Whether you use your ads for branding or for generating sales, text links on an appropriate site can do three things --
  1. bring targeted traffic to your website;
  2. pre-sell your visitors before they arrive at your site;
  3. add to the importance of your website for better placement in search engines through the concept known as 'link popularity.'

  Text links on pages that attract your market improves the link popularity of your own site and helps generate even more traffic from other sources. However, all links are not equal. A lot of unrelated links provide less value than a few 'themed' links.

  The popular search engine, Google, uses PageRank™, "a system for ranking web pages ... PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value ... Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves 'important' weigh more heavily and help to make other pages 'important.'..."

  PageRank (PR) is a scale from 0 -10. The higher PRs are very difficult to earn and most sites are PR 3 or less. Even JCPenny.com only has PR 5, presently. Your Business Start Page (YBSP) has a PR of 6. According to server logs, we receive over 40,000 unique visitors per month, and our demographic survey indicates that these visitors are almost entirely business people, and 95% are over the age of 25. 92% have a college education. 86% of respondents have bookmarked YBSP with 31% visiting at least monthly, many of them weekly. 46% are business owners and 33% employed in professional or management capacities.

  Two of every three visitors are from the USA with United Kingdom, Canada and Australia accounting for a large portion of the remainder.

  If this is the sort of visitor you want to attract, we would like to discuss with you the Advantage Licensing we can offer. Please e-mail Frederick Pearce or enter your name and e-mail address below and we will be happy to get back to you.

CAN YOU TELL ME SOMETHING ABOUT THIS ADVANTAGE LICENSING?

  Certainly. In a nutshell, Your Business Start Page can provide you with quality traffic from effective text links, imbedded within relevant content, which also help to increase the quality and visibility of your own website.

  That, in turn and over time, will contribute towards better placement for your website in major search engines results - which will translate into increased visibility and higher traffic counts from that source. This is a long term strategy. Your site is not going to jump from #20,000 to #1 overnight. And link popularity is only one of many considerations.

  Also, YBSP has been around since early 1996; it is one of the oldest, and longest running websites dedicated to small business. Our logos and graphics have remained unchanged in all this time, purposely — the World Wide Web is a graphic-dominated world, and longevity breeds recognition. Ten years is a long time in internet terms. Small business people recognize our marks. By arrangement, you will be able to use YBSP marks on your website, thus adding an endorsement not available by other means.

  This is why we compare our Advantage Licensing to Merchandise Licensing.

  Conventional internet thinking was, "If it doesn't get a million hits, it's not worth the trouble." The advertising world is now realizing that internet advertising is no different than TV or radio advertising. Advertising is not about showing your ad to everyone. It's about segmentation. It is about getting in front of the correct people - real prospects - and demonstrating your right to be in their world.

  Anything you can do to improve your site's exposure to real prospects can only serve to enhance your sales results. Higher search engine placement, visibility and endorsement are key elements in the process.

ADVANTAGE LICENSING

  1. We will introduce you to our users as a business associate would introduce another business associate, as a company worthy of their trust and recognition. Equate this with a radio announcer speaking of your company as a local friend they use on a regular basis.

  2. You will not be 'another advertiser' or 'our latest sponsor' trying to hawk their products to a captive audience. You will be shown as a company who wants to help our users, with information and advice, and with whom we have negotiated a special arrangement - perhaps an exclusive deal or special business package of some sort.

  3. Your promotions will not be presented nor seen as advertisments. They will be intergral with our site's editorial text. Links to your site will be from within that text, and adjacent to it, as a means by which a visitor can get more information. Rather like Your brand of tools being used and demonstrated on 'This Old House.' Banners will be 'Us Introducing You' and 'Our ad about You,' rather than you 'fishing' for customers.

  4. Our 150-page website - or whatever section of YBSP that is appropriate for you - will be given over to your company. You won't be the only licensee, of course, but the cohesive 'small-business-club' nature of our website will be maintained with your company as 'one of the group dedicated to providing help.' We will not bring in a competitor of yours as long as you are a licensee, so you will have exclusive access to our visitors for your type of service or product.

  5. We will link directly to specific information on your site from several locations. You will place our menu on each of those pages to maintain ease of navigation for visitors.

  6. You will be given at least 8 text links throughout the YBSP site linking to your site, plus at least 2 banner ads linking to a place within YBSP that speaks of you or your products.

  7. With your cooperation, we (or you) will write new material for YBSP especially to incoorporate your service or product so we can feature it. If you have a typical company website of 5 - 10 webpages, association with our 150-page business website immediately puts you in a bigger league.

  A Word of Warning! Look again at the demographic of our visitors. Many web marketers think a high click-through is necessary for success. We maintain that the measure of success is not hits, nor click-throughs, but sales. Just as it has always been for business. This 'new era' looks remarkably like the 'old era' in our opinion! If Advantage Licensing does not increase your sales, you can simply cancell the license.

  I hope I haven't made it sound complicated - it really is a simple concept which has been in use for as long as businesses have cooperated with one another. Please contact me to get Your Business Start Page Advantage Licensing working for your company.