Re: Click Tax

From: Janet Attard <attard_at_businessknowhow.com>
Date: Thu 25 Apr 2002 14:56:30 -0600

> Anyhow, the point of this post is to remind those who pine for
> the Past that it is gone.
>

Well not exactly.... it seems more and more like the past is coming back,
just in some slightly different ways. When online services first started
they were extremely expensive for the service subscriber to use. This was in
the 1980s before the web. Or before the web was anything anyone knew about.
(I'd love to a brief timeline on the web offlist if anyone has it).

You see back then.... (rocking in my rocking chair, shawl draped on
shoulders <G>)..... it cost me $35 an hour to use online services - at least
during the day - and even more to use research services. Plus I had to pay
really high phone bills because all the calls to the online service numbers
were toll calls.

The only businesses back then that could afford to put anything online were
the corporations and startups -Compuserve, GE (GEnie service), and Quantum
which became AOL and Prodigy. And then there were the big research
databases - Dow Jones News Retrieval service was my favorite. There was
another big one whose name escapes me at the moment..)
Anyone else - the small entrepreneurial types - were content providers -
called sysops back in the 80s - and they were paid by the big services to
put content online, but they couldn't put ads on line.

The bottom line was that the bottom line was way above the budgets of most
microsized businesses and individuals. And that does seem to be where the
web is headed today.

What is interesting to note is how much big companies are willing to pay to
bid on PPC terms, compared to how little they are willing to pay publishers
to advertise on their sites. Go take a look at what the same advertisers
who want you (meaning any small publishers) to take $5 a completed sale (or
worse, 50 cents or 10 cents a sale) are paying the Overture for
clickthroughs. Some are paying more than $5 per click through on popular
terms. I can't think of a better reason than those PPC prices for publishers
to avoid low-paying affiliate deals and low-paying ad networks.

--Janet Attard
Author, The Home Office and Small Business Answer Book
Business Know-How(r) - small business, career and self-employment resources
Providing content to the online world since 1988
http://www.businessknowhow.com, http://www.careerknowhow.com,
http://www.legalknowhow.com





Received on Thu Apr 25 2002 - 15:56:30 CDT