May 2005

Resistance is futile - embrace change!

Change. It's a constant in life, and no less so in our businesses. Resisting change--whether out of fear or just plain laziness--usually wastes a lot of energy that you're probably better off using to embrace the new trend and move ahead.

Good example is the real estate industry. The National Association of Realtors is proposing to file a lawsuit to block independent brokerages from listing homes on public websites. The fear is that they will lose their power and commissions--and possibly their jobs--if people can find their own listings. An editorial in Information Week suggests they quit griping and look at the airline and hotel industries to see how they've used the Internet to change their business models. And how about the car business? Or the music business? Dramatic changes to all those industries.

Have you really done all you can to integrate the Internet into your business model? I'm sure you've already experienced the good, the bad, and the downright ugly of web-enabled customer service in your personal and/or business shopping experiences. But how's your own website performing? Have you asked your customers? One of the risks inherent in de-peopling a process--or in outsourcing it, for that matter--is that we can distance ourselves a bit too much and as a result may fail to ask how we're doing. Don't make that mistake. I don't know about you, but when a telephone customer service rep keeps saying my name every sentence, or repeatedly recites apologies that are clearly scripted, I lose patience pretty quickly.

Look at blogging. I've been writing for over 2 years about how powerful a tool it is. At last the mainstream press and corporate America are catching on--everywhere you look today you find articles about who's blogging (the CEO of General Motors, for heavens' sake). If you're still toying with embracing this idea, there are some good questions you can ask in this article I wrote a while ago called Blogging for Business: How to Decide if It's Right for Your Company."

Sincerely,
Barbara

Some of what’s going on at ReallyGoodFreelanceWriter.com:

• Writing articles on health and well-being for college reference books with nationwide distribution



• Learned to send photos to my Blogger blogs...Barbara Payne's Capitalist Cleveland Blog



• Got new carpeting in my office!

Make the Most of Your Money -- The truth about annuities

As many of you are aware, annuities are insurance products often sold with high commissions that benefit the sales agent more than you. But don't dismiss annuities automatically. They offer several benefits that few other products can match. First, there's a payout option that will last until the annuitant's death! With people living much longer these days, you need to face the possibility that you might easily outlive your savings.

Another very important feature of annuities is asset protection. As a business owner, you care a lot about protecting your assets. In most states, creditors can't touch annuity assets--they're generally judgment-proof! If your financial planner has not spoken with you regarding this issue, find an independent, fee-only planner, who can advise you in this area--and help you find commission-free annuities with reasonable fees.

This financial tip brought to you by Asset Design Center

April-May 2005

Vertical search will change the SEO game

Vertical search? Just when we got used to the idea of having local search (where you ask the search engine to look for, say, only printing companies located in a 5-mile radius), along comes this new idea for focusing your search by industry.

It could change the rules of the game.

You know that, with 95% of people online using them, you can't ignore search engines as part of your marketing efforts. But it can be very confusing. It may seem really expensive--or like it's just too much trouble. Totally legitimate reactions.

Spending for search marketing is now bigger, according to recent industry reports, than any other online ad spending--projected for 2005 at $4.1 billion--and plays a big part of the much-vaunted search engine optimization strategy. If you're like a lot of people, you get tired just reading all those terms, let alone having to do something about them.

So you might well ask: How much time/money do I REALLY have to invest in this stuff? The answer, unfortunately, isn't simple.

• Keyword prices are rising as marketers vie for positioning--which means you'll have to do more research and target more carefully, and therefore spend more.


• When 83% of marketers plan to increase spending on paid placement campaigns in 2005, it means competition continues to get fiercer.


• The good news is that the big search engines keep ramping up their investments to make search more effective: Google spent $319 million in 2004 and plans to invest more than $500 million in 2005.


• Hot verticals include retail, financial services, media and travel--which together equalled 79% of $2.6B spent on paid search in 2004.


• Hundreds of companies are being formed around vertical niches. Each company creates a site that searches only specific types of sites--say, only resumes of people with certain skills are collected from all available sources (such as Monster.com etc.)

The upshot for you, the user, is speed and simplicity--you won't have to wade through a lot of unrelated links to find what you need. It's search on steroids--you'll have ads that are more effective, clickthroughs that are more meaningful, and prices that are higher.

Big-budget companies will jump on these premium sites. And if vertical grows as powerful as it promises to be, we ought to see the price of general SEO coming down some. So take comfort, and massage your budget for some of this.
For small and medium businesses, a good way to work up a smart strategy is to first find out what your competitors are doing online.

Sincerely, Barbara

Some of what’s going on at ReallyGoodFreelanceWriter.com:

• Invited to author the Official Capitalist Cleveland weblog


• Quoted as blogging expert in nationwide outlets of Knight-Ridder and Gannett newspapers


• Hired to write university reference book materials on health and wellness
  Helping university market its EMBA program

Make the Most of Your Money - Q&A: Estate Tax - KEEP GOOD RECORDS

On April 13, Congress passed a bill that repeals the estate tax. While that sounds positive, surrounding factors may cause your heirs nightmares--unless you act now.
Under current law, the cost basis of your assets is adjusted to their value at the time of your death--which means there is no capital gains tax liability for or for your heirs if they liquidate these assets at your death. With the new law, your heirs will have to pay capital gains tax on these assets. (Did you honestly believe that Uncle Sam was truly eliminating a tax?)

Determining the cost basis depends exclusively on how well you keep accurate records. It will be hard enough to find confirmation statements for all of your stocks and bonds; imagine how tough it will be to determine how much capital you've put into businesses and real estate investments.

Start now. Make sure you have accurate records for all of your investments and other major assets that can grow in value.
Brought to you by Asset Design Center