IS THE INTERNET A FREE MARKET? by Richard Igoe In an ideal web, the laws of supply and demand should determine the price of most things, but on the internet it is not only price that counts! Definitely the internet is the largest marketplace ever built, but knowledge of internet marketing is the single most important factor that restricts entry into this huge ocean of opportunity. A website is really a marketing or selling tool. Whether it is your personal website promoting you, a brochure for your company, a branding site, or a full e-commerce site, your number one mission is to market what you have. You must understand that your website is only part of the bigger picture. How you use this tool will determine your success on the internet. Because of the free market nature of the internet you need to be one step ahead of your competition and your website is what will help you use your knowledge to maximum effect. It allows you build empires from sandcastles. A small website can look very professional. Just look how YouTube, or Facebook grew within less than 2 years! It allows you to ask your visitors for their email addresses and to follow up with your powers of persuasion. It allows you to satisfy demand immediately, either for information or for a product or service that you sell. And it allows you to manipulate the minds of your visitors to buy from you. Your website is the shop window of your business and you need to use it effectively. But remember you must first bring visitors to your shop window. The internet search engines allow you to bring HIGHLY TARGETED traffic to your shop window, and as such they should be an integral part of your marketing strategy. But do you get the same opportunity as a multinational corporation to get a number 1 ranking on the search engines? Is the internet the ultimate free market? Larger companies have a certain advantage as they can use their huge advertising budgets to plaster their name on billboards, newspapers, in the metro, on buses, even on aeroplanes, and brand their image on peoples minds. Also the search engine robots are becoming more intelligent and rank sites not only on their placement of keywords, but also on how many other HIGH QUALITY sites are linked to them. A large site can form strategic alliances with other large sites to improve their chance of high ranking. This all seems to give them an unfair advantage. BUT large corporations do not necessarily have the best or most informative sites. And they cannot adapt as fast as an individual to changing market situations, and the internet is dynamic and changes every day! Also they often insist on their marketing managers having an MBA or traditional marketing degree. Many of these managers don't have the time to take in the kind of knowledge you are reading here as they are concentrating on finding ways to spend their advertising budgets. AND remember there are also the directories! To get listed on a directory your site needs to be full of relevant content. Directories are reviewed by experts. You should at least get your site listed in Yahoo and Looksmart and if your website is in a category with hundreds of other sites, it helps to have a domain name beginning with an "a" or "b" so you get listed at the top. Directories will usually include your site if it is relevant to the category you are trying to get listed in, and if the content is good. So if you are an expert in your field, you have just as good a chance as a large corporation of getting listed. But before paying to be included it is a good idea to read a few articles about getting listed in Yahoo because if you don't use your trading name or leave out a contact address, you may not get listed. Also one other thing that the search engines take into account is the theme of your site. The more focused your site is the more relevant your web pages will be so pages in sites built around a theme are going to be given more relevancy and get better rankings. The internet is certainly not a free market in the traditional sense of the word, where the laws of supply and demand rule. It is however a FREE-FOR-ALL market where the better your internet marketing knowledge, the more chance you have of being noticed. ---------------------------------------------- Article Copyright by Richard Igoe - http://www.TheWebsEYE.com - for the latest Website software. You may distribute this article freely as long as the above information remains intact.