I am playing/paying for online advertising to build more business and awareness for Good Nature Publishing Co. If you run a small business -- what I call a microdot niche business -- you know the number one challenge is invisibility.
Invisibility means people who are natural customers never find out about Good Nature's poster size field guides or meet the great artists I work with here.
One of the biggest fans of Google adwords is also a natural customer of mine-- American Meadows
Ray Allen, CEO, finds thousands of people coming to American Meadows through Google Adwords.
Ray has been in business a lot longer than I have-- and he has built a business on quality and integrity. I admire his success. Mimickry being the highest praise, I went off to our website stats log to see what people type in their browser when they find Good Nature.
Here are the top ten key words for 2005:
1. good nature publishing
2. baseball slider
3. knuckleball
4. deciduous trees
5. pacific northwest map
6. tree posters
7. trees of california
8. www.goodnaturepublishing.com
9. paphiopedilum rothschildianum
10. indian canoes
Isn't that an interesting mix?
What makes me laugh is I feel like Good Nature is mostly about teaching trees -- educational flora and fauna art that is also beautiful. But baseball is a passion as well as plants. (Well- it used to be before corporations got hold of it.)
And philosophically -- I see Good Nature's work as a small part of a counterculture to the technological imperative: Newer, faster, digital world meets slow and careful artists who take months to carefully consider and draw us back to our roots in the natural world. Watercolor and color pencil v Boing Boing Cool! Cool!
Anyway -- last week I went to Yahoo Key Word Search
and typed in key word "sex". Then I typed in "native trees". I invite you to discover what people are really doing on the web with that one search. Let me tell you: they aren't looking for distinctions between conifer and deciduous trees.
I was stunned by the gap -- something like 8,000,000 searchs for all kinds of "sex" and almost 400 for anything to do with "native trees".
So I guess I am in the wrong business?
Oh well. Maybe more people would see Good Nature if I advertise tree sex?
Basta.
A personal pleasure of mine was seeing artist names come up in searches for the first time: Jean Emmons, Kate Nessler and Carol Woodin all got a lot of hits as part of my top 100 key words.
These bright angels are three of the best contemporary botanical artists.
They deserve to be found everywhere we are -- for their art nourishes our souls and informs us of the gifts life has given us --eyes to start with, and humbler skills with brush and paint.
Well-- we'll see what my intermittent work with Google, Yahoo, Adbrite and others lead to. Enough for now.
I am testing interest in a Yellowstone Wolf Biodiversity poster this week. Hope to find some partners to fund design, art work and publishing a painting that tells the amazing story of wolves reintroduction to our world's first park.
Basta .
Timothy
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