Buyers Don’t Rely on Yellow Pages Like Used to

Customers’ buying behavior has changed - for good. If your business depends on most categories in Yellow Pages to attract new customers, you’ve probably seen a decline. Traditionally, people headed to Yellow Page directory precisely when they were ready to buy. They’d check listings to find their options, or "let their finders do walking." Now they’ve got more choices.

New research by The Kelsey Group in March, 2005 found that 70% of US households now use Internet as an information source when shopping locally for products and services. These buyers aren’t going to Internet for online purchases, nor to find distant providers. They intend to spend their money in their own community.

The Kelsey Group also found that interviewed individuals felt search engines were a "better source of purchasing information than Yellow Pages, newspapers and magazines." The trend is being driven entirely by Internet users. Related data from other sources show that consumers who search online for purchases spend more than those using printed directory.

Demote Yellow Page Ad to a Smaller Portion of Your Budget

The Yellow Page industry is a Fifteen Billion Dollar industry in US. While there are more choices of printed Yellow Page directories than ever, buying habits of public have moved away from using them. Computer-savvy buyers know easiest way to find information they want is through search engines (and since May they can do searches on run, on their cell phones). But many small or local businesses aren’t even listed.

The Kelsey Group’s data is consistent with other statistics showing that Internet has overtaken newspaper for cars and real estate (major purchases). And it’s becoming "go-to" place for information. A study by imedia Connection found it’s "second only to spouses for finding referrals."

MP3 is NOT free to use if you're an online publisher. BUT - let me be clear - there are some opt-outs. It appears you don't have to pay any license fees if:

It's for personal use or non commercial reasons (not generating income). OR - if your company revenue is below $100,000 a year.

Now, these rules might change of course. Make sure to check these yourself and ensure you're up to date by visiting mp3licensing.com for full details.

However, when there's alternatives I don't see why anyone publishing audio online would want to or should publish in MP3 format.

So what's best alternative? Well - it's all about OGG.

Okay, a slightly strange name. Here are facts:

OGG is just as high quality as MP3.

OGG is just as quick to download as MP3.

OGG is open source - this means no fees due, ever (for full details on OGG visit vorbis.com).

The only current downside of OGG is that it isn't as widely supported by audio players as MP3.

BUT - I'm convinced this will change. As more and more online publishers say "No!" to paying hefty and unnecessary licensing fees, more and more audio will be published online in OGG format, meaning more and more audio players will support OGG.

So if you're currently publishing audio online in MP3 format, what does this mean for you?

Well, my advice is to convert your audio from MP3 format to OGG format, without delay.

Now I'll admit it can be a little bit time consuming, but once it's done, it's done. And would you rather make a little effort to convert your audio, or pay licensing fees year after year?

So how do you convert MP3 to OGG? Easy - use an audio converter. You'll find a ton of high quality free ones by searching download.com and also sourceforge.net. My personal favorite is WinLAME (awful name, great software) from winlame.sourceforge.net.

So use WinLAME to convert your MP3 to OGG. Pay attention to keeping MP3 and OGG files around same size (I've actually found OGG files to be slightly smaller). And then compare audio quality. I'll be surprised if you can find any difference between them.

Now this conversion process might take a while. For about six hours of audio it took my computer at least a couple of hours of processing time. But I just left computer to it and came back when it was done. You can even leave this process running overnight if you have a lot of audio to convert.

Now here's an extra snippet you need to pay attention to:

Some OGG audio has "Tags". Tags are extra information inside audio file which often includes name of song for example.