Last year I decided that I wanted to get more
traffic for my art website. I figured that Looksmart's
association with MSN was an inexpensive way to do so.
Looksmart, a top search engine in its own right, was
being used to give the first results on MSN. MSN being
the #2 search engine with an excellent potential for
market reach because every new computer with Windows
comes installed with IE where the browser's homepage is
MSN. (How wonderful it would be to be Bill Gates)
I especially liked Looksmart because it featured
very few listings, and their editors were relatively
tough on the titles and descriptions they use.
Therefore, these few listings presented very little
competition for top ranking. After carefully tailoring
my title and description and after several e-mail
debates with their editors, I managed to get the
listing I wanted and the way I wanted it. The traffic
poured in...
Now before you all run to Looksmart, realize that
things have changed. This year Looksmart unveiled its
new pay per click model. My listing has now become a
"small business listing" where they gave me $300 credit
towards clicks received. Each click costs $0.15, so my
listing is only worth 2000 visitors. This for a well
ranked site is about a few days worth of traffic. It
seems more and more like a form of tax, where like it
or not we must pay to be seen. This is not what the
Internet was intended to be. Gone are the days of the
free web. I would really like to hear how others feel
about this concept of click tax.
Sincerely,
Allan Pollett
SEO specialist
http://www.geocities.com/hollywood/1940/resume.html
and CEO of
http://www.UCanBuyArt.com
Received on Mon Apr 22 2002 - 11:28:53 CDT
