As specified when this website was set up on 1/20/2009, the first year goal was to reach 250,000 visitors.

Goal: The objective is to empower conservatives to get more involved and defend their own interests through local initiatives in their states and communities.  In that context, the measure of success isn't the number of website visitors per year, but rather the growing impact of those visitors through their actions.  As a simple metric of progress, however, the goal is to reach 250,000+ visitors in 2009, and grow that to 500,000+ or far more during the 2010 election cycle, and well over 1 million in 2011 in preparation for 2012.

Our focus is on reaching action-oriented conservatives who want to do something positive about the political and economic challenges we face.  In short, we're looking to reach individuals who are motivated to get involved or lead at the local level, and to help get the word out about what they are doing.  The Tea Party movement was a good initial example of this local empowerment approach, but is not our exclusive focus.  In short, we trust individuals to figure out what works in their areas, and who to trust in 2010 and 2012.  This website serves as a tool for finding out what others are saying and doing, and sharing local initiatives so that more people can become aware of them despite any traditional media bias, disinterest, or scorn.

Our bias here is simple - to encourage conservatives to get out there and stand up for what they believe.

Market Analysis:  The above goal may not seem like much by national election standards, since nearly 125 million voters participated in the 2008 presidential election, of which nearly 60 million voted Republican.

The highly touted Obama election campaign, with vast funding available to it, reportedly developed a list of 12 million supporters during their lengthy campaign with the support of very well-established organizations.

Keep in mind that roughly 100 million eligible voters didn't vote at all (and usually don't).  Both parties tend to ignore those Americans, and assume that they never will vote in any significant way.  For example, if some more of them vote, but split along the same pattern as others, then there may be little real impact.

That may be true, but it is also possible for them to have a decisive impact in many close elections.  Those who are closely aligned with a particular party are fairly predictable, if they choose to participate and vote.  The independents and non-voters are the people who can unexpectedly transform election outcomes by making choices which are not driven by party allegiance, but rather by personal judgment and principles..

A limited test marketing AdWords campaign reached over 3 million Google search users on certain dates between January 27 and February 12 (not active advertising on all dates).  This limited two week experiment with several different ads accounted for over 1000 of the initial visits.  That was a low "click through" rate (to limit the cost), but served to test relevant keyword search patterns and the ability to target specific groups of conservatives through their search interests.

That was followed by a "Chicago Tea Party" campaign which reached over 300,000 Google search users in just 2 days with a very limited budget.  After just our first 30 days, this raised visits to over 10,000.

Another brief market test online ad campaign was run on March 15-16.  Two test ads about the Tax Day Tea Party protests and about "The 912 Project", which was promoted and launched by Glenn Beck on Fox News a few days earlier (March 13), were used to compare the levels of interest with similar keywords.

These ads were shown 80,000+ times in response to relevant keyword searches, and attracted a little more than 1200 "click-throughs" in just over a 48 hour period.  That's a reasonable 1.5% click-through rate for the campaign, but the actual response rate for specific keywords was far higher, such as 3-4% up to 20%+.  It reached fewer search users than the February test, but was also a more targeted campaign.  If run in the same manner as the earlier campaign, it probably would have reached well over 150,000 search users.

One interesting result of this test was that many search users who were looking for information related to Glenn Beck's "912 project" showed interest in the Tax Day Tea Party protests.  This suggests that such individuals were very interested in both.  They had probably heard about Glenn Beck's initiative last week, or follow-up on his Monday show, but had not yet discovered the Tax Day Tea Party protests.

In simple terms, roughly 900 of the 1200 visitors responded to the Tea Party ad rather than the 912 Project ad, even though in many cases those visitors had been searching for keywords related to the 912 Project.  They were searching for the 912 Project, but the Tax Day Tea Party ad caught their attention and interest, presumably because it was something specific in which they could already get involved locally.

Another interesting result was that, less than one month after Rick Santelli's "tea party" rant on CNBC, there was no longer much search interest in him or that "Chicago tea party" story.  As expected, this was now old news, so the level of search interest had quickly peaked in February and soon faded away even though the actual Tea Party movement is still getting larger behind the scenes in Chicago and nationally.

This period included the preparations and follow-up to the Tax Day Tea Party protests nationwide.  Those protests, organized locally by independent groups (not by Surge USA leadership), also helped to draw attention to the SurgeUSA.org tools as participants and those who heard about these protests looked for more information online.  Once again, the role of Surge USA in all this is simply to empower those conservative individuals to more easily find what they are seeking so that they can get directly involved.

By the end of the first 100 days, the idea of a political "surge" among conservatives was already starting to catch the attention of some Republican leaders, and it was interesting that they even launched a new initiative at the end of 100 days called www.ResurgentRepublic.com .  Unfortunately, the Republicans still don't seem to "get it", as Glenn Beck demonstrated in his May 1 program with Tea Party organizers and participants.

In short, they weren't as mad at Democrats and the liberal news media bias as they were at Republicans.  They expect to be ignored, scorned, and misunderstood by Democrats and the liberal media.  That is no surprise.  They expect Republicans to listen, and to change how they have been acting over the years.  Republicans in Washington have become part of the problem, rather than the solution.

Unlike the final months and weeks prior to an election, there are also far fewer advertising campaigns at this time by political candidates.  Many campaign websites largely "go dark" after the election is over, even if the domains are retained for future elections or fundraising.  There will be isolated local campaigns, and these are very important to states and communities, but they won't attract much national media attention.

That creates an opportunity to get organized at a time when the well-funded national organizations are paying little attention to individual voters, and far more attention to what elected officials are doing.  The liberals in power and the interests groups which supported them are busily pushing their agenda as fast as they can.  Republican leaders and their supporters are trying to limit the damage or figure out how to win in 2010 or 2012.

This creates an opportunity in 2009 to actually reach out to many frustrated Americans, and especially conservatives, who may feel that their interests are being disrespected by both parties.  That's not about "hard-line conservatives".  It includes independents, "moderate" Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, and others. 

The political parties will probably continue to fight over their known bases of active voters, as though the rest didn't matter.  In particular, they will fight in 2010 and 2012 over the small numbers which may switch back and forth, such as the "moderates" and "independents" rather than the solid supporters in either party who will rarely switch sides.  The base may choose not to vote for a particular candidate who doesn't win their trust, but they won't necessarily switch parties because their own political philosophy won't change.

Both parties ignore "moderates" until election time comes along, and then just pay them lip service in order to get elected.  That could well explain why 100+ million people don't vote.  A very substantial number of them may feel that neither party is sincerely interested in listening to them, whether they vote or not.  The highly partisan activists on the far left or right are the squeaky wheels which keep getting greased as a reward for their solid political support, whether through overt corruption or political business as usual.

The focus therefore needs to shift back to honest individuals at the state and local level who aren't looking to get special favors from government as the basis for their support.  Instead of false populism to empower national leaders to impose their own social agendas by pitting one group of voters against another to compete for government favor, the people at the local level need to be empowered to really stand up and be heard for a change.

Action plan: Reach out to those who both parties have largely ignored

Search results therefore differ during the post-election period after many competing advertisements and content about current political topics disappear.  Although elected officials may share such content through updates to their official websites, they may not advertise these sites at all.  A lot of the political noise of a campaign season goes away.  The people who are really concerned about the new direction which this country seems to be following may therefore be easier to reach.  They will be searching for information.  They will be following significant news events, rather than just the smooth rhetoric of campaign speeches.

This is not a political campaign website, PAC, or business venture.  It is a personal initiative to help many other conservative Americans to find and openly share ideas.  It promotes collaboration with their peers in other communities or organizations around the country which may share similar views and objectives.  It makes it easier to research what their elected officials and party leaders or conservative thought leaders and other commentators are doing and saying on whatever topics are of importance to themselves.

Blogs typically promote the views of the blogger involved, and attract those who share similar views, such as to comment on the blog posts.  That's useful as a way to get many creative ideas out there very quickly, and to spread good ideas, but this isn't a personal popularity contest.  That's the liberal populist model - to rally the masses like mindless drones around a charismatic figure who tells them what they want to hear.

The focus for conservatives needs to be on empowering and motivating many individual Americans to work together politically as effectively as they already do in their careers.  This isn't about "tolerance" of diverse views on specific issues, or about being more or less "moderate" or "conservative" as a litmus test.  It is about shifting the focus to what we can all achieve together, even if we may disagree on many things.

Think about it.  Do all of your colleagues at work agree with you on everything?  Do you work together and accomplish great things in spite of that?  Have you learned to disagree respectfully, and still be friends?  Do you focus on criticizing each other, or on beating your competition to your mutual benefit?

In fact, don't competing ideas help to develop better ones?  Great progress can be sparked by just a few motivated people, as so many entrepreneurial ventures have proven in this country.  We need Republican entrepreneurs who will drive the changes we want to see in the world - not through liberal government social programs to spread the misery, but rather through conservative initiatives to develop and spread prosperity.

In that context, the metric for success is not the total number of visitors, but rather the relevant feedback from individuals who make use of the website as a tool for their own political actions.  The focus is on improving what individual users find to be helpful, rather than on simply achieving the most visitors.

For example, the target audience of SurgeUSA consists of various types of community leaders.

The point is that, as in the concept of "six degrees of separation", improvements to the networking and sharing of action-oriented ideas and local initiatives of thousands of community leaders across the country can have an impact on millions of people.

The objective is to reinforce that impact through support of their local efforts, rather than to build a top-down political power structure such as the largest e-mail database of loyal supporters of an individual politician.

In 2010, Republicans need to pick up at least 10 US Senate seats, 40 House seats, and as many more Governors as possible.  In 2012, new conservative leadership will be needed in the White House, too.

That obviously will not be easy, nor will it happen if everybody waits until the final months before the 2010 election to get serious about achieving this desired outcome.  There's a lot of hard work to be done now.

It also won't happen unless more Americans decide that socialism isn't they change that they believed in.

The point is that the work to be done is at the state and local level.  It is at the "grassroots" - not among a few elected officials in Washington or the party leaders.  They can help to "inspire the base", but the point is that the Republican party and the conservative movement is not really about them.  It is about those tens of millions of individuals who still believe in conservative American values and the importance of limiting federal government power and expense to those essential tasks which they delegate up to their leaders.

There is no reason to fear the Saul Alinsky model of the liberal insurgents.  The communists and socialists around the world have been massively outperformed economically over time.  There were many times when their leaders and observers thought that their ascendancy was inevitable and irreversible.  It never was.

We can outperform them again.  We know how to do this.  We know how to compete to win.

Our system of government wasn't created to promote a "fair" distribution of wealth to all.  It created a fair playing field on which individuals and teams play to win within the constraints of some basic rules - not rules designed to favor one over the other so that the outcome is like a game of marked cards.

Keep in mind that these websites were not aimed at the roughly 200 million people in America who are in the working age demographic, or the total number of active American voters, or any political group.  They were aimed at the leaders of a few thousand growing companies in the USA and around the world.

As the global economy went into recession at the end of 2007, the number of visitors per month declined around 10% in 2008, and has remained at roughly the same level in 2009.

This level of visits is very competitive with leading specialty magazines in this niche market for the last 20 - 50 years, which distribute free magazines to 25,000 - 45,000 readers at considerable advertiser expense.

When the US and global economy eventually recovers, more companies will begin planning the major capital investment projects again which create sustainable new jobs and economic progress.

The development and launch of ShortListNews in 2007 and 2008 already anticipated that scenario to provide new tools and referral capabilities for executives as companies grow again.  This business started just before 9/11/01 and supported business growth as the last recession ended, just as the founder worked with many growing companies about their expansion plans during the 1990's.

The launch of SurgeUSA.org reflects the obvious trend in recent decades for business leaders to focus heavily on "red states" as they look to grow their companies.  There are obviously many capital investment projects in "blue states" too, including cities with liberal leaders. This referral business is not political.

Google Groups - SurgeUSA

Plaxo Surge USA Group

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