Internet Marketing: For Free - but You Know "Free" Isn't (!) Free!

The marketers have taken over the web, there is no doubt about it, look at the numbers, the search engines have become the makers of wealth, and the newest method of making contact, weBLOGS, web-logs, or journal type entries of what is happening in your world; have now moved into that realm. Folks are actually selling their BLOGS- as contact centers. That's awesome and also a little humbling, it allows so much freedom for entrepreneurial types, and perhaps you are one of those, a business maker, is that you? Maybe you are the other type, a business viewer, and one who watches folks make businesses? Maybe you'd love a business but your not sure you can handle it, or have the know how, so your wondering if this one is for you? The marketers have taken over the web, but here's a thought for you, the real business builders, the providers of real product and real service, not marketers, are going to take it back- and you, can be part of that!

We can try to run against this tide, or let it propel us -to locations we might not think of- because marketers such as Shawn Casey, http://www.shawncasey.com, aren't going to stop making money with their knowledge, and Mr. Casey is loaded with it. Consider his sage advice about why we would look at selling our "stuff" on the web - he says that the first thing we have to know is: "What is the desired result?" He joins this with the thought - what do you want people to do - as he goes on Shawn develops this concept, and while it's not my usual style, after listening to this fellow, he sure seems level headed to me. Consider this formula for what we are about if we are entrepreneurs, we want people to pay attention to what we have, we want their interest, we want them to desire what we have, and we want them to take action. That forms into a nice acrostic of AIDA:

A=attention - we want to get peoples attention about what we have for them.

I= interest - we want to get into peoples interest.

D=desire - we want people to desire what we have for them.

A=action - we want people to take action based on what we have.

Shawn has tons more at his site, and while this isn't an ad for Mr. Casey, if you are thinking about making money at the internet, with a product, why wouldn't you want to emulate someone like Shawn who has had; and continues to have incredible success. We can try to swim against the tide, or, we can find folks who are successful at this, and learn what they did, how it worked.

One thing that we can be sure of, when it says, "FREE" in the ad, something is going to cost us. Ever find yourself looking for the "catch", and then trying to figure out, "how do I get this, without having to__(Insert the buy -or--)___?" Don't you reckon that folks who do that sort of thing for a living know we're goin' there? They must, and that's not all, we're not the only ones, are we? So we know that free isn't free, but maybe what we really need to know is, what's free cost? We're looking at something here, and because it's big, we may be missing most of the edges on the picture. Because it's a little bit gray, we may need some contrast to really catch it clearly, but we know free isn't free, and that should tell us something. Is it telling us what we need to be told? Are we hearing clearly what we aren't seeing clearly? Free isn't free, but are we missing the price? For free, but you know free isn't free, but the cost? Ah my, are we missing it?