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Home » Business And Finance Articles » Prosper With Virtual Real Estate And Digital Assets Part 1

Prosper with Virtual Real Estate and Digital Assets – Part 1

A growing but underground movement is quickly gaining steam online. Others outside the Internet business world may be missing this expanding industry.

Since the dot.com boom and its bust many people outside the Internet marketing world have understandably been skeptical about the net being a realistic path to business and financial wealth. However, almost a billion people around the world use the net as an information gathering, ecommerce, or, more recently, social networking resource. This critical mass of worldwide Internet traffic means that billions of dollars in online business are being generated by a variety of different Internet industries.

Nevertheless, even some Internet business owners aren't really sold on the medium's potential. Despite the seemingly boundless potential online marketing opportunities, all too often many netpreneurs complain that they aren't realizing their dreams of a viable Internet business.

By contrast, many people choose to invest in real estate. Real estate is a stable, reliable, and usually profitable investment. The people invested in real estate would probably scoff at any comparison of the value of net-based assets against actual real estate.

Could you convince Donald Trump that internet-based virtual real estate might be as valuable as traditional real estate? But when you factor the billions of dollars Google, Amazon, eBay, and Yahoo! are generating with their digital assets into the argument, even the Donald would give this booming industry another lookâ€"and probably already is.

With some savvy planning, many people may see wealth from online digital assets in the near future. In the next three weeks, I will reflect on how digital assets can begin to build a virtual real estate empire for you in some creative ways that may even rival traditional real estate. First, let's define virtual real estate and digital assets.

Virtual real estate, or a VRE site, is a term coined by the online sales success John Reese. Reese is known for his legendary one million dollar sales day during which he sold his Traffic Secrets course. He also covers industries with promising virtual real estate potential in his monthly membership site, The Reese Report. You can read my review of the Reese Report at...
http://www.searchengineplan.com/seo-reviews/reesereportreview.htm.

VRE sites, according to Reese, are websites that become valuable because they can carry and be monetized with Google Adsense(tm) or the Yahoo! Publisher's Network (or YPN advertising network). The Virtual Real Estate or VRE business sector is becoming a burgeoning industry online. This began in earnest once Google started to allow website owners or publishers to carry Adsenseâ„¢ contextual-based ads on their sites.

In the past, if you had a site that wasn't a viable ecommerce site, you were out of luck doing business online. There were only a few other ways to make money online such as selling on eBay or promoting affiliate programs. Running a business based on ad revenue was really the domain of major traffic sites like the MSNs, Googles, and Yahoo!s of the world.

The tide has turned and now small website owners can make significant income by placing Google Adsense(tm) or Yahoo! Publishers Network (YPN) ads on their sites. The VRE industry is more than a cottage industry. I have read reports from reliable sources that claim Google presently generates about 40% - 50% of its ad revenue from Adsense(tm). According to investment and stock information reported on the Yahoo! Financial site, Google generated over $6.1 billion in 2005. Since Google is on target to be a $7.5 billion company, you do the math. A recent report by Business 2.0 magazine stated, "Adsense alone is expected to generate sales of $4 billion this year."

This means some savvy web marketers will become millionaires marketing and reselling Adsense(tm) ads and related services. One such person is the Adsenseâ„¢ Go To Guru, Joel Comm. Comm is one of the most successful netpreneurs to profit and then leverage the earning potential of the Adsense(tm) windfall. Comm used extensive research on his sites with Adsenseâ„¢ presentation to develop Adsense best practices to maximize the earning power of the ads.

Joel recounts how he started out only making less than 10 dollars a day in Adsense(tm) and later was able to make a six-figure income on Google's ad program. Next, Comm wrote an Adsense ebook that became a best seller on Click Bank. He then leveraged his knowledge to write a print version of the book to become an Amazon, New York Times, and Time magazine bestsellerâ€"moving over a reputed four million copies of his book! Joel Comm's insights are now standard Adsenseâ„¢ conventional wisdom used by millions of sites to generate more click-throughs. You can read a review of Joel's Adsense Book at...
http://www.searchengineplan.com/seo-reviews/joelcomm.htm

On the other hand, many Internet purists have disdain for the VRE gold rush and see it as fools' gold. They make a point that too many Adsense(tm) supported sites are cluttering up the Internet with useless, valueless, and duplicate content. Google's criteria even forbids people from starting sites just for the purpose of generating Adsense(tm) revenue. Furthermore, respected Internet marketers like John Humprey have opined in recent months that his Content Desk Team feels traditional Adsense sponsored sites are dead, and instead, he promotes what he calls "authority sites."

In the second part of this series, we will discuss Google's attempt to stem the tide of quasi-content VRE sites and YPN's rise to become a serious player in the publisher's ad reseller industry. We will discuss if VRE sites are a long-term business model that is here to stay or a temporary phenomena in online marketing. Until then, I hope and pray you are always on top in your business and personal life.

And here is another random article you might be interested in...

Difficult Customers - There's No Such Thing

A couple of years ago I had a call from a Customer Service Manager working in the paper industry. He wanted me to run a seminar for his team, on "How to Deal with Difficult Customers".

I had several telephone conversations with this manager organising dates, times and getting to understand his business. If I was to describe his style on the telephone I would use words like, businesslike, cold, curt and somewhat impatient. I started to realise that if I was one of his customers then I might have been a bit "difficult". He certainly knew his business and I don't think he was a bad person but warm and friendly - forget it.

There are actually very few genuinely difficult customers in the world. And I hear you say - "we've got all of them". However the majority of customers in the world are reasonable people. They may not think the way, look the way, sound the way that you do. However they are your customers and if you want their business then you've got to deal with them. They may get "difficult" from time to time if they feel they've been let down. It's how you handle them that'll determine if they continue to be a problem or if you can turn them around.

Difficult customers and situations usually occur because some part of our core service has failed or the customer perceives it to have failed. We've not delivered on time, the customer has the wrong product, it doesn't work or it's not what the customer expected. What happens then is, the customer comes to the interaction with us in a negative frame of mind. It's what happens then that'll decide whether they deal with us again or bad mouth us to other people.

The trick is not just to concentrate on fixing the core service issues. Telling the customer that you'll replace the product, deliver it in half an hour or knock something off the price, isn't the answer. Sometimes you may not have an answer and the customer is going to hear "NO". However as you're aware, it's how you say "NO" that matters. Let's consider some of the reasons customer interactions go wrong and why they may become more "difficult".

• We don't care. - We don't sound or look as if we care, are concerned or appreciate the customer's situation. Maybe you do care, however you've really got to say caring words and look and sound as if you care. After all, the customer can't read your mind.
• We don't listen. - Too often we try to jump in with solutions and don't allow the customer to vent their feelings. Again we need to show the customer that we're listening by what we say, how we say it and our body language.
• We let the customer "get to us". We often allow the customers attitude to irritate or annoy us. This becomes obvious to the customer, again through our tone of voice, our body language and only fuels a difficult situation.
• We use the wrong words. - There are certain trigger words that cause a customer to become more difficult. Some of these are "cant, have to, sorry 'bout that". Even your organisation's jargon can have a negative effect on a customer interaction.
• We don't see it from the customer's point of view. - Too often customer service people think the customer is making too much of a fuss. They think - "What's the big deal, we'll fix it right away". The thing is, it is a big deal for the customer and they want us to appreciate that.

Customers will often judge the level of your service based on how well you recover from a difficult situation and they're very likely to forgive you if you do it well.