Internet Marketing Grim Reaper???

My website, BlackAtlanta.com, was sparked as an idea some years ago.  Many of you know the story… and if you don’t, I promise to blog about it soon.  However, it was basically a site to feature African American lifestyles in Atlanta, GA.

In doing SEO research for the site, I kept seeing a website for the keywords “Black Atlanta” in Google. I kept coming across this site:  http://blackatlanta.tripod.com/

Now, during the late 90s and early 2000′s, web hosting was Expensive.  There were a few big hosts that offered free hosting, in exchange for ads being all over your page.  They made money, just like social networking sites do today!  You drove them a lot of traffic to your pages and they advertised on it and made money.  What a model!

Back to the Story.  I tried like crazy to find the “owner” of the Tripod site.  I traced it back to a gentleman who was a Civil Engineer…. Ronald Smith, PE  He was SO before his time.  Images of Structures and complex cement foundations were all over some of his other sites… Keep in mind, this was the late 90s!

Ronald F Smith, P.E.

I tried emailing him.  I tried calling him.  Nothing.  The BEST that I can presume is that he won the lottery and then moved to the Amazon Jungles.  Why else would a guy as progressive as that leave the face of the earth? Perhaps I just have not found him yet….   Maybe… Just maybe, he lost the love that we all have of the internet and decided to call his ideas quits.  I still look so we can share ideas of his early pioneering.

The reason why this guy’s concept was special to me, was that he was a pioneer of what I was trying to do:  Index the business, entertainment, and people of Black Atlanta.  Furthermore, he did more cities.  He was a true internet pioneer and one whom we honor on BlackInternetMarketing.com. Guys like Shoe over at ShoeMoney.com have BOLDLY asked where are all the Black Techies online… Well, this guy is the epitome!

Now, the original question… What would happen if you died tonight?  In a case like the tripod above, your site would be abandoned and would only be up as long as your hosting was paid.  If tripod was not that free service that was being kept alive by a ton of google ads, it would not be up today.

If you died tonight….

• Would your internet business run itself?
• Would your relatives and/or heirs have the logins to your registrar for your domain renewals?
• Would your whole business crumble and die around YOU?  Have you branded your business correctly to continue in the case of your death?
• Could your business be sold or would a potential buyer shy away because your site Died with YOU?

I have had this discussion with my cousin Kelvin of KelvinBrown.com.  IF something were to happen, we have mutually shared logins for registrars, web hosts and more.  I am sure that maybe, my wife and family, will be in Cancun relaxing if I were to go LOL  Just kidding.

10 Steps to Beat The Internet Grim Reaper.

In the case you were to become disabled or die, here are some steps to protect your hard work. Internet bloggers and marketers like Yaro Starak report $10K a month and more revenues per their sites.  Is he prepared?    Here you go…

1. Prepare a will. Make sure your internet holdings are documented in your will.
2. Have the hard talks. Talk with family about your internet wishes in case you were to pass.
3. Find a Techie Partner. My cousin acts as my techie partner.  I can trust him with my information and he would understand next steps in case something would happen.
4. Domain Logins: Give your Techie Partner your logins for your Domain Registrar.
5. Web Hosting: Keep your Techie Partner informed about where you host your sites.
6. Share backups: I am guilty.  But you should put your sites on a CD every once in a while and mail them to your techie partner.  OR, let them know where to find them in the case a site needed to be restored.
7. Share Merchant Acct and paypal information: If your site continues to make money, you need to make sure that your family or heirs will know how and where to get to your money!
8. Keep a customer/client/contact list: Add a client list to your backup.  Backup all email lists.  Give access to autoresponders and Outlook accounts and/or Gmail type accounts!
9. Have an exit plan for Your web site: If you were to leave, and this site revolved solely around you, then you should plan to inform your family that the income would stop!
10. Get life insurance: As entrepreneurs, we all too often overlook good medical care and life insurance.  If your business makes great money, replace that income with life insurance.  If it does not… replace that nothing spot with life insurance.

Here is an 11th as a bonus. If you are like me, you spend hours in front of the PC.  Put the twinkies down and take a walk outside.  Don’t magnify health issues such as obesity… which also influences how fast the reaper visits you.

I hope that this post is THOUGHT invoking…. My grandmother used to say…

“The Young MAY die… The OLD MUST die.”

Get with the program, and do not let your site become an ORPHAN.  Comment below on your plans to keep your site going!

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For years, it has been my advice to clients, friends, and family…”Buy your DOMAIN STACK”.

A domain stack is considered to be the .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz and yes…. your .tv

This can help as it allows your brand to be as protected as possible.  For example…. If I owned corporatecompanyABCD.com, and someone opened up an adult fantasy store at corporatecompanyABCD.net and it got better Search Engine Positioning than my .com, then I have a brand problem, and potentially a REPUTATION issue.

Reputation management consists of keeping a gauge on how your visitors are finding you in the search engines.  Protecting your brand by buying your domain stack is one thing that you can do.  Here is a list of others that you can do, which will eventually lead to a better Seach Engine Optimization factor, which helps in your bottom line Internet Marketing Strategy.

1. Create Your Own Wiki: www.wetpaint.com is a great place to go to create your own WIKI.  This has some SEO value and wikis are fresh content, which gets spidered well by search engine search bots.
2. Start a blog: Start a blog a WordPress.com or blogger.com.  This will allow you to continually drive home the value proposition of your brand and keywords!
3. Create a social networking profile:  Myspace.com, Facebook.com, and a slew of other proprietary and private social networks allow you to have a presence on these heavily googled pages.  You would RATHER have these show up high in rankings than that adult fantasy shop in the case you did not buy your whole Domain Stack!
4. Create a LinkedIn.com Business Profile: not only is this a great place to share your resume and network with business colleagues, but it is also a heavily spidered site with great search engine penetration.

There are a ton of other sites.  In a private consultation, I can give you a full “prescription” of things to do to increase qualified link traffic back to your site to increase its position in the search engines.  But in the mean time, joining some of these sites will further fortify your brands presence across a variety of sites!

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