ForumsInternet/eCommerce

What do you do for $135 per month? Can you provide proofs of your work? I really don't like the black hat SEO technics

When we started our e-commerce, I gave the SEO to one company, $100 per month, the result was a wast of time, after that, I did my SEO get better results. So what can you do for me?

As each generation comes along, the phone book /yellow pages book gets used less and less. Yes, there are stories out there of the plumber that started out with a 1/4 page then 2/4 page then 3/4 page than 4/4 page then 2 pages. Now they are trapped. They have to advertise in the book.

Timing and product offered and the rest of the marketing plan/budget all comes into play.

As for me ... done various "yellow" type books and came up zero. Still owe the phone company $7000 for the last wasted ad.

Depending on product offered ... internet ... CraigsList ... Kudzu ... local community web directories.

Sorry if this does not apply - This question was posted under Internet/eCommerce, so i'm assuming it's a web related business.

If you are an Internet Business, I personally do not recommend advertising in a Yellow Book. I suggest placing some really good web log analyzing scripts into your website like Google Analytics. You can view how many visitors view your site, how long they stayed, referring websites, what search engines referred them to you, what keywords or phrases they used to find you, etc. It's very thorough and FREE too. From analyzing your visitors you can gauge where you should focus your advertising dollars. I tried print ads and using the BBB also but had very few referalls. Not worth the money for myself. From my log analyzing over 80% of my visitors found me through Google. The other 20% or so was from Yahoo and MSN combined.

Serious SEO cost a lot of money, Pricing vary between $3000 to $10-15000 like SEO-Expert said and he is right, under that it is a joke.
Now who can afford this money? Manufacturers, big brands, big companies etc... in a short word forget it lol
So if you are starting a business online, or run a little business like me, you better learn how to do your own SEO. Where can you learn that? Find some webmaster forums, they are plenty of tips and reel experiences.

Why doing your own SEO if you cannot to afford a professional SEO expert? Let me tell you a few things:

First of all, you are the only one who know your business or your field, yes it will take some time to improve your SEO, and if you are like me, I am learning everyday.
Second of all, if you own a web software you master your site, you can make the updates you want. Need upgrades? No problem, many developers will be happy to help you if you don't have the knowledge.

Testing, testing, testing, that is all about. you must test keywords, keyphrases etc.. wait a little and make changes if you need to.

Good luck

I started my business, http://www.beadbuddies.net selling beads online 3 years ago. I quit my job 2 years ago and my wife quit hers 1 year ago. We both worked at one of those big insurance companies and hated our jobs. Anyways, enough of that.

We ONLY do avertising through Google and Yahoo Sponsored Search and only spend $1500.00 a month or less on advertising. I have not tried the phone book but if I had $7000 extra to spend on an advertisement I would definitely not put it there. I cannot recommend Google over Yahoo because I personally use Yahoo more than Google for online searches. However, I usually see slightly better conversions through Google. I count on 5 times my money back that I spend on pay per click and always get it. Either that or word of mouth has really spread my business because that is the only advertising I do.

SEO's - They will call you at least once per week. Listen to what they have to say but don't sign up for anything. If you are familiar with code you can do everything they say yourself and better.

Best advice I can give is to spend that money on pay per click. It does work if your products are competitive!

I spent 25 years perfecting our Yellow Pages advertising in New York City and used to give keynote addresses on sales and marketing @ small biz conferences. I used to regard ANY Yellow Pages as a necessary evil. We stopped doing YP advertising in 2000 and focused on building our word-of-mouth referrals (which is where 60% of our new business was coming from). Word-of-mouth and repeat business is more effective than any advertising. Before spending $ on YP adv, are you doing everything you can to get word-of-mouth recommendations and to keep your existing customers as rabid fans? We still don't have a very good website (I created in a weekend five years ago) and are only getting around to doing search engine optimization. I spent the last five years, investing in putting the right team of people together, training them, and providing ALL my employees with health insurance. We've grown slowly, steadily, and organically--which works for me.

My answer to you re: YP advertising is "it all depends." If you are marketing to people who don't use computers, Yellow Pages may work. If you are marketing a service that does not operate from a storefront, Yellow Pages may work. If you are marketing to an Internet-saavy group, I would not bother with YP.

We perfected our YP advertising through the early 80's until we were getting $2.50 in first-time sales for each dollar spent. Lesson #1: track every inquiry so you know where prospects heard about you. Lesson #2: Learn how to write good copy. Lesson #3: It's not always about being the biggest ad: In one category, being one of the three largest ads worked. In another category, it made no difference at all--THAT was an expensive lesson! Lesson #4: There are better ways of creating an attractive ad than going to two or four color. Lesson #5: you have to be where people are looking for you. We thought of ourselves as being in the word processing business. People of a certain age looked for us under "Typing" or "Public Stenographer."

Lesson #6: How are the books getting to your prospective clients? Just for giggles, next time you are visiting a client, ask him or her for their Yellow Pages. They may not even have one. It may be from 1999.

After the first World Trade Center bombing, we watched our sales plummet to 50 cents on the dollar because the delivery mechanism of the Yellow Pages changed drastically due to security issues. When the Yellow Book came to New York City, their advertising claimed they would be sending out their books by USPS to specific addressees. Imagine my surprise when I saw their books stacked up on the front steps of buildings! I refused to pay their bills. After three years, we settled because despite what their advertising and salespeople said, the delivery mechanism was not spelled out in the contract. Lesson #7: If it doesn't say it in the contract, it isn't going to happen. If it DOES say it in the contract, it still might not happen.

I am 52. Most of my staff is 30 and under. None of them use a Yellow Pages. I use them only occasionally for very specific neighborhood searches (a locksmith, a notary public, a computer repair shop who might have an obsolete part for our voice mail computer, etc.) Recently, we were adding another employee to our bullpen and were running out of room. My staff took one look at my filing cabinet full of Yellow Pages advertising materials that went back until before they were born and announced they had found space for the new employee. All my valuable information was put in storage boxes.

There used to be a great book called "Turning Yellow Into Gold." It taught me about writing effective copy. So did "Ogilvy on Advertising."

If you found this helpful, let me know. I'd love to be able to tell my staff that my intellectual capital still has a market in the new millenium.