Make sure you write down *every* keyword and/or phrase your spouse uses. Also pay close attention to web sites she/he clicks on from search results. This will give you an outside look at how majority of your customers are going to find you.

After your spouse clicks on one of search results that she/he is interested in, ask them "Why?" What was it about that particular site that interested her/him? Take notes; this is good stuff!

Note: Of course not everyone is selling information on how to make money online. Some of you may be selling crafts that you made yourself, vitamins or weight loss products, long distance service, etc. No matter what your site wants from its visitors, you can still do this exercise. Just be sure that your spouse only has a vague idea of what she/he is searching for.

The next step in this exercise is to have your spouse conduct their searches again, only this time they should have a really good idea of exactly what it is they are looking for. Tell them to be specific in their searches.

Again, write down keywords and/or phrases they use, what sites they visit from results and why.

Be sure to also write down URL of web sites they visit. (This is your competition!) Next week, we are going to do a little undercover work. You will become ultimate internet spy!

Note: The reason I say to use your spouse or friends for this exercise, is that we, as marketers, tend to get so close to what we're doing, that it's hard to get back, outside box, as newbies. We know what it is our product does, and how it does it, but our customers don't! We need to get inside their heads and discover *their* idea of our product. This is easiest way to do that.

***Attention, MRI subscribers!***

If your spouse isn't available for this exercise, try using Keyword Finding Tools listed in "Search Engine Tools" category at Click here Spend some time with last resource listed and you'll have your keyword list in no time!

***Attention, Non-MRI subscribers!***

You can subscribe to The Marketing Resource Informer and gain access to only ezine that does all work for you and provides you with easy to use resources you won't find anywhere else on net at Click here

When goal is to index entire web and results are far less relevant and traffic less likely to result in sales to listed sites, how do you charge sites to be listed? Hmmmm. The search engines said, "We've been getting complaints about a couple of things from sites seeking listings, one that they submit and never get listed, and two that when they are listed it is only months later that they begin to benefit from delivered search engine traffic." AHA! An opportunity presents itself to charge money to someone for listings!

Bingo! Paid inclusion is launched at Inktomi and becomes an instant success with those who have been frustrated by slow listing times and especially with those that can't seem to be listed at all at important engines. Here is a way to get listed and get listed sooner, I'll pay for that! But how much? And are there any benefits above free submission to entice reluctant web business into paying for what, until now has been free. We'll guarantee, not only that you'll be listed, but quickly, and to sweeten pot, we'll recrawl your site on a weekly basis to guarantee fresh listings.

Now it's time for everyone to leap into new model and begin more frequent crawls for preferred listees. Certainly this will lead even further toward commercialization of web, which angers many but is only solution to supporting increasingly expensive proposistion of providing complex search to millions and indexing a dramatically larger web.

Time to innovate if you expect to attract those paid inclusion listings. At Fast AllTheWeb, they've come up with an intra- search facility that site owners with under a specified number of pages can install as a branded, hosted search for their own sites as an additional benefit. A hosted and branded site search will likely cost them very little more to implement for paid inclusion customers, while increasing revenue for Fast. As Fast is a partner to Lycos network, this paid inclusion not only comes with intrasearch for your site and regular site recrawls to keep search results fresh, but also gets listings into Lycos network as well.

A further enhancement in race to paid inclusion will be extra cost "partner" or "sponsor" links that turn up at top of search results pages. This may affect some search partners differently than others as some now use GoTo paid listings as those "sponsor or partner" links. Certainly GoTo will fight to maintain current partners by making themselves more attractive to those search engines considering paid inclusion programs.

Inktomi has larger partner list to support their version of paid inclusion and is more attractive for distribution and visibility, but offers little in way of "perks" for value driven crowd. Altavista offers their own version of paid inclusion, dividing program into two separate categories, one for small businesses and sites under 500 pages and other for big boys of ebusiness with more than 500 pages to index.

Pricing is just now being determined by many search engines making paid inclusion move, but it ranges anywhere from $39 per page to be listed up to yearly pricing models which come with additional benefits, such as intra-search option from Fast, AllTheWeb.com.

I recommend keeping an eye out for short term sign-up bonuses and perks as paid inclusion model gains acceptance over next 6 months. Just as pay-per-click model of search took some time to gain traction, so too will paid inclusion.

Watch also for partnering changes in near term as larger networks battle to gain or maintain market share. Some will be more agressive than others so bargains and benefits will no doubt emerge within 6 to 8 months to build customer and brand loyalty early in race to paid inclusion dominance.