Going Green Takes Common Sense & Effort

Going Green is huge these days, though many people fail to realize that living green is quite easy when common sense is used. The Federal Government has been advertising 'unplug to save electricity' for months touting the fact that anything plugged into an electrical outlet draws power constantly even when turned off. The fact that the electricity used amounts to an average of 3 cents per month per item plugged in is not shared because most consumers would simply feel that a few cents makes no difference yet combine 3 cents by millions of people worldwide and it adds up much faster.

Devices such as the Voltbolt (www.TheVoltBolt.com) solved this years ago with a simple power strip that locks to disable all power instantly while also providing security and anti-theft deterrence with a locking key to secure devices to the power strip and disable power instantly at the turn of the key for about the price of a normal power strip. Using reclaimed building products from companies such as Seldom Found Arhitecturals provides unique items to accent home or business while recycling wood, stone, brick and other materials that often end up in land fills.

Electricity costs more during the day so laundry and dishwashers should be run at night or after 6PM when most electric rates go down. Water and other utilities often work in the same method charging more for peak production times (8-6) thus a bit of common sense used can reduce monthly bills tremendously. Builder Consulting utilizes Green Production through working in multiple shifts with staff at the office late into the evening and early morning when power consumption is less costly and more efficient...and it serves customers worldwide from 7AM to Midnight most days improving customer service while working Green.

Use LCD monitors rather than old tube monitors which consume 50% less power and have a brighter, crisper display that is easier on the eyes. Be sure to recycle the tons of wasted paper at offices using it for note taking, internal printing and recycle programs. Rather than throwing away old computers simply upgrade them and donate to charity as Builder Consulting has done for years providing needy or low income families with computers instead of landfills.

Going Green continues at home making sure not to let water run when brushing teeth or turning off the lights when not in use and replacing all light bulbs with those nifty new high efficiency light bulbs that use 70% less power. Little things such as turning off the lights in a bedroom or bathroom when taking a shower during the day make a big difference when millions of people make the effort. During the hot and cold times of the year set the thermostat to an average temperature and do not adjust the settings to wide ranges (no more than 1-2 degrees change) since significant adjustments increases heating or cooling costs by up to 20%. If your home has a garage only open it when required since the heat or cold coming into the garage will creep into your home raising the heating or cooling costs significantly. There are countless common sense ideas for Going Green we may all use on a daily basis to save money and the environment.

Robert 'Dot Com' Jackson
BuilderConsulting.com
913-814-8844 Offices

Netextinct - Business, Services & Items the Internet is making extinct

Netextinct –adjective
1. no longer in existence; that has ended or died out: travel agencies are quickly becoming netextinct.
2. no longer in use; obsolete: a netextinct business
3. having ceased operations; no longer active: an extinct business due to the Internet

The Internet provides millions of people instant access to information, products, services, friends and constantly evolves as a child coming of age. With the apparent benefits there have been those affected by netextinction replacing their business model or service with the click of a mouse. Consider when was the last time you called a travel agency to book an airline ticket? Online classified ads are up 500% while newspapers fail or close their doors daily. Car dealerships now accept that most buyers have researched prices, makes, models and know more about the vehicle they want to purchase (due to the Internet) than the salespeople making the classic 'used car salesperson' obsolete.

These businesses have become netextinct; victims of the ecommerce (another word that never existed before the Internet). What other businesses or services would you consider to be netextinct or in process of netextinction?

Robert 'Dot Com' Jackson
BuilderConsulting.com - Building Better Websites Since 1995
913-814-8844 Corporate Offices

Building Better Social Media Networking, Marketing, Blogs & Websites

Nearly 33% of active Internet users utilizing social networking sites every day,* social media sites are your greatest strategic asset to attract new customers and build brand awareness and instantly communicate a message to clients worldwide.
The time required for small- and mid-sized businesses to create and maintain just one social network profile (experts say about 32 hours per month), launching and nurturing a complete campaign that brings success across multiple channels is a challenge.
Builder Social Media builds strategic, comprehensive social media solutions so you can focus on your core competencies while we focus on ours - building effective, affordable, and on target social media campaigns to maximize your marketing ROI while saving you time and money.
The average in-house social media expert costs $84,000/year, including salary, benefits and taxes, our solutions save you 90% and more than 13,000 hours per year while delivering the same results.
Want better results? Go beyond the profile.
Anyone with an Internet connection can set up a profile on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Plaxo, Blogger, Activerain or Fast Pitch but there are specific methods that are more effective and Builder Social Media knows how.
If you want it done right, partner with Builder Social Media
Builder Social Media will build your Social Media Marketing working with your team to deliver the right conversations and captivate your audiences while saving you time and money, protecting your brand, and maximizing your marketing investment. With time-saving, affordable social networking solutions from Builder Social Media, there’s no reason to miss out on these tremendous new business opportunities that can:
• Establish, build, and maintain quality customer relationships
• Position you as an industry leader and a Subject Matter Expert in your field
• Create high-quality back links to your website to boost your Search Engine ranking efforts
• Protect your online reputation and brand. We can reserve your name on the top social networks before your competitors do it for you.

visit us online at www.BuilderSocialMedia.com today to find out how you can reach more people online by building social media marketing that works!

Robert 'Dot Com' Jackson
BuilderConsulting.com
913-814-8844 Offices

Some of the many benefits of Insomnia...

As far back as I can remember I have been unable to sleep much, it first felt like a curse yet looking past the sleepless times there have been tremendous benefits. Throughout schooling I would use the time to read books, magazines and when I had read everything in the house I started to log onto my father's workstation and learned how to work with Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). Social Media is not a new invention, we were doing the same things using BBS in the early 1980's with man bulletin board systems surviving today.

It was a place to share information, comments, play games, read about others and the information they posted (sound familiar...maybe kind of like Facebook or Myspace). Everything back then was simple text, we created images with dots and dashes after the wonderful sound of a 1200 baud modem dialing, the handshake and then connection. I would guess the majority of Internet Users today have never heard a dial-up modem connect or have gone through the transition from 1200 baud to 2400 to 56K to high speed and now higher speeds. I was caught using the EXPENSIVE IBM Workstation provided by EDS for my father but I never learned because I never slept and it was always something new or interesting to learn.

Forward over 20 years later and I still spend nearly every night from whenever I arrive home until 3,4 or 5 AM on the computer. I have several computers in the house, two laptops in the bedroom (so I always have one in reach) enabling me to spend 100+ hours each week learning on the Internet. Add to this the PDA cell phones with Internet Connection, the wireless cellular EVDO high speed modem and dozens of computers, servers and workstations at the office and I now appreciate Insomnia. There is always a benefit to every experience, sometimes it may take years to truely see but if we have the patience and determination things become clear.

It has been a busy day, maybe I can get to bed by 4 AM tonight after some more time online...

Robert 'Dot Com' Jackson
www.BuilderConsulting.com - Building Better Websites Since 1995
913-814-8844 Office

Understanding Pay Per Click PPC Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing through use of Pay Per Click (PPC) ads is an effective method of placing any website in front of prospective clients without having to optimize or market the website. Companies with new websites, extremely old websites or websites which offer multiple services in multiple locations are best serviced through use of pay per click marketing. Search Engine pay per click marketing (Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft bCentral) is typically setup with a daily and/or monthly budget for the marketing campaign.

In traditional advertising marketers charge for a specific location in a magazine or newspaper in hopes that someone saw the advertisment based on a distribution number created by the company selling the advertising. This left much to be desired since the company selling the advertising was the same company providing the customers with the 'distribution numbers' estimating how many people might see the magazine or newspaper and hopefully view the advertisment inside of it. There was no true way to judge how many people saw the advertisment or what the return on investment was for the ad campaign. Online advertising, specifically pay per click (PPC) changed things with the pay for performance method of costs.

With PPC advertising a company only pays when the advertisment they show on the search engine is clicked on and a prospective customer is taken to the website to view the customer. When a customer simply views the ad on a search engine, without clicking, then there is no cost to anyone. Advertisers may setup a daily and monthly budget to spend for ads in addition to individual bids (yes bidding similar to ebay) for each search term or keyword phrase. A company or individual may bid for a particular phrase or set of keywords to have their advertisment show up when a search was done for those words on a search engine. The benefit is that advertisers pay for exactly what they receive while the detraction of bidding on keywords is that competitors can instantly outbid each other driving the costs up dramatically.

This means that ten companies may bid for the keyword phrase 'Kansas City Website Companies' all spending $1 per click to show up in the first ten advertising locations on a search engine. When ten more companies decided to bid on the same set of keywords they outbid the first companies for $1.50 per click or 50% higher cost per click. When the first set of companies see they have been outbid and their ads are no longer showing then they bid $2 a click or 100% more for the same traffic. Bidding sometimes becomes extremely competative when people or companies target a specific keyword phrase with no limit on how high the bidding goes for each click.

The benefit of Pay Per Click is that companies never pay for the branding/marketing aspects of having online users view the ad unless the online user actually clicks on the ad (thus pay per click). Online marketers sometimes neglect taking the time to search for the best 'bang for the buck' when setting up PPC accounts for clients. Builder Consulting spends several hours consulting with the customer to determine the top keywords and phrases then sets a specific budget for each term based upon the overall monthly goals and cost per click likelyhood of a return on investment. Keep in mind that any account setup with a daily and monthly budget will not show all ads all of the time.

The rate at which ads are shown is based upon budgets, likelyhood of the ad delivering a click (more effective ads are shown more often), the number of advertisers paying for each search term and the remaining balance of a budget for each advertiser. Any individual or company can setup pay per click advertising in a matter of minutes, setting it up properly to requires experiance and an understanding of the overall concepts, goals and technical aspects of the systems to provide a true return on investment.

Robert 'Dot Com' Jackson
BuilderConsulting.com
913-814-8844 Offices

Microsoft Bing.com 'Decision Search Engine' & Reaches # 2 Position

June 1st 2009 Microsoft launched the new 'Decision Search Engine' intent on improving the way search results are displayed. Commercials on national prime time TV show people speaking random words associated with what others asked them as a way to illustrate the frustration of search results on many search engines. Microsoft launched a YouTube channel with the new search engine to share advertisments www.YouTube.com/Bing An example of this includes a commercial where a wife asks about 'Hawaii' and the husband begins saying all types of words that have to do with Hawaii such as 'Hawaii 5-0', surf lingo and other items that would commonly come up on a search engine related to Hawaii.

The Bing.com search engine looks at the context of what users are searching for and then makes a decision on which search results make the most sense to display. With the launch of the new Bing.com search engine Microsoft overtook the # 2 position behind Google temporarily jumping ahead of Yahoo.com with 16.28% of the market share. Yahoo moved down to 10.22% of the market share with Google remaining at 71.47% of the search engine market share according to StatCounter reports June 4th.

Microsoft has launched several new cutting edge technologies in the past few months including Photosynth.net enabling users worldwide to combine images creating extremely detailed 'video like' 3D images online. What remains to be seen is if the Bing.com search engine will be a long term competitor with Yahoo.com or Google.com using intelligent search results and new technologies.

Robert 'Dot Com' Jackson
Internet & Technology Expert
BuilderConsulting.com - Building Better Websites & Online Solutions Since 1995
913-814-8844 Office

Online Classifieds Usage Double Since 2005

According to the latest Pew Internet Research study nearly 50% of all Internet users are using online classifieds. Forty-nine percent of online adults surveyed said they have visited sites like Craigslist, Kijiji and Oodle, up from only 22% in 2005. The study says that 9% of Internet users visit these sites on any given day, compared with 4% four years ago.

Online classifieds are particularly popular with 25 to 44 year old Internet users, more than half of whom use Internet classifieds, while just under half of 18 to 24 year olds and 45 to 54 year olds 49% and 48%, respectively use online classifieds.

Those figures fall for users over 55 with 35% of 55 to 64 year olds using classified websites, while 26% of Internet users over 65 do.

Use of classified sites also increases with income and education, with online adults earning $50,000 or more, as well as college graduates, considerably more likely to have visited them. The Pew Research study highlights the growing importance of online classifieds to Internet users and reflects the changes in the audience for classified ads in terms of those who place them and those who make purchases using online classified websites which devastated a key revenue source for traditional newspapers.
Craigslist is by far the most used website in the United States. In March 2009 all classified websites averaged 53.8 million unique visitors, up 7% from February. Craigslist alone had 42.2 million unique visitors in the month of March (out of the total 53.8 million total users). Newspaper classified revenue fell from 17.4 Billion to $10 billion over the same period with real estate classifieds down 52% since their peak in 2006. Total Internet ads revanue for newspapers in 2008 was $3.1 billion according to the Newspaper Association of America.

Just as past studies of online users have shown, adults living in households with incomes of $50,000 or more a year are significantly more likely to visit and use classified ads sites than lower earners. More than half (56%) of higher income Internet users use sites like Craigslist, compared with 47% of those making $30,000-$49,999 and 42% of those making less than $30,000 a year. In addition, online adults making $50,000 or more are more than twice as likely as those earning less than $30,000 a year to use online classified ads on a typical day.

The Internet continues to be the strong point in business and live with the numbers clearly showing adaptation by the average user.

Robert 'Dot Com' Jackson
www.BuilderConsulting.com
913-814-8844 Office