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Tips For A Successful Internet Business
by Loring A. Windblad
Let’s take a look at Business and Business Philosophy.
A business exists to 1) provide a service or product to
customers and 2) to make a reasonable profit for the business
owner.
In the past this took the form of two kinds of traveling
salesman (the itinerant traveling salesman, working out
of his wagon or truck, who brought otherwise unavailable
products to places who simply could not economically travel
the distance required to find those products….and
the “drummer”, or “route salesman”
who went to the various “fixed location” businesses
and sold them their “restocking supplies”) and
the “fixed location” businesses (stores) who
carried a selection of “most needed” products
in their store for customers to come in, select from and
purchase.
Pretty much this mode of operation stayed true from the
mid 1800’s to the late 1900’s. But by 1990 there
was a new inroad into this model of business – and
business philosophy. Or was there? And just what was that
inroad?
The Inroad was “The Internet”, in existence
since the 1960’s, started “going commercial”
by about 1990. It is now 2005 and this commercialization
is an ongoing and evolving process. Business has changed
and is changing. Many fixed location store fronts also
have web locations and offer home delivery for online
ordering, even for local customers. But how about “Business
Philosophy”? It is changing, also? Or is it?
Right now internet businesses are proliferating at an
alarming rate. I cannot count and possibly no one can
count the total number of internet businesses in the world
today. There are probably between 100 and 1000 “new”
internet businesses starting every day somewhere in the
world, and this figure could be much higher. There even
is a “new category” of business which has evolved,
sort of to keep track of those businesses.
No, it is not the electronic store front which offers
products or services to customers anywhere in the world
(though this is a major evolution from a standard “fixed
location” real store front on your local street),
nor is it the “hosting service” which electronically
locates and “displays” your electronic storefront
for customers to find. They are not unlike the building
owner who sublets space for offices and stores. The new
type of business is the “search engine” which
“locates, catalogues and categorizes” all of
these various business enterprises and allows you to find
what you are looking for.
It is said that there are hundreds of different search
engines out there, proliferating and multiplying like
lemmings….and, like lemmings, falling by the wayside
for various inadequacies. Except for the best and biggest.
The number one “search engine” is probably Google.
However, MSN is gaining and Alexa, All-the-Web, Alta Vista,
AOL, Ask Jeeves, Lycos, Matilda, Scrub the Web and a few
others may be considered the “major” search
engines, those which comprise, say, 95% or more of total
search engine use worldwide.
There is possible a second type of “new business”
brought to us by the Internet. This is the browser. In
fact, the browser and the search engine work hand in hand
and are completely different entities. Basically, they
generally are set to work hand in hand and mutually complement
one another. In fact, in my mind, the search engine is
slightly more valuable but less independent.
The Number One Browser is likely to be Microsoft’s
Internet Explorer. But there are several more “major”
browsers, which include AOL/Netscape, Firefox and Opera,
as well as many more. These four probably comprise more
than 95% of the worldwide “browser use” on the
internet.
You could compare them (very loosely) thusly: look at
the search engine as an exquisitely detailed map, showing
not only everything that is there by business and location,
but everything that is inside those locations – the
books and other resources within a library, the entire
stock of the local store, all the services of a print
shop, etc. And look at the browser as the vehicle that
gets you from where you are to the resources, products
and services you are looking for. It’s nice to have
such a detailed map but the map is useless without the
ability to go there and see and use what is there.
The search engine, slightly more valuable in a sense,
is not a “stand-alone” item. It requires a browser
to be truly functional. The browser, however, is a stand-alone
item which benefits mightily by the information the search
engine provides. Compare the search-engineless browser
to a long trip in a vehicle with an occasional rare find
– a resource you may or may not have been looking
for.
So for you to be successful in your internet business
endeavor you must not only be there – on the internet
– and accessible to browsers, you must find a way
to “be found” by the search engines and mapped
so that the people using the browsers can find you.
To do this you must do several things. You must build
your web site cleanly and meeting the “search criteria”
of the various “search engines”. Ideally you
will want to use a pleasing layout, probably a cascading
style sheet, optimize your verbal content for the search
engine algorithms and engage the services of someone who
really knows how to do this kind of work. You must also
carefully, very carefully indeed, select the host for
your web site. More on this in the next article, but see
my #1 web site below.
I personally recommend Lawrence Deon of http://www.rankingyourwaytothebank.com/
I have seen several resources out there similar to what
Lawrence Deon provides and they range in price from triple
the cost to more than 10 times the cost….and they
don’t do anything that Ranking Your Way To The Bank
doesn’t do.
Organic Greens dot US ranks right up in the top 10 for
nearly 20 different search terms and on most of the world’s
major search engines. This is purely thanks to Lawrence
Deon. I have this one up and three more right now in varying
stages of construction, all with Lawrence Deon’s
help. And I have more web sites up which are designed
with thanks to Lawrence Deon.
About the Author
Loring Windblad has operated his own HBBs for nearly 40
years, is a published author and freelance writer. Loring
has written books, articles, grants, business plans and
resumes that got the job done right. His latest HBB endeavor
is: http://www.organicgreens.us |
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