A MERCHANDISING NIGHTMARE!

Every minute of everyday there are more and more merchants offering sales of goods and services on the internet. The internet has exploded into a virtual universe of web site addresses. New sites go up everyday from all over the world. There are more and more people shopping on the internet for various types of merchandise and services daily.

The question that comes to mind is: how do we know that this is a legitimate deal? It seems that we do not hesitate to click on the buy now button, click on the shopping cart, give our credit card information, address, etc. and wait for the package to arrive at our front door. Now, I am the first to say that I truly enjoy the convenience of a myriad of products and services at my finger tips without leaving the comfort of my home! I am rapidly becoming a non brick and mortar shopper.

Certainly for the merchant the internet offers an appealing business environment. Costs are lower than physical real estate, fewer personnel are necessary, therefore payroll taxes are minimum, merchants no longer have the hassle of a daily physical routine with store hours to keep. Wow, this is utopia for the merchant!

So, at this point what we have is: ease of shopping, lots of potential customers, financial benefits to the merchant.

One key element in the exchange of goods and services is missing. I would say that this is low-cost advertising. That was simple (or was it) in the beginning. All you had to do was send out emails assuming you had target market email addresses. Bulk snail mail was certainly one of the ways of the old days. Therefore electronic mail made sense.

Enter the "snake oil" salesmen, tipsters, and tricksters! Email turned into spam full of false claims, fake deals, plain thievery, fraud, and scams. Not to mention pornography and filth.

The bright gurus came up with the "safe-list"...with opt in, double opt in, opt-out email lists to rent, sale or charge you to use. I, for one, thought that this sounded good and purchased a safe list mailout of 25,000 targeted addresses. Good so far.....the next day I was shut down by the spamcops because one (1) of 25,000 was reported as spam. Frankly I think the company was on the up and up and somehow just one person on their list either forgot signing up or was in a cross mood that day. This cost 48 hours of down time and a change of servers. Now, to say the least, I am nervous about any "safe list" advertising.

Pay-per-click does not appeal to me because there are no controls and the casual surfer who is only clicking for entertainment can run up the advertising cost astronomically. Nothing that is "viral" appeals to me....maybe I still think of anything suggesting virus as deadly.
This brings us to networks. These are great if you have time to spend reading life affirmations, poems, friendly chatter, well wishes, and some advice. Networks are wonderful for meeting really nice people all over the world, but I wonder at their value for advertising. Please do not misunderstand. Networks have great personal value.

Oh yes, and then there is the search engine, the bugaboo of the internet. To the common, everyday person the search engine becomes some unapproachable electronic god who gives and takes away favors (your page ranking) at whim. Robots, spiders and other creepy crawlers who index, link, accept and reject. Search engines with unappealing names...Google, Yahoo, etc. Why can't we have Snuggle, Welcome, and Help!?!

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