Michigan Antiques Directory - Newsletter the "MAD RAG"

September 2008

Hello and welcome to the 7th issue of the MAD RAG.

We have devoted this little corner of the website to keeping you and all interested parties abreast of what is happening with the Michigan Antiques Directory. We hope you have taken a moment to read our "About Us" page so you know how we got here. Don't miss the news in "The Booth".

Greetings!

Another summer season is coming to a close. We hope it was prosperous and pleasant.

Grand Rapids Press - The WEEK END! Edition news article

Early in April, we had an unsolicited and unexpected boost to our advertising efforts. We received an email from Tricia Woolfenden, a reporter with the Grand Rapids Press. She was doing the cover story for the The WEEK END! section of the GRPress, published every Thursday, and had come across our web site in the course of her research. She asked if we would give her a call to answer a few questions for the article. Needless to say, we jumped at the opportunity. The article, entitled Hooked On Antiques, was primarily about Larry Wood and his Allegan Antique Market, a simply fabulous market on the Allegan County Fairgrounds on the last Sunday of the month from May until September. The subtitle was Thrill of the Hunt, Finds of the Heart Attract Buyers to the Fair. Ms. Woolfenden certainly hit the mark with that statement as antiquing is a passion unto itself. Our own Leslie Victor of the Michigan Antique Directory got a couple of paragraphs, in which she spoke highly of the perseverance of Michigan store owners despite the precarious economic climate. Best of all, our web site got a box on the first page of the article. It said:

CONNECT
If you're looking to hit the road in
Michigan this summer, check out
mi-antiques.com for a guide to
antique markets, shops and fairs.

The Grand Rapids Press has a circulation of 309,590. We were extremely pleased to receive the press coverage and it showed in our web log statistics in the following months. This is good for us and great for all of the clients of Michigan Antiques Directory.

Speaking of Statistics

Web log statistics. What are they?? The short answer is that they are the information that we gather to tell us how and why our web site is being used. The long answer can be found in this informative and not too technical article found at visibility.tv, a web site by a guy that we think knows what he's talking about and explains it in a way that we understand. Every week, we at Michigan Antiques Directory look at our web log statistics (we'll call them stats for short) to see how our web site is doing on the Internet super highway. Following are the main areas on which we focus. The stats below are a comparison to our stats from a year ago:

Page views: up 70%
Web server hits: up 85.6%
People visits: up 70.6%
Unique visitors: up 152.1%. This is related to the people visits above. This is also most significant! It means that more "new" people are finding antique and collectibles stores using Michigan Antiques Directory.
Search engines searches: up 120.3%. This is the number of times that a visitor accesses our site from a search engine using a keyword search. People are using all the major search engines and are using keywords related to types of antiques, store names and location by county and city. Your full business listing covers all of these bases.

Our stats tell us that many people from all around the world use Michigan Antiques Directory each month to find antiques and collectibles stores in Michigan. What follows is another facet of our promotion and stats.

About Link Exchange

Exchanging links (trading web site URLS) is a tool that is commonly used by web sites to promote ourselves. We have exchanged links with many sites related to antiques/collectibles, tourism and travel. Our stats reveal that other organizations have placed Michigan Antiques Directory on their web sites unsolicited by us. Here are a few examples:

Grand Rapids Public Library has us linked under 'Community Resources' on their GRPLpedia page.
Detroit Extended Stay Hotels has us linked on their Local Travel Resources page.
Retire to Northern Michigan has us linked off their menu entitled 'Antique Shops'.

A section in our stats called "Referring Sites" turned up this interesting entry. A person wanted her parents to join her in attending a wedding in southeastern Michigan and knew that antique shops would convince them to make the trip. She posted her question in an on-line forum and received the following reply:

"I'm not familiar with the area, but here are a couple of links
to help point you in the right direction… "

And, there we were, first on the list as www.mi-antiques.com.

We really enjoy reviewing our logs and will share our findings with you in our MAD RAG.

We Like Testimonials!

No… we LOVE testimonials. Here are two recent ones.

After getting one of our business cards from a friend, Heather, an antique lover in Paw Paw wrote:

"She gave me your business card so that I could check out your web site. I love it!! I LOVE going to antique stores and often times have wondered how best to find out where they all are in this area without having to own 100 different phone books. Thanks for this provision. I love that I can find
out where they are but also the hours of operation and what they specialize in. So cool!! "

And another from Nancy, owner of Four Generations Antiques in Hart:

"Your website is a wonderful resource for people selling antiques.. and people looking for
antiques.. I wish I would have had this information available years ago."

Many thanks to Nancy and Heather! You've expressed our sentiments exactly!

Our New Feature - The Antiques Resource Page

On a regular basis, we receive calls or emails from people who have items that they would like to identify and/or sell. While selling items for people or businesses goes beyond the scope of our web site, it did occur to us that we could be a resource for people looking for information. And, so, we will begin constructing The Antiques Resource Page. It will contain links to other web sites for the identification of antiques and collectibles. We think this will be useful to collectors and dealers alike. If you have any favorites that you would like to share, please send them on.

The Booth

We created this part of our newsletter as a display for "this and that." We welcome your experiences and news. Maybe you have an idea that you would like to share. Tell us how people have used MAD to find your store. Just send us an email. Please feel free to jump into future issues of the MAD RAG.

Submissions:
From us here at MAD:
- We invite all our customers to send us some interesting news about their store, antiquing, their part of the state or something you think people who visit MAD might find interesting..
MAD News:
Our referral program is still available to our valued clients of Michigan Antiques Directory (MAD). We know that word of mouth continues to be a most reliable form of advertising. When people find a good thing, they naturally want to share that information with others who would benefit. We propose taking advantage of your conversations with other store owners about Michigan Antiques Directory to build our client base – a win for us! In return we would compensate you in the form of cash or credit to offset your advertising expenses – a win for you! Please visit our Referral Program page for details.
Over the years that Michigan Antiques Directory has been in existence we have worked hard on our search engine placement. As the years have progressed we have seen our ranking steadily improve. Our city level indexing is working within the search engines and many people are finding your stores using content searches that pick up your descriptions within your listing. If you would like to update the description of your business listing, just send us an email.
Remember... Michigan Antiques Directory is an antiques and collectibles business site that can help any antiques and collectibles seller within the state of Michigan have a central location on the Internet -- no matter how far off the beaten path their establishment may be.
If you have any questions, concerns, comments or suggestions please let us know. We look forward to hearing from you

Thank you for reading this issue of the MAD RAG — John and Leslie Victor