Evolution of internet marketing

The Web is often a laboratory for high-speed evolution. If you add information to the Web and do nothing to promote it, your information will sleep peacefully on a server and never cross the fibers that make up the interconnectivity of the Web. On the other hand, some web destinations become very popular with only a small amount of initial advertising. Early adopters, spreading the word via email, can produce a tidal wave of visitors in no time. The vast majority of information on the Web falls somewhere in between those extremes.

Early on, most people with something to sell recognized the potential inherent in the Web. Print and TV ads were expensive and space for your message was limited. A website can be just the opposite: a cheap ad with virtually unlimited space for your message. The only drawback was the “printouts” problem. With a print ad, everyone bought into the fantasy that every reader would study every ad. With a website, the site sells your product or service, but you are faced with an entirely separate sales job (or perhaps it would be better characterized as a marketing job) to persuade the public to visit your website and spend some time over there. .

Today, almost everything under the sun is sold on the Web. Among those sellers is a subset of merchants who are developing and selling tools designed to make life easier for all those other sellers. As with the California gold rush, the greatest chance of making a fortune lies not with gold miners, but with dealers selling new and improved picks, shovels, and sluice boxes. Merchants who sell tools to Internet merchants may charge high prices for two reasons:

because the products being sold, if used correctly, will actually generate revenue far in excess of their cost, and

because the cost of these tools is fully tax deductible if used in a bona fide business.

This subset of vendors who sell to Internet marketers appears to be more attuned to the evolutionary potential of the Web. His modus operandi is to try competing techniques, keep the best one, and then try it on a newcomer. When you find a technique that works well, stick with it. Once you collect some impressive performance data, turn it into a training course for selling to new internet marketers.

That’s why virtually every product in this category is sold through a long “landing page,” with lots of impressive testimonials and claims about the product’s past performance. If you’re not convinced to buy after reading this first page, at least give them your email address and they’ll give you a free PDF book on the subject (previously selling for $97, of course!).

Now, I’m not saying there is something inherently wrong with this approach. For the past six months, I’ve been handing out my email address to any internet marketing tool seller who seemed to have a promising product or newsletter. As a result, I have acquired a mountain of (mostly) useful free information on the subject. I have even bought some of the products. And none of these merchants have misused my email address. For the most part, I’m happy to get your occasional messages.

But in this case, is it possible that the evolution of the Web has gone off on a tangent that is doomed to extinction? Has anyone actually read every word on one of those landing pages? Many marketers who sell to internet marketers will preach that you must build a quality mailing list, because the mailing list will be the source of most of your sales. But is it possible that this approach to mailing lists is similar to “inbreeding”, with a small number of prospects, each on many lists? Is it possible that many potential clients are lost simply because they do not want to give their email address?

In the course of my research, I found some tools that would be of great help to internet marketers and AdSense publishers. Most of these marketers have significantly shortened their landing pages by using whiteboard videos and screenshots. We’ll take a closer look at the use of streaming video in internet marketing on the new YourBiz.tv site