DIGITAL CITY

The Internet is like a HUGE digital city that we can either get lost in or we can turn into our personal playground. There is no greater fun than opening our minds to the fact that it's made up of people, not ghost in the machine.

Most people have become so disconnected from the world today that we have become unaware that everything that goes on activity wise on the Internet involves a person, somehow, somewhere, and someplace. Once we realize that and understand that each individual can be reached then we have accomplished more in a flash than most others will in a lifetime.

Our lives are all interconnected. This is not a metaphor. When you buy a pair of shoes, just think about all the people involved and places involved that made it even possible for the shoes to exist. Starting with the business owners that had the foresight to mine the earth, grow the plants, or raise the animals that contributed to the finished product that you put on your feet. The people that work for these businesses have families to feed, keep well, and have children who grow into more people who do other jobs that support everything we do in life.

A huge portion of people in all walks of life are online now and if nothing else, contribute in their own way by purchasing products from businesses where people are working to make a living. Once you fathom just how far and wide the web of people involved in the simple manufacturing of a pair of shoes, and the avenues that they go through to get to you, the final purchaser, the more you realize the web of individuals involved in all other walks of our lives.

That said, we realize that the families of people who are our neighbors, friends, and business owners, are all part of our own personal web and we all benefit from being part of this web. Now think about that in relation to the Internet. You soon begin to see how this web intertwines us all and it really boils down to connecting to people.

It is a well known fact by business owners that customers cost money. At first glance, from a laymen's standpoint, that may not seem logical, but it does, and often times it can cost more to gain a customer than what the customer returns in payment for products, at least in the beginning of a business customer relationship. The main goal of a successful business owner is to retain that hard earned customer so that future purchases will make it profitable for the business owner.

When working on the Internet, most people rely way to heavily on getting traffic driven to a site via a search engine without thinking about the fact that it's people who are the most important link to acquire. Sure, it's good to be on the first page of a search done for your particular product, but the most important part of traffic that is going to actually make you money is the person who looked for you specifically to buy from because of a referral by another person. You may even have a product that isn't even related to what a person may be searching for, but a personal referral to your web site or web store may create a customer that suddenly realizes that whatever it is you have may be of interest to them for one reason or another.

The person who made the referral is the person deserving of your reward of payment, and the person who followed the persons referral to your site needs to be rewarded for purchasing your product by receiving a discount coupon and other gifts for trusting in you and what you have to offer. This is the key that drives the success of a business that chooses to sell online.

The problem with search engines is the fact that people online who want to garner a corner for themselves in the marketing world work harder at trying to scam the search engine system than in building a strong solid customer base, so in their actions, it forces the search engines to keep changing their algorithms all the time to compensate for all of this bad activity. So it becomes a never ending cycle of trying to optimize a web site to stay on the front page of searches so people will find you and purchase your products.

I very recently had a conversation with a nice lady from GoDaddy who called to talk to me about other programs they had to offer. After reviewing the fact that I had several web sites up on the Internet that market different products I make, she asked me how come I just didn't have one big huge web site and put everything on that one site to sell? My answer to her was like this. First of all, it may seem that I may be a bit spread out, but in reality I am an inventor and because of my personality type, I am not just a one idea kind of guy. If I was a person looking for a chocolate mold for my wedding so it would be a personal statement like my invitations and other personalized items at my wedding, I would not be searching for something to make ceramic tiles in even though my small company makes molds for that kind of thing too. So using the Internet like a personal sales staff, each web site I have is like a personalized salesman to reach the kind of people that want that particular kind of product.

The second thing the young lady tried to sell me was SEO services. For those that are not in the know, "SEO" stands for Search Engine Optimization. What this really means is having the right keywords and other elements in your web pages that satisfy a search engine so you are indexed and cataloged by them so you come up at the top of searches done by people looking for your kind of product or services. I replied that I really didn't need those kinds of services and that brought on a conversation about the success of web sites that don't use those kind of services.

I tried to explain to her that my web site for making custom chocolate molds kept me busy not because of search engines so much as it did because chocolate companies, individual chocolatiers, and referrals of my sites by individual people is what makes or breaks my sites success, not the search engines. The search engines keep changing all the time so I never know from day to day where I may be found on the Internet using the same search terms all the time. She actually did a search for custom chocolate molds on Google at that moment while she was on the phone with me and found me on the first page about number six down from the top. That seemed to make her take a mental step backwards and maybe think about what I had said. Even though at that particular moment I was listed on the first page of Google, it may not be that way tomorrow.

I spent the time in the beginning by building the web site for the custom chocolate molds by first building it for the people using it, not trying to satisfy the search engines. It just so happens that the search engines indexed the site as they should have by the content, not by how it was optimized specifically for them.

Since I fully realize just how important it is to my small business in getting and keeping each and every one of my customers, I also realize just how important it is to me and my family that these same people make referrals of my site to others. Only people who are satisfied with their dealings with a business make referrals that bring sales.

Link Commissions™ is my way of giving back and rewarding both the people who make referrals and also rewarding people that follow those referrals to my online stores with coupons and other gifts.