PC4Media

Connecting Real Relationships Online

We just launched the killer local social app and I am about to bring my "network" of businesses online in a really meaningful "grow their business" way - as I move my blog over to Hubspot.

With this new app, we've served more than 15k page views in two weeks. It's bringing lots of local connections online. (I'm not linking to it until we've had 100k page views.)

Joshua Porter puts it eloquently when he says that online social networks are removing latency from our real world social networks by enabling the intrinsic benefit of reconnecting or making that connection visible to others.

What the big social network sites are doing is similar: they’re creating a place where social standing, not economic standing, is the primary motivation. Or, more to the point, they’re modeling that part of our lives in which we yearn for social standing. As Danah Boyd and Nicole Ellison rightfully articulate in Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship:

“What makes social network sites unique is not that they allow individuals to meet strangers, but rather that they enable users to articulate and make visible their social networks. This can result in connections between individuals that would not otherwise be made, but that is often not the goal, and these meetings are frequently between “latent ties” (Haythornthwaite, 2005) who share some offline connection. On many of the large SNSs, participants are not necessarily “networking” or looking to meet new people; instead, they are primarily communicating with people who are already a part of their extended social network.”

In other words, you’re mostly dealing with people you already know in some way. The motivation is almost always intrinsic.

It's a simple benefit to the individual participants. But, it has the potential for both participant and platform creator - to reap huge rewards. The question Josh is asking, (later in his post) as Facebook begins to share this data with ecommerce companies, is "Who benefits more, is the benefit implicit and is that right?"

Our app is designed to benefit our participants more than us. Ultimately, I believe, that's where the value resides and the rewards belong.

 

1,000 Visits in One Week

That's all I'm saying.

Ruminations on Adsense Arbitrage: You're Trying Too Hard...

... to get traffic to your website.

I was clicking around today and clicked on adsense ad that went to this website about event planning. And this one about kitchen remodeling.

People said that adsense arbitrage was dead.

But, it most certainly is not.

All these guys do is bid low for a specific term to get a visitor. Then, they design their site so that you can only click on ad, most likely earning them more than they paid to get you there.

If you're doing anything else - other than this - to make money online, you're probably trying too hard.

Although I am sure there is no rocket science to managing this process, I have little interest in learning. However, I'd love to speak to someone who does this for a living. 

I'd imagine the people that figure this out don't work for other people? Why would you unless you just want the company? I'm asking.

Small Businesses Should Generate Their Own Leads Online

Here's the case for it:

Here is one example: Take a look at one of the highest lead generation sources available today: Google. Type in “real estate” or your local area such as “Seattle Real Estate”

As of the moment I write this (Wednesday, Sept 12, 2007), roughly 70% of the pay-per-click advertisements for “Seattle Real Estate” are going to lead generation companies.

What does this mean?

According to Google the average cost of having an ad under “Seattle Real Estate” is $3.74 to $4.95 per interested lead. There are 107 to 134 users per day clicking on that ad, which therefore has a daily cost of $410 to $670 to capture every person looking for “local real estate” in a decently sized metropolitan area.

Now we use basic business math to come to the conclusion of how the market becomes “destabilized” in this scenario.

With 70% of the leads potential of Google’s pay-per-click system going to lead generation companies, realize they have to sell the $410 to $670 of daily leads back to the real estate professional at a higher rate.

Depending on the lead generation company- the rate may be anywhere from 2% to as high as 200% over the cost they paid for a lead. For a real world example, this is just like the ticket scalper who stands in front of a stadium and buys the hottest seats and resells them on the street for twice what they paid.

Using the Seattle example: realize the monthly ad potential of Google alone for the term “Seattle Real Estate” is $76,930 to $129,830. Unlike a street scalper selling tickets however, the online marketplace becomes even more problematic because the scalper in this case doesn’t really tell you exactly what type of lead you are buying. It could be hot… or it could be cold. It could have come from Google pay-per-click, a professional partner, a blind mailing list or anywhere.

So that brings us to the real question: Why isn’t every agent or broker a lead generator online?

I don’t actually know. There are tools and services that require minimal effort to become your own lead generator. This effectively cuts out the middleman who is charging you more for what you already had access to. Every time you look at a magazine, a newspaper, a website, or a search engine and see a lead generator company advertising you should be asking yourself, “Why am I not buying that ad directly from the publisher?” or “Why isn’t my information there?”

I think this is my new mission: Helping small businesses cut out the middle man for local online lead generation.

This space needs a craigslist.