Bookmark pages are also great for figuring out new subjects to write your own info products about. They are also good for figuring out new niches to jump into.

If you are creating a web site for a "hot" tag that everybody is searching for, you'll get massive highly targeted traffic! Not only this, but the main search engines pick up on the tags and you will get back back links from the engines with the tag listings!

After you have tagged information you ping the tag-search-engines and they quickly come and index your pages according to the tags. You then appear at the top of the listing until somebody else creates newer pages for that tag.

If you missed out on the "blog and ping" wave you will want to get in ahead of time. Tag and ping is going to be a large trend and is shifting the face of the web forever. Find out more about the technique that has all the hole-and-corner experts in a dizzy tizz: Tag And Ping Site

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The Top 10 Ways To Increase Your Traffic Today

Your Mentor — Mon, 07 May 2012 12:08:32 +0000

Anyone developing an online business, no matter what their subject or niche, has one thing in common with every other online business developer, and that one key component is traffic. Everything you read or hear on the net about creating a successful online business will always stress the importance of generating traffic.

We all know this to be fact – without traffic, we have no business. Naturally, a good product and a sound business plan are essential for success, but assuming these to be in place, getting traffic to your site is probably the number one issue facing most online businesses. So, as everyone is in agreement about this key need, let's get down to the 'ins' and 'outs' of how to increase traffic flow.

You may be just starting out with your new site, eager to tell the world about your product, or you may be a well-established 'old-timer' trying daily to find new ways of getting your message out there. Which ever you are, the fact remains that you are faced with a very competitive marketplace. To succeed requires constant re-evaluation of your market and to find new and improved ways of getting that traffic to your site.

Whenever possible, the best place to be is one step ahead of your competition. Keep an eye on what your competitors are doing and improve on them. Don't just copy others' ideas, find a new twist, a new angle a unique way of drawing people to you. It's so often the most simple measures that carry the gold and within a very short time, your site can be receiving hits like never before.

To get things rolling and start prompting a stream of ever-increasing awareness (and therefore traffic) to your site, here are some essential tools for making that truly possible;

1. Write some good, useful, inspirational articles to direct traffic to your site

Do your research, See what information people are searching for, both through the search engines and in the forums. Submit these articles to article directories, ezines and to other sites who are in a similar market to your own.

Always, include your details and the all important URL of your site, in the resource box. Try not to make the article appear as an obvious advertisement of your product or business , but as a source of valuable information which others will find of use. This way, you will be respected for your knowledge and promote interest in both you and what you're involved with. People will want to check you out!

2. Spend a little money and start some good advertising campaigns

This is by far the fastest and most effective way of directing targeted traffic to your site. Both Goggles' Adwords and Yahoos' Overture are the indisputable leaders in this field. An ad with either of these guys will give you immediate exposure to a waiting world of budding customers. Just follow the simple rules and guidelines laid down for each and you could soon be receiving a vast return on your initial investment. Start slowly with a small daily budget and 'tweek' as your campaign unfolds.

3. Optimize your web pages

Again, do your research and make sure that you have the best keywords on your pages. Search engines look for these keywords and with them, determine your sites' ranking in their lists. The right words in the right place can shoot you to the higher listings and get you seen more easily when people search.

There' s lots of information on the web on how to achieve this if you want to do it for yourself. Alternatively, you may wish to use a paid service for even better results.

4. Trading Links with other sites

By getting your site listed on another person's site you are multiplying your exposure in an instant. Any visitor to either site is immediately presented with the other persons' URL after just one search. Each sites efforts have a double effect by generating potential traffic to either site. Apply this across a few sites and you can see how dramatic the effect can be.

5. Start Some Viral Marketing

As the name suggests, this is all about starting a virus, spreading from person to person, site to site – only, you are the source of the virus and it has your name on it! Write a report, ebook, article or whatever and give it away for free. Just ensure that your link is on or within the report, etc. so that all people who have access to it are directed back to your site. This can be one of the most effective free traffic-generating methods available to you. Be creative, send it out and wait for the results.

6. Start An Ezine or Online Newsletter

Once you begin to tell people about yourself, they soon begin to develop a relationship with you and feel that they can trust you. Keeping people informed through a newsletter will depend this relationship, create long-standing customers for you and will encourage these customers to tell others about you, bringing further traffic to your site.

7. Participating In Forums

Forums or online communities are places where people of a similar nature and interest come together to share news and exchange ideas. In these places, it is possible for you to show your expertise and skills and establish yourself as someone worth listening to. People start to trust you and look to you for some of the answers to their needs. Through this, traffic to your site will naturally occur. Again, be yourself, do not try to sell in these places simply allow others to seek you out.

8. Offline Advertising

Often overlooked by web-based businesses, this can be a highly effective way of boosting your traffic. Bumper stickers, business cards, ads in shops, fliers are but a few ways of getting your word out. Be creative and let people know you are in business.

9. Email Signatures.

Every time you send an email you are contacting a potential customer, whether they know it or not. By placing a simple one line ad with your URL at then end of every email you are projecting your existence to anyone curious to find out more. Don't miss out on this simple but powerful free tool.

Getting traffic to your site does not have to be an expensive business. With consistency and patience, using just a few of the above techniques can have traffic knocking at your door in no time at all. Structure your approach and follow a plan, learn from your efforts and reap the rewards.

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The Secret Of How To Get Noticed By Google

Your Mentor — Sat, 05 May 2012 13:23:52 +0000

I remember when I created my first web site. I designed it, published it and then waited expectantly for Google to list it in their page rankings. Of course, I didn't expect to be up at the top of the listings but I did think I would be there somewhere.

After several days the disappointment began to set in. I had a great web site but no one was going to see it because Google wasn't including me in their listings! All that work for nothing. So I started looking around the net, trying to find out why I wasn't being listed. It was now that I discovered that it can take Google up to 8 months to include your site on their search engine. This was a devastating blow. I couldn't wait 8 months before people saw my web site!

My next plan of action was to get some traffic to my web site, maybe that would help get me noticed. I designed a banner free of charge from a site on the web, this was really easy, even as a beginner it was done in 5 minutes. I then bought some banner impressions from a seller on ebay. Typically this involved displaying your banner 1,000,000 for a fee of say $4.99. So I signed up for this and expected the traffic to come flying to my site. Well, if I got 1 person clicking on my banner from every 1000 times the banner was displayed I was lucky. And then there was the people that just view the banners in order to get paid. When I looked at where the hits were coming from it was evident that most of them were coming from China and other non-English speaking countries.

So, having discovered that paid for banner advertising does not work, I finally discovered how to get noticed by Google….

Back-links. Yes, that was the secret. What are back-links? There are other web sites that have a link to your site on them. Google determines the popularity of your site by how many other sites link to it. So how do you get back links? You can list your site in the free directories that proliferate the web, but these are low quality links.

The best way of getting links is to create your own links by writing an article like this. There are dozens of article directories on the net, you submit your article, simply ensure you include a link to your web site and hey presto, you have created a back link to your site. Google will take notice and you will move up the search rankings. The more articles you submit, the more popular Google will think your site is.

Article directories are free to use and can also be a good way of advertising your site. Write about a subject that relates to your site, people see you have some expert knowledge on the subject and follow the link through to your site.

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The Power of Articles

Your Mentor — Thu, 03 May 2012 10:18:48 +0000

During this last year I have given a HUGE amount of thought to the subject of search engines. After a lot of thought, I have determined to distinguish a single factor that will increase my bottom line more than any other factor. Aren't we all looking for new and interesting ways to get more free traffic from search engines? I am I can tell you that.

So I had to consider all different kinds of factors. I thought about my product selection. I considered my domain names. I considered my page content, and the overall look of my sites. I thought about my selection of keywords. I thought about on-page optimization. I couldn't distinguish any of these as the single most important thing that I did this last year.

If there is one thing I did this last year that raised my rankings and increased my traffic, it was the development of one way links. Now I'm not talking about trading links with other sites. I'm talking about getting sites to link to mine WITHOUT linking to theirs. I think we've all noticed that search engines are giving a lot of credit for this, and I've noticed it 'big time'.

So I figured out this last year that there are really easy ways to make this happen. At first, I heard about an article directory from a friend that would publish articles for free. I like writing articles, and have always written the content for my sites, but give away free website content? I decided to take one of my articles and have it published. Sure enough, the article directory let me add some information in a resource box that appeared at the bottom of my article, and I placed a link back to my site using the anchor text of one of my keyword phrases.

Sure enough, I had made a nice one way link to myself. I had no idea that this was only the beginning. I then started searching for more article directories where I could publish my article, and was able to find a list of about 100. I spent a day and submitted my article to all of them, and checked a few days later to find out which ones accepted it. Almost all of them did, and so I had created about 100 one way links back to my site.

It wasn't until last week that a friend told me about articlesender.com. They are a service that will submit your article to a bunch of sites. They will even do it for free. I donated to tell about $20 and they submitted my article to around 200 article directories. Submitting my article to that many directories would have taken me about 2 days, so $20 to me is nothing.

I would pay a lot more than that to get a few hundred one way links to my site. Are you kidding me? I love it. Not to mention that I get to use whatever anchor text I want, and write whatever content I want for the page that it appears on.

My friends; harness the power of articles. Right now, one way linking is the way to the money.

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The Old But Reliable Ways of Attracting Free Online Traffics

Your Mentor — Tue, 01 May 2012 18:57:05 +0000

Every home business owner should know that your WEBSITE TRAFFICS will determine the life span of your work at home online business. As suggested by many motivation expert, your best bet to be successful in ANYTHING you do will be to study and learn from those WHO are already successful.

What are these online experts doing to attract the necessary traffics to their work at home online business?

What online strategy are they using and what can you learn from them?

One of the most frequently used online strategy is writing and submitting free articles to ezine. Over the years, as I read over many website marketing strategy, it seems that article writing remains the TOP method that webmaster has been using for many years. The only problem is that there are so many free articles floating around these days that you need to build a solid reputation before you can GAIN any reasonable click through to your site via your free articles.

Reciprocal links is another popular method which you can used to gain traffics to your home business website. Before starting your reciprocal links strategy, make sure you determine the keywords you want to used for your main index page. During the link exchange make sure you put your KEYWORDS in your hyper text link. Search Engine will recognize them as your site keywords. Remember also to include them in your title and the first 80-120 words of the index content page. Please do not just reciprocal links, SEO experts recommend that you should add at least 60-70 pages of contents in your NEW site so that your site will not just be a LINKS only website which score a LOW RANK in the algorithm of Search Engine.

Finally, have you noticed that successful online master also make used of discussion forum wisely. Discussion forum are a great online marketing tools that you should not ignore. It can bring IMMEDIATELY an increase in your website TRAFFICS which can result in increase revenue for you. Forums allows you to create your own signature file which you can write a few lines of
your own business information including your URL. Each posting you made will automatically include your signature file. However, you have to show your expert knowledge when answering questions as people who read your postings will associate it with you. Frequent forums that get lots of online traffics so that each posting by you will get the maximum exposure.

In whatever business, the initial learning may be tough, but if you believe in yourself and persist in LEARNING and taking the necessary ACTION to apply what you learn, one day, you too will become an Online Expert and SUCCESS will follow YOU.

Wishing you success in running a Successful Work At Home Online Business.

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The Miraculous Conversion

Your Mentor — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 04:21:29 +0000

The recent bloodbath among online content peddlers and digital media proselytisers can be traced to two deadly sins. The first was to assume that traffic equals sales. In other words, that a miraculous conversion will spontaneously occur among the hordes of visitors to a web site. It was taken as an article of faith that a certain percentage of this mass will inevitably and nigh hypnotically reach for their bulging pocketbooks and purchase content, however packaged. Moreover, ad revenues (more reasonably) were assumed to be closely correlated with "eyeballs". This myth led to an obsession with counters, page hits, impressions, unique visitors, statistics and demographics.

It failed, however, to take into account the dwindling efficacy of what Seth Godin, in his brilliant essay ("Unleashing the IdeaVirus"), calls "Interruption Marketing" – ads, banners, spam and fliers. It also ignored, at its peril, the ethos of free content and open source prevalent among the Internet opinion leaders, movers and shapers. These two neglected aspects of Internet hype and culture led to the trouncing of erstwhile promising web media companies while their business models were exposed as wishful thinking.

The second mistake was to exclusively cater to the needs of a highly idiosyncratic group of people (Silicone Valley geeks and nerds). The assumption that the USA (let alone the rest of the world) is Silicone Valley writ large proved to be calamitous to the industry.

In the 1970s and 1980s, evolutionary biologists like Richard Dawkins and Rupert Sheldrake developed models of cultural evolution. Dawkins' "meme" is a cultural element (like a behaviour or an idea) passed from one individual to another and from one generation to another not through biological -genetic means – but by imitation. Sheldrake added the notion of contagion – "morphic resonance" – which causes behaviour patterns to suddenly emerged in whole populations. Physicists talked about sudden "phase transitions", the emergent results of a critical mass reached. A latter day thinker, Michael Gladwell, called it the "tipping point".

Seth Godin invented the concept of an "ideavirus" and an attendant marketing terminology. In a nutshell, he says, to use his own summation:

"Marketing by interrupting people isn't cost-effective anymore. You can't afford to seek out people and send them unwanted marketing, in large groups and hope that some will send you money. Instead the future belongs to marketers who establish a foundation and process where interested people can market to each other. Ignite consumer networks and then get out of the way and let them talk."

This is sound advice with a shaky conclusion. The conversion from exposure to a marketing message (even from peers within a consumer network) – to an actual sale is a convoluted, multi-layered, highly complex process. It is not a "black box", better left unattended to. It is the same deadly sin all over again – the belief in a miraculous conversion. And it is highly US-centric. People in other parts of the world interact entirely differently.

You can get them to visit and you get them to talk and you can get them to excite others. But to get them to buy – is a whole different ballgame. Dot.coms had better begin to study its rules.

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