During our initial phase, the key marketing tactic for ToursbyLocals.com is to drive traffic through our site, primarily through online means.
You can do this at no effort by buying 'pay-per-click' ads on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN (these are the 'sponsored results' you see at the top or side of the page after you type in a search term.
For example, if you type the search term 'private tour iceland' into Google you'll likely see our ad either on the top or right side of the page. If you click on it, you'll go to a special landing page all about our iceland tours. These are the 'pay-per-click' search result and you'll cost us about $0.50 if you click on our ad.
But if you click through 2 or 3 pages of search results you'll find the same URL. These are the 'organic' search results and clicking them is free!
Free is good.
The problem is that very few people will click even 1 page into a search result so if you want visitors to your site, it is critical to get listed on the first page.
So how to do that? There are a lot of important elements to consider, but one thing that makes your whole job easier is to achieve the holy grail for search engine marketers -high Google PageRank.
This is Google's estimate of how 'important' your page is. When we first started started tracking ToursByLocals.com on November 8, 2008, it had a PageRank of 0.
After sticking at 0 for 6 weeks, my Christmas present was to see that it had finally registered and is now at 2! This puts us within striking range of the top PageRank sites that we compete with on various terms. Since my main activity over the past 6 weeks is to get as many sites as possible to link to us, I credit that for the improvement.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Friday, January 2, 2009
Happy New Year!
Well 2008 is finally over. There's been no end of doom and gloom and all the usual suspects are going on about how bad it was and whether or not things will be better in 2009.
I don't have a crystal ball to tell me what's going to happen, but I like to be optomistic.
ToursByLocals.com is the 4th major business I've started. When I think back on it, all of them were started during times of uncertainty - but just when things were starting to turn around.
Didatech Software (which became Ingenuity Works) was in the planning stages during 1982 and actually started operations in May 1983.
The economic news during the planning phase was all dire. The US economy (and as always happens, the Canadian one as well) was in a deep recession. Inflation was high and banks were failing (in the US). In June 0f 1982, the prime interest rate reached 21.5% and US the unemployment rate reached 10.5% in December of 1982.
What a time to start a business! But start it we did. And it gave us a great ride until we cashed out in 1999.
The next business, GroupInfoWeb.com, was started a few months after the great Internet bubble burst in May of 2000. It was a tough go. I remember a meeting where we were set to sign a big contract - 10 AM on September 11, 2001.
That contract didn't get signed for another 12 months.
And then MyTripJournal.com... which was launched after September 11th hammered the travel market, followed on closely by the SARS epidemic of 2003. But after that, travel rebounded and things worked out well (we cashed out in 2007).
So what's the point of all this rambling?
If my history is any indication, 2009 will be a year of recovery. Maybe next year, all our troubles will be far away.
I don't have a crystal ball to tell me what's going to happen, but I like to be optomistic.
ToursByLocals.com is the 4th major business I've started. When I think back on it, all of them were started during times of uncertainty - but just when things were starting to turn around.
Didatech Software (which became Ingenuity Works) was in the planning stages during 1982 and actually started operations in May 1983.
The economic news during the planning phase was all dire. The US economy (and as always happens, the Canadian one as well) was in a deep recession. Inflation was high and banks were failing (in the US). In June 0f 1982, the prime interest rate reached 21.5% and US the unemployment rate reached 10.5% in December of 1982.
What a time to start a business! But start it we did. And it gave us a great ride until we cashed out in 1999.
The next business, GroupInfoWeb.com, was started a few months after the great Internet bubble burst in May of 2000. It was a tough go. I remember a meeting where we were set to sign a big contract - 10 AM on September 11, 2001.
That contract didn't get signed for another 12 months.
And then MyTripJournal.com... which was launched after September 11th hammered the travel market, followed on closely by the SARS epidemic of 2003. But after that, travel rebounded and things worked out well (we cashed out in 2007).
So what's the point of all this rambling?
If my history is any indication, 2009 will be a year of recovery. Maybe next year, all our troubles will be far away.
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