This week, Amazon launched a set of widgets that attempt to do the same thing. They allow affiliates to display Amazon products in a colorful, more appealing way.

I have a gut feeling that widgets will eventually be very useful for e-tailers, but we have a ways to go to get there. I just don’t believe that these Amazon widgets are going to help affiliates. In fact, I predict that clickthrough rates on them will be worse than text ads and probably identical to the clickthrough rates on graphics ads. I think that site visitors are simply going to ignore them just as they do banner ads.

Desktop widgets may end up being more effective than website widgets. It is undeniable that if you can entice your customers to download your widget to their computer, you have an advantage that most internet retailers will never have. Ebay is experimenting in this area, and I can see why customers would want Ebay widgets on their desktop. However, I am not sure how niche retailers will be able to compete for valuable and limited desktop space.

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My first thought is that this is a very dumb, annoying idea. We already have to put up with our offline friends trying to sell us overpriced MLM products and trying to get us to come to “parties” where we are expected to buy something. Now, we are about to face the same thing online.

My question is this–if I want to buy an iPod, am I really going to find a friend and buy it from their “lemonade stand”? If I want to get it at the best price, wouldn’t I set up my own lemonade stand and buy it from myself?

As annoying as I find this whole concept, it just might fly. I find the whole Facebook thing to be very annoying too but obviously most people disagree with me.

Of course, the Lemonade Stand plan is just part of a small but growing trend to do retail in the Web 2.0 environment. And retailing in a Web 2.0 environment sounds an awful lot like MLM (multi-level marketing). When I started selling online in 1999, I began by selling MLM products. We have moved away from MLM products over the years, largely because I have come to understand that the Internet has become a threat to MLM that is going to eventually kill that whole business model unless it evolves dramatically.

Affiliate marketing is another concept that is going to have to evolve or die. It is simply becoming more and more infeasible for affiliate marketing to work in today’s online environment. My guess is that affiliate marketing is going evolve to more and more look like Web 2.0.

I expect someone to eventually figure out how to sell in Web 2.0 environment and when they do, that will represent the end of both MLM and affiliate marketing in their current forms. I will be shocked though if the lemonade stand idea is the answer. It is just too primitive a concept.

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“The site has installed a ring tone search engine and lists scores of cell phone ring tones atop its highly trafficked page,” reports Red Herring’s Scott Martin.  “People can find Shakira and Britney Spears ring tones along with links for gambling, concerts, and dating.”  Not to mention Nissan cars, Tai Chi, and Louis Vuitton.

That’s a pretty far cry from the aforementioned rollformers (although I’ve heard the 8 Stand x 2 x 10” Dahlstrom #550-8 is popular with some young people).  But Red Herring quoted Baris Karadogan, who wrote, “[F]rom what I hear, that is generating them north of $1000/day.  That’s $360K straight to the bottom line, at 10% pretax that’s like finding $4M of revenue all of a sudden.  That’s luck.”

Mr. Girkins may not entirely agree – he’s apparently still pursuing a lawsuit filed against YouTube when this all first started.  It almost seems as if the problem has taken on a life of its own, as Mr. Girkins said the new search engine “more than covers costs for hosting.  But we have a lot of attorney costs, too.”

Still, among the Web’s many lemonade-from-lemons situations, uTube’s reversal has to be among the most impressive.

Lemonade stands were a “big thing” in my neighborhood and each year I would take an inventory, defining my competition in my neck of the woods. Each year my strategy changed; each year the timing of this big event solely depended on the weather, the perfect intersection and of course, customers’ needs.

Mrs. Bade was one of my biggest customers who liked tart pink lemonade with lots of ice. To accommodate her taste buds, I always made it a point to concoct a biting brew just for her. Each year, she walked away with sheer delight, or at least she made me feel that it was special. Of course, having a lemonade stand in the middle of a snowy winter didn’t make good sense to anyone; but once in awhile my instincts told me that I should be ready to lead off the pack of lemonade stands each Spring by being the first on my street to lure in the thirsty customers. Of course, positioning was a huge step in my calculated plan. To strategically place my lemonade stand directly on my front lawn was not a wise choice; my house was on a cul-de-sac where traffic flow was minimal. Nor did I follow my parents’ advice to erect my stand within eyesight and only two houses down. My quest was to find the perfect corner, perfect timeframe and perfect “stand front” banner to catch the eye of my potential customers.

The big day finally arrived and I was ready to command my post. My lemonade stand was sprayed with streamers and balloons of all shapes and colors. It didn’t consist of the normal one-table stand; no mine was a three-tabled display offering a variety of lemonade flavors and sizes. Making sure my stomach did not interfere with the selling side of my big day, my mother insisted that we start off the day with a stack of pancakes and of course, a glass of my fine brew. Now, recruiting reasonable helpers was another matter as friends usually insisted on sampling my concoctions and daily profits. The recruitment side of my business was to include the right mix of personalities. Not just anyone would do. I sought out two friends who, if needed, could persuade consumption of the finest cut of meat to die-hard vegetarians – Wanda and Wendy Wachendorfer. Their parents owned the local meat market, “Buffa’s Deli”. Everyone in town knew who the Wachendorfers were, so if the lemonade itself didn’t make the sale, their presence would – simply out of sheer empathy.

With everything in place for the big day — position, employees, flyers distributed on every storefront and a variety of lemonade flavors that included peach nectar, mango and orange, the day was sure to be a huge success. Every year brought about new changes and new flavors to my lemonade stand – from knowing my favorite customer picks to the importance of positioning my stand in just the right place; that was the BIG picture.

So when I began my human resources job last month in an industry I knew nothing about, search engine marketing, I reflected on a time in my young life when I realized it was all about positioning. Positioning the customer in a place on the internet where they wanted to be. In my case, it was the corner of Burgess Street and Fleming Road. On the internet, each customer maintains a slightly different place or position for their business; it may not be number one in the search engine listings, number two may work just fine for them, but it’s up to the search marketing company to aid and assist the customer in defining needs, business strategy and marketing challenges, to determine what corner of the internet works for them.

It really is all about the relationship. Whether it lasts one year or several years, the relationship becomes an integral part of the partnership between the search marketing company and the client. My lemonade customers from one year were my returning customers the following year. Each year the relationship was more fruitful allowing me to understand whether pink lemonade was desirable or whether the plain lemonade was their style. It was really up to me to offer the varietals of lemonade; it was simply all about choices. Search marketing offers a number of choices from organic optimization to pay-per-click advertising campaigns. Choosing the service(s) that impact your company will help a business succeed – again, having the choices.

In addition and conclusion, search marketing really focuses on aiding the customer. So let me conclude my story by asking, “Lemon-Aid Anyone?”

Oneupweb is the only two-time winner of the ClickZ award for “Best Search Engine Engine Marketing Firm”. StraightUpSearchs blog authors include experts from Oneupwebs natural SEO, pay-per-click campaign management, research, marketing, design, and sales departments.