Author: footloose

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Where does this all it take one?How many is too many?

Sales Funnel? An Income Funnel? Terms being bandied about with gay abandon by those with all the answers.

The latest and the greatest internet scoop, if they are to be believed. A strategy anyone can use to accumulate wealth beyond ones wildest dreams.

Sadly I am a slow learner.

Shuffling slowly behind the crowd wondering what the hell is going on. Apparently the “definition of the sales funnel (also known as a revenue funnel or sales process) refers to the buying process that companies lead customers through when purchasing products. A sales funnel is divided into several steps, which differ depending on the particular sales model.”

Nothing particularly remarkable in that.

It is just another reinvented strategy. A sales strategy which I have never been particularly good at and the reason, I am stuck somewhere between points two and three.

The point at which I lose it.

Then there is the fourth phase. The Decision phase. Impulse buying. The point at which I would argue, the internet is supposed to changing lives for the better.

But it is not.

I always understood that the world wide web is supposed to be an information super highway, giving us access to everything we need to make rational decisions. It is not supposed to get mangled and twisted into a modern day version of the age old “Chain Letter” phenomena.

A flaw that can’t be blamed on the internet. Nor the advent of smart phones and technology.

It is us.

It is how we are, how we relate. How we focus and how we use the tools that are available to us that determines the outcome.

If we want to change the way things are, we are the first, that need to change. We need to re-look at and understand what we, so blithely, refer to as free enterprise. What we understand as freedom and what we understand as enterprise. We need to understand the difference between socialism, social enterprise and free markets.

We can easily build a small business that can be run from home with the tools we have. Many have already done it. It is possible to build an online business and wealth beyond ones wildest dreams. But nothing will ever change unless we start making some radical changes to the way we think and we should start by evaluating Googles rather trite dictum of “do no evil”.

Twenty years ago I sold a company that was grown from scratch.  A responsibility for four hundred staff and God only knows, how many clients. Something that I have had to remind myself, on more than one occasion,  that was not fun.

Never to be repeated.

At the time I swore I would not employ another person for as long as I live and off I went; to fish on the net.

But like most fisherman, the tales I have, are about the ones that got away.

There are no shortcuts. Most ideas have already been tried and very few ever succeed. Despite this, over the years, I have gained a wealth of experience and built a hobby into a  small home run business..

Experience I have to share.

It is the way the internet works. The story of the Greek Fisherman and the American Tourist.

 

 

Am beginning to think my indexing problems are related to the need to redirect urls to the https version.

I have ‘forced’ a redirect on The Food Route for all domains and requested that the outstanding post as well as England and Channel Island pages are indexed.

Somethings never change.

What was  obvious to Sergey Brin and Larry Page when they started tinkering about in their Garage, was as true then as it is today. The need to communicate; information, experience and knowledge.

The ability to ask questions and get answers. The search for answers.

Targeted quality traffic. The ultimate key needed to open doors to the opportunities that are waiting on the net.

What was not so blindingly obvious though, was how what they were doing would change the way everything gets done. How it would evolve and vest such enormous power and responsibility in the hands of so few.

But  at the same time changes which have also given all of us, almost free access, to every tool we might ever need. Tools to challenge and compete. The means and the ability to influence  everything we do, what we buy and what we think.

So if things are not quite what we would like them to be, we being who we are, are the ones responsible or who are supposed to be responsible, only have ourselves to blame. We can, we should be doing more. Building virtual word of mouth information hubs to share our experience. Where we facilitate the exchange of skills and know how and to do that, the first step is to start sharpening those tools.

To demonstrate that we can change whatever can be changed.

You don’t want to be the next Amazon or Facebook or Tik Tok infuencer. Too much pressure. Too much hype, double speak. Far more sensible simply to be you. Free of the burden that comes with being ‘responsible’.

Google’s Search Console and the Community Forum

Have opened an account for Emsworth Local and have made an index request for The Coffeeman’s advert as well as the Medical Practice post .

I then opened a different account and added An English Breakfast making an index request for the First Meal of the Day. I have also added Selsey Local and requested indexing for Places to BBQ.

All indexed within 12 hours.

Have requested that the three outstanding posts on Emsworth Local are crawled as well as Charley’s Jobs Wanted and Rafbar Plumbing adverts. Wanted to add Workshop Web but can’t verify so added African Story and requested the addition of the  three outstanding posts.

Workshop Web verified after twelve hours. But had a problem opening site map list after enabling Site Maps. Wasn’t able to display a page returning an Ooops error report. Waited another twelve hours and problem resolved. Submitted site maps and outstanding posts. All updated

Submitted crawl requests for the rest of the Adverts on Emsworth Local . Also submitted Chichester Harbour.

Some but not all Adverts now indexed on Emsworth Local. Boat Trips on Chichester Harbour not indexed yet. Have submitted site maps for all Local sites. But not crawl requests for the posts.

Every now and again the Search Console comes back with a read error when trying to submit a Site Map.  Sometimes clears simply by clicking the record, other times by resubmitting.

 

Bruce Bartie

073 544 5660 or 044 382 0266

There are too few, who understand that the internet is nothing more than a handy tool that has been left lying around, waiting for someone to use. There are too few, who understand that the key to using the net, is understanding, the importance of a sense of community.

Tick off those two boxes and you will be opening doors in no time