I know that there are people that are easy going; easy to please, but "clinical," where have you been all my software development life???     First of all, "clinical" means "sterile," formatted; easy to program a database to "spit out" your data in a uniform, consistent look from top to bottom.     How the "free" - premium products bait works.

    While custom design objective is to bring out of your advertising message your personality or industry theme via unique wallpaper for background, ie, theme and imagery that provides a clue for your potential customers what you and your business is all about.

    Now, we recently did a facelift for Fabric Fair.     These people wouldn't fit into the sterile mold very well.   At least, their services wouldn't, or Al's Pool Service, or for that matter, Mary's Babysitting Service Business Card Page .. we think Mary wants to make sure that her potential customer parents understand that their children will be taken care of by a professional and not some (clinical) robot.     And, if you paid over $250 for the year, not with us!

You be the judge, and don't even base your decision on price, but value because hands down, you will never find anyone that offers such professional publishing and advertising services directed to your local market better than Shop Las Vegas!    Try our 3-Clicks test. [Click on the judge to learn more about our rates.]

    This section is especially for those that still feel that you can still find a "free lunch" somewhere -- no matter how skimpy it may be.

Background

    What is the most important entity that you can talk about with your opportunity on the Internet?   Your business, of course.

    With this premise, you are easily persuaded to try a "free listing."     Now, the "free listing" is a simple name, address and phone no. and for those with a website, a link to it.     This is the "bait" because you find that you are not being displayed and if you are, you are buried amongst "premium accounts" and furthermore, you see all types of "content" on the listing page such as "More to Consider" or "Featured Listing" (marketing term for "premium account") and if none of that appeals to the potential customer, the directory vendor has adopted Google™ Adsense random link advertisements.     I know because Shop Las Vegas makes some money from this "click thru" method too, but never at the expense of our advertisers, ie, on their advertisement design pages.

    Now, when we say "premium," we mean premium because based upon our rates (let's compare what you get for a profile page with our "Anchor Only Page" product because they charge $75 and we do too.)     Only difference is they charge it per month and our fee is only for the first year, an annual charge and renewals are discounted to $50 for future years.

    I know, it is still really like comparing "apples'n oranges" based upon both content value and pricing, but what can we do?     We pass along to our advertisers a lot of benefits and savings.





Clinical Content favors the vendor

    Most major directories have adopted a database approach to formatting its web pages and accessing its accounts.     Shop Las Vegas also stores quite a bit of its information on its advertisers in a database too, but only to generate the elaborate front-end, cross-index directory groups and categories and valley areas and ABC searches for business name or contact name.     The actual custom advertisement design and page is external and linked to this infrastructure.

    With the right database tools, our competition doesn't have to do much at all except format a clinical page of "bullets."     Bullets from A to Z for services and products and hours (and languages spoken, etc.)     Unfortunately, the database approach lacks search engine capabilities where the dynamic pages that are created literally "on-the-fly" are not physically maintained or "there" on the host web server for search engines to "spider" and gather keywords and other pertinent tags to provide the most common method consumers use the Internet.     If you do not think that this is a disadvantage, these people want to talk to you.     See Yellow Book comparison above/earlier for more on this important issue.

    We did a few keyword searches with not very satisfying results, but that is in our professional opinion.

    Our cursory review of premium profiles indicates that some have many services while others list only a few.     Something tells me that the profiles with fewer options were not properly counseled on the importance of being thorough if you ever expect to have a potential customer pick up the phone and call them.

    Here is a small list of service categories to illustrate our point.






    This vendor treats the listing of service category bullets as a means to an end.     It is only a beginning; a beginning that should be enhanced with descriptive paragraphs, etc.     There are many other things that this vendor does poorly.     For instance, after looking at a few landscapers and returning to the homepage -- the homepage changes to a restaurant theme!     I thought to myself:   "Why?"     Then I looked around the heading border and the search options or groups or categories that the directory supports and shout my mouth .. I like it .. for competition.



 
Illustrations

Competition - five (5) (premium) accounts listed with links to everything including Google
Note:   no free listings in sight ..

Free Listing   (Surrounded by premium profiles, suggestions, and hi-lighted business link)
"Bait":   is that what you want/expected?     Or, are you ready to "upgrade" for $75/month or their "best" at $2,000/year so your business can be a "Featured Listing" too.     Beyond the business name, address, phone no. and possibly your own website link, options are really for the premium $$$ products; free listing truly is bait.

Percent Breakdown of your "Free Listing" Page

Your name and address is 5 %.

Featured Listings * is 10% (Profile @ $2,000/year)

* Listing(s), as in plural.     If there are several "high-priced spread."

More to Consider ** is 20%   (Based upon their Rating System*)

** Most recently rated, and Top Rated.     Where does that leave you?

What Your Neighbors Are Saying is 20% (Again, Rating System)

Other Distractions is 10% (Sponsor Ads***)     Category Recently Rated; Google

*** There is no "free lunch," and your listing provides a "source of content" for sponsors.

Now, if you feel that 5% of a busy page with your competition prominently displayed is for you, fine.     But, if you feel like we do that a Rating System by design is an unfair measure of your business, welcome.     You be the judge, and don't even base your decision on price, but value because hands down, you will never find anyone that offers such professional publishing and advertising services directed to your local market better than Shop Las Vegas!     Now, try our 3-Clicks infrastructure test. [Click on the judge to learn more about our rates.]