Transparency in business has long been a staple of good customer service, engaging customers and reassuring them about the products and services they are paying for.  Now that companies are operating in a global economy, transparency is an even more valuable consideration for companies with an online presence.  One of the greatest marketing values of the Internet is that it gives businesses of all sizes the ability to open their doors to customers who would otherwise not be able to get an “inside peek” at how a company operates.

Read the rest of this entry »

I read a great book recently: “Free” by Chris Anderson – and I highly recommend it to all.  Anyway, there are a zillion great points made, but perhaps none more important than the concept of scarcity as a driver for behavior.

To paraphrase, the two ends of the spectrum for all things are scarcity and abundance.  When things are scarce, in economic terms (supply and demand), value increases.  When they are abundant, value decreases.  Makes sense, right?

When things go awry, in our business at least, is often when those forces change – but we humans don’t. 

Read the rest of this entry »

Google is known for taking an extremely hard line approach to those using it’s products that break their policies. This goes for every product, including AdWords. With adsense, if you click your ads you understandably get banned and even as an AdWords advertiser, if you break the policies, you are treated with equal indiscrimination regardless of how much you spend. AdWords advertisers spending millions a year have woken up to find that Google simply doesn’t like them any more and they can take their money elsewhere.

Google AdWords & Affiliate Marketing.

To be able to keep on top of the ever changing search marketing space, we absolutely have to operate our own sites. How can we help a client with their e-commerce site if we don’t have one ourselves or at least worked on one before? It would be like paying an accountant to do your accounts with no experience only after reading “accounting for dummies”.

Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I saw Barry Ritholtz mentioned that he was selling video recordings of a conference he put on for only $69, and some of the people who commented on his site wrote garbage like this:

Read the rest of this entry »