Money Money Money

Small Business Websites

I've been following the fascinating 30 day challenge held every August by Ed Dale (and Australian Internet Marketer) who helps people (especially small businesses) to set up and optimize websites.

His credo is that no matter what your business, whether you are in the industrial safety supplies business or perhaps a pop band looking to break out, you will benefit from optimizing your site for keywords related to your business. Even the smallest business would benefit from understanding how the net works, but sadly most won't have heard of his free course.

Search Engine Optimization businesses

For those of us who have been making money online for a few years now, it's tempting to capitalize on our hard-won knowledge of how search engines work to set up a business offering seo optimization services.

But it's pretty clear that everyone and their dog has had the same idea judging from the results when you plug that keyword into Google, and it's not clear that all of them know what they are doing. If you are going into this business the best way to do it is through the off-line world of recommendations from people you have helped to get their pages to rank. And if you are looking to hire an SEO consultant, check that their own webpage ranks for their "seo consultant" or "seo services" and related keywords. If they can't get their own page to rank in the SERPS chances are that they won't be able to get yours to rank either.

Online stores closing down

It turns out the online world is just like the off-line one, with stores such as Circuit City (which sold electronic goods) closing their doors.

I think part of the problem was that they specialised in a product group that was vulnerable to the recession. After all nobody needs to buy TV's or plasma screens - these are purchases that can easily be postponed. By contrast the online stores that are thriving, such as Amazon or Buy.com, offer a wide range of goods, some of which could be classed as necessities (particularly the discount clothing). It turns out that diversification is the key to survival.

Microsoft Advertising

It looks like the fight between Microsoft and Google is hotting up, with Google moving into the operating system business and Microsoft challenging in the search business with Bing.

Microsoft plans to go further - they currently offer advertising on Bing, displayed alongside the search results, but have never allowed small publishers to put advertising on their websites they way Google does. However, it turns out that they are thinking about it, with a test system in beta with a few selected publishers who've been invited to trial their system. I really hope it goes well enough so that they can roll it out to other small publishers. At the moment Google dominates in advertising for small publishers, with competitors such as Adbrite and Kontera struggling badly because they simply can't sign up enough advertisers. However as Microsoft already has a lot of advertisers signed up for their search engine, it should be easy to extend display of ads to small publishers. It looks like there might be competition in this market at last.