JimWorld Gazette Issue #39 01/30/1998

Gazette - Issue #39 - January 30, 1998

-- Housekeeping
-- Old Business - The Forums
-- New For You
-- Which Side Of The Tracks Do You Live On?
-- A Few New Awards We're Proud Of
-- Grassroots Marketing
-- Snippets
-- Nobody's Making Money On The Net - Right?

Link to this issue of the Gazette as http://gazetteworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=g39

HOUSEKEEPING

(Second Notice - this notice will stay here until everybody has stuffed the ballot box!)

Time for the Gazeteers to saddle up and ride to victory once again!

> Congratulations!
>
> Your site (VirtualPROMOTE) has been selected as one of the
> 32 finalists in the annual Surfers Choice Site of The Year voting.

Voting is taking place at http://surferschoice.trigger.net/vote.htm and we don't have enough votes yet to insure victory. Time is running out, so please take a moment and vote!

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This week's Gazette is going to be shorter than usual. I have spent so much time working on new tools for you to use on the JimWorld site that little time was left over to do a standard job of over-writing for the Gazette.

The new features and tools on the site will prove valuable to you, but you have to use them to get that value. Trust me on this one - they will help you more than you can imagine.

Do yourself a favor and do not bookmark anything deeper than the Home Page of JimWorld. If you bypass the Home Page you will miss a lot of new features being added every week.

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I would like to wrap up the survey of webmaster attitudes towards being paid for advertising results only. I need about another 1,000 of you to take five minutes and fill in the survey. I need response from webmasters and site managers of all sizes of sites. <http://jimworld.com/survey2.html> PLEASE.

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Welcome to Adam Kalsey, Technical Director at 'the marketing store!' <http://tmsonline.com/>

Adam will be assuming duties as the moderator of the InfoSeek Forum. He has excellent knowledge of not only the InfoSeek search engine, but an excellent grasp of promotion and online marketing in general. Give Adam lots of promotion problems to help you solve.

SOME OLD BUSINESS - THE FORUMS

The Search Engine Forums have taken off well. There is already a good core membership forming up there and the threads are addressing some pretty substantial issues that all of you will find valuable. The most active forums are Yahoo and InfoSeek. I guarantee that you will learn at least two new things if you read the threads. Better yet, participate actively.

A few guidelines need to be explained. These procedures will keep the Forums readable and informative.

When you first post, be sure to register and include your name, email address and URL of your site. If your site is an adult content site, we do want you to participate in the discussions, but please do not post your adult URL. If you do not have a non-adult URL, simply put 'Adult Only' in the URL field.
When you post, do not use a sig, or signature, after your post. Your name is already to the left of the post and your email address and URL are also available by your name. Signatures just clutter up the Forums, and I have been deleting all of them that I find.
Do not post a message to a thread just to thank someone for responding to your post. That also clutter up the Forums. If you just want to say Thanks, send a private email to the person. Only make posts that contain actual information or questions.
Do not post blatant commercials to the Forums. This is a venue for the exchange of information. If you need more business, by all means feel free to advertise in the Gazette or on the sites.
If you have an ax to grind, or a strong agenda that requires you to attack other members of the Forum, please feel free to establish your own forums on your own site or to publish your own newsletter. Do not 'contribute' judgmental content to our Forums. I will not tolerate flames and attacks. I have already found it necessary to delete an entire thread that was far off-topic. I will continue to prune the threads using my tastes and opinions as the final criteria as to what is appropriate.
Contrary to popular mythology, I can't be everywhere at once. Even I have certain limitations. If you don't believe that, I'll give you my wife's email address. Consequently, if you notice something in the forum that I should take a look at, please let me know. You will be helping me to keep the Forums valuable to the members.

In closing, if you haven't participated in the Forums yet, shame on you. I see from the logs that there have been hundreds of people reading but not yet posting. You are missing a valuable source of help and guidance.

While there are many promotion gurus posting answers and tips to the Forums, they need questions and problems in order to be of help, which is why they are frequenting the Forums. They have other things to do with their time, but want to be of help. So ask some questions. You'll get free answers that most people pay these folks lots of money for.

The final release of the Forum software we are using has been released. I will be upgrading from the Beta version this week and you will notice some new features and enhancements.

As I mentioned before, the quality of the Ultimate Bulletin Board (UBB) software is outstanding. I looked at over 40 Forum packages before choosing UBB. The support has been outstanding and the development of new features has been on time. All of this from a FREE software package. Amazing. I don't get this level of support and quality from much of the software I pay for.

If you want to run threaded discussion groups on your site, be sure to visit Prime-Web at http://www.prime-web.com/ and consider UBB. You won't be sorry.

NEW FOR YOU

It's time to vote for your favorite Helpware treatment. I narrowed the list down to six great entries and can't get it down to the five I originally said would be in the finals. They are all too good.

You'll find a link to the voting booth on the home page <http://jimworld.com/index.html>

Look carefully at all six and vote - just once!

The voting Perl script I installed is working great so far. It started as a text only voting script and so I hacked it to present graphics instead of text. I'm doing a full review of several products from the company that offers the voting script, so more about it later.

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I get several emails a day asking where the reference to such-and-so was written. My memory being what it isn't, these were really hard for me to answer. It occurred to me that there would be a real advantage to having a memory-helper on the site - so I installed one.

JimWorld is now searchable! And the script supporting the search is pretty flexible. Lots of advanced search options.

You'll find it at the bottom of the JimWorld Home Page. Use it often to find those tips you didn't commit to memory.

When I first ran the index building program to gather all of the information from the site, it came back with a message that I have written almost 600,000 words of content for the site, taking up 3.5 million characters of space. Only 5.5 average letters per word? Guess I should look up some bigger words now and then.

BTW: If you want to see what people are searching for, try <http://jimworld.com/bin/summaries.html> Don't even ask about the "melrose place girls" search.

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The final new tool for you this week is the PromoteCARD service. You can send digital postcards to anyone you want using images that I have chosen for their use in the web services world.

Got a client you want to touch base with? Want to let a webmaster know that you have put up a link to their site, and hopefully get them to visit your site? Want to let someone know that you have a great idea for them?

Send a PromoteCARD. It's free.

You'll find lots of ways to use these to your advantage. I will continually be looking for more images to make available. I hope you all enjoy this one. I've already been using it and the response is great. Everyone goes to see your message.

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Well, that's about all I could get done in one week. Especially considering what a lousy Perl programmer I am.

I hope these new tools give you some ideas of what you can do to increase the content of your site. You can get a lot of free stuff all over the web that you can use to make your site a web community.

My next chore is to put the infamous 500 submission sites into a database that makes it easier to use and easier to maintain. Trust me. If I can do this stuff, so can you. Your mate knows you're lying anyway when you say you'll knock off in an hour and get some rest. Might as well put the time to good use.

WHICH SIDE OF THE TRACKS DO YOU LIVE ON?

We've been talking about Internet demographics in the last two articles, and the GVU survey specifically.

Again, I have to re-iterate my disclaimer that the GVU survey data can be very misleading if you're not familiar with the survey's methodology, and the resulting limitations. To put the GVU data into context, you can review part one of this series at <http://jimworld.com/gazettedecember19.html>.

Last time, I left off saying we'd look at monitor demographics. And we will, because so many web sites don't account for the monitors people actually use to view the sites.

But I spent my weekend dealing with e-mail, and am feeling much more qualified to discuss that today. Monitor demographics will have to wait until next time, again.

More specifically, I spend the weekend dealing with unsolicited e-mail. You might say that some Spam went through the fan here.

Some statistics help shed light on the Spam issue. In the current GVU survey:

- 9.2% of the US Internet population reads Spam
- 13.1% of novices read Spam (novice = on net < 6 months)
- 8.2% of intermediate users read Spam (intermediate = on net 6 mo to 3 years)
- 5.4% of experts read Spam (expert = on net > 3 years)

Considering who this survey covers, you might argue that the percentages are higher in the general Internet population.

But for all of those who read unsolicited e-mail, even more "reply negatively" and some even "retaliate". A negative reply is return message that may be interpreted to mean "take me off your list". Retaliatory responses take many forms. Returning the message a number of times (sometimes hundreds of times using auto-mailer programs), billing the sender for processing the e-mail message and turning the bill over to a collection agency, and complaining to the senders service provider (and sometimes even retaliating against them).

The negative replies and retaliations are a serious problem for Spammers. Adding some more statistics from the current GVU survey:

- US Internet population - 9.2 % read, 12% negative reply, and 1.5% retaliate
- Novices - 13.1% read, 10% negative reply, and only 0.5% retaliate
- Intermediate - 8.2% read, 11.8% negative reply, and 2% retaliate
- Experts - 5.4% read, 14.5 negative reply, and 3.6% retaliate

So, on average, you send out 100 unsolicited e-mails, and 9 people read it, 12 people reply negatively, and at least one person retaliates (to teach you not to send Spam).

So, for that list of 1,000,000 e-mail names you've probably been offered:

- 1,000,000 unsolicited e-mails (100%)
- 90,000 readers (9%)
- 4,500 interested e-mail replies (assuming 5% of readers)

BUT:

- 119,000 negative replies, and
- 19,000 experienced Internet users who want to teach you a lesson.

Spammers want the interested replies with out the negative fall-out, and this is where Spamming gets dicey, and a very bad name.

There are programs available that will send e-mail with the "from" information set equal to the "to" information. That way, negative responders just get their negative responses back. And those retaliators who return the message 100 times just get it back 100 times. Of course, some expert users can "sniff through" to who actually sent the message.

This "sniffing through" to senders gives rise to another Spamming "solution" / e-mail problem. E-mail packages that send out e-mail with someone else's "from" information on it, instead of the senders. If you do this, you can be sued for damages, and if you are sued, case history says you'll lose. Winning damage settlements like this is getting easier for ISP's than selling Internet services.

It's amazing to me how many people have bought and installed spamming software through those banner ads. They e-mail me with questions and problems, or to subscribe to lists on my servers, and they send me my own e-mail address. And then they e-mail me asking why they're not getting a response! I can't even respond to some of them because they didn't put their e-mail address in the message, and - that's right - the "from" address is me! Some people even send me e-mail, and subscribe to mailing lists, with someone else's e-mail address.

Most of this is easily fixed with my delete key. Those e-mails are gone - until the next time. But sometime they cause problems that require expensive technical and legal time to work through. Our list services just got more expensive this weekend, and we'll have to review our pricing.

Even if you're not paying for list services, you can be impacted. Some e-mail services return newsletters and discussion group messages because it's from a mailing list (list-server). The "free" e-mail services are especially prone to this, they seem to process it through if they're not busy, and return it if they are. Some of the "free" forwarding and e-mail services simply don't forward or process list-server generated mail.

We also get newsletter and discussion group mail returned by Spam-filtering software, either the subscriber's own filters, or their service provider's.

This article isn't whining or a call to action, it's meant to be educational. Related educational items can be found at <http://www.news.com> and other sites:

Hotmail takes spammers to court
AOL taking spammers to court
Juno files $5 mil lawsuit against spammers
Spammer's web site shut down after anti-spammers threaten ISP

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Paul Fuhrmeister is Vice President of CommerceStreet.com, an Internet Service Provider who still offers list services, but is reviewing it's pricing and procedures.

The LinkUp discussion group, announced in the last article, has received a tremendous response, in terms of subscribers, activity and feedback. The group is for members to exchange information about their web sites, in order to build reciprocal links. You can receive information about the group, and how to subscribe (there are new procedures), at our web site: <http://www.CommerceStreet.com>

A FEW NEW AWARDS WE'RE PROUD OF

Thanks to Quentin Road Bible Hour <http://www.biblehour.com/> for the following recognition. (Want to see a really content rich site? Check Quentin Road out!)

Web-Site o' The Week--VirtualPROMOTE!

VirtualPromote (JimWorld) is The Road to High Traffic on your web-site. They have a multiplicity (ouch) of webmaster tools, tutorials, tips, and information you need to acquire the web site promotion skills needed to build high traffic counts to your site. This is great information that anyone can understand and act upon, and it's a free service. While you're there make sure you subscribe to the Gazette - Every Friday you receive the GAZETTE via email with tips and tools to help you build traffic to your web site.

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Dear Jim,

I wanted to let you know that JimWorld has been selected as one of Geekgirltalk's Pick of the Bunch.

The Pick of the Bunch is a very selective listing of sites devoted to computers and technology. Each site selected is reviewed at Geekgirltalk <www.geekgirls.com>

Congratulations on JimWorld. My job involves trawling the Net for hours each day, and it really is a pleasure to come across a resource as well designed and hopping as yours.

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I have recently decided to start giving out an award. I want you to be my first recipient. This award will go to only the best sites that apply for it. Your site is the only one that will get it without applying for it. I find that your site is very helpful, has excellent design, and one of the best that I have found on the Net.

Thanks,
James Avery
New Realms Web Site Design <http://www.telalink.net/~newrealm>

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Congratulations! Your web site has been selected for the Best of the Web Award. This award is given to sites that are unique, interesting, humorous, informative, imaginative, creative, innovative or useful.

This award puts your web site above the rest. It recognizes your creativity and technical talents to produce an outstanding site. It is one of the few awards that webmasters are proud to receive. So be sure to tell your clients, employer and friends about your award. You've earned it.

As a winner, your web site will be announced on at <http://www.okaneku.com>. Websurfers cruise through our listings everyday, giving your site great new exposure. They know our site is a great place to find new and exciting sites on the web. And the best part is, it's absolutely free.

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It seems appropriate that your site is the "vanguard" of my resources page, where it has won the first ever Perfect Promotion Site award I have ever given out.

You can view your listing at <http://www.pr2.com/resource_email_newsletter.htm>

As you know, I am an enormous fan of JimWorld and the Gazette, so this seemed an appropriate gesture.

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On a first note I would like to congratulate you for receiving YeoYeo's Web Site Medal of Honor. No, this is not some phony award, but all sites are hand picked. Unlike most awards, you do not have to apply to receive this award. It is given out to the best of the best. You're web site ranked excellent in all of the following categories:

-HTML design
-Overall Content
-Originality
-Overall Excellence
-Ease of Use
-E-mail response
-Popularity

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Your site has been selected as a Featured Site at the Internet Treasure Hunt Bureau! Through careful deliberation, mouse-moving, and head-nodding, we all agreed that your site was incredibly cool and that it should be shown off to all of our internet treasure hunters. Think of it as an award with a guided tour!

If you're wondering who we are, we're the Internet Treasure Hunt Bureau, the new fun contest site on the internet. Our primary focus is to provide quality treasure hunts to our visitors while introducing them to some really cool sites. To help support this habit, we allow sites to sponsor questions that help get their sites noticed. But, when we're not running sponsored questions, we feature really cool sites for free!

So, what do you have to do? Absolutely nothing! Just sit back and enjoy having our participants visit your site to learn something about your content. In about a week, we'll let you know how many visitors we sent you and maybe throw in a sales pitch. Hey, we have to support our habit somehow. :)

In the meantime, you're welcomed to visit our site to see exactly what we're all about. Here's our little woodcut on the web: <http://www.treasurebureau.com>

Your site is scheduled to be featured for three days, starting 2/5/98. In fact, your site was selected to commemorate our 100th featured site and over 25,000 visitors. Neither of these milestones could have been achieved so quickly without JimWorld's help. Thank you.

GRASSROOTS MARKETING

How to Achieve Website Traffic On A Low Budget

Is it easy to get traffic to your web site? No.

Can you do it? Yes, and you don't need a big budget to do so.

Let's talk about how. The concept here is actually quite simple. Content, content, content! However, the execution is often difficult. It takes hard work, continuous effort, and most importantly long-term thinking. Got it? Let's make sure. Do you think those 20+ pages talking about how great your firm and your products are qualifies as content? Guess what, the answer is no.

Content, for our purposes here, is information that is useful, informative, and entertaining for your visitors. Don't misunderstand, it should be relevant to your product/service, but it should be "information oriented" not "sales oriented."

That's great you say, "but my company is different. We do this...or we do that. How can our site have content?"

Good question. For demonstration purposes, let's look at a client web site, the Restaurant Report ( http://www.restaurantreport.com ) The Restaurant Report web site is dedicated to content. Content which is targeted and relevant to hospitality professionals and food connoisseurs. I'm not suggesting that your web site has to have 300+ pages of content like the Restaurant Report's does to be successful. However, I would suggest that your site strive for a balance of 80% content, 20% sales pitch.

Here are some low budget ideas that any company can consider.

Articles (Tip Sheets)
You know a lot about your business, so write about it. Publish articles on your web site that share your expertise with your target market. Submit articles to industry web sites and print publications, utilizing your byline to draw traffic to your web site. In addition, you can solicit articles from colleagues and others to publish on your web site. Trust me, they'll love the exposure. For example, the Restaurant Report web site has 100+ articles available on-line for hospitality professionals. This virtual library has become a valuable resource for the Restaurant Report's target market.

E-mail Newsletter
Say what you will, e-mail remains perhaps the most powerful tool on the Internet. Offer visitors to your site the ability to sign up to receive periodic free information about your industry. And then publish it! Ideas include articles, links, news, etc. A newsletter should be mostly about providing information to subscribers. Newsletters, however, are also an outstanding way to "gently" plug your business. In short, newsletters are a great way to stay in touch with your audience on a regular basis, share information with them, and invite them back to your web site.

Lists
People love lists. On the Restaurant Report web site some of the most heavily trafficked pages are the "Top 100 Hospitality Sites" and the "Best of the Best" guide. Think about an interesting, yet relevant way you can utilize this concept on your web site.

Contests
While it's true that people love lists, they go absolutely crazy for free stuff. Can you offer a sample of your product for free? Can you solicit a company to donate prizes to your web contest? For example, the Restaurant Report hosts contests sponsored by food companies, most recently Omaha Steaks.

Banner Trades
Great, you've succeeded in establishing a fair amount of traffic to your website. Are there companies that would be interested in reaching your audience with a message? Seek out companies/websites that have comparable audiences, but aren't your direct competitors. Then propose a banner advertising exchange. The Restaurant Report has successfully promoted its e-mail newsletter on several hospitality industry websites using this concept, which has resulted in hundreds of new subscriptions for the newsletter.

Content is still king. Strive to be an information source for your industry. Provide your visitors with informative, entertaining information. Utilize some of the low budget strategies outlined here. And as stated before, keep a long -term perspective. After all, you do want to be around in the long term.

Article by:
Jaime Oikle joikle@intrepidmarketing.com> is president of IntrepidNet Marketing. Visit their website at <http://www.intrepidmarketing.com> to browse the article archive and review the "Reading List for Web Marketers"

SNIPPETS

We recently started a banner exchange for anime sites (Japanese animation) only! Best of all it is free! We were wondering if you would accept it and put it on your site... it is a good way for anime sites to pomote themselves.... since they are usually just personal pages. Although we will accept commercal sites too.

It has only been up one day.. and may still be a bit rough.... We would still appreciate it if you could look it over. The address is...... <http://www.iczer1.com>

---Jim--- OK I looked it over and I'm really upset. Only up one day and the site already looks that good? Shame on you!---

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If you are considering joining an online Mall to sell your products or services, you might want to take a look at the survey results at NetProfit Magazine <http://www.netprofit-mag.com/>

They asked online merchants about their experiences with malls and the results are not encouraging.
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Just because you can invent a Subject for an email that guarantees that most people will read it, doesn't mean that you should mail it. I got this one and since it really pushed one of my buttons, I immediately read it. The incoming message from MAGNUMLTD@aol.com> had a subject line of:

>Your Web Site Isn't Working

The remainder of the message went on to say:

>Your Web Site Isn't Working As Hard As It Should Be!
>EXPOSE YOURSELF And Your Web Site To The World
>With International Indexing On
>1,500+ Search Engines
>In 32 Countries
>For Only $199
>(Special Promo Pricing Expires on January 30, 1998)
> Regular Price Is $249

Within 10 seconds this company had guaranteed that I would never buy from them or create a link to them from my site. I did think it was worth doing them the favor of writing a Snippet about them, however.

Good work, folks. Your email got you a write-up. Never let it be said that I don't try to help beginners out whenever I can.

BTW - I got 9 copies of the message. One would have been enough.

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Everything comes in time. One of the biggest problems facing most webmasters is their lack of experience in writing good marketing copy for their sites.

I just got a submission for an online copywriting service: Webmaster at <http://www.risingltd.com/WebMaster.html> and they are providing copywriting services to the writing challenged. A service whose time has come.

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Submit your site to The Net One <http://www.thenet1.com> They are currently advertising The Net One Search Engine in Wired, PC Computing and Computer User to name a few magazines. That should make it a pretty busy site to be listed on.

Their areas are: Consumer Search, Professional Search, Business Opportunity Search, Aolmall, Adult Search & The Internet Gateway.

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Here's a handy site I thought some of you Gazeteers would like.

The GraphX Kingdom at <http://www.htmlhaven.com/graphx/> brings you thousands of free icons, graphics, images, and logos! All for FREE!

Andrew Sain has organized and sorted over 3000 icons that can be used at your discretion for FREE! Browse the categories such as automobiles, emails, documents, college sports logos, and one of the favorite sections...the cartoon icons. The intricate yet easy to use navigational system lets you parade through the site unimpeded. Use the graphics for your own designs, desktop icons, or to spice up your own web pages.

And graphics aren't the only interesting part of the Kingdom. Be sure to check out his newsletter as well. They are revamping to include HTML Tips-N-Tricks, graphic tips, software reviews, and site features. Join the almost 9,000 current subscribers today.

Last but not least, check out the new Web Hosting offers from the parent site of the Kingdom at <http://www.net-matrix.com> They are offering all Gazeteers who sign up free site submission to over 300 directories, just for signing up! Visit <http://www.net-matrix.com/>

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From another Gazeteer:

Over the past 2 years, I have undertaken the job of educating myself about web design, web promotion, and the art of effective teeth gnashing. All of which I have been reasonably successful. The information I have read in your newsletter have done two very important things for me:

Taught me some new tricks and tactics for better web managing;
Reinforced most of my existing tricks and tactics for better web managing.

Probably one of the most important items that I learned from your web site, was from your new Search Engine Forum under Yahoo!. I went there first because my web site, Marriage Builders <http://www.marriagebuilders.com> is listed on the first page of few related key word search results in all but one of the major search engines and directories. Which one? Of course, Yahoo!.

The advice I found was to call in my URL request directly to the Yahoo! staff. Sure enough, I actually got a call from a REAL person who took down the information and said it should be up in about 7 days. I seem to have made more progress in 2 days than I ever did over the past 1.5 years with Yahoo!. We'll see if it actually worked. I'll be sure to let you know.

Thank you for your service. I'm sure you have helped countless web managers, of which I am one.

Steve Harley
Marriage Builders, Inc.

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Hi my cyberfriend Jim,

In Issue #32 of Gazette on December 12, 1997 you mentioned that we are spanning the globe. I want know are there in the Gazette subscription list some people from Yugoslavia (.yu) except me. I would appreciate if you could send me their e-mail addresses because I want to meet them.

Dacha danilo@fon.fon.bg.ac.yu>

NOBODY MAKING MONEY ON THE NET, RIGHT?

This just in from a Gazeteer:

I am an avid reader of the Gazette. It is easily the best internet newsletter for web site developers and marketers, in my opinion, and I find each week's addition most helpful. I would like to share my own internet success story with you and the Gazette readers.

Last May, my partner and I started our own internet business. A large portion of our sales are travel-related (accommodation and tour reservations, for example). We actually started taking reservations this past fall. Our Travel Services General Manager (a 15-year travel industry veteran) estimates that in reservations alone, our business will pull in $1 million in revenue this year.

Our company is the Yellowstone Net Company <http://www.yellowstone.net>. We are the #1 Yellowstone National Park site on the internet, currently receiving 2000 total page impressions or more per day. We have been recommended by USA TODAY, The Seattle Times and Rand McNally & Company, among others. We provide current and extensive information about Yellowstone National Park, including the thrice-weekly online Yellowstone Net Newspaper, a weekly email newsletter, discussion forums, live chat, and lots of information about the geysers, wildlife and other attractions in Yellowstone.

We have a quality site which attracts a prime target audience -- travelers who are willing to spend money. We started out just making Yellowstone reservations -- recently we have started making Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Glacier, Grand Teton and Rocky Mountain National Park reservations as well.

In addition to national park reservations, we sell sell Yellowstone videos, photos and t-shirts, as well as western gifts and outdoor gear.

This week, on February 4, my partner (Clint Wilkes, the marketing half of our company) will be a featured speaker at the annual Interactive Newspaper Conference in Seattle <http://www.mediainfo.com>. Clint will be speaking to newspaper professionals from around the world, sharing the strategy we have used to market Yellowstone Net.

Our strategy has been simple: create the best site in our chosen niche (Yellowstone), bring aboard the top (Yellowstone) experts to be a part of our site, put a lot of effort into promoting the site on the internet (primarily through links and search engines), seek to attract visitors who have money to spend, and be open to constructive criticism along the way. We have thus far done very little offline advertising.

From the beginning, our strategy was to generate revenue from travel services. As of yet, we have not sought to sell advertising space. When we do (probably later this year), we will sell at a premium price.

Within the past month, we have started receiving requests for advice from other commercial web site owners. My partner Clint is now accepting invitations for marketing consultations.

Thanks for your time, and thank you for the Gazette.

-- Bruce T. Gourley gourley@yellowstone.net>
Yellowstone Net <http://www.yellowstone.net>