I can only comment on my own experience.  I'm assuming that the application
wants to earn revenue, and not do so from advertising (ad-only models rarely
work).  That means sales.  I've been purchasing on the net since 1996.
Unless the site has a product that no one else on earth and no other site
has, the true differentiator (and driver) of success in the long term will
be dollar value, user experience, and customer support, not search engine
placement.  In that scenario, good "placement" on sites like epinions.com
and resellerratings.com, etc. from regular customers is much more valuable.
Let's face it, just about any product being sold nowadays, including
software, is a commodity item.  If it's a high ticket item, then chances are
a face-to-face (or several) will be required to get a check, which makes
search engine placement just about irrelevant, as a good salesperson working
on 100% commission (the good ones always work on 100% commission) will have
no problem developing their own leads.

If it were me, and I was designing a business model, the last place I would
be spending time and resources would be search engine placement, or gyrating
an application to enhance search engine placement. ;)  But that's me.

The search engine placement lists and groups are very similar to the "get
more traffic" lists and groups.  I've lurked on both over the years, and I
could never get past the idea that in just about every case, it's pretty
much just endless discussions about churn.  Generic traffic is just the same
set of eyeballs over and over, and the traffic brokers you run into will
NEVER back up their claims with sales conversion numbers, because they know
full well that there is no relationship between the number of people
visiting a site and the total amount of sales.  They'll claim "10,000 unique
visitors to your site this week guaranteed!!" but that has no bearing
whatsoever on sales.  I'd rather focus on making my customers stunned by the
value and good customer service I provide.  I'll get lots more sales that
way over time.

John

> -----Original Message-----
> From: neal [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 2:26 PM
> To: Tomcat Users List
> Subject: RE: [OFF-TOPIC] RE: RewriteRules and Standalone Tomcat
> 
> 
> Oh C'mon!  How?!?!?!  Telepathy?  ;-)  I know that there are 
> other means
> such as word of mouth and as Craig said there's probably not 
> a way to verify
> these numbers anyway ... besides I'm just quoting what I 
> read.  But whether
> you agree with the 80% number or not I would think surely the 
> outrageous
> fees charged by competent SEOs is proof enough of their 
> significance.  On
> the Google lists I participate in, its commonly acknowledged 
> that getting
> dropped from Google can break the back of many internet businesses.
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Turner, John [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 11:17 AM
> To: 'Tomcat Users List'
> Subject: RE: [OFF-TOPIC] RE: RewriteRules and Standalone Tomcat
> 
> 
> 
> If the site has real value, the customers will find it all by 
> themselves.
> 
> John
> 

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