Ok, website setup done, Google analytic bounce rate 0% (have never seen that before in 18 years of doing this!), so it is time to tell you the rest of the story:
In the summer of 2001, I quit my job, printed up a home made business card, and went into business as Oregonfreeads.com, in Springfield, Oregon.
Within 3 years, I raised over $160,000.00 to create the application, which would not cut the mustard by today’s standards. We sold over $4000,000.00 in advertising which I invented, became Adsforfree.com, went nationwide, and almost went Public before the crash. Unfortunately, 97.5% of our clientele at that time were California Realtors, and that company is no more. We had sold over $10,000,000.00 in digital advertising by that time.
How, you may ask, did we do that?
You see, I knew first hand about a built in conflict of interests when it comes to advertising, especially on Google and now the social networks, Maps, Trip Adviser, Facebook…and it has always been there for Yellow Pages:
You see, the people selling that advertising are going to put you on a page, or a website, or a directory, competing with all of your peers, A-Z; thus all the 111AAAwhatever business names. I don’t think that is very nice, and not good for the advertisers. So I did it differently.
As far as I know, nobody else has ever done it my way, I was exclusive to my advertisers, by town. In other words, if you were my client, for SEO, or anything else, I did not represent your competitors. If you are nationwide, or worldwide, the exclusive could cost more, but still I did not have conflicts of interests, because I never liked it as an advertiser, and I do not think that is a good value – it is an outdated system good only for print, which is less and less important for small business’s success, and much more expensive in a digital, free advertising world.
All these years, I have maintained and improved my “Link Authority” and “Authorship” online, in preparation for this time. I am a writer, published many places and many times, in places like Real Estate Magazine, DZone (the largest and oldest tech directory and news service on the web), Newspapers and many other places. Truth be known, writing about business topics, finance, technology trends, how to’s is my passion, and it has always been my passion since age twelve. Google and the others remember these things. You cannot fake this, it must be real, and it is extremely powerful; what we used to call it in the old days was “advertorial.”
I saw an opportunity thus when Google was nothing but a search box, and I have built my power over the years in this way.
Now my secret sauce: I refuse conflicts of interests, and nobody understood it, and that is why I was able to get so huge, starting with nothing.
If you are having trouble wrapping your brain around this, you are not alone; normal in fact, so let me explain:
- Consider the low cost of digital advertising production
- Consider how many business categories there are in the yellow pages
- Consider how many Cities, town, counties, and niches there are to dominate on behalf of a client
- Do the math, if you have one client in each, even at a low cost per year, how much money are you taking in, renewing yearly (because renewals are historically 97% with this model)
- Which means that, according to statistics on survival in business, and especially Real Estate Agents, my clients were around 90 percent more successful than their competitors.
I walked away with nothing, but an education!
If I had been properly insured…
Now I just sell insurance. It is a cleaner, more regulated, more fair marketplace.
For the last couple of years, I have been researching the insurance industry, and I have learned a great deal.
Independent Agent all lines of insurance, Property, Casualty, Auto, Life, Health, Accident – I am an Agent for Allstate in Iowa and Nebraska, Cell 928-228-9228 24-7 Call anytime, I will come to you!
Original article is here: