Conditions for being listed:
- To qualify for being listed, you need to demonstrate your expertise in cosmetic dentistry. Accredited members of the AACD, because of the thoroughness and recognized difficulty of the examination which they are required to pass, can be listed, no further questions asked. Most sustaining members of the AACD have been passing our screening, but not all of them.
- Non-accredited cosmetic dentists must demonstrate by the nature and quality of the services they render (verified by photographs of their work submitted to Dr. Hall for review) and the amount of continuing education in cosmetic dentistry by recognized experts in the field that they have the training necessary to know cosmetic dentistry.
- Graduates of recognized post-graduate programs in cosmetic dentistry may be listed, provided we can verify by examining photographs of their work that the quality of that work demonstrates that the dentist has indeed put into practice the principles of cosmetic dentistry that he or she has learned in that program. Please indicate those programs on your application.
- We reserve the right to investigate any and all claims of memberships, accreditations, and graduations.
How is www.mynewsmile.com different from other online referral services?
There are several key differences.
Credibility
Other services will list you merely if you are willing to pay. We screen our dentists before listing them. Does that mean we turn away business? Yes. We have a file folder full of rejections of dentists who wanted to be listed. But the flip side is that we have credibility. As a trained cosmetic dentist himself, Dr. Hall has an edge in being able to evaluate the credentials of listed dentists, and we use that advantage to put you on a site that has credibility. And by years of practicing cosmetic dentistry, he knows how important it is for a dentist to have that passion for beautiful smiles, as well as special training in esthetics and bonding techniques.
Search Engine Rankings
As of the writing of this page, we are now getting about five million hits per month from about 130,000 unique visitors each month. Www.mynewsmile.com is at or near the top for many common search terms that actual patients really use. From over fifteen years of experience with internet marketing of cosmetic dentistry, we know the search terms patients use to find information about cosmetic dentistry, and we provide the content that answers those questions. Then, once they’re on the site, we help them understand why they need expert care for their cosmetic dentistry needs. We’re not going to give away our secret here in public as to what those search terms are or aren’t, but our numbers obviously show that we know what we’re doing.
Cost
Other referral services charge you an arm and a leg. When Dr. Hall was in private practice and was approached by one of these services who wanted $5000 per year to promote his web site, he thought the price was way too high and decided instead to learn how to promote the site himself. We have priced ours realistically. The bottom line for you is a greater return on investment, which, for anyone who knows advertising, it’s not just the bottom line, it’s also the top line and every line in between.
Plus, he didn’t want the cost to be so high that cost would screen out dentists he wanted to list. So he purposely keeps the cost low so that the dentists he picks to be on the site can consider it a no-brainer to be listed.
How do we keep the cost so low? Simple. Dr. Hall started the web site in the early days of the Internet as a hobby, and then developed the web site to market his own practice, making it into one of the top private-practice cosmetic dentistry web sites in the country. It paid for itself many times over in just the amount of local business it generated (attracting hundreds of patients). That more than paid for the web site development costs. Now he has turned the site into a nationwide service. This translates into benefits to you because we can afford to sign up new dentists for a nominal cost.
Also, we intend to continue to keep costs down by keeping overhead down. We’re not going to go to dental shows to market the site. We’re doing all the web development in-house. And the secret of internet marketing is to understand search engines, not to pour money into advertising.
Coverage
By pricing our referral service so reasonably, we are attracting a larger number of dentists. Pricing is a real problem for many dental referral sites. They’re priced so high, they just don’t return enough investment on the advertising dollar, so dentists don’t want to list. Then consumers get frustrated because they enter their search data and come up blank! Consumers don’t go into stores with empty shelves, and they don’t like dentist referral services that don’t have any dentists. The answer? With around 200 listed dentists, www.mynewsmile.com lists an expert cosmetic dentist within a reasonable driving distance of most people in North America, which makes it useful to prospective patients. It does this by being a modestly priced Internet referral service that attracts dentists. A site that is useful to prospective patients means it is also useful for the sponsoring dentists. And we restrict our referral density to one cosmetic dentist per 800,000 people, or one per market area, which keeps your listing from being diluted by competition.
Expertise
The information we provide for patients is accurate. We despair somewhat to see what passes for expert cosmetic dentistry information on other sites. We’re the only cosmetic dentistry information site written by an accredited cosmetic dentist. It is flattering to see other web sites pick up information that we originally post-this has happened quite a bit over the years. But even when the information is copied, the other sites misinterpret important details.
Innovations
Besides being an accredited cosmetic dentist, Dr. Hall has been a web pioneer. He began publishing the web site as a hobby in 1995, directly from his personal PC, later turning it into a practice marketing tool. He has always published it in-house. So he knows web design, internet marketing, search engine optimization, etc., and he uses it all to help promote your practice. He was doing search engine optimization before that term was invented, two years before Google was launched. There are few search engine professionals with that much experience. And we are confident there is no one in the country with the combination of cosmetic dentistry and internet expertise that we have here at www.mynewsmile.com.
You’ll find several other innovations on our site that you won’t find on others. Chief of these is our unique way of recruiting listed dentists. Many times it has happened this way: A patient e-mails us needing a cosmetic dentist. We personally research on the Internet, in AACD membership records, LVI alumni records, or by calling laboratory technicians or other cosmetic dentists to find the best cosmetic dentist we can for that patient in their geographic area. Dr. Hall checks the credentials of the dentist, the educational achievements, and verifies the quality of work of the dentist by examining photographs of his or her work. Then we refer the patient to that dentist for no charge, as a goodwill gesture. Once that dentist is aware of what we are doing and sees how well the service works, she or he will often want to join our service and help sponsor the site. If that dentist signs up and becomes permanently listed, we have an excellent continuing referral source for that geographic area.
We have other new ideas: Mail or e-mail us some photographs of dental work you have performed. If they pass our quality check, we can post them on our site, credited to you, with a link to your referral information. So if they’re learning about porcelain veneers, they’ll see your beautiful work, be impressed, and can then click to your web site, your “make-an-appointment” page or to your phone number listing. Or, if you just want your name and phone number and/or a link to your web site, you can just pay for that. You can also have your picture posted, you can have a listing for Invisalign® referrals, or a make-an-appointment page. And all these services are provided at a cost that will will make economic sense-you’ll get excellent return on investment.
Join www.mynewsmile.com and promote your cosmetic dental practice. Internet marketing is one of the most valuable, best-kept secrets in marketing private dental practice. Internet marketing can be done very professionally and ethically, without hype. The Internet draws people looking for quality cosmetic dental services, and they want the best and are ready for treatment! And the great news is that you can get a basic listing on www.mynewsmile.com at a starting rate of a mere $260 per year.
In 2003, when we became a national referral service, we had over 5000 unique visitors per month. In 2006, we are seeing over 20,000 unique visitors per month with about half a million hits per month. We maintain our leading position with web savvy-we know the search behaviors of potential patients on the internet, and we’re ranked at the top for a great number of the search questions people use to get cosmetic dentistry information. And consumer behavior history shows that people all over look to the Internet for cosmetic dentistry information and they will respond when we tell them they need a dentist with special expertise in order to treat their cosmetic dentistry problems. Why not harness that web presence for your practice?
Click here for a pop-up window showing terms of service.
Fees
- Listing fees are $260 per year, for a basic listing that gives you an exclusive within a 20-mile radius. An expanded radius may be negotiated on an individual basis, depending on the geography and market of the area in question. If you are close to a state line, a second listing in a nearby state will generally carry a fee of $100 per year. High density market areas such as Manhattan, Los Angeles, or South Florida, are at a premium rate.
- If you are in a smaller metropolitan area (less than 250,000 population), we give you a small market discount of $65 per year.
- For large metropolitan areas, we may have not more than one listing for every approximately 800,000 in population as the total number of listings for that metropolitan area, regardless of how close they are.
- For also being listed in our Invisible braces section, the fee is an additional $35 per year. This is one of the hottest cosmetic dentistry query topics on the web! Let people find your name when they’re looking for information on invisible braces.
- If you would like photographs included with your listing, the fee is $25 per year for a photograph of yourself that will be posted with your referral listing. Submit the photo via e-mail, or we can copy it directly from your website. When we post the photo, we will attach a text tag to the photo that will be visible to search engines and will help us attract search engine traffic to where your listing is posted. You may also submit “before-and-after” photographs of patients you have treated. Pending acceptance of your photographs by us, we will post them in the cosmetic dentistry information part of the site with credits to you and a link to your referral information. The charge for this is also $25 per year per photograph, or $50 per before-and-after set. So if you have a beautiful porcelain veneer case, we’ll post your work in our porcelain veneer section with a link to your referral information. Patients will see your work and your credits and will be directed to your practice. We’re not aware of anyone else on the web who is doing this!
We reserve the right to refuse any photograph for any reason whatsoever. - For only $40 per year, we will create a make-an-appointment form on the site for you, and patients may request appointments with your office directly on our site. You will receive an e-mail from the site immediately upon posting by the patient stating the patient’s chief complaint, preferred appointment times, contact information, and comments. Patients love this convenience, and you have the benefit of getting them to make a commitment while they are on the site. If you don’t want it e-mailed to you, we can fax it to you for an additional $20 per year.
Payment is made at our secure site or by phone or fax. We accept all major credit cards.
Click here to proceed to our listing request form.