Is Your Website a Cheap Date?
Last night I listened to an interesting conference call with Dr. Mike Woo-Ming and his partner Howie. Now of course they were selling a brand new Internet “system” that practically guarantees you’ll make a fortune – don’t all conference calls end with that sort of thing?
What I really liked though was the back story and reasoning behind their new product. Regular readers will know that my unofficial motto is “Just Say No to Crack-Sense” and Mike and Howie go to great lengths to explain why this should be every Internet business person’s motto.
Are You a Cheap Date?
The most valuable thing on the Internet is traffic. Real human eyeballs staring at a page that is holding their interest. Every website owner knows that these eyeballs have value…that’s why they put AdSense on their sites, to try and realize that value.
Let’s think of the business model that is being employed here:
Do lots of work –> Get targeted visitor –> Sell them for 50 cents –> Never see them again
<— repeat <—
See the limitations of this system, which by the way holds just as true for affiliate marketing? You’re a cheap date. The AdSense [AdWords actually] buyer gets to buy the heart of your business for 50 cents a head!
How much do you think that pair of eyeballs is worth to them? If they have done there homework, in almost any industry it is way more than 50 cents or 5 dollars or 10 dollars. Are you, the AdSense publisher, beginning to feel used? I am.
Just like with real crack, the system is tipped heavily in favor of the dealers [Google and the Advertisers].
Like Taking Candy
When someone leaves your site via AdSense or an affiliate link, it is like Google, on behalf of the merchants, taking candy from a baby. You’ve just given away the only thing of value in your business for a few cents.
Why are Those Eyeballs Worth More to the Merchant?
While you and I see the website visitor as some wandering eyeballs holding a mouse who, if you’re lucky, may stumble in from a search engine query and click on your ads the merchant, if they know what they are doing, sees that website visitor as a PERSON!
And people have wants and needs and this thing called money to make the wants and needs happen. The merchant sees more potential than us business babies see in a website visitor.
How do I Keep the Value on My Site?
A skillful and sustaining business begins to create a relationship with their customers and potential customers because they know that it’s the relationship that has the real value. First and foremost you want them to be YOUR client.
On the web this strategy will work better in some sales processes than others. Mike and Howie have, accurately I believe, identified lead capture as the most effective way to use this technique. In a nutshell you capture your visitor’s information and store it in YOUR database and then sell the leads to vendors.
Notice the shift in power here? They may purchase from the vendor, but they’re still your client. You still have the customer info! You could sell it again or if you’ve done a really good job of building your relationship with that client and the merchant you’re referring them to [another relationship to be valued], they will come to you for another recommendation the next time they need or want something.
Action Step For Me
For me the primary action from this revelation is just to be aware of the alternatives to the very immature business model of monetizing my websites with AdSense and affiliate links. It’s clear now that to a real business, the kind that makes you rich, these strategies are laughable. I feel like with this realization I have grown up a bit and my eyes are a bit more open to possibility than they were. My next project will definitely be evaluated against the idea of keeping the real value within my company
rather than quickly disposing of it for a quick buck.
If you want to listen to an mp3 of the conference call with Dr. Mike and Howie you can follow the link.
If you are interested in visiting their sales page it is here. These are not affiliate links and I haven’t signed up for their program, although I would consider it in the future.
Update: They combined the mp3 and the sales page. Listen and see them by following this link.
Update 2: Dr. Mike and Howie have released an audio of questions that have been asked about their program. I should mention that Howie has a valley girl accent so these calls are worth listening to just for that 