I am fortunate in my job to have the opportunity to research dozens of businesses and learn what phrases people search to find those businesses online. Today I was doing some foundational search engine optimization for a client of one of LevelTen’s sister companies and discovered something fascinating.

Good Stinks™ sells battery operated, flameless candles and candle warmers. They do not sell any regular candles that burn with wicks.

I was blown away by the popularity of Good Stink’s niche. It was not only popular, but had relatively low competition, which is what got my attention.
In the book The Long Tail, Chris Anderson encourages business owners and entrepreneurs to “scratch your niche” online, instead of trying to be everything to everyone. I am sure the online market for regular candles became saturated long ago, but these specialty candles are unique. Affiliate marketing professionals love these types of opportunities, and are always on the lookout for them.

These wickless candles seem to be all the rage, and I am definitely noticing them more often in bars and restaurants (to cut down on liability due to accidental fire no doubt). I love how they even flicker to simulate real candles. Below are some of the related keywords and their daily search volume for this niche.

Candle warmer (5535)*
Flameless candles (3360)*
Pillar candles (5550)*
Battery operated candles (5190)*
Wickless Candles (252)*

*Montlhly Searches on Yahoo. 22% of the search engine market.

With the holiday season coming up, I can foresee Good Stinks™ doing quite well. It seems like the opportunities for niche marketing are endless online. So if you have a niche in mind, do your research, then by all means…scratch it.

Recently, we at LevelTen have been hard at work promoting a new site we created for National Breast Cancer Foundation. We have employed a variety of web marketing tools such as the more standard methods of paid search advertising, linking, and search engine optimization, to the more viral methods of social networks, blogs, forums, and niche communities.

On top of SEO/SEM, LevelTen has also been facilitating and monitoring the MyNBCF breast cancer forum and breast cancer message board, where survivors, patients, supporters, family members, and friends can chat about breast cancer-related topics.

The first two months have been an interesting journey. Through keyword research, monitoring the site’s analytics, and collecting the market research from paid search, we have become much more familiar with what the most popular and relevant terms and phrases users are searching that pertain to the breast cancer site.

Here are some examples of relevant terms related to breast cancer that are getting searched. (According to Overture)

Mammograms (196.8 searches per day)
Free mammograms (21.5 searches per day)
Types of breast cancer (53 searches per day)
Inflammatory breast cancer (162.6 searches per day)
Breast cancer survivor stories (12 searches per day)
Breast cancer chemotherapy chat (12 searches per day)
Breast cancer charities (17 searches per day)
Metastic breast cancer (86 searches per day)
Breast cancer stages (148 searches per day)

If you are the owner of a privately held company and offer your employees stock options, you better make sure your company’s stock is held at fair market value or you could end up in trouble with the IRS and consequentially in need of a highly qualified damages expert.

Recently, new tax related laws have been passed that govern these practices, specifically section 409(a). Basically, 409a requires private companies to withhold income taxes on the awarded stock options that have prices below fair market value. This is directly related the financial reporting issue under FAS 123.

FAS 123 provides alternative methods for the voluntary change to the fair method of accounting. While the FASB 15X provides a way to measure the fair value under a wide variety of accounting statements.

Since this has been passed, non-public companies have labored to find the proper ways to establish that their stock option price is reasonably aligned with fair market value. Before, when the stock price was determined by management, the tax burden was on the company to prove the reasonability of the fare market value to the IRS. Now, one of the best ways for companies to do this is through business valuation methods with a qualified independent appraisal expert, because then the burden of proof will shift to the IRS.

By also using an independent appraiser for a business valuation method, your company’s valuations can be used by auditors in FAS 123. Just a piece of knowledge that is valuable to any private business owner.

My father emailed me last week with some interesting news. He received a call from our favorite search engine’s local office to inquire about one of his art pieces.

Google’s Dallas office called him to buy one of his art prints, “Armadillo Pop,” for their Armadillo Room. I guess when your company is #1 on Fortune’s list of 100 Best Companies to Work For you get themed rooms. Or maybe it is quite the opposite, themed rooms, free gourmet food, and having quite literally a sandbox in the office is why they are #1.

Turning Browsers into Buyers
Anyway, this call from Google was definitely a surprise not just because it was Google, but because he had never sold anything directly from his site without a pre-established relationship or offline encounter with the buyer. He had been using it as an aid for collateral and as a second contact point for those interested who had seen his work at Texas art festivals and shows, but never thought of the site as a tool for people finding his art from search and buying it directly.

Thanks to LevelTen search engine op training camp, his son taught him a couple of things about getting found online (just a couple really). Luckily, he had been doing many of the right things early on, and giving Google what it likes, such as adding and updating his content regularly and often.

Google Analytics “Ah ha!” Moment
When I showed him Google Analytics on his site, a bell went off in his head and the potential for global direct buys became apparent. He was most impressed that people from all over the world were searching for Texas art and finding his site. Along with people around the world, Google employees use Google often no doubt. This is how the representative said he found my father’s site which lead to the sale. The Google employee actually had to call him on the phone, because my father’s site has no shopping cart (one step at a time).

The Texas Artist
You see my father is an artist, and not just any artist. He is a Texas artist, and they get their own category. For the last eight years or so, he has been producing Texas art, mostly abstract brightly colored character themed pieces. He is also quite good at realism, but chose to take a different, more creative, path. He is also self-published Texas folklore author of sorts (mostly a comedic collection of short stories about how he hates yard work).

His latest project involves taking his characters he has established in his paintings over the years and creating a live Texas metal art tribute to revive community economic support for a tiny Texas town that was afflicted by fire. Right now he is working on applying for a creative arts grant for this project.

Update
As of March of 2007, my Dad has been maintaining an email list of opt-in subscribers which he sends weekly “Postcards From Texas.” These are actually 6 x 8 original art paintings in digital form. The painting is then bid on, and the real version is then sent to the winner. You can see past postcards at www.TheTexasArtist.com.

Although LevelTen does do business nationally, even internationally from time to time, we should not forget our roots right here in the great state of Texas. Non-Texans associate Texas & Texans with many images & icons, some of these include: BBQ, Old West style shootem’ up cowboys, The Cowboys football team, and pickup trucks.

Online Truck Accessories
If an out-of-stateter visits, they will soon find out, these are not the only things that make Texas great. Nonetheless, LevelTen recently acquired a new marketing client – an online truck accessories retailer out of Richardson, Texas, named ChromePickup.com. Since we did not design the site, in order to market their products effectively, I had to really spend some time getting my hands dirty by researching what speaks to their customers.

Having to learn about these Ford, Dodge, & Chevy products & merchandise reminded me of my own roots where I spent the first 18 years of my life — 90 miles North of Dallas, in a small town with the population of 3,000 people.

Urban Cowboy
In Dallas, people add spoilers to BMWs or spinning rims to Hummers. In the more rural parts of Texas, status symbols for vehicles include truck grille guards, headache racks, and mud flaps. These additional truck accessories give the perception that the truck owner has some real ranch-ownin’, animal stock sellin’, weekend huntin’, cowboy bling bling to throw around.

The State of the Union
Since 45% of the American population do live in rural areas, and trucks are quite popular not only in Texas, but other states as well, there is consequently a huge online market for truck accessories and types of truck accessories. This is shown by the online search volume and large numbers of companies competing below.

Look what Yahoo’s tool tells us about searches from this last November for different types of truck accessories. For your convenience I have linked to pictures of each item in case you were like me and didn’t have a clue what nerf bars or headache racks were.

Truck Accessories (80,537 searches)
Headache racks (1870)
Mud flaps (4,968)
Mudflaps (1,016)
(obviously supposed to be two words, but the one word form gets a lot of searches too)
Grille guards (1,993)
(yes, that is with an “e”)
Bed rails (9,207)
Nerf bars (8,244)
Light bars (5,243)

By adding the word “Truck” there is less competition and less, but more relevant, searches.

Truck headache racks (537)
(obviously two words, but the one word form gets a lot of searches)
Truck mud flaps (904)
Truck mudflaps (37)
Truck grille guards (187)
(yes, that is with an “e”)
Truck bed rails (693)
Truck nerf bars (842)
Truck light bars (860)

Not actual stamp

The US Postal Service is proposing a “forever stamp,” which would sell at next year’s first-class postal rate and remain valid as payment in full for a first-class piece of mail forever.

The U.S. Postal Service, which raised the price of a first-class stamp to 39 cents in January, is playing with this idea, undoubtingly to combat the negative publicity that is sure to follow the proposed boosting of the current first-class postal rate. If passed, it will increase from 39 to 42 cents in January 2007.

The postal service hopes by releasing the forever stamp it will encourage customers to stock up, relieving them of the inevitable price hikes of the future.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past few days the media has focused a great deal on the possibilities of the reformation to our immigration laws. Clearly something needs to be done, but at the current time it appears that no one has a sound solution. Protests and boycotts have been staged all across the United States and Mexico in support of the rights and privileges of illegal workers, and personally I will gladly support anyone who desires to come to this country in search of a better life. However, what I will not condone is the overall disregard that is given to our laws governing citizenship. If an immigrant from Mexico, China, Korea or anywhere else on earth desires to come to the United States then more power to them, but if you want the right and privilege to be called an American Citizen the please follow the system our nation has established. I found some interesting information on Wikipedia, outside of the first offense misdemeanor for coming into the United States illegally, Wikipedia stated that

Many immigrants commit another federal offense by purchasing fake documents such as Social Security cards, birth certificates and driver’s licenses, and many use fake social security numbers “SSN” (knowing they will never see the money that they illegally pay into Social Security) in order to illegally obtain employment in the U.S.

Illegally entering, providing a fictitious “SSN” and illegally working in the U.S. are three separate federal offenses that are commonly committed by undocumented aliens in the U.S. Not paying all federal and state taxes would be a forth federal or state offense.

From that statement is where I draw my biggest concerns; if I choose to knowingly commit a felony against the United States and her citizens, then I should expect to be punished for my crime. Yet many who have committed either a misdemeanor and or a felony are outraged and feel that this system has served them an injustice. How can that be? Clearly you have broken the laws of this nation and now you must pay the price whatever that might be.