I threw together this little diddy to show you how I approach valuation of a web site. There are often so many moving parts in a web business that it’s hard to know where to start. If you have a web site that you are trying to sell I think this will help you understand some of the basics in determining it’s value.

Topics covered:

• How does your site make money?
• Things you should consider about revenue
• What to look out for in traffc

I wanted to take a second and show you guys how to use twitter and tweetdeck to keep up with public and private conversations I care about. Check out the video below:

This makes my little search marketer heart go pitter-patter:

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/can-google-goog-bring-back-missing-keyword-ads-and-revenue-

Regular readers of this blog know that I throw a particularly cautious eye on the activities of Google. This is because most of the time that they make a change, it is not to the benefit of the marketer. Trust me, they only want to fleece more money from us. But this time it looks like it has backfired. Maybe they will give us a little slack over the next few months.

I can’t believe it.

This will change your campaigns and forecasts, and market research efforts today.

Google is now giving out search volume data on keywords in their suggestion tool. They have been giving out similar information for a while now, but now this data is actually accurate.

You no longer need to extrapolate or guess at traffic numbers. You now KNOW traffic numbers.

Head on over to the Google Tool and see for yourself:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

This is great news for you.

Now…. Where is the cancel button on that keyword tool? Hmmm…..

Hey Folks. Loren is giving a talk on screencasts, live video, and video distibution channels tonight at the Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs. It starts at 7pm EST. You can check out the live feed here:

http://www.snowcaplabs.com/live/

If you are around you should check it out!

Earlier tonight I was watching Hulu.com (which is really great place to burn a few hours and watch some TV online). I noticed an interesting video advertising concept. TRESemme was running a series of ads throughout the videos. Before the video began there was a screen asking you to “Choose the style you prefer:”

I think this is really cool. Here they are actually involving you interactively in the advertisement. When you choose one style over another it gives you tips specific to that hair style. Now that’s an interesting concept delivered over time. If you did this with more fine-grained segmentations you might actually be able to create ads for direct response advertising. I give TRESemme kudos for coming up with a cool concept.

BUT they did miss the market big-time. Why in the world would you show a hair care ads deliberately created for women to a man watching “Weird Science”? It’s about as far off the mark as you can get, but the concept still stands.

What questions would you like to ask your audience?

Recently Yahoo and Google announced a new partnership. Here’s the skinny. Yahoo will serve up Google’s ads on about 80% of their search volume. This move will add about a billion dollars annually to Yahoo in the short term, but in the long term they are going to effectively kill off their search business. This deal really concerns me for several reasons:

1. Google is becoming a monopoly. Google already has about 65% of the search engine volume. A combination with Yahoo will give them over 90% of the search volume. I’m always a fan of competition over monopolies. This will effectively consolidate Google’s power and dominance. I’ve already mentioned how Google is raking the little guy over the coals. This will only make it worse.
2. Your costs on Yahoo are going to increase. Guaranteed. Average prices on Yahoo are about a third of what Google’s paid search algorithm is able to achieve. This is where all Yahoo’s new-found cash will be coming from. Straight from your pocket.
3. There will be less innovation. Yahoo is not known for their innovation in search. But Microsoft is actually innovating. Take their adlab or their excel plug-in for examples of the next generation of tools for advertisers. I believe that a combination with Microsoft would have combined Yahoo’s volume with Microsoft’s innovation. But with this deal there will be no reason to even run a separate Yahoo account. This means no improvements or innovations on their own platform. (Not that they understand how to improve their platform anyway)

Let’s hope that the Department of Justice puts this one to bed before they can execute it or that Microsoft and Carl Icahn go hostile. This deal completely seals Google’s dominance and your dependence on their traffic. Anyone interested in forming a consortium of concerned advertisers?

The team at Snowcap is at Startup Riot for an all day pitch event. We’re not pitching, but listening. Loren is broadcasting live from the event at his site:

http://lorennorman.com/startup-culture/startup-riot/

Running a search campaign requires that you collect and analyze a bunch of data. Of all the metrics you are collecting what is most important question that you should be asking? Some might say what is my conversion? Others might state cost per click. But chances are you aren’t collecting the most important thing.

What should you be asking: Why are my potential customers here? This is by far the most important and overlooked aspect of a campaign. Let’s say for example that you are a jeweler and advertising on terms related to “ruby.” Now, from your perspective that makes perfect sense. You sell rubies so you should naturally be advertising on them right? Not always.

What you should be asking yourself is what do people typing in this term really want? In the case of “ruby” most of that traffic is actually looking for information on the Ruby on Rails programming language and framework. So you might be paying for quite a lot of traffic that completely misses the mark.

When you are researching your market you want to break up all your keywords into really tight groupings. Each of these is a segment. Now ask each of these segments. So in our jewelry example we might have a tight group around “ruby” terms. When you drive traffic from this segment you’ll want to ask them “What were you looking for today? What is your most important question?”

When you start collecting this data the psychology of each and every single terms starts to unfold. By analyzing their answers you’ll realize that a majority of the traffic search on “Ruby” wants computer stuff and not gems. On the other hand you might find that “Rubies” is the where your audience truly lies.

But wait, it gets better. when you collect this data you can immediately integrate it into your search campaigns. When you analyze the data you can prioritize a list of concerns that people in a particular segment have. You can use this information in your landing pages and absolutely trounce conversion. When you speak to your audience in the same language and hit on all their major concerns you are much more likely to close the sale.

Go out and start digging into the psychology of your market. I bet you’ll find a huge pot of gold.