Morning Folks!!
If you have a domain getting 350 daily type ins for example you have a business. 350 is just a number to us. But go downtown today where ever you are and count how many customers go in a store in any given DAY. FEW stores are likely to get 350 customers in a day. MOST won't get 350 customers in a week!! Don't believe me? Then you have never been in retail. Then you have never had to work on a commission only basis. Sell nothing....eat nothing.
Yes, big box stores and McDonald's etc will get the 350 customers and then some. But go count and see how long it takes. Still a number of hours and still a number of sales in those hours.
It is unfortunate that most retailers have not been able to harness the power online. They accept 350 customers online walking in and buying nothing but would they be stupid enough to allow 350 customers to come in the store, make no sales and not ask why??
I am finally seeing the focus change to sales and profits on the Internet. Boy has this been a SLOW process. But it is finally here. Investor money is drying up and now startups are finally going to have to resort to sales. That my friends is the evolution I have been waiting for. Sales. Sales. It's all about sales and now that folks are starting to get that point, things will change fast and furiously. Fast for me anyways. 3 years is fast. We are less than that and we have already entered the 'Gravitational Pull'.
Go get 1 million likes or 1 sale. Which has more value? Which buys food? We took a huge detour and gamble with 'Social' media. But what about 'Commercial' media? What about trackable sales? What about new clients and new business and repeat business?
Social is 'Word of mouth' and it is very important. But 'Word of mouth' is a bi-product of doing things right. You don't start with 'Word of Mouth', you start off with sales that CREATE 'Word of mouth'. Most online have it ASS BACKWARDS and it is absurd!!
We are also on the verge of finding out it just may not work. Facebook now 50% of the IPO and still has yet to find the bottom. Blah blah,blah comes AFTER the sale!
So a word to all startups......SELL SOMETHING!
Until then.....Like us on Facebook!
Have a GREAT Day!
Rick Schwartz
Paul
“Go get 1 million likes or 1 sale.” = Those who spend most of their time on Facebook and social sites wasting time VS those who work and make money.
I think we know who the 1% are…
Josh
You don’t start with”Word of Mouth”, you start off with sales that CREATE”Word of mouth”
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That’s part of Rick’s Street MBA. :) I like it.
Adi
I like it, i very much like it.
Name silo
I’m taking notes as I type lol.
Jeff Schneider
Hello Rick,
” I am finally seeing the focus change to sales and profits on the Internet. Boy has this been a SLOW process. But it is finally here. Investor money is drying up and now startups are finally going to have to resort to sales. That my friends is the evolution I have been waiting for. Sales. Sales. It’s all about sales and now that folks are starting to get that point, things will change fast and furiously. Fast for me anyways. 3 years is fast. We are less than that and we have already entered the”Gravitational Pull”.”
You have hit the nail squarely on head with this paragraph!
Web companies are slowly coming around to bolstering their sales force personell instead of hiring mostly Alpha Dog Engineers. A paradigm switch that is netting superior R.O.I.s for businesses on the NET. LinkedIn makes 1.30$ per member revenue by this method of hiring Sales people over Alpha Dog Engineers. A trend they want to increase even more. They spend 33% revenues on Sales and Marketing.
Facebook on the other hand makes a little over 6cents per member by spending 15% on Sales and marketing. This lopsided picture only accents FBs flawed management Strategies. The sea change is starting and its undertoe will pull many out to Sea and for others float them to the Top.
Great perception Rick, KUDOS
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
Show us the money..
Well, lost customers are not the same as type in’s. A customer may look at more than one buying opportunity before deciding, so its not a one to one relationship.
A type in is one decent opportunity to get close to a consumer. What is that worth? well, not a sale anyway.
Most of the value in a domain (Of decent ones) is in a potential destination and features such as recollection etc etc.. not as a type in or random traffic.
Show us the money..
Difference is Paul I’d done quite a bit of research for a UK company backed by foreign media capital (big money backer) and those likes are worth something. Its just the same as type in’s. Small percentages on large volumes can still equal great revenues.
In absolute black and white you are right that a sale always beats infinite likes backed by nothing, but invariable sales comes from all angles so its difficult not to accept the value of consumer attention. Branding, recognition all flow from such things….
Jeff Schneider
Hello’
” In absolute black and white you are right that a sale always beats infinite likes backed by nothing, but invariable sales comes from all angles so its difficult not to accept the value of consumer attention. Branding, recognition all flow from such things….”
You may be right that consumer attention is important, but Likes on FB are so homogenized and watered down as far as being recommendations that they are a far cry from an actual recommendation. Similar to when you ask an American how his day is ? and they invariably say GREAT, even as their world is crumbling. LIKES on FB are a joke.
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
Donny
Very interesting- Difference is – Show us the money is that the big money backers that you talk about include those who build platforms around FaceBoo. They know nothing because they feel since they have money they are smarter and know more. So they become lazy and follow the crowd.
It’s like someone who owns a real fast car it does not make you a better driver. You just get drive real fast.
They are no better informed than those money managers that recommend stocks. It’s like when all of them downgrade ALU, YHOO, A reason exists for all that.
Apple makes something, Costco makes something- Fboo not really, they will need to charge members to be profitable in the future. Good luck in building your platform around Fboo. I would rather own my own domain name and platform and not be dependent on anyone.
JMO of course
Donny
Uzoma
Rick,
I thought you’d like the following article, as it showa that you are indeed more than a domainer, you are an inspiration, and a business man. The following article is from Yahoo news, and it compliments your thoughts bautifully:
Forget Apple, Forget Facebook: Here’s The One Company That Actually Terrifies Google Execs
By Nicholas Carlson | Business Insider – Wed, Aug 15, 2012 2:42 PM
It’s very easy to get caught up in the Android versus iPhone duel and Google’s recruiting battles with its newly-public Silicon Valley neighbor, Facebook.
But neither one of those companies worry Google executives as much as another that is actively taking money out of their pockets.
This company is from Washington, but no, it’s not Microsoft.
Google’s real rival, and real competition to watch over the next few years is Amazon.
Google is a search company, but the searches that it actually makes money from are the searches people do before they are about to buy something online. These commercial searches make up about 20 percent of total Google searches. Those searches are where the ads are.
What Googlers worry about in private is a growing trend among consumers to skip Google altogether, and to just go ahead and search for the product they would like to buy on Amazon.com, or, on mobile in an Amazon app.
There’s data to prove this trend is real. According to ComScore, Amazon search queries are up 73 percent in the last year. But it makes intuitive sense doesn’t it?
Why go through these steps …
Google search”rubber galoshes,”
Analyze some text links,
Click on one to go to a product page on some e-commerce store,
Click to add the item to your cart,
Input your credit card,
Input your address,
… when you can just …
Search amazon for”rubber galoshes,”
Click one button to buy the product with your usual credit card and have it shipped to your normal address.
On mobile, where Amazon has its own app and Google is just a search bar for a smaller-screened browser, the equation tips further in Amazon’s balance.
The scenario gets even scarier for Google if Kindle phones and Kindle tablets gain ubiquity.
If you have a Kindle phone, which comes with free movies and books because you have an Amazon Prime account, which also gives you free shipping, why in the WORLD would you ever search to buy something through anything but Amazon?
You wouldn’t.
That’s why Amazon is practically giving its hardware away.
It’s also why Amazon scares Google more than anything Facebook or Apple are up to.
Danny Pryor
LMAO! Great stuff. :)
I wrote this on my own FB wall this week,”Why do people think the moment they try a new idea on the web that it immediately becomes revolutionary? A change in media is not the augury of success for any crappy idea, and it does not mean the implementer of that failed proposition is suddenly a genius.”
Enough said.
Show us the money..
Must admit Donny, I do share a number of your sentiments. While I can’t go into detail of who the backers were it would be fair to say that 10’s of millions having a punt is not even an issue for them, they are traditional foreign state media looking to diversify and stay current in a rapidly changing ‘informational world’.
Most of the issues they have are around their corporate mentality. Entrepreneurs and traditional blue chip big business really is chalk and cheese ideologically. New media is fast moving and about ideas, something that traditional media cannot cope with because it is not the workforce it promotes or tolerates largely. Traditional media also moves too slowly and at great cost, new media is fast and agile.
Eventually though, I think big media will win. The gap between quality and non quality web is getting wider and users are getting more regimented. Google, Youtube etc are progressively becoming more imbedded. These are the new barriers to competition. At the moment the barriers are quite low and the capital required still not that large. Hence, it’s an entrepreneur’s field day… I think that will slowly change.
Show us the money..
Yes, ‘likes’ on FB are like ‘links’ in the SEO world. Lots of links or likes doesn’t mean terribly much if they have been bought. You can buy advertising which will do the same job.
Same old story, its the quality that counts. Natural likes to a companys viral video on Youtube are worth a lot more than clicking a like to be entered into a competition draw on FB.
Show us the money..
This is exactly what I said about greater clustering of consumers onto effectively portal (porthole lol) sites.
The Google search engine will always have a use, but it’s a technical reference library although during the current web lifecycle phase they have also been able to capture ordinary shoppers. Consumers increasingly will go to Amazon and Ebay to buy their ordinary day to day things because 1) The huge variety and 2) The low cost as huge numbers of suppliers can beat the large companies. Worst of all is that foreign suppliers are sending it direct from China and missing sales taxes also. How do retailers compete against manufacturers selling direct?
The web is in a consolidation phase. More and more clustering will evolve.
Nb: Nice to see the large logistics companies finally starting service points for web order collections from various stores. Something I mentioned that needed to be done in 2005. Wifi phones are slowly but surely making inroads against traditional cell phone giants. I am just waiting for the likes of Google (Dark fibre and Motorola) to team up with Skype (Voip software) and nail the telecoms big time (Think that Google probably has developed its own software in a ‘darkroom’), something that I generally mentioned just before BT sold O2 and Virgin Media sold its Mobile circa 2005/6 etc. It’s taking a long time for this nemesis to happen.