So, what did I fail at? A couple people knew that this was coming, but I bet that most haven’t noticed that this blog is now running on a new domain name and under a new operating name. Yup, I picked a business name without doing enough research, I let myself make an assumption that could have potentially turned in to wee bit ‘o drama in the future.

The name I had originally chosen was Large Orange Pop. I have a thing for the 50s even though I was born in the 60s, and the idea of looking for a name that had more potential as a brand than as a description of some services I may offer appealed to me. It appealed to me so much that I simply assumed that I was the only one to think of it. As usual, assumptions can go wrong. There is another company out there that had a similar idea, Orange Soda, only they had it several years ago.

So what’s a guy to do? The obvious, move on quickly and put it behind me. I found a new name that I like that also lends itself toward branding, and when I finally have the time to work on it, a new look and feel featuring my favorite 50s villains and heroes, robots. Hopefully the rebuild won’t take too long, but fortunately I am heavy with client work at the moment that may keep me from working on my own site.

Takeaway?

Do your research! You may have a great idea that you think is completely unique, but odds are you would be wrong.

It all started with a simple need. Getting links. At first it was about getting friends to link to you, or joining a webring. Then it was trading links with other people whether you liked them or not. That was soon followed by submitting your website to hundreds of directories, free and paid. But what happened when you needed thousands of links submitted? Simple, you outsource it like everything else. $50 gets you 1000 link submissions!

Well, it seems like making money submitting websites to directories isn’t as lucrative as it once was. Take a look at this email Dave over at ChainzOnline got, I assume by mistake.

Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 23:01:53 +0300
From: SEO Company <info@seo4experts.com>
To:
Subject: Looking for Link Builder. Job Offer.

Hi,

We are a SEO company. We are looking to hire several link builders.

We want you to build links from forums. NOTE: we do NOT need any other type of links. Please do NOT reply to this email with your offers of other kinds of links. Thanks.

We’ve got a list of ~1,000 computer & software related forums. We want you to make 3 posts on each forum regularly. You will need to put a link in your signature. We want to hire you for a long period of time (month, year, several years++).

For how much are you ready to do this kind of work? How much do you want per forum? [UTF-8?](You’ll need to make 3 posts on each forum.)

We are sending out this email to several hundreds of Indian link builders in order to find the cheapest price. So please make as low quote as you can.

Who we want to find:

a) responsible person who wants to work
b) a person with good English
c) a person who knows how to make posts on forums

Please reply to this email if you are interested.

Thanks,
SEO Company

Here is a company spamming to find spammers that we can thank for a lot of the new spam heading our way. No link for you ( http://www.forumlinkbuilding.com/view.php/forum_link_building_service ). Take a look at this quote from their page:

Unique: We will build links to your website using forums. We will create 3 posts on each forum linking to your website from 3 different pages. We never spam forums.

They “never” spam forums yet they create accounts specifically to get three posts with links in them? Isn’t this spam? I’m sure we can all go on for hours about these types of “people”, but they won’t care. So what to do about it?

Over at WebWorkshop we set it up so that you need 50 posts to get any live links or sigs at all. And I talked with a mod at WebProWorld and they also instituted a min post count to get sig links. And I suspect that most other forums will do the same to help stem the flood of low income workers spamming our forums with “I like what you said” or “Hi, I’m from New York” via an India IP address posts.

I think my new hobby will be contacting all these companies that hire these guys and ask them why they are spamming our forums. Hmmmm, possible client recruitment potential. Forget that last part, you don’t need those clients.

Or maybe not.

Without a doubt the web has become a very crowded place. With almost every commercial business having at least some presence online, some businesses having multiple websites, and then the top of the heap, the megalithic websites like Amazon, Blue Nile, and eBay. We won’t even get in to the topic of affiliate programs that create hundreds, even thousands, of websites all selling the same product. With that level of competition why would anyone want to get involved with adding a second business to their already full plate?

Why do I need a website?

For me, the number one reason for a company, especially a small company, to have a website today is that fewer and fewer people are using the phone book to find what they are looking for. When someone picks up a phone book they are looking for a phone number. They already know what they want, pizza, movie times, how late are you open, and other similar questions. As people become more and more internet savvy they want more than a phone book can give them, they want to shop.

But what if you offer a product or service that has seen its market eaten up by outsourcing overseas like software development, or turned in to a commodity sold from lists in a database rather than as an actual product like diamonds? You can still compete. It’s been said by the people at Wal-Mart that you can’t out Amazon Amazon, but you can find an angle where you can compete on a local level, and as you grow in to your web presence you can begin to expand in to larger markets, or new products that will help differentiate you from the Amazon’s and Blue Nile’s of the world. And if you can pick up a piece of the global market on your way up, that’s just a little more icing on the cake.

Local Search to the rescue!

The easiest and usually best way to start elbowing your way in to internet millions is to stake out your local market. There may be thousands of people online selling Peeps but how many people are selling Peeps in Flathead County, Montana? I don’t know about you, but when I get a craving for pink bunny peeps I need them now, not 3 days from now via FedEx.

It doesn’t have to be Peeps. Maybe you run a small printing company, or you have a baseball card shop, or even a tanning salon. Whatever it is, the internet makes for the best phone book ad ever. It has everything a normal phone book ad has, phone number, address, etc., but it can also have your store hours, a list of products or services, maybe even an interactive way for your local clients to get what they need without even getting in their car.

So what do we do now?

The first step is to build a website that not only focuses on your product or service, but one that focuses on your local community. A site that is just as likely to rank well for your city’s name is it is to rank for your product.

Fortunately for both of us I have just signed up a new old client. I originally built their first website more than 7 years ago, and since it was built it has seen almost no effort put in to it. A common problem for small businesses with a lot of work to do and not enough time to think about that “web thing”. As long as the email works, they are happy. I’ll let you in on who this client is in a few weeks once we get things back on track for them.

I can tell you that they are in a very competitive industry that has seen it’s profit margins eaten away by advancing technology and cheaper labor costs in Asia. But it is still an industry that can, and should, have strong ties with the local community and should leverage that involvement in to a profitable website that serves as more than just a place to get their email from. We’ll find out together if it can be turned around and made in to a profit center rather than an expense.

But what if your goals are more than that? What if you actually want to be a part of the local scene? What if you are after something a little more fulfilling than a quick link and move on?

There is an answer, or I wouldn’t be posting this.

Take a look at Lafayette Online, a local website that has been running for years with the simple goal of giving people in Lafayette, In., local news, a local dining guide, lodging information, even a calendar of events. And it’s primary viewer? People that actually live and shop in Lafayette! What a concept! (BTW, go Boilermakers!)

Lafayette Online isn’t alone, take a look at Nashville Scene. A different approach to the local scene, but the same effect. Local information is being provided to local people, and if you are targeting locally, these sites are where you need to be.

Find these sites. Contact the site owners. See if you can get a news story written about you. At the very least add them to your press release list, many of the site owners are small operations just trying to provide something to the local community and any news that they can get is good news. And if it isn’t, it’s easy enough to delete.

Don’t have a news worthy item? Advertise! Everyone is wrapped up in Google AdWords as the ad supplier of choice. But these local sites run by local people, putting local money back in to the local economy can be a far better investment over time than the random Google Ad. Besides, how often is someone from Google going to come in to your shop and spend $20?