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List of PR7 web directories to submit your sites

by Ades on October 17, 2007 in Blogging Tips, Marketing, Online Advertising with 19 Comments

Here is a list of PageRank 7 directories if you would like to submit your websites. Having your website included in one of these directories might improve your search engine results and possibly improve you PageRank too.

Best Of The Web

Best of the web (BOTW) is a directory that was established in 1994. Currently it is offering 60 day free advertising for all new submissions.

Win 10,000 USD! They have a contest going on too, if you submit your site using this Promo Code: WIN10K you will get 15% discount and automatically included in the “Win 10,000 dollars” contest. Contest ends at the end of November. contest page.

Main Directory: www.botw.org Price: $79.95/year
Blogs Directory: blogs.botw.org Price: $39.95 one time fee

Business.com

One of the popular web directories on the net is Business.com, it was sold for $345 million in July 2007. This directory receives over 6+ million monthly business visitors. If you have a company, you should seriously consider business dot com directory.

Price: $199/year
Website: www.business.com

EatonWeb

EatonWeb is a blog directory. When you submit your blog it will be rated based on three rankings: strength, momentum and overall. See here for how these rankings are calculated.

So after being accepted to this directory, you will have to improve your rankings, in order to be shown higher than your competitors.

Price:$24.99/year
Website: http://portal.eatonweb.com/

Bidding Web Directory

BWD is a directory with a twist, when you get listed in their directory, your site will be ranked alphabetically. So if you have a site that starts with letter “Z”, in BWD you still have a chance to be ranked on No.1 spot. How? You need to bid your way through. If you have lots of money you can even get a place on the homepage. Homepage displays the Top10 bidders, currently highest is $950.

Price: $10 one time fee
Website: http://www.webdirectorybid.com

Additional PR8 Directories to consider

You should consider Yahoo Directory and Dmoz.org too. Yahoo is $299/year, while Dmoz is free. If you can get listed in Dmoz, then you will be lucky. Because Google pays more attention to dmoz listed sites in search results.

If you know of any other PR7 or 8 directories, please list them in the comments.

Correct way to market any product

by Ades on October 12, 2007 in Marketing, Online Advertising with 6 Comments

Just like any science, studies in any other fields too advance and improve. Marketing now and marketing 5 years back is not the same. During my marketing class in MBA, there was an interesting discussion about the target profile VS target audience. At the end of the discussion, lecturer made it clear that “target audience” concept was simply wrong way to market products. Why?

Here is why

In “target audience” concept, when we want to market a product we try to determine an audience. Let’s say I want to sell my “color picker” product.

In this concept, I would assume that my target audience is:

  • People who are 18-29 years old
  • Males
  • IT related people (webmasters, bloggers, web designers..etc)

It does sound logical to define the target audience in this manner. But let’s be frank, not all 18 year olds need my color picker, not all males want to pick colors too… some IT related people are just busy with servers (they would say color what??) So what would be the correct way to define the correct customers for my product?

Target Profiles my friend…

In target profiles, you simply concentrate on one person. The idea here is that you single out one person that will need your product. And then you assume that there are thousands of similar people to this person in the world.

So again, color picker example… I would single out “person who uses Adobe Photoshop extensively”. Person who works with photoshop here can be Graphic Designer, Web Designer, Blogger, Programmer…etc As long as the person is a Photoshop user, I am not interested in their profession (age, gender, demographics…etc either) but I am interested if he or she is a Photoshop user. If yes, then I want to target that person!

Because my product solves the problem of loading heavy photoshop again and again when you need to capture a color (code) from the screen. When photoshop user see my color picker, he/she would say “hey, that’s a nice tool. it would make my life a lot easier!”.

Once I have identified my customer, in my case who is a photoshop user. I would need to find these photoshop users and advertise them my product. They can be in photoshop forums, they can be reading photoshop magazine and they can be purchasing photoshop filters (in this case I can contact photoshop filter seller and partner with him, bundle my product or give discounts to their customers). You got the idea, right?!

Once you have identified that one person who needs your product, the possibilities of advertising your products is endless. I hope this post was useful.

Donald Gunn: The 12 Types of Ads

by Ades on August 7, 2007 in Marketing, SEO & Promotion with No comments

Donald Gunn’s believes that there are only 12 types of ads that you see on TV. Here is the list that has been provided with the sample videos from Slate dot com. If you have a product to promote, this can be a great kick-start for choosing an ad type that will suit your product best.

Gunn’s first format is the “demo.”

This is a visual demonstration of a product’s capabilities. You’ve seen hundreds of demo ads on late-night TV, for things like kitchen knives (watch it slice through that tin can!) and stain removers (it can’t possibly erase that red wine blotch—and yet!). Some of the ads introducing Apple’s iPhone are just straight-up demos, pointing out the product’s features as the viewer looks on.

This spot, for Samsonite Spinners luggage, is a particularly stylish example of the demo format. We see the suitcase’s four spinning wheels in action (look at them navigate that crowded sidewalk!), but along the way, we get a tasty world-beat track and some vivid streetscapes to hold our attention.

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