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The Common Question of Consoles and Access Addressed

By

Voltar

Cloud Cash

One of the common questions I get asked by new webmasters, especially the very new webmasters, is about the use of consoles: how could anyone put those things on their sites?

Most commonly this is where I start getting them to think like webmasters and not like surfers. They were surfers before and hated hitting consoles when they got in the way of what they thought might be the motherload of free smut. After all they already paid their money to get on the net, why pay more!

I'll address these things below. Please follow along with an open mind and view it as information to evaluate. You may very well be suprised at what you come away with.

I've had many a new surfer tell me they enjoy the extra options and links from consoles. It saves them from hunting around and searching for other links related to what they want to find on the net. It's also the primary way that most newer surfers find sites - through links to other related sites from sites they are on.

They don't know about right clicking or shutting down consoles quickly and such. They haven't had the long term practice at it. They don't even know what to call them. These are things webmasters sometimes forget.

Consoles make money for those very reasons. They should be tempered except in certain cases, to being used AFTER the full presentation of the ads for the sponsors are shown. Then if you hit the surfer with a console as they are leaving, you are grabbing money from thin air.

Consoles are not bad; they are not evil. They are a way to honestly make money. It's not bad for you as a regular webmaster, since they make you money.

The only surfers that ever really complain or see it as a problem to have consoles are those that will almost never buy. Being long term suckers of webmasters' wallets, they only want free stuff and are long term burners of webmasters' bandwidth. Take away all the fresh traffic that does come into link type sites and the sales ratios I personally believe would drop to almost nothing. People rarely buy what they have gotten used to getting for free.

One problem I see is surfer education. The fact that major places falsely sell access, and claim to be selling them the internet, is a large concern and threat to much of the business on the internet. Such of course isn't the case and many surfers just don't know that every site they visit is actually owned and run with overhead and costs by people other than the company they paid for net access.

We need a combined effort to let surfers know that the sites they are visiting, are NOT paid for by those access feed they paid their ISP. How would they act if they walked into their local mall or store? They have access to the store, but recognize that they're still expected to pay for what they find in that store. Showing this distinction should have a positive effect on your sales.

Let them know that these are simply small samples (content), to show them what they can have for the price of membership. This is a great way to educate the surfers. Try expressing these things, and claiming ownership of your sites, the next time you build. It's your future, and the future of your business.

Drop consoles on everything you can. Make that extra money from thin air.

Voltar