Trade shows - my recent experience

I recently had been to 2 major trade shows related to home improvements as I am currently renovating my house and am in the market for stuff like cooker hoods, hobs, oven, counter tops, wash basins, tap fittings, shower heads, shower screens, hot and cold mixers, toilet bowls, etc.

In both trade shows, there were many very attractive trade show displays on all kind of products related to home improvement. In one of the exhibit booths, there was one exhibitor displaying what he called Nano cloth and his demonstration was so effective I purchase 4 of them.

In both trade shows, all the exhibitors were competing for the attention of visitors and from what I observed, if they want to be really effective to grab attentions, they should place logo floor mats all over the trade show area.

At the end of one of those trade shows, about one hour before closing, they made an announcement that the loading (and unloading) bay will be closed at 10.45pm, only 45 minutes after the end of the trade exhibition. What I observed was even before the trade show officially ended, many exhibitors were already packing up in their hurry to meet the unloading bay closing time. I feel that the organizers were very unfair to both the exhibitors as well as the visitors. I think if the exhibitors had used truss to construct their trade booth, they should be able to dismantle them much faster and they probably would not need to be in such a hurry.

I can see that trade shows are very effective as I was induced to purchase many items from the exhibitors, many of which in fact are not planned.

Comparison: Google AdSense and Amazon Affiliate

Before we make any comparison between Goggle AdSense and Amazon Associates, let us first discuss the type of online advertisements.

CPC (cost per click): also know as PPC (pay per click). Publisher get paid only when visitor click on an advertisement. No click, no pay

CPM (cost per thousand impressions): Publisher get paid each time a CPM ad is displayed. Amount paid per impression (amount paid each time CPM ad is displayed) is the same irrespective of whether visitor click on the ad or whether an action (like buying something) by visitor is induced by the CPM ad. CPM is called cost per 1000 impressions because the amount paid for a single impression is usually very little, so that amount per impression is multiplied by 1000 to create a figure that is more meaningful.

CPA (cost per action): Also called PPA (pay per action or pay per aquisition), CPA ads require visitors to do more than just clicking on an ad. Publisher get paid only when a visitor who clicked on a CPA ad acted upon the advertisement such as buy something, filled in a form or other pre-defined action. No action, no pay.

Comparison between Google AdSense and Amazon Associates

Google AdSense serves all three types of ads - CPC, CPM and CPA and thus has a huge inventory to draw from to display in a publisher's website or blog and thus gives publishers a better chance of getting income from publishing content. Furthermore, CPC and CPM ads offer an easier path to earning something from ads as compared to CPA ads which require action.

However, AdSense ads uses Javascript. Blogs using the Blogger platform for their blog cannot copy-paste Javascript into their posts (post editor) and thus faces restrictions within the actual content, a section much more visible to visitors (and thus more effective) than places like the sidebar, footer, etc.

Amazon uses both Javascript as well as active hyperlinks. Such hyperlinks (HTML) can very easily be incorporated any place which allows HTML and that include posts like this one.

For example, I can incorporate an Amazon ad within this sentence by making reference to blogging. Try clicking on this link or the preceding link and you will discover that you have ended up in Amazon's site and if you purchase anything from Amazon, a commission will be paid.

However, as mentioned above, Amazon Associates serve only PPA ads (visitor need to purchase something) which means earnings are harder to generate. My experience is that earnings from AdSense is many times more from than Amazon Associates.

Shelf life (Paste and forget)

Google AdSense is very much a "paste and forget" operation because a publisher only has to paste AdSense's Javascript in the proper place and forget about it. AdSense will continue to serve relevant ads there without publisher having to do anything.

Amazon Associates however have such thing as time limited special offers which expires and after which expiry date, the links need to be removed. Amazon Associate can also link to a specific product or page which has a shelf life (expiry date), for example, link to a book. Books can become out of print which then render the Amazon link irrelevant. (This is why I usually link to a search page which never expire)

Trade show booth and logo floor mat

Participating in trade shows is a cost effective way of making your company and its products known to the world. I still remember the first international trade show I participated in, the Geneva International Exhibition of Invention some 10 years back. Exhibitors as well as visitors came from every corner of the earth. Participating in trade exhibitions is very good way to get concentrated exposure to a well targeted audience if you chose the trade show wisely.

Back then, we only had simple plain exhibition booth and we had to rely on colorful attractive posters to catch visitors' attention. Now trade show participants are more fortunate in having a great variety of easily setup and dismantled exhibit booths for their trade show displays.

Of particular interest of these relatively new options is the light weight but strong truss also referred to as space frame like the one featured in the image below:



To my eye, the truss or space frame is a beautiful creation. However, as they say, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder and it is possible that others view the trusses as ugly and worthy of covering up. Well, if that is so, there is the truss cover fitted with the patented Velcro hooks and loops which will enable the trusses to be covered within seconds:



The one new addition to the range of trade show items that in my opinion is the most effective way to catch attention of visitors are the logo floor mats which weren't available to us 10 years ago and which would have helped draw more visitors to our booth had it been available then.

After marketing and sales - order fulfillment

Does your online business involves physical product? If so, your business will be more complicated than if it involves digital products like eBooks etc. The very first step of course is marketing which would be same for both. However, once you receive an order, the difference become apparent, for orders will have to be followed by fulfillment of the order. For both, you must have an inventory. The inventory for a digital product would be just a digital file or files stored online somewhere in a server ready for download. The same digital file or files can be downloaded countless number of times and you will never run out of stock.

For physical product, keeping inventory will be a major headache for you may have to have a warehouse to store the inventory and a system to manage the inventory and a system and staff for order fulfillment (also known as product fulfillment).

If you are prepared to pay, you can pass these headaches to a third party fulfillment services company while you concentrate on the more important marketing and sales. Third party fulfillment services companies, because they are specialised in this area, will be able to take care of order fulfillment very much more efficiently than you can ever hope to be as they can put in place infrastructures and staff to handle the tasks and they can spread the costs of such infrastructures and staff over lots more products which you cannot because you may only have one or a few products and will not be able to justify the cost

Trade show paraphernalia

Many thinks making money online involves only online activities. This is a mistake as online money making websites need promotion. People needs to be informed about the website and this can be achieved by participating in trade shows or trade fairs.

This means one have to set up trade show booths. In many cases, a table will be needed to place flyers, exhibits, etc. on the table for display. However it would be very unprofessional to just use a naked table. The table should have table skirts. I spotted one very unusual table skirt, namely a contour table skirt like the one in the photo below:



This is most unusual and very likely to attract attention of visitors.

Banners are also very effective at attracting attention and conveying messages. Banners will need banner stands to hold up the banner. I have seen scrolling billboards but this is the first time I come across a scrolling banner stand (see photo below):



Participating in trade fairs is an expensive affair, takes place over a very restricted time span and is very localized. One may want to organize a travelling trade exhibition and for that, one need a booth that is easy to set up and dismental. The paraphernalia that fits this requirement is Pipe and Drape:



The whole pipe and drape trade fair booth can be easily dismantled and packed into just a set of 3 easily portable bags (see photo below):

Email Marketing

Unless you are very blessed and potential customers get to know about your business and
business come to you without any effort on your part, to make your business successful, you will have to do marketing. Marketing can take various form. One of them is email marketing. Email marketing is direct marketing via electronic means, that is, via the Internet and electronic mail or email.

The first step involved in email marketing is of course preparation of the content of the email. The next step is to send it to recipients identified as potential customers. This means you must have a targeted marketing list or mailing leads which you can build up yourself or purchase.

The kind of mailing list you use will of course depend on the kind of business you are in. If you are in the business of mortgage or business related to mortgage like for example mortgage insurance, you will of course use a mortgage mailing list which you can build up yourself or to save time, purchase from a reputable source.

Computer or Internet Franchises

One good way to make money is to start business. However, it is easier said than done. Statistics shows that only half of newly launched businesses are still operating after 5 years while the other half have closed shop. Starting new business is risky business. However, this risk can be greatly reduced by buying into a franchise or purchase an existing profitable business. Most business have a gestation period where initially the business does not have much customers and the business do not make money or more likely, losing money in the initial few years. Entering business via a franchise will greatly shorten this gestation period.

There are now franchises for many categories of business, including advertising, Marketing, Automotive, Business Consulting, etc. If you are reading this article online, it is likely your interest will be franchises like computer franchise or Internet franchise

Google AdSense Channels Report

Here is the first monthly (November) report of the Google AdSense Custom Channels and URL Channel in percentage term for my blog Blogger Tips and Tricks:

Channel	Earnings percentage
Total URL Channel	100.0
sidebar skyscraper unit	68.9
Below blog Header left link unit	13.6
Below blog Header right link unit	6.2
sidebar link unit	4.9
Main column end of posts large rectangle units	4.7
footer leaderboard unit	1.8

This result shows that the sidebar large skyscraper unit is the best performer at 66.9% while the footer leaderboard unit is the worst performer at only 1.8%. This is not surprising as the skyscraper unit is in the most visible position above the fold while the footer leaderboard unit is sometimes above the fold but displayed only in the individual post (permalink) and never in the homepage as Google only allows maximum 3 ad units and the leaderboard unit is suppressed in the homepage.

Another conclusion that may be drawn from the results is surprisingly, the large rectangle ad unit immediately after a post is not performing well at only 4.7% which is counter to what Google AdSense recommend to have ad units where surfers attention are normally centered - within content, that is, in the main column.