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Search Engines Leech Value from Web Sites
bigenchilada writes "Jakob Nielsen, former Sun Distinguished Engineer and now usability guru, proposes "that search engines are sucking out too much of the Web's value, acting as leeches on companies that create the very source materials the search engines index."
He says that the value provided by search engines may be tilting too much in favor of the search engines. The web sites that create content are now simply fodder for the search engines' revenue stream."
The question, then, is how much will the growth of Wikipedia negativly effect Google? I know I've started doing Wikipedia searches for things I would have Googled for before.
Next he claims that just when you are making money after you hyped your article with a massive advertising campaign your competitor will do the same because he doesn't want to loose forcing you to run an ad campaign again.
Wow. How odd. Lucky nothing like that happens in the real world.
Coca Cola has just the one ad campaign in the late 1900's (or is that 1800's) and has been coasting ever since.
OF COURSE NOT Gee whiz. News flash, if you sell your product through paid advertising then you got to keep paying to advertise. More and more and more and every time there will be some new upstart who runs an ad campaign for a similar product forcing you to do it again.
What the fuck do search engines got to do with it? This is just plain old advertising.
No this fucktard has just learned that pay-per-click advertising has better statistics (you can actually tie the ad to the sale) and then used some magic math to prove that ad costs can sky rocket. Someone tell Intel. How much are they spending on that new logo again?
But you can tell this guy is a nutjob. He seems to think that because software/service X is available for free this will stop competition. Gee, look at my tagline for two free editors. Now google for other text editors. How many do you find? Rounded to the nearest hundred.
The bubble is over, there is no new economy, all the same old rules still apply. Oh and it says a lot about Jakob Nielsen that quality of your product doesn't seem to enter into equation. The only determining factor in how many people come to your site is how much you pay for ads and the only factor in how much you sell is your site.
Eheh. Explain this to google please. Exactly where did google advertise? Thank you.
Of course even an idiot gets some things right. Who here uses slashdot own search or uses google to search slashdot for old stories (oh and the third option for editors "Search old stories? What for?"). It is far easier to google with a question the find an answer site. Gamefaqs.com is about the only site I search directly.
If you don't want people to search you via google then A disable google from indexing you or B improve your goddamn site so the fucking search works properly.
Oh and if you don't like paying several dollar per google ad click, then don't. Word of mouth can work wonders if you are selling quality. There are plenty of companies that never advertise. They survive because they are the best and everyone knows it or they are so common people don't even think about it anymore. Anyone else. Welcome to the world of the ad agency sucking every last dollar out of you that they can. It is their way of making a living.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
His "solutions" are pretty weak though:
1-general spam (which he calls "email newsletters")
2-targetted spam (for those who intententionally/foolishly request more info)
3-encouraging discussion group shills
4-trading links with "affiliate sites" (pyramid scheme, as another poster suggested)
5-push spam (RSS)
6-put your web address on your product label (gee, what a stroke of genius.)
7-hardware lock-in (his example is iPod and iTunes)
8-"mobile features". Dunno what the hell he's talking about. He prattles about how search engines are hard to use on mobile devices and how a better position is to be "an icon on somebody's Blackberry". Is he advocating "adware" for mobile devices? If so, all I can say is "nice, dickhead".
The real problem is that he's completely misinterpretted the role of the search engine to support his conclusion. The primary purpose of the search engine is to direct people to the sites they 're looking for. His "evidence" that the engines are usurping the sites' place is a flimsy bit of speculative strawman that "people have begun using search engines as answer engines to directly access what they want -- often without truly engaging with the websites". Ridiculous! People looking for a simple answer that can be culled from the tiny snippet of text in a search engine are always going to use a search engine for that. RSS feeds, hardware lock-in, adware on mobiles-- those are all just typical mass-marketing obscenities which will do nothing to lure active seekers of information. For that you need to get placement in search engines, because that's what people like that use. I think he's just pissed that competitors are using search engines as well, creating a bit of an advertising "arms race". Well cry me a river. Welcome to the real world of business, chief.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
After all of those constraints are in place, he further comes up with the idea that by making $4 per visitor (after COGS and conversion rates) "the site can pay $3.99 per click". Well, I guess if you really are hellbent on giving your profits away you could...
Actually, you could pay more and many sites do. It's called the lifetime value of a customer which, in the long run, could be hundreds of times the initial sale. Consider a site like e*trade which might give away double their profits on the first transaction. Odds are pretty good that you're not just going to buy stock and then forget about it. You're eventually going to sell the stock so they make profit there too. And odds are good that you're not just going to buy and sell one stock and move on to another brokerage. You'll keep using more of their services, and the value of you as a customer will eventually exceed the cost of acquisition.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
A book author typically makes less than five grand for a GOOD selling book,
Both of my free books have earned me more than $5000 from giving them away for free to the first reader. In fact, I believe I have made over $100,000 in my life based on the business I have generated from business owners who want my opinion on subjects contained within my free books. Three of my peers have done the same, and all of them have found significant profits from giving away the generalized content while selling the specific content directly to the end customer who can pay the most.
They often make less than you would think.
Two of the most popular bands on MTV right now are people I know directly from their involvement in the Midwest music scene for years. One of the bands (I won't name them now) has brought in millions for their promotions company and has yet to make more than the $200,000 advance they received. Their album is consistently a top seller and they're relatively broke compared to those who know how to manipulate the content cartels. On the flip side, a few local bands who I have told to give their music away freely are making very good money on their local shows -- sometimes over $1000 a night. I believe I will be able to work with many bands over the next few years to making real money without using the force of government to guarantee protection.
It's that, or the galleries.
No, if you're a commercial artist, go and get a salaried job with a commercial distribution house or gallery company. That's how you can make money. Yet most artists feel they want to risk making nothing in exchange for maybe making millions? Come on, its a sucker game. Copyright makes the distribution cartels wealthy because of copyright. I'm finding ways to change that by dumping government as my "protector."
We'd have to put them on welfare if we abolished copyright law altogether.
Sure, you believe that. We'll be opening our No Copyright Studios this spring in Chicago, come and visit. I already believe we'll clear a clean million for the bands and content producers in the first year -- and every thing we record in the studio will instantly be public domain. We'll be watching for others to take the content and redo it, and then we'll be able to use that content as well for our own gain. People with talent CAN turn that into profit.
What you propose is intellectual socialism. I think we've all seen just how well things work out when "the people" collectively own all the property.
Huh? I'm talking about real capitalism. Capitalism does not need regulations or monopolies on force. Capitalism is about supply and demand. CD content or ebooks are infinitely available in supply, so the price should be $0.00. Don't put your most profitable content into CD or e-book form, sell that portion of it in a face-to-face mechanism.
A few dozen people I've met with have listened to my advice and have increased their income significantly -- enough so that they're helping to provide cash for my studio and the promotional side of things. In fact, one of the guys investing nearly $10,000 was broke 2 years ago until he gave up and started to give his products away for free, while gaining a customer base that didn't exist before (he's a painter). Now he makes close to 6 figures a year.
Don't tell me you've made millions because of copyright, no one does. Instead of 10 people making 20 million a year each, I'd rather see 100,000 people making $50,000 a year a piece by producing a live product for sale, and giving the recorded product away electronically, or trying to sell the official release for profit.