Do you recall the TV commercial at the crest of the dotcom wave: a dedicated band of staffers from an anonymous e-business gather around one computer. Their seated engineer dramatically clicks a key and launches their ecommerce website. Frenzied jubilation quickly turns to silence as the staffers watch their site traffic grow from hundreds to millions.

The dilemma wasn't the abundance of traffic. It was the lack of sales this traffic "should" have produced.

And you thought having a million hits was a good thing. But what good has it done your site if no sales result from all those hits?

These are the issues James Maduk, author of "52 Secrets My Mom Never Told Me About Internet Marketing" and host of "Small Business Heroes Radio", knows small business websites are facing.

Maduk knows some secrets about Internet marketing. He agreed to share a few of his tips with us, including how to use “event” marketing,, how we shouldn’t waste time with search engines, and his thoughts on an e-mail marketing campaign.

Q: You use a “Mimeo White Board” (http://www.mimio.com) online to do a 10-minute webcast every Monday morning. It has a really high “cool factor”. Tell us more about that.

Maduk: “Mimeo White Board” works with RealPlayer. I have a studio in my house where I work. By get in front of the white board, put on my microphone – and it’s just like being in a classroom with me. As I write on the whiteboard, it visually streams out to you. The reason I like this is, it works great on dial-up modems. I had originally done video webcasts, but ran into problems where people didn’t have the appropriate bandwidth to be able to see what I was doing. With “Mimeo White Board”, I get the best of both worlds where I can actually talk to people and they can hear and see what I’m writing down on the board. It’s a great way to learn.

One of the other things I think is great for small businesses is I’ve done over 100 of these little courses and have close to 40 hours of content now. Those are all products that can be sold. Not only do I do a onetime education for my customers, but also it gives me an archive of my product that can continue to generate revenue.

Q: Let’s talk about search engines. There are misconceptions about how effective search engines can be. Explain your philosophy.

Maduk: My philosophy relates specifically to small business. Because I’m a small-business owner, I thought that when I initially started getting listed in the search engines that I would be flooded with traffic. In fact, that’s not the case. One of the keywords I focused on was “online sales training“. If you go to Google.com, you’ll still find that I have a couple of sites listed: virtualselling.com and jamesmaduk.com are right at the top.

But I only get about six or seven hits per day from Google. Maybe I picked the wrong keywords or just barking up the wrong tree with my service. The bottom line is I didn’t get the value or traffic that I thought I would get in a search engine. Search engines, for small businesses in general, are probably a waste of time.

Q: That flies in the face of search engine convention.

Maduk: What I mean by that is if you’re going to spend time, energy and money you have to be sure that, if you do get listed, you’re going to be able to get some kind of return in terms of qualified traffic – people looking for you that you‘re able to convert into money or a customer. It’s been my experience for a small business that this is just not the case.

Q: How do you suggest small business approach this?

Maduk: When I look at search engines, I have two strategies – and these are all listed in my book. There are four major search engines and two directories. The first is I don’t waste any time or money using any submissions software. I submit to a couple search engines manually on a regular basis. I don’t really worry about it too much. The second strategy I use for search engines is “pay-per-click” – and only when they pay off.

Q: Those are the sponsored link programs?

Maduk: Yes – Overture and Google. I only use them for very specific sites that I have. Besides JamesMaduk.com, my “collector” site, I have twelve other sites which are mini-sites or direct sales sites. They are usually just one page and an order page. Their purpose is to sell a product or service. So for “pay-per-click” or sponsored link programs in search engines, I’ll enter these sites because I’ll know I’ll get an opportunity to convert visitors into dollars and then I can measure how effective the campaign was.

Q: I’ve learned you don’t want to drive a lot of clicks, per se, because that will cost you money. Only drive clicks that will convert into sales.

Maduk: Correct. I won’t do “pay-per-click” for my main collection site where all my information is. I don’t want people to go there and for me to have to pay for it. I’ll use another method like “event marketing” and press releases for my main site.

Q: How do you select words to use in the sponsors link program? Are they extremely targeted or product-specific?

Maduk: When I register new web sites, I use keywords and terms that are very specific. To carry that further, I register domains that are also very specific - “InternetMarketingForSpeakers.com” or “InternetMarketingForCoaches.com”. These sites are all direct sale, one-page sites.

Q: What are some of your secrets to getting consistent traffic to a web site?

Maduk: If you’re going to offer an event on your website, do it consistently. Over time, you’ll develop a loyal following. Word-of-mouth always works much better in my experience.

Q: What is another secret?

Maduk: I’m a big fan of e-mail marketing and, specifically, auto responders. For example, I have set up a series of 52 e-mails sent through auto responder that relate to my book “52 Secrets My Mom Never Told Me About Internet Marketing”. If you put value in those messages, they get sent around quickly. The traffic to my web sites is consistent to the amount of e-mail I’m sending out – not on how much traffic is coming to me from a search engine.

Q: What is your philosophy with unsolicited e-mail?

Maduk: Anyone that does get e-mail should have requested some information from the person who is sending it. In all the e-mails I send out, I like to remind people upfront “You’re receiving this particular e-mail because you requested to be on the newsletter”. It’s vital to always give people the opportunity to remove themselves each time.


This article is Part 2 of 2. In Part 1, we look at some more of James Maduk’s "52 Secrets My Mom Never Told Me About Internet Marketing" The full audio interview with James Maduk can be heard at http://www.webtalkguys.com.

(Dana Greenlee is producer and co-host of the WebTalkGuys Radio Show.  WebTalkGuys, a Seattle-based talk show featuring technology news and interviews. It is broadcast on WebTalkGuys Radio, Sonic Box, via Pocket PC at Mazingo Networks and the telephone via the Mobile Broadcast Network.  It's on the radio in Seattle at KLAY 1180 AM.  Past show and interviews are also webcast via the Internet at http://www.webtalkguys.com. Greenlee is also a member of the The International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences).

PC World magazine names WebTalkGuys "Best of Today's Web Hidden Gems" in their August 2002 issue.