Very Heavy Advertising is the Only Way Out of the Internet Backwaters

I remember seeing a graph a few years ago of book sales. At the left hand were the very high sales of the big books, like Twilight, Fifty Shades and all that stuff. It then drops dramatically and exposes a very long tail. That tail is where all the small publishers and self-publishers sit, selling a handful of books a year. And there are lots of them. The allure of the Internet is that a small unknown publisher or writer or for that matter an Internet entrepreneur, can set up his or own site and become a sqillionnaire over night. In fact Google advertise this phenomenon as if it happens all the time. The satchel advert shows a mum wanting to buy an old fashioned school satchel and when she can't find one she sets up her own business and boom, she's got outlets all over the world etc. And the giants of the internet try to make us believe we can do the same. We can't. Events like these are as rare as hens teeth, with one in a million (probably) breaking out of the Internets vast backwater, where businesses, set up for a few quid sit and wait for fame - Gangnam Style. Well, I'm still waiting and I've had http://www.vagabond-unlimited.co.uk for many, many years. It gets a few hundred stragglers a year, who look but don't buy. Then I met two young Internet guru's who seemed to believe that you can do SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and get your site ranked at the top of Google. Really? I said. No. Oh yes they said.

Months of hard work later and nothing has changed. It turns out most of what SEO guru's recommend is against Google's terms of service and it's very lucky indeed that I met up with a senior SEO marketeer who works for one of the largest Internet marketing companies in the UK recently, otherwise I might have done what they recommended in full. The only reason I didn't was because I was waiting to launch a new version of my website. Another SEO recommendation - update your content regularly. The only trouble is I was finally getting visitors to my site. Once I updated they all stopped and I'm back to zero's and one's (ironically). And guess what. The internet executive I met up with, was absolutely clueless about how to get your site ranked. I asked him questions but he was very vague and as he mumbled into his chest, about something relating to building relationships, I had the urge to slap him across his face. So, the great hope that was SEO, just isn't there. The overnight miracle successes we all hear about, are just a combination of flooks, and stuff that just hits a nerve with the public. Something that they just love. Getting that right is almost all the battle. The other thing is, advertising. Television, radio and billboards. Good all fashioned advertising. And that takes oodles of cash and a great product that is going to pay you back at some point.

The people that love the Internet claim that it's for everyone - that it has some kind of democratic properties that any other system of commerce and communication doesn't have. And some of that is true. It is a different way of doing things. But newspapers lose money because of it. High street shops go bust because of it. Bubbles come along and they burst. No-one but a handful of retailers have really grasped the Internet in terms of profits. And while very large businesses are falling over themselves to advertise Facebook for free (and other social networking sites), Facebook can't make money itself. They offered a free service. People took up that free service, but it has to be paid for somewhere and advertising on the Internet just doesn't get result and big business knows it. The SEO exec I met up with said as much - don't bother advertising on Facebook and Google. Weird. It does all fall back to the old fashioned methods. So if newspaper barons and television executives are worrying about the internet they needn't bother. It's all for free. The end user doesn't pay for anything, the provider of services don't get paid, either - unless its a broadband company. Even porn is free these days.