Marketing Conundrum

Ignoring the problem or getting bent out of shape over it isn’t going to make it go away. I am referring to the sad state of affairs of modern day popular culture and just how far from authenticity we have sunk in our search for meaning in life. Much of the world is entering what is being called the 'Bread and Circuses' phase of declining empire. A phase preoccupied with credit binging, fiat money and spectacle.  The Romans went through a similar period of decay, Nero fiddling while Rome burned.

Then as now, there are many narrowly focused people out there in the world with money to spend who only want to be entertained. They care not a hoot for dignity, synergy or edified social discourse. Reading, the News Hour, National Public Radio, debates...how boring. Glamour, glitter and action, that’s where it’s at. Seeking diversion in fun and games is a sign of the times, and noble or not, the astute marketer can realize that there is a lot of money to be made catering to the praetorian.

In order to be successful online, as offline, when selling either a product or a service, there must exist a market for what you are selling. By targeting the multi-billion dollar, global, entertainment market, a nobody’s fool Internet marketer can focus on one of the largest and still exponentially growing markets available, second only to the porn industry. This market is packed full of people who are searching for new and exciting products having anything to do with gambling, sports, celebrity, lotteries, glitz, gossip, or any combination thereof.

The conundrum, or perhaps we should call it hypocrisy, is that many of us pretend to righteousness when it comes to say selling seedy sex online, but have no qualms about taking peoples money for any other imaginable swindle as long as it isn’t jailie. The fact is, people are going to attempt to fill the void in their lives by throwing money away whether we, as astute observers, are there or not to relieve them of some of it. When gambling was illegal, it didn’t cure people from the desire to beat the odds despite common sense and logic, it only drove the passion underground, and enriched and fostered a nasty criminal element to cater to them. At least now, as with lotteries, it is a taxation on idiocy, and we are no longer our brothers keepers.

There is no reason I can think of not to put that money to better use, and I can only do that if it is in my pocket. Foolish people with too much freedom and too little self control or respect for themselves, are aggressively bent on seeking their vicarious thrills, so who am I to deny them. Standing on a soapbox extolling the virtues of thrift and husbandry will only earn me derision and ridicule. Since I am in the upscale marketing business, there is one mantra that I will adhere to in taking on these ‘products’ and that is to provide variety, selection and quality to the customer.

When all is said and done, catering to human foibles in this manner may actually be more honest and sincere than the present day cons and swindles of corporations, wall street or mainstream politics. In this regard then, it is incumbent upon me to find the most professional and legitimate programs available to offer my customers since my reputation and business ethics are at stake; long term credibility and viability being paramount.

Gambling and celebrity worship were traditionally the purview of the sharkskin suit and gold chain set, but with the advent of the Internet, anyone can enter the game. But this enterprise as with any other, to be ultimately successful must provide a needed service honestly and with integrity. The business model has to be approached and structured to be open and above board to both the people providing the service and those partaking of it. There is a lot of money to be made from a world lost to the grace of higher pursuits...but there is no denying the mad pursuit of happiness. To this end, I have discovered a vehicle that offers professionalism and savvy in profiting from this phenomena of advanced web profits. I decidedly frown on purveyors of turpitude who exploit others for personal gain, however, if our prospective customers wish to exploit themselves, that is a matter of their own concern.

Receiving Online Payments

The World Wide Web has become an integral part of our lives. It has penetrated so deeply into our daily living that people now turn towards the World Wide Web for buying clothes, books, electronic equipment etc. For an online seller, then, it becomes imperative to find means to make an online transaction as easy and painless as possible. Since most people prefer to use their credit cards while shopping, webmasters need to integrate this service into their online shopping websites. An answer to your online payment needs can be a payment processing company.

Most online shopping sites enter into a business alliance with payment processing companies. However, you should diligently comb the market for the best deal before you sign up with a service. Make sure that they are not overcharging you. Also, check out their reputation in the market – are they known for their fair minded financial and business transactions? This kind of a company operates through two types of services – one id intended for companies with merchant accounts with their banks and the other for companies who do not possess this kind of a bank account. The first kind of service is generally used by fairly large financial institutions and organizations dealing in independent sales.

The advantage of having a merchant account is that you can receive payments within a few days of the transaction. However, if you do not have a merchant bank account, the payment processing company receives the payment on your behalf initially. The mode of operation is that the buyer will fulfill the transaction not on the seller’s website, but on the site of the payment processing company. (If you choose the former service, the processing company will help you enable your website to receive payments from the buyer directly.) Also, it is only a few times in a month that the processing company will forward you the payments.

There are a couple of steps which need to be completed before your website can host the facility of receiving payments through a credit card. Firstly, you will have to host an order form on your website. You then need to establish a gateway. This kind of service transfers the customer’s payment and credit card information to the payment processing company. You would then need to establish the facility of a shopping cart on your website. If your site already hosts this function, the payment processing company will surely be able to integrate its services with it.

monitoring on your website

10 things you should be monitoring on your website

By David Leonhardt
Every business needs to know how it is doing. That's the idea behind exit surveys, customer feedback forms, suggestion boxes and other devices. Without feedback from the customer, monitoring inventory, expenses, revenue and other benchmarks, a business can take a quick slide down a slippery slope, without the owner ever seeing it coming – or being able to stop the slide.

Webmasters also have things they should be monitoring on their websites. Most of these can be classified as traffic related or server performance related. Here is my top ten list.

Monitoring website traffic

Traffic totals. You want to know how much traffic you are generating. If the line on the graph is heading down, you know you have to find out why.

Referrers. It's not enough just to know how many visitors you are getting. You need to know where they are coming from. I discovered I was getting a lot of visitors from a Thanksgiving site. They were all being funneled into my Thanksgiving Happiness article. Suddenly I knew I should get more links from other Thanksgiving sites. Valuable information.

Searches. Much to my surprise, my happiness site started getting a ridiculous number of hits from the search for "hairdressers". It just so happens I wrote a humor column on a hairdresser experience. I was surprised to see it getting so much traffic for such a generic, competitive search term. If that had been a term of a little more relevance for me, this information would have lead me to properly optimize the page and get even more traffic.

Pages viewed per visit. If people visit only one page per visit, you have some work to convince them to visit more pages, like those that make you money.

Pages visited. So you threw up on your site something cool as an add-on. How were you to know that other webmasters would link to it and send a whole bunch of traffic your way? Well, now you know, so add some copy to the page to pull visitors into the rest of your site.

Monitoring website performance

Forms. Are they all functioning? A good website monitoring service can keep tabs on them for you. The last thing you want is to have lost hundreds or thousands of subscribers because a sign-up form stopped functioning

Shopping carts. Slow and complicated shopping carts are responsible for an estimated $25 billion in lost sales. Make sure yours is functioning properly. A good website monitoring service can watch this for you, too.

Download speed. Clear your cache and test your pages. Hmm. Maybe those images are a bit large. Time to compress them, or even remove some. Remember that some people are on a much slower connection than you are. I use a satellite connection sometimes, but when I don't, my connection speed is 28K.

Server speed. re there problems with server speed? Maybe not where you are, but on the other side of the world. Global website monitoring can alert you to a transatlantic connection problem, so you can take it up with your web hosting service.

Server accessibility. All the web hosts promise 99% accessibility. But is that for real? Who monitors them? By one estimate, 75% of inaccessibility is not on the hosting server, but rather on the Internet's backbone network and in global routing. A global website monitoring service can help identify the problem, so that you can work with your web hosting company to resolve it before too many sales are lost.

Fun. If you are not having fun, audition for that drummer position in the local band. There is no point spending your life doing something that bores you. Webmastering should be fun.