On page 20 of the September 2010 issue of “Fast Company” they mention that September 12 is the date of this year’s “KaraokeFest” in Pomonoa, CA.

In the short article it is noted that annual sales of karaoke music and karaoke machines in the U.S. “have fallen a whopping 80% off their…peaks to just $40 million.”

This is where the inspiration for this post enters the picture. Rick Priddis, president of the-soon-to-be-defunct (in my opinion) Priddis Music inspires readers with this little gem,

“It’s gotten a lot worse because of the rise of the Internet. But we’re all just continuing on and hoping for the best.”

So let me get this straight: This dude, Priddis, says the Internet has hurt his business (it is 2010, right? The internet has been a viable business platform for at least 15 years and he’s been open since 1984.] and his solution is to HOPE FOR THE BEST?!!!

Are you kidding me? This guy has 25 years (actually 26 years. He hasn’t bothered to update his logo from a year ago) and his plan to get through these tough times is HOPE and he blames his tough times on THE INTERNET?

Sure, piracy has gotten worse over the years but if there are 100,000 people willing to come down to Pomona, a.k.a., the armpit of Southern California, and compete for trophies for karaoke singing then there are at least 10 times if not 100 times more people (that’s 1 million to 10 million for those of you from Pomona) willing to spend $1.46 per week for a new track for their machine.

Doing some back-of-the-napkin math shows that if just 1 million people download just one track at $1.46 per week then this is a $72.8 million a year industry just in music alone for a simple $75.92 per year hobby, not counting the machine.

So poor ol’ Rick’s response is to hope it gets better. Well, Rick’s hoping has paid off. Here is a brainstorming list of things that are streaming out of my brain as I sit here this Sunday afternoon pondering the business that could be Ricks if he’d stop hoping and start doing!

If business is down 80% I’m sure a heck of a lot of his competitors have gone out of business. How many did he contact and offer to buy their domain names / websites? If their domain names have expired he can just buy them on GoDaddy or any other big registrar.

What about buying the phone numbers of past competitors and having them forwarded to his office? (I use VOIPO.com and got my phone number for $99 for two years. That’s a good investment to buy your competitor’s phone number when they go out of business. It won’t take many sales to make back a $4.13 per month investment.)

What about buying the contact lists of former competitors? Offer them 10% of every sale for life.

What about making them affiliates of his when they go on to their new careers and paying them 10-50% of every sale they help generate through their affiliate links?

What about partnering with other business owners that serve the same market but don’t sell karaoke-related devices or music and having them become affiliates and they then cross-promote for one another?

What about offering free karaoke machines in return for a 2 year subscription to his music-of-the-month club? If this model works for printers and coffee machines why not karaoke?

What if this guy sold a hand full of machines each week, leveraged the internet to promote his music and machines world wide, maybe offered a membership / subscription program, kept his website up-to-date rather than posting events that are over a month in the past (not to mention his logo, which is a year out of date), offered tips and suggestions on how to throw a fun karaoke party for special occasions such as:

• kids birthdays
• retirement parties
• reunions (DUH!)
• sales meetings
• trade shows
• county fairs

Instead, he has a static Joomla website with broken links, no way to capture visitor information via some sort of free report and web form, poor SEO (search engine optimization), which is evident in his source code, which shows – I kid you not – 127 keywords with no commas separating them including neutral words such as “free,” “pdf” and “with.” Furthermore, the page Title and Description are terrible and neither mention his MONEY WORD, karaoke!!

No wonder this dude is relying on HOPE to carry him through these tough times.

This guy is a classic example of the danger of thinking small, looking backwards and focusing on the obstacles instead of the opportunities in the business world in general and in his particular industry specifically.

If you need to think bigger about your business, talk to Steve.

If you need to optimize your website and generate traffic, talk to Roger.

If you need to grow, take action. Motion beats meditation now and for always. Now stop reading and start doing.

How much eggnog and cheesecake can one man eat during Christmas?

Rather than find out, I started working on getting one of my clients / good friends, X2 Technologies out of San Rafael, CA, a higher ranking on Google to help them grow their business in 2010.

Like a NASCAR pit crew, when you have the right tools and use them in a coordinated, orchestrated, consistent manner you can make big things happen fast.

The picture in this post is a screen shot from today – Dec 27, 2009 – showing X2 Technologies with the first two rankings in Google for a “longtail keyword” (more on that in another post) that turned up 1,080,000 results!

The keyword phrase I optimized them for was “bay area computer consultants,” which is what they are and what they do. The really important thing to keep in mind, though, is that I was able to get their video ranked on the first page of Google IN UNDER A WEEK!

That’s right. In less than 7 days, with a lot of targeted, focused work, I was able to get a small business with less than 15 employees, ranked on the first page of Google ahead of larger firms, national firms, firms that partner with Microsoft and HP and TrendMicro and other behemoths.

And I can do it for your small business, too. But I limit the number of companies I work with in any one locale. So if you would like to beat out and out rank your local/regional competitors in 2010 and beyond give me a jingle now and let’s make some search engine magic happen!

Remember, life is good. It’s gooder when you’re selling…A LOT!

David Reese with HealthPlan4U is both a client and a friend.

So we put together a little something for him today and have submitted to the internet marketing gods to be indexed by more than a few sites. Let’s see how long it takes it to show up on the first page of various search engines.