Finding Success on the Internet are You Providing Helpful Information or Just Selling Products?

Many novice Internet marketers think the purpose of their site is to sell something. But what smart marketers have long known is that when the overwhelming majority of people sign on to the Internet, it's not to buy something. It's to learn something. They thirst for information.

For example, if you woke up this morning and thought, “gee, I'd like to start collecting political campaign buttons.” The first you're going to do is not get on the Internet and start buying buttons. First, you're going to look for information on collecting these buttons. So you might open Google and type “political campaign buttons.” What you'll get back is many pages of web sites where you can buy these these buttons. Since you're not interested in buying buttons at this point, you go back to the Google search box and type “collecting political campaign buttons.” Once again, the first few pages show web sites where you can buy buttons.

But as you keep scrolling down, you see Ultimate LINK Page to Political Exonumia: tokens, medals, buttons, etc. Click on this link and you'll go to a site that offers links to information on collecting buttons, a list of books for collectors, a list of organizations for collectors, and links to other print publications or web resources for button collectors.

Now, which site are you going to bookmark? One that wants to sell you buttons or this site which offers a wealth of helpful information on button collecting?

If you have a number of sites bookmarked in your browser, go look at what they are. My guess is that you'll have bookmarked at least twice as many sites because of their content vs sites that are purely sales oriented.

If you ever saw the the movie Field of Dreams, you will remember the phrase “build it and they will come.” My advice is that in the Internet world, the phrase should be “build good content (information) and they will come.”

Once you have visitors coming to your site and coming back for more information you will find it easier to sell product because they will trust you as an authority on your subject. In other words, who would you buy from – someone who just wants to sell you political campaign buttons or someone who has taken the time and made the effort to teach you about collecting these buttons?