1st Steps Cool Marketing Resources and Tools
A diamond in the rough, Internet Business Network has scanned the Web for info on Web-marketing and selling, and critiqued sites for marketing savvy. It comes up short on information design, though: the newsbits, tips, and links are buried in tiny type by date - fairly meaningless for categorization. If you're interested in developing a business Web site, or marketing your stuff online, you'll find a few good ideas and links embedded here. IBN means well - you can track your UPS and FedEx packages - but as it works now, is not a mandatory bookmark.-KW
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MarketPlace
If you like business analysis or aren't shy about sending contact info to marketeers, MarketPlace might be for you. It's a front page for a Dun and Bradstreet CD-ROM offering market research by industry, a national directory of service businesses, and other business research tools. You must register (for free) to access the database. Pull up "eating places/restaurants,"for example, to get the estimated number in the U.S., annual sales, number employed, and company size, location, and specialty data. The information isn't dated or referenced, so you might want to take it with a grain of salt. current.-KW
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Netresource.com Home
Remember the joke about consultants? They borrow your watch to tell you what time it is. Netresource is kind of like that - a Web marketing consultant whose site is virtually all links to pages it's created for clients. The only value here is a serviceable article about the pros and cons of marketing on the Internet. You can have a memorable catch-22 experience at the search button, which instructs you to "enter a search pattern," which in turn leads you to the command, "enter a search string." Never did find out what I should search for.-KW
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Results Unlimited Helps You Do More Business With Less Effort
What were the creators thinking? There's less text here than on a bus ad - and zero value. Apparently, these folks want to sell you marketing consulting and training services, and, of course, videos. The links go to a paragraph or two of teaser copy: "If you'd like to do more business with less effort, you can either sell more or reduce your cost of doing business."And hey - Results Unlimited can work with you on both. Just send e-mail. What's really unlimited here is lameness.-KW
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Welcome to Access Business Online
It's image map city at Access Business Online, which epitomizes entrepreneurialism on the Web at its most overblown. The site promotes business self-help books and videos, canned how-to-ask-for-more-money articles, and a few links outside to daily news sources. There's an ever-present, very busy-looking grid to "guide" you through clips and product pitches. For all the elaborate front-end, it's not a smart guide. Too bad Access Business Online doesn't follow its own quote-to-live-by: "Do one thing. Do it well. Do it better than anyone else. Do it for less."
-KW
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