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"Experience is the worst teacher; it gives the test before presenting the lesson." Vernon Law |
It's FREE! |
To the browsers (the folks that are cruisin'
the Web), the cost is quite low. $20 a month to an ISP (Internet Service
Provider) and their supplied modem and they're off and rollin'! To the Providers
(that's you and me) it ain't free. The cost starts at $35 per year for a Registered
Domain and $50 per month for a 20MB Virtual Server and doesn't stop. If you're going
to buy me as well, there's another hourly rate to add to the above. So let's not
start out on the wrong foot by believing that this isn't going to cost real money.
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It's EASY! |
Yeah, yeah, I know, all you need is your cousin's
copy of Adobe PageMill
and you're going to build a multi-Million dollar business in your spare time, right?
Isn't that what you learned on television? Well, guess what. Are you sitting down?
What you learned on television wasn't really the straight poop. It was poop, but
it wasn't the straight poop. The number of potholes and out and out beartraps waiting
for you to fall into as an Internet Content Provider will likely boggle your imagination.
Suffice it to say that a call to us first will save you a LOT of grief
later. |
It's Omnipotent! |
Okay, yes, it is extremely powerful. Omnipotent?
Not by the longest stretch of your imagination. Eventually this medium is going
to replace the Postal Service, Television, shopping malls, your telephone and a
lot of other appliances that will greatly stretch your credibility, but today it
is just a baby. Yes, there are literally millions of potential customers/clients
out on the Web today that might well be interested in giving you money for your
product or service. No, they aren't going to be able to find you easily with the
state of today's art and therefore are going to require other means of finding you.
Those things you've heard of before. They are magazine ads, billboards, bus benches,
direct mail pieces, etc. Today, a website isn't a replacement of traditional advertising,
it IS a serious enhancement of traditional promotional actions, but it isn't yet
a replacement. |
It's changed all the Rules! |
This isn't quite an absolute untruth, but it's
very close to absolute. The Internet has definitely opened a lot of doors to unconventional
marketing practices that you wouldn't have even considered using before it's existence.
But it does NOT make those practices acceptible. SPAMming is NOT acceptible, never
has been nor ever will be. Those that practice it once or twice and accept correction
will be tolerated in the evolving CyberCommunity with a wary eye in the days to
come. Those that don't accept correction will find themselves in a Virtual Penitentiary
the likes of which isn't even imaginable today. If you think you're immune to such
consequences, think again. The CyberPersonnae you build for yourself on the internet
today is going to be with you for a very long time to come and is going to become
even more important tomorrow than it is now. To add insult to this injury, there
is no mechanism to declare bankruptcy on your CyberPersonnae and wash the slate
clean. If you don't play nice today, the rest of the denizens are going to remember
tomorrow that you didn't and the road out of a "dishonorable name" or
serious "loss of face" is dismal and very long. Did it change all the rules? Sort of, as I see it, it turned the clock back a couple of centuries to a time when a man or woman's honor was their MOST valuable asset and the family "good name" protected in lieu of life or limb. I see it as one of those Good Things. Do the old rules still apply in this new medium? Absolutely, you have to maintain all the ancient business practices of ethical treatment of customers, fast service, honorable warranties, etc. It's just possible now to reach more of them by a couple of orders of magnitude than it was before. That order of magnitude brings with it all the ramifications of making a BIG mess or a BIG mansion. We can help you with this too. |
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