My Cousin Does our Website….
In conversations with owners of small and mid-sized businesses, I all too often hear remarks such as, “my nephew works on my website.” Such a strategy may have been sufficient in 2000, when the internet was young and a simple html site was all that was needed to be found on the web. With the explosion of social media and dynamic and time-efficient web design platforms offered by web 2.0 platforms such as Drupal.org, WordPress.org, and Jumla.org, however, you should ask yourself if you really want an amateur managing a critical component of your business. Hiring a professional to direct the progress of your web presence is indispensible to the growth of your business—and you can be certain that your competitor has already done so.
As small and mid-sized companies rarely have the financial resources necessary to produce television, radio, and magazine advertisements, one of the few ways to promote businesses such as your own to prospective clients is to market it effectively on the internet. Individuals searching for the type of services you offer turn to the web first and will increasingly do so as phones and tablets facilitate fast internet access at any time or place. Meanwhile, newspapers are dying, the yellow pages are dying even faster, and most forms of print media are slowly being phased-out as tablets and other modes of digital media are surging in popularity. Moreover, I am actually cancelling my extensive television service to get basic cable and internet because I can access virtually any TV programming I could want online and can then connect my computer to our high definition television. This can save one paying for an expensive television package more than $100 per month. As long as you have the ability online, you can take advantage of the thousands of websites with high quality movies, television shows, and many other forms of entertainment.
Furthermore, the internet is certainly the most dynamic advertising platform history has seen, soundly trumping those of television and print. All one has to do is search for a business or term in which you are interested, and Google, Bing, or Yahoo will likely return millions if not billions of search results to you. Some of these results will be placed by payment, but most will be retrieved organically. To be found by the potential customer, your business has to be on the first page of search results relevant to your business, or people will click on your competition instead. To find your way to the top of the result list, you need a professional to manage your website or online marketing. If your “cousin” or “nephew” is a professional or treats the maintenance of your website as his job, hire him or her. However, if he or she is not a professional web designer, internet marketing consultant, Adwords certified, or an SEO professional, you need someone who is. Half of small businesses fail in the first five years because their owners are too timid and miserly to invest in acquiring the resources necessary to lift an enterprise off the ground – I see this ALL the time.
A New Paradigm Shift
It’s even more unacceptable that large multi-nationals also make huge internet mistakes despite the fact that they have much more money to spend on online marketing. Whether they are incompetent when it comes to internet marketing or just resistant to the exponential increase in internet and software use and integration into business escapes me. Software and data basing are essential to medium and large businesses, yet only a fraction of them do it properly. Perhaps this trend can simply be attributed to older generations greedily holding onto the power despite the fact that the younger generations have the capabilities of integrating more advanced software, web design, and IT technologies into place. Yet this power shift must happen. Until it does, our economy and those of countries operating similarly will merely stagnate until the consequent cumulative debt leads to a global economic collapse as the Ponzi scheme of fractional reserve banking* continues, resulting in massive default or hyperinflation. As long as the power stays with the older generations that want to use the internet to run advanced logarithmic trading programs, essentially stealing from everyone by causing inflation through massive derivative leveraging and consolidating power for their massive corporations, the economy will slowly crumble world-wide. Small businesses and medium-sized businesses that may provide exceptional service but lack the marketing exposure will continue to suffer and the banking elite will continue to consolidate power, essentially ruling the world at the whim of the public who are too lazy and ignorant to stand up. Potential for reversing such a fate lies in the internet, which presents the most egalitarian stage of technology, as it allows people to share information for free and to access software and services at extremely low costs, making once arduous, intricate, time-consuming tasks virtuously effortless.
A common misconception is that the United States was built on small business and competition that created a free-market environment which fostered competition, thereby producing the most beneficial goods and services to society. This is actually a fallacy disproven by John Nash, who developed the “Game Theory” demonstrating that in some instances collaborating or consolidating to form a monopoly is actually better than the free market outcome. Indeed, in many instances more competition is better; yet there exist specific conditions in which a natural monopoly such as water supply yields a more favorable outcome than having competition among multiple companies, which would actually lead to an unnecessary price increase.
A natural monopoly occurs when one company can produce the lowest cost per service/good because of economies of scale, and it should be regulated by the government as a nonprofit service. As a government regulated nonprofit, these natural monopolies can yield the best possible services and goods for the lowest possible cost. The government should also provide services for which there is insufficient enough private incentive to create but the overall utility of such is more beneficial than the cost, such as roads and highways. When the government is run by the banking and corporate elite conducting Ponzi scheme, however, you cannot trust the government to provide natural monopolies effectively. The corporations control the government through monetary enslavement and threaten to implode the economy unless they are bailed out, a phenomenon which has already happened and continues to happen. Bailing out failing corporations is the worst way to repair an economy, because it allows companies that clearly produce nothing of value to stay in business.
Yet rather than producing the most goods for the lowest possible cost, the current government’s approach essentially funnels money from the working class, redistributing the wealth to other people or paying debts and obligations that represent ineffective economic policies. This produces nothing and is a disturbing waste of our resources and time. The internet and computer technology can change all of this. With the internet, software, and computer technology, the government could be the most efficient goods and services producing entity in the history of the world rather than redistributing wealth which does nothing to help the world economy.
We could use software and internet technology to streamline all natural monopolies such as water, electricity, and internet providing service so that everyone gets the best access to basic necessities of life at the cheapest possible cost. This is the goal of the lifegroundproject.com (still a work in progress), MuvDigital’s sister company advocating a redesign of our economy so that we can actually utilize the amazing technology to its utmost potential.
It is time we use the power of the internet and information technology to take back the power our founding fathers fought for us to have hundreds of years ago. If someone was to create a digital currency backed by physical gold or silver, the currency would be limited to physical parameters and could not by inflated indefinitely, thereby ending the Ponzi scheme of fractional reserve banking. Until we have a non-inflationary currency that actually facilitates trade and economic progress, our economy will continue to crumble despite the botched 2 percent GDP increase numbers that are clearly misleading gauges of the realistic state of the economy.
*(fractional reserve banking is a Ponzi scheme because the interest on the loans does not exist and cannot be paid back unless more loans or the debt supply increases; this can go on for infinity as you see today the debt swelling indefinitely until default, collapse or hyperinflation)