JimWorld Gazette Issue #30 11/28/1997

JimWorld Gazette - Issue #30 - November 28, 1997

CONTENTS

-- Time To Get Ready For Next Xmas
-- Need More Hits?
-- Weighing The Risks
-- Tips From The Hitman - Part XVI
-- Scumbag Watch
-- Get Your Web Site "Rite"
-- No Longer On The Sidelines
-- Snippets
-- As Long As They Spell Your Name Right


Link to this issue of the Gazette as http://gazetteworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=g30


I've posted several new awards to the JimWorld awards page http://www.jimworld.com/ourawards.html Stop by and take a look. Click on each of the award graphics to go submit your site for the same awards. Remember, if JimWorld can win it, how hard can it be!

This one just in (in addition to their regular award earlier in the week):
"Congrats!
You have won the first prestigious Awards Jungle Website of the Month (November) award. This award is only given to one website every month and is the most prestigious and difficult to win at Awards Jungle. Your review and site will be featured in the winners' page for another month, under our Site of the Month. Congratulations, and well-done."
http://207.49.108.199/flamingo/chowch/aj/winners.htm>

----------

From Griff:

"I told a friend of mine in Atlanta to look up your site (VirtualPROMOTE) about a month ago. She called me Friday to tell me that it is the best thing I could have done for her. You are doing a GREAT job, and I really appreciate it."

Air Discounters International http://www.connect.net/gevans/travel.html

TIME TO GET READY FOR NEXT CHRISTMAS

I've been getting a lot of email this week asking 'What can I do to increase traffic and sales between now and Christmas?'

The short answer is: start 4 months ago.

However, there are some things that you can do that should have an almost immediate impact on traffic. Sales increases depend on how well your web site does its job. Remember - advertising delivers prospects, merchandising delivers sales. (I know I'm going to hear from all of the direct marketing life-forms about that statement. Trust me, I understand the purpose of direct marketing. That's why my company has been named Direct Marketing Network for over 12 years.)

The first thing: start a sweepstakes. The one that we started at StarWest http://www.starwestinc.com/ began producing over 300 new visitors per day starting the 3rd day after it was announced. (You should enter. 111 winners before Christmas. The prizes are really cool. Great bikes. Who doesn't love a Harley-Davidson? I think there were some pretty girls in there too. Cathy says the guys are very hot. I can't really say on that one.) -- End of blatant plug. --

Put up some good prizes and lots of them. One winner is not going to cut it. People want to enter contests where there are lots of chances to win.

Announce your contest to all of the contest directories. Donate some prizes to their site's sweepstakes to get better placement on their sites.

Don't ask for anything but name, email address and country on the entry form. Put product information at the top of the entry form page. Most contest directories will link directly to your entry form, so you have to show the products on the entry form page in order to get them to click around your site and hopefully order. Bear in mind that the entry form page is your only shot. Don't abuse the visitor by making it a huge page. Strut your stuff and let them enter.

Check out the Gazette September 5th and 12th issues in the archives http://www.gazetteworld.com/ for a lot more information about running and promoting a sweepstakes.

Put out a press release about your sweepstakes. Start by using the press release writer-bot at PRWeb http://www.prweb.com/ to create your release, then send it out using PRWeb's free distribution service. Take that same press release and send it out to an opt-in list. Yep. Gonna have to spring for a few bucks for that one. Post the press release on your site under 'What's New?'

Second thing: Decorate your site for Christmas. Make it festive to show that it is a live site and not just some pages put up who knows when. People respond to merchandising which is why retail stores spend so much time and money doing it. Just because your store is virtual, it's no excuse for not running it like a professional merchant. Would you shop at a department store that still had their window displays showing tie-dyed t-shirts and platform shoes? You don't have to redo the whole site. Just change the window displays (home page). An hour of searching the Net will reward you with enough Christmas season clip art to decorate 5 web sites.

Invest a bit of your 'spare time' (whatever that is) looking around the web getting ideas for next year at your web store. Save some copies of pages you like so that you can look at them in a few months. You will be rewarded with lots of idea starters next September when it's time to plan your holiday season.

NEED MORE HITS?

Get your site listed and reviewed at Eye On The Web http://www.eyeontheweb.com/ They'll let you know if you make the cut. Eye can generate lots of traffic, so get started.

"Have You Prospered Yet---Try Prospernet" http://www.prospernet.com/ Select the category you want to be listed under from among the many they have.

Internet AllStars" is a catalog in the Russian language of Internet information resources. http://stars.infoart.ru/ The button for 'English' is in the upper left hand corner. It takes you to the English language submission page. Your site will be reviewed (not by the KGB, as far as I know) to determine if it has rich enough content to be included. Your site does not have to be written in Russian to be included.

WorldVillage http://www.worldvillage.com/index2.html reviews and awards sites with family content. To get listed or reviewed, go to the page you would like to be seen on and find the email address for the maintainer of that subject page. Sounds more complicated than it is. Only took me 30 minutes to figure it out. Great idea and a very nicely done site.

Xplore is a collection of 500 of the "most interesting, informative, and entertaining sites on the Web." http://www.xplore.com/xplore500/medium/menu.html Look around and hit the suggest button on the right side. Cool site, BTW.

Net Junkie's Pick Of The Day http://www.midatlantic.net/junkie.sht rewards a wide range of tastes in content and subject. Whatever the Junkie finds interesting and well done. I like the guitar pick motif.

"The Earth Channel bestows Mother's Finest awards on sites of excellence that are created to benefit the earth and its inhabitants." http://www.earthchannel.com/cool/ Not just for Tree Hugger sites. A wide range of sites have been chosen that promote positive values. I know several of our subscribers should be submitting for this one.

Canada's Top 100 http://www.canadatop100.com/ Very good quality site and the reviewers have excellent taste in web sites. Get yours submitted.

Online Canada accepts submissions from any Canadian web site. Submit for a link and submit for the Online Canada Best Of The Web award.

The GREAT WHITE NORTH'S Page of Excellence Award http://www.golden.net/~joemac/awards/award.htm is given to individuals or sites which:
1. Go out of their way to Promote Canada or parts thereof
2. Filled with information and links about Canada,
3 .They find fun and useful

BotSpot Of The Week award is given weekly to the best web bot they can find. http://www.botspot.com/dailybot/ If your site has a bot of some type or other, go get it reviewed by their non-bot reviewers. Look around while you're there. It is an incredibly cool site.

In an effort to increase the visibility of well done and maintained sites that are made for women, WWWomen offers an award of recognition: the Best of WWWomen Site Award. http://www.wwwomen.com/feature/bestwww.shtml Notice I said 'made for women' not 'made by women'. Anyone is eligible to enter if their site is for women.

The Wyoming Companion designates a "Best of the West" site regularly. http://www.wyomingcompanion.com/wcwwl.html If your site is about the Western US, mosey on over thar an' hitch up to the ol' award post.

WEIGHING THE RISKS

Both Jim and I continue to receive a lot of messages concerning my articles on merchant fraud prevention. Stories abound about how the simple techniques I have covered in previous articles have helped many of you prevent fraudulent orders you normally would have processed. However, several merchants have questions about the apparent severity of one technique in particular. The major question revolves around establishing a policy of not accepting orders from ANY free, web-based Email address. Won't that eliminate a lot of legitimate orders?

I will expound upon that policy first and then talk a little about the problems with real-time order processing and shipping goods (hard or soft) outside your own country.

After receiving several dozen credit card charge backs resulting from fraudulent orders placed exclusively through free, web-based Email addresses, we established the policy of not accepting orders from any of the over 300 such Email domains.

Point number 1:

We have NEVER had a fraudulent order placed through a standard, ISP-based Email address. Conversely, EVERY fraudulent order has come through the web-based Email services.

Although I have also recommended adding the HTTP_USER_AGENT line to your form handler to capture a "customer's" IP address, at the time, this information really isn't very useful. There are several sites you can log onto before proceeding to any of the web-based Email services that offer total protection of your identity -when you log onto one of these sites - you are reissued a random IP address and they keep absolutely no logs of this. Hence, I can log onto one of these sites, go to the hotmail site and send Email, or go to a site to buy something, with absolutely no possibility of being traced.

However, when fully active, the AntiFraud.com site will provide the ability to track down the ISP who owns the IP address in question and automatically send an Email providing the ISP with the pertinent data used for illegal and fraudulent purposes. Will the ISP's do anything with this data? Who knows, but at least they will know which one of their customer's is using their services for criminal purposes.

Point number 2:

If someone places an order using a standard, ISP based Email address such as joe@ix.netcom.com, it is fairly easy to track this individual. However, it is virtually impossible to track the identity of someone using one of the free Email services - and if they know what they are doing - it is absolutely impossible.

Has the screening of all orders cut into our sales? No. The vast majority of people using the free Email services use an ISP to access the Net. Every ISP I know of issues at least one Email address with every account. So onlinefraud@hotmail.com (which one of my employees, a Mr. John Smith of 111 main street) recently registered in about 30 seconds, also has a legitimate, more easily traceable ISP issued address. We simply inform our customers that we don't accept orders through free Email services and ask them to use their standard, ISP issued address (go to http://antifraud.com/redflag.htm). Granted, there are some honest folks out there who really, truly don't have anything but a Juno.com account - so guess what - they can call us to place the order (yes, we have caller ID on our phones).

Now, let's address the problems of real-time ordering processing. There are many services out there that offer (for a fee or percentage) to process your orders in real-time, while the customer is logged onto your site. The first question you need to answer is whether you need to use such a service. If you are selling any hard goods that are physically shipped to an address, the answer is no. Legally, you can not even charge the customer's card until the order has been shipped. However, the option of real-time processing is very attractive to software vendors or subscription services. This convenience does have its risk.

Most real-time order processors do absolutely no pre-screening of orders. If the credit card goes through verification, the order is processed and the "customer" is immediately given their serial number or subscription user name. You, as the merchant, won't ever find out about the fraudulent nature of the order until you receive the charge back. Yes, these services will tell you they use the Address Verification Service to insure the address provided is what the credit card company has on record, but that does not mean that onlinefraud@hotmail.com is the actual owner of that card. I am currently working with a couple of real-time processing services that are installing the same fraud prevention measures that will be available to members of AntiFraud.com. I will let you know when this is in place so you have a safe method of real-time processing.

The last area of concern is shipping orders out of your own country. I can sum this up with a few short sentences. Make absolutely, positively sure that you have a legitimate order before shipping anything, including soft goods across the border. Regardless of the circumstances, regardless of the proof you may have, regardless if you have a signed confession from the crook who stole your goods through a fraudulent order, if that order went across the border, you can basically kiss it good-by. It's hard enough here in the states to get the proper authorities to do something about credit card fraud. Try getting the authorities in a foreign country to pursue such a matter!

To sum up the situation, I believe fraud committed against merchants conducting online transactions is increasing dramatically, and will continue to do so. However, there is no need to panic. While many years ago it was safe in most places to leave your house with the doors unlocked, that is no longer true. While only six months ago is was safe to blindly accept any online order, that is no longer true. But, like locking the doors to your house, protecting yourself from online fraud is really not that big a deal. Some common sense, and a few specialized tools, policies and techniques usually will do the trick.

----------

T.J. Walker mailto:support@softwaresolutions.net
http://beherenow.com or http://beherenow.com or http://softwaresolutions.net

TIPS FROM THE HITMAN - PART XVI

I trust all of our USA readers had a great Thanksgiving Holiday. I actually took some time away from the computer screen. OK, I read my email, I can't help myself! Having a business on the Internet can be addictive. I have done a lot of things in my lifetime, but I can't recall every putting in the kind of hours I do and enjoying it as much! That said, let's move on to part 2 of the Search Engine position game. Maybe I can help send a little success your way too.

Although I covered some of the basics for web page construction in the very first articles I did for Jim and Virtual Promote Gazette, I will likely cover some of these points again. For the long term reader, this will be a refresher, for the newcomer, I do not want to skip some items because they are so important. I know both Jim and I have the early articles archived where they could be read, but I also know not many of you spend much time in news- letter archive files.

What is the secret to good search engine position and why should you care about your position on just 7 or 8 sites on the Internet when there are now thousands of places to list your page? Well, the simple truth is that there is one directory and 6 search engines where 95% of the people using the net go to find information quickly. The last time I said this I also said in the US, but now these major players are all expanding into the World market. So, it is safe to say good listings at these sites are more important than ever.

What are these top sites? Well Yahoo still stands out as the only directory on the list rounded out by 6 search engines. Yahoo was one of the first easy to use directory, and has continued to lead the pack. The major Search Engine are (in no particular order) Excite, Infoseek, Alta Vista, Lycos, WebCrawler and HotBot. This list used to include Open Text Index, but they dropped the ball when they stopped taking new submissions. When they supposedly started again the results were less than satisfactory. They are now considered out of the game by most Internet Promotion specialists. It should be noted that there is an up and coming challenger on the Web now, Northern Light Search. They are not well know to most people although regular readers of the Gazette have certainly heard of them. In my opinion, their search engine is better than the rest, and produces more accurate results. They also provide access to information that is not available anywhere else, on a kind of pay per view arrangement. I think they are in the game to stay and will show growth like Alta Vista did when it hit the web running.

Let's go over some of the essentials to good page construction that should be the basis for any page being promoted. These are the basics, and there are some variations to these rules at each of the search engines. Each engine uses its own methods to analyze, categorize and rank a site. For instance, on some sites meta tags are important, on others, such as Excite they are not even used to rank the page. We'll get into some of the specifics or rules of thumb for individual sites a little later.

A "pretty" site may be appreciated by the viewer, but the search engines see only the HTML code on the page. How you handle certain aspects of the page code can make the difference between page one in a keyword search or ending up on page 300. In both cases, the page would appear the same to the viewer.

I will not go into a discussion of what keywords are and how to choose them. If you are unclear on the subject of keywords, how to pick them and what they do for you, I think you just might want to hit the archives for the Gazette. If you aren't sure, get busy, and read some of the old articles. You have to know your keywords. Also look at the tutorials on the main VirtualPROMOTE site. The Road To More Traffic discusses keywords in detail.

The very first place you can look at to improve position is the title of your page. This is the title as it appears in the title tags. It is essential you use your most important keywords in the title. Never put useless, overused words like Homepage in the title tags. Make your title descriptive. The title should tell the viewer, and more importantly the search indicies ad directories, what your page is about. To use an example, "VirtualPROMOTE - Learn To Announce and Promote Your Web Site FREE The Way Professionals Do" is the right way to do this, and "VirtualPROMOTE Homepage" would be the wrong way! You will see Jim has his company name, VirtualPROMOTE. This is not always a good idea if you have zero name recognition yet.

Jim also uses important keywords like announce, promote, and he uses one of the top "buzz" words "Free". The use of the emotionally charged type of words like health, money, love, safety, save, easy, guarantee, and proven all are words that get attention and have been used by ad writers to boost sales for ages. Don't be afraid that the title is too long, you will not be penalized for making it too long, although usually only the first 64 characters (or so) are actually shown in the search results. Load it with keywords and tell the search engine what is on the page. One word of caution here, do not repeat the same keyword word in the title more that twice, or you could be penalized.

Next time we will start with the meta tags, once extremely important at most search engines, and now a potential trap that could send your page to the end of the list if done wrong.

Hayden Mitchell mailto:hayden@webthemes.com
Web Themes http://www.webthemes.com

SCUMBAG WATCH

"This information has been brought to our attention. It is a series of three viruses that are creating havoc.

WARNING!!!!!! If you receive an e-mail titled "JOIN THE CREW" - DO NOT open it! It will erase EVERYTHING on your hard drive! Send this letter out to as many people you can... this is a new virus and not many people know about it! This information was received this morning from IBM, please share it with anyone that might access the Internet.

Also, If anyone receives mail entitled; PENPAL GREETINGS! please delete it WITHOUT reading it!! This is a warning for all Internet users there is a dangerous virus propagating across the Internet through an e-mail message entitled "PENPAL GREETINGS!". DO NOT DOWNLOAD ANY MESSAGE ENTITLED "PENPAL GREETINGS"!! This message appears to be a friendly letter asking you if you are interested in a penpal, but by the time you read this letter, it is too late. The *TROJAN HORSE" virus will have already infected the boot sector of your hard drive, destroying all of the data present. It is a self-replicating virus, and once the message is read, it will AUTOMATICALLY forward itself to anyone who's e-mail address is present in YOUR mailbox! This virus will DESTROY your hard drive, and holds the potential to DESTROY the hard drive of anyone whose mail is in your in box, and who's mail is in their in box and so on. If this virus keeps getting passed, it has the potential to do a great deal of DAMAGE to computer networks worldwide!!!!"

Hard as it is to believe, this ka-ka is still making the rounds. Of course, the 'warning' goes on to ask that you send the message on to everyone you know to help them save their computers. It also mentions that this is validated by IBM and AOL who need to get the word out and this email message is how they chose to spread the word. And as usual, it warns about a different virus that 'attaches itself to your motherboard and renders it useless.' Cute fantasy.

Like IBM and AOL needs this bozo to help them 'get the word out'!

When you get these, just chuckle and throw them away. If it came from someone you know, let them know that this is the online version of a snipe hunt. They are not real.

If a big company finds a virus, they have much better ways of notifying the public. They can let the magazines know and the word goes out officially. Don't worry about this stuff. Just keep your virus scanner up-to-date and you will never have a virus problem.

Please don't even pass this stuff on as a joke. It really scares lots of people who haven't heard the facts and we don't need any more credibility problems than we already have.

If you publish a newsletter or discussion group, please pass along the truth about this hoax. Maybe we can stamp this go-around out before it scares a lot of people. Lots of people will be logging onto the Net for the first time just after Christmas and they will have enough problems without being scared off by a hoax.

Remember the kids in school who would do ANYTHING for attention? The ones with no talents that would get them noticed, so they destroyed things so that they wouldn't appear to be non-existent? These people 'grow up' more or less, and have to resort to these kinds of mindless pranks to get attention as adults. Pathetic and a total waste of oxygen.

Of course, I guess it is conceivable that some enterprising virus-checker-writer needing to boost sales, might be the one keeping this thing going around. Just a thought.

GET YOUR WEBSITE "RITE"

You spend time working on your Website's HTML. You spend the time looking for, or creating, the right graphics. And you don't have any dead or outdated links. So, your Website is perfect, right? Not necessarily.

Is your product or service going to sell if your site is full of typos? Probably, but you'd also have more success (read that as 'sales') if it wasn't. If you think typos bother me, you're right. Not so much on personal homepages. If little Billy really likes kats, I'm not going to surf elsewhere. The language in chatrooms is full of "new" terms that simply make keyboarding faster. So if Sara is going to brb, I'm not offended in the least.

So where or what is my problem? I'd rather fill out an 'order form' than an 'order from'. I'm more likely to read about 'the newest' pocket pager than 'teh newes' one. What do typos say to me as a consumer? Not much. A Website is fairly permanent. If the owner of the site doesn't care enough to make sure the site is error-free, it makes me wonder about the product or service they are selling.

Unlike print media, a typographical error on a Webpage can be easily corrected. If you want a sales pitch that rivals the "big boys" take the time to proofread your own Website. Don't have time to do it yourself? You can hire a professional proofreader or ask a friend to read through your site.

As far as proofreading goes, a spell checker is of limited use. Spell check will find obvious keyboarding errors but you need to do some work for yourself. What you want to do is look for 'two' instead of 'to', 'their' instead of 'there', and so on. If you aren't sure about a word, look it up or use another. The Internet is not the place to impress people with your use of 5 syllable words when a one- or two syllable word will do the job just as well.

Once you are fairly sure about what you have to say on your Website, visit your pages just as a visitor would. Read through everything. Does anything jump out at you? Look for missing capitalizations, missing spaces between words, and misspellings.

Now, I am going to share with you a little trick. Even though I love the Internet, I am one of those people that like to hold a book or a piece of paper in my hands. It comes from years of reading and working in the printing industry. Print out your Website. Read through it again with a pen in hand and a dictionary by your side.

After you've made and uploaded your changes , you're not done yet. Don't groan, the next part is actually kind of fun. I found The Website Garage. You can get a Free Tune Up by visiting http://www.websitegarage.com. Run your site through the free diagnostics, including an HTML analyzer and a spell checker that appears to be fairly comprehensive. What impressed me? Their spell checker found a typo on my personal homepage. I update this site weekly and have read through it many times.

There are two more sources you may find useful. The first is Webster's Dictionary at http://c.gp.cs.cmu.edu:5103/prog/webster/ and the other is an internet Thesaurus at http://www.thesaurus.com .

-----------

Article by Wendy S. Hay mailto:wshay@rocketmail.com
The Write Touch Editing Services http://home1.gte.net/jeffhay/writetouch.htm

NO LONGER ON THE SIDELINES

One of the topics of the latest Gazette really hit home this week. I have been sitting on the sidelines about the spam issue because it didn't really affect me that much, until this week.

I registered a domain last week that will be used to host my internet based publishing solution for newspapers and magazines. I couldn't believe that newsflash.net was still available. Well, one day later I found that my new domain has baggage that goes with it. A spammer (LRS Publishing) is using false header information, and guess what domain is forged in every mail they send out? Now I get dozens of emails a day addressed to Postmaster, as well as my personal address listed at InterNIC, asking that I do something about this spam! My server admin even gets mail about this, as well as an ISP that has one of my OLD domains! Jeez!

It troubles me that it is so easy, and apparently not a serious crime, to use false identity online. Think of this scary scenario: someone decides that your business needs a little setback, perhaps a competitor or an unhappy former employee. A single investment in a few million email addresses is all that is required. One mailing with your return email address, 800 number, fax, and physical address will shut you down for weeks as "bombers" of all sorts have their way with your lifelines to the world. Scenario? It happened! I think it was a boating business in Florida.

Your observation that forging email header information should be a legal offense is right on!

No longer on the sidelines,

Craig Johnson, mailto:craig@ibuy.net
web maniac (and developer)
latest site: http://magazines.ibuy.net

SNIPPETS

"Hi Jim--
Just wanted to say that the ads worked great--especially the ones in the Gazette. I got several new customers -- more than enough to pay for the ads. From talking to some of the new customers myself, you have a very devoted band of followers. They love your newsletter.

The Gazette is the best advertising investment on the Internet I have ever made."

Joe Haedrich mailto:JoeHae@aol.com
Web Cards http://www.printing.com/

----------

Starting in January the Gazette will be holding drawings each month. The sweepstakes is only open to Gazette subscribers and you don't have to do anything to enter. As long as you're a subscriber you will be eligible each month.

I am already lining up a big group of suckers (Oops, I mean civic minded web merchants) to give good stuff away every month of 1998. They'll get enough promotion out of the deal to more than make up for their costs of offering the prizes.

The goal is to have $3,000.00 (or more) worth of prizes. If you would like to commit to being a sweepstakes sponsor, drop me a line at mailto:jim@jimworld.com Still need things like VirtualPROMOTE mouse pads and t-shirts, software, hardware and the like.

Each month, the t-shirt will go to the lucky Gazeteer who is selected to choose the random numbers that will determine that month's prize winners. Of course, the first t-shirt has to go to me, just so I can assure that it is top quality. Yea, right. Not like I want one or anything.

----------

Web site is not spelled web sight.

I guess it could be a web sight if it were a webcam site. Or a really ugly sight. Like a web sight for sore eyes?

----------

Did you know that at Award-It http://www.award-it.com/ you can fill out one form and submit your site for over 200 different awards? Well, you can. And it works. I used it to submit StarWest's site http://www.starwestinc.com/ and within 3 days had received 6 'real' awards. The awards at Award-It are real awards. No 'let's swap awards' awards. Larry runs a tight ship and is to be commended for his hard work. That's why Award-It is the newest JimTool. Larry is now eligible to proudly display the JimTool button on his web site, thereby sending VirtualPROMOTE even more traffic.

----------

Check out this press release to see an example of a site built entirely around offering content to drive sales. http://www.gina.com/wire/tn/tn970860.htx

.... AS LONG AS THEY SPELL YOUR NAME RIGHT

Gazeteers,

I am currently working with a client who is conducting research for a book regarding creative business financing. She is particularly interested in hearing stories about the creative ways in which you may have raised funds to start, manage or grow your business. If you have some ideas or know of someone who may, can you please contact me at: mailto:creativeways@thebranchoffice.com

Please include contact information (including telephone) so that we may discuss further how you implemented those ideas? If your comments/ideas are used in the book, you will be asked to sign a release so that it may be included.

Thank you for you help in this project!
Julie Hewett http://www.TheBranchOffice.com