JimWorld Gazette Issue #52 05/15/1998

Gazette - Issue #52 - May 15, 1998

-- Sites update
-- Are you using your site to help customers?
-- Tips from the Hitman - Part XXXII
-- Electronic Publishing - Part II
-- How's Your Attitude?
-- Snippets

Link to this issue of the Gazette as http://gazetteworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=g52

SITES UPDATE

HELPWARE UPDATE
http://helpwaresites.com

The Helpware Directory has gotten off to a great start. 500 sites already submitted and more coming in daily. The backlog of sites to review is down to about 150 and shrinking daily as I learn to do the job efficiently.

YooHoo developer John has made some dramatic upgrades to his software and the Helpware Directory is where he is shaking it down.

If you wrote me about a listing that appeared in the searches but not in the listings by category, please check again. I think they are all fixed now.

This week we will be putting the promotion team into play to start creating more traffic for your listings in the Directory. The traffic counts being generated already for sites listed should be gratifying to those of you in the Directory. You can see how many visitors you have had from the Helpware Directory by visiting each of your listings and looking at the [ Hits] next to your site name.

When you submit now, you only need to put keywords into the keyword field of the form for words that do not appear in your site description. The system has been changed to search both fields of the listings for keyword matches.

This week we will be implementing a sort routine that will sort the listings in a category alphabetically which is not only fair to everyone, but also will make the directory easier to read for the visitors.

FORUMS UPDATE
http://gethighforums.com/
http://searchengineforums.com/

Thanks to Prime-Web, the developers of the Ultimate BB software used to power the Get High and Search Engine Forums for selecting Jim's Forums as their Site Of The Week. It's not the layout that won, it's the content. And you created the content, everyday since the Forums went live. Congratulations to all of you participating in the most visible Forums on the Web.

Just a note: When posting to the Forums, please do not sign your posts. It takes up two or three extra lines on the page for each post and the information is already in your profile.

This also applies to posting your URL as a signature. That information is in the profile as well. If you have not put all of your contact information into your profile, please do so. It is more friendly and will generate traffic and business for you.

When you become known as a knowledgable and ethical person in the Forums, believe me when I say that many people will seek you out for your products and services.

----------

From the H.E.L.P Forum in the Get High Traffic Forums area
http://gethighforums.com/

Last week I finally got up and running a small business web site <http://www.nicholsonmarketing.com/

The main offers are two businesses I have run from home over the past 4 months and are doing OK.

Main, main question is: how do I get people to a site quickly that is only a week old? Please, if anyone could suggest a low cost method, I would be greatful. Also any suggestions on my site would be appreciated.

When I launched my new site, I used Postmaster2's free announcement listing, and it got me almost 300 visitors on my first day. I used it for my personal site and got over 100 hits from it on the day it came out. For several days some more visitors came from the announcement, then it died off. So, this is a good way to get some initial hits and some exposure. The URL is http://netcreations.com/postmaster/

If you go there, have your keywords, and several different length versions of your site description handy.

If you can offer something of value for free to your visitors, you can promote that pretty easily. For instance, if you offered something cool for free, I would put your link on my freebies links page. Others would too, and you could also promote it on all the Free for All Links Pages, which may draw some traffic, though would not be likely to be a major source of hits from what I have experienced.

Hope some of that helps, :)
Lynne W.
http://caragraphics.hypermart.net/

For immediate traffic, consider running a well designed contest or sweepstakes. Drop in on the Contest Forum for more ideas about How and Why.
Jim

----------

In the Contests and Sweepstakes Forum, there is a rapidly growing list of places to announce a contest, including some links to directories listing lots of other places. Very valuable resource.

MISSING FROM THE WEB
http://jimworld.com/mftw.html

This unique database of web site content and services ideas is already showing results. One site operator read a post about guinea pigs that I posted, converted it to her site's subject of pet rats, implemented the suggestion and already has doubled her site's traqffic and increased sales internationally. Very Happy Camper.

Others are posting thanks for suggestions that have triggered ideas for their sites and getting results already.

Need an idea? Got an idea you don't need? Stop in and click on 'Ideas'.

When something on JimWorld helps you make progress, please take the time to come back and leave a message. Your success might encourage others to move forward. Nothing breeds success like success.

ARE YOU USING YOUR SITE TO HELP YOUR CUSTOMERS

....or are you just hiding behind it?

We've all been to a web site that offers a product or service and seen extensive information meant to help us decide to buy the product or service, and it appears that money was no object when creating the site. Beautiful photos. High -budget copy. Great design. Stunning graphics. Advanced navigation. A sales brochure that could only exist on-line. Every sales question answered.

Now click on the Customer Support button.

Are you now in an even bigger site full of content, or at a form to fill out in the hopes that someone will get back to you eventually?

Most times, the latter.

If you ask the owner of the site, he or she will tell you some yarn about wanting to personalize the service and insure that each customer gets exactly the correct advice. This is the justification for having a minimalist approach to after-market content.

The real answer they don't tell you is the same answer that might be keeping you from providing great on-line support files. They don't want to let the prospective customer know that anyone has ever had a problem using their product. Like anyone would believe that.

Try something. Go to one of the big car manufacturers. Any of them. Anywhere in the world. Now, try to find out what to do when the door handle falls off in y9our hand or the emergency brake fails and the car rolls into the ocean. Keep looking. There's hundreds of pages of $50,000 photos, there must be an answer to some frequently experienced problems. That's right.... problems.

Do these car companies really believe that there is a single person on the face of the planet that believes that they build perfect cars and only have happy customers with beautific glows of pleasure on their faces?

The fear is that if they put extensive problem solving information on their site, they buying public will think they have an inferior product.

Now, let's take a look at the other extreme.

Visit Ted's Ultimate Bulletin Board web site at <http://www.ultimatebb.com/> This is the sales and support site for the software we use to drive our Get High Forums, Search Engine Forums, and the Staff Private Forums.

Ted has a nice site to help you decide if you want to buy the software. Very adequate to the task. But follow the link on his home page that reads '** See the UBB in action here' and you wind up on a live set of forums that has about 5,000 messages posted to it. The major subject range from Installing on Unix, Installing on NT, Suggestions for improvements, Bug reports.

Now go into the 'UBB Installation - UNIX' board. They first thing you will notice is that most of the posts are requests for answers on problems the customer encountered while trying to install the software. And there are lots of them. Lots of dirty laundry being aired in public. Probably scares off all of the buyers that were lucky enough to stumble across this terrifying information.

Oh, contraire. If you read the posts, almost every one of them starts off as a really frustrated plea for help. 'I've done everything right and I keep getting this server error' but ends a few posts later with 'Thanks everybody. I did what you said and bingo. It works perfectly now. Thanks Ted for a fantastic product.'

Is there anybody reading this that thinks there is an easy Perl script to install? But what if you knew that you could go to a dirty laundry site like that and get immediate feedback from lots of people and get your problem resolved instantly? Wouldn't that make you more comfortable with giving it a try?

And where do all of these willing helpers come from? Does Ted have dozens of customer support employees cruising the web in search of customers to help? No. He has none. All of those helping hands are attached to past cash-customers that have paid for the software and are now happy to lend a hand to the next group of cash customers. Most will even go to your site and fix the problems for you. For free.

Does that sound like a company that has scared off all of their potential customers? In fact, Ted has a mega-hit on his hands and while he is due a ton of credit for creating a fantastic product and supporting the heck out of it, a lot of the credit goes to the community hanging around waiting for the chance to help his new customers be successful.

Kind of like the hoards of people hanging out at the Microsoft site waiting to help you. Yea. Right.

I'm sure Ted's nice little sales site helps to sell the software, at least 10% of the time. But I'd bet cash money that 90% of the buying decision comes when prospects see that hundreds of people have bought and run into problems and reached a happy ending within 24 hours. That would close me.

Would it close some sales for you?

'But Jim. My product is different. This wouldn't work for me!'

Stop having a knee-jerk reaction long enough to actually think about this. It is a scary change in your mind set. Forget what they drilled into your head in Marketing 101. It can be a whole new world if you let it.

This is where all of the 'Marketing Gurus' miss the whole point. You can do business on the web using the old text book, or you can try an easier, less stressful, more profitable way by taking advantage of the new culture on-line.

Why should people help you make money and get nothing in return? They won't. Period. But the old text book says that the only way to reward people is to reward them with money. Bull. It ain't that way, but you won't find any marketing experts that will even understand the question, much less understand the answers.

Drop into the Forums. There are hundreds of people actively looking for people to help. Not so they can get some money from you.

So why are they there doing what they do? I don't know all of the reasons, but I know the things they share in common. All of them.

They have each worked hard to gain the skills and knowledge they now possess. They weren't born with it. So traditional thinking says they should carefully guard that knowledge and sell it only to the highest bidders. So why don't they?

Because they are good people. And helping people makes them feel good about themselves. The same feeling you get from volunteering at a hospital or being a Scout leader. Lots of work, but seeing the results of your efforts makes you feel good and that you are doing something bigger than yourself. And the recognition that they receive from the community they are helping also feels good. We all like to hang out in places where we are respected not only for the skills we have, but also for the person we are. Let that enjoyment of reward get out of hand and you wind up with something like JimWorld.

And the bottom line winds up benefiting as well, but not if that is why you are helping. That gets spotted pretty quickly and people avoid you. But give without expecting anything in return except a Thank You, and you will get rewarded. People will remember how you helped them or someone else and they will seek you out when they have a project that needs to be entrusted to a reliable person. For cash.

So, if you're going to try this really scary way of doing business, you have to think beyond the sale. Find ways to reward everybody. Find ways to give people a chance to feel good about themselves by helping others. And while they are doing that they will create constantly escalating sales for you. Sounds like everybody wins, doesn't it?

If you have some more ideas on this subject, or want some help implementing it in your business, or just think I'm full of bull and want to let the world know, stop in at the Get High (Traffic) Forums and say your piece. <http://gethighforums.com/>

The Ultimate BB software is available from Ted's web site <http://ultimatebb.com> He has made the software affordable for anyone that wants to run it. For a one year license the cost is only us$45.00 or a forever license is only us$130.00 and a three-pack of forever licenses is a great value at us$260.00. Upgrades are free for registered owners. He also still makes a free version available for download. Not as feature rich, but it is free and a great way to try-before-u-buy.

If you want to run a UBB forum on your site but don't have cgi bin access, drop me a line at jimbo@jimworld.com> and I'll send you a couple of referrals. I won't publish them here because they can't handle the kind of response people get when they are mentioned in the Gazette.

Cost is about us$15.00 per month including the software rental fee that is paid to Ted for the use of his software. Installation is about $50 and you get access to the administration system to keep you forums in top shape.

Thanks to Ted for making our forums the Site of the Week of all Ultimate BB users. The award is for you, the members of both forums for making the content unique on the web.

TIPS FROM THE HITMAN - PART XXXII

...Creating A Page That Gets 1,000 Hits An Hour, Starting Today.

OK, now that I have your attention, I will go into details on a technique I have used in the past to create a web page that will pull in over 1,000 hits an hour. Actually I have seen this technique pull 5,000 hits an hour when conditions were right. The best thing about this technique is that it does not matter what your homepage or business is about. The bad news is it does require that you do some dedicated research and pick the right time to use the technique.

The basics of this method involve the ability to locate information, and disseminate it more quickly than has been available to anyone but top news organizations such as UPI in the past. Yes, this is about news or information. Because the Internet makes news available faster than ever before in history it creates some unique opportunities. The fact that the Internet also tends to have information on a given subject spread out in an unorganized fashion is the other key to this technique.

What this technique boils down to is creating a special page dealing with a breaking news story that has an extremely high degree of interest to a wide variety of people especially when the story is fresh. I did not know what I would use as an example when I decided to write this article, I was going to use one of the past successes I have had with the technique. Then it happened, as I started typing the article at 12:30am on Friday Pacific time a Network news bulletin broke into the television program that I had running in the background. The news was that entertainment great Frank Sinatra had just passed away from a heart attach. Now this is not good news, and this entertainer was loved by many, but it will serve to demonstrate just how this technique works.

When a story such as this that generates a need to know more details on a story it is an opportunity to perform a public service and to generate thousands of hits an hour to a webpage. Here is how it works. First you hit all the places on the Internet that have breaking news. Places like CNN site, Reuters, News headlines at all the Search Engines etc. There are dozens of places to gather bits and pieces of breaking news. If you use one of the push technology services, you could re configure it to deliver information on the story also.

Now while the story is fresh, you create a tribute page about Frank Sinatra. You give it a title that will index well at the Search Engines, you should realize the importance of a good title if you have been reading Gazette or have used the Search Engine Forums. Something like "Frank Sinatra suffers fatal heart attach and dies in Los Angeles California". Next create a page with a headline text at the top dealing with the subject and containing pertinent keywords once again. Now a tasteful picture of Old Blue Eyes would be good. The remainder of the page should consists of links to every news article you found. You do not want to plagiarize any article Just put a link and perhaps quote the Headline of the ad, once again using keywords in the actual link text.

Time is of the essence for this technique to really bring in the hits. I know you want to know how this is going to bring hits to your homepage. Well, the page will be in your domain on your server or ISP, it is your webpage. At the bottom of the page, put your Link Exchange and or Smart Clicks banners or whatever banner exchanges you belong to. Don't get carried away, two is not excessive. You can also put a small hot link that says this page is brought to you as a service of "your company" by an admirer of Frank Sinatra.

The next part of the task has works best if you have some experience with getting a good position on the Search Engines, in particular Infoseek. Do not panic if you have not had a lot of luck in this area, if you followed the instructions above and put meta tags for keywords and description and include the important keywords without repeating any of them, you will be surprised. Because it is a breaking story, anyone doing a search such as 'Frank Sinatra dies', for instance is likely to find your page if you acted quickly. This is because this is the equivalent of a topic or subject that has never been entered so it will be very easy to get a page one listing if you are quick.

As I check for the story on the net now while it is less than an hour old, the links are already there spread out in disorderly fashion waiting to be consolidated. There are no results in a search for 'Frank Sinatra dies' at Infoseek, but it has one link on their homepage linking to a Reuters article. This is exactly the situation and timing that is perfect for the technique if I were to go with this story.

This technique would probably bring in 50,000 hits by noon tomorrow if I did it right now. But you will find that competition will come in fast for this story. If you are serious, move to phase two.

As soon as you have submitted to Infoseek, move on and submit to Hot Bot and Alta Vista. You will be able to track hits to the page by checking on your banner stats or by using whatever stats tracking you have in place. If you wish to carry the project past the initial big bust of interest when it is the easiest to get the really big hits, you can submit it to the other slow to list engines but the three I mentioned will have your page indexed within a couple days, Infoseek in hours. Do not overlook Yahoo, if you have done a good job, perhaps after you have done your first update (check news links twice a day, they change or disappear) you may have a good candidate for a time sensitive submission on Yahoo. This type of listing will often get posted within 48 hours if it is well done and contains breaking new.

The key to pushing this technique to maximum results is to work on the page at least twice a day with new updates and links, related stories, even links to other existing pages on the subject. You can expand the page to more than one, take it into the direction of a biography or whatever, the possibilities are as open as your imagination.

This technique may seem grizzly when dealing with death as in the example, but if handled properly, you are doing a service of consolidation of information on a subject with a high level of interest for a period of time. The technique can be used to cover any subject that involves breaking news or extreme interest that was not there yesterday. If done properly, you not only provide a valuable service, you create awareness for your business as your banner views go up by the same amount as your hit count if you use two banners on different services at the bottom of the page.

Hayden Mitchell
Web Themes <http://www.webthemes.com/>

BOOK OR BYTES - ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING - PART II

In my previous article, I discussed the very real potential of successfully publishing "books" in an electronic format. I also mentioned the Internet could be a perfect marketing mechanism for such books.

I touched on two aspects of such a venture that require more in-depth explanations. One was the question of what electronic format to use, the second was utilizing the Internet to reach a well defined niche market. Since writing and publishing a book (using the word 'book' to refer to any well written body of information) is only about 20% of the work - with the other 80% being marketing, I'll concentrate on that now and save the details of the various electronic formats for next time.

Let me start with a real life example - my own. Three years ago I wrote and published a perfect-bound, paper back book entitled "Colorado: A Newcomer's Manual - Everything You Need to Know About Living in Colorado." Why this book? Because during the last 5 years, Colorado has been one of the fastest growing states in the country. We have had almost a million people move here from other states. That's what I call a well-defined niche market - newcomers to Colorado. First I did a little research - results: there was nothing like my book currently available. OK, next step, how to reach that audience?

Let me share one of the best secrets of marketing to a large potential audience that may be only a small fraction of the population. You don't! You can't! And, better yet, you don't have to. In all likelihood someone else is already doing that for you! All you have to do is determine who that is and go from there.

How in the world could I possibly get in touch with every person that moved into the state of Colorado? I couldn't. So, what to do? Break out your pen and paper - you do remember how to use those don't you? Personally, I spend so much time on a keyboard - I'm appalled at my own handwriting any more. Anyway, draw a bunch of little dots at the bottom of the paper - that's your potential audience. Now define what makes them a niche market - what do they all have in common? (A. My audience is people moving to Colorado). Now think - who specializes in reaching this market? (Realtors in my case). Good, that's the level above your little dots. It would be a lot easier for me to reach a few hundred Realtors than to reach hundreds of thousands of newcomers.

But, can I go above that level? Who deals with all the Realtors in the state? (A. The local Boards of Realtors). OK, now we're talking about 6 or so boards of Realtors that have direct contact with every Realtor in the state - who have contact with virtually every person thinking about moving here. Starting to get the picture?

Now, is there anyone else already reaching my market? (In my case, how about human resources departments, mortgage companies and insurance agencies?) I don't have to market directly to the end user. I market to those that are already spending money to reach them and make a mutually beneficial arrangement.

In my case this was two-fold. I sold my books in bulk quantities to Colorado Realtors, human resource departments of large companies, mortgage brokers and insurance agents. I offered them generous discounts for bulk purchases and they had something of real value to offer their customers.

Then I decided to sell the book directly to my market via the Internet. Now, you must remember this was several years ago. The Internet was a mere baby compared to today. It has probably grown ten-fold in users, and a thousand-fold in online websites since then. However, it worked very well for me - even way back then :-) I can almost guarantee that regardless of the subject matter, you can find a multitude of existing websites out there relating to that subject. So, let's get down to how to use this vast resource.

Step One: Design a great website - with good content - with something more to offer your customers other than a sales pitch. In my case, the site for my book <http://beherenow.com/newcomer> (in case you are curious) also contains links to virtually every other website in Colorado that provides useful information. Although I have since sold this book to another publisher - I maintain the website because it still generates a lot of sales for that publisher. (translation: I get bigger royalty checks).

Step Two: Promote your website as you would any other. Use all the terrific information that is packed into the Gazette and on the JimWorld site. Get into the search engines, send out your announcements - you know the routine.

Step Three: Listen very carefully to this one. RECIPROCAL LINKS. This is the big secret as I outlined above. Sure, I might get my site up in the search engines - but how many people thinking about moving to Colorado go to the search engines and search for "Books, Colorado"? If you lived in another state and were planning a move here, what would you search for? "Colorado Real Estate, Realtors, Homes" perhaps?

So guess what I did? I spent weeks searching for, then visiting every Realtor, mortgage broker, insurance agent and every other site that I thought a potential newcomer might visit. I would then scan down the page (or many pages) to find an Email address. Once I had my list together I sent a message outlining my book, what a great help it was to newcomers and that my website contained a wealth of information for newcomers (I had extracted portions of the book and put them online). I asked if they would be interested in exchanging links. I had a "Colorado Links" page that I would be happy to list them on if they thought my book would be of benefit to their visitors. Needless to say, the vast majority of those sites - the ones that most of my potential market would go to - saw the value in providing a link to another great resource for their visitors - it made their own sites even more valuable.

End result: I sold almost 1000 copies of my book - at full retail price - in a paperback edition - directly from my website. And, most of that traffic came from the reciprocal links from the other sites. I received orders from all over the world - Japan, Africa, Europe, Russia, and Australia - for a book about Colorado.

Fortunately, I no longer have to do such time consuming work putting together those massive lists of sites and Email addresses every time I need to find potential reciprocal links. I recently stumbled upon an incredible software product that I recently negotiated rights for after I saw some of its capabilities. Although the developer did not realize how useful his product was for harvesting this type of data, I used it once and was on the phone immediately. No big sales pitch here, but you might want to take a look at <http://softwaresolutions.net/webbandit>. This $49.95 program will automatically do a keyword search of all 10 major search engines, parse the results, then extract the URL, title, description, Email address, phone, address and more from each site and save the results in your choice of text, HTML or database. It shaves about two weeks off the process of doing this manually. What literally took me a solid 10 days to do - this program did in about an hour or so. Yes - I tested it just to tortur e myself. I sent it out to find sites for "Colorado Realty" and by the time I finished lunch it had almost duplicated the list that had taken me days to complete - don't you hate when that happens :-)

Next time I will get into the details of actually publishing or converting a book into electronic formats. However, with the 20%/80% split leaning real heavy on the marketing side of things, I wanted to give you something to start with there. Heck, the conversion to an electronic format is just a couple of mouse clicks away (yea, right)!

T.J. Walker
http://www.softwaresolutions.net

HOW'S YOUR ATTITUDE?

Much of your success on the web can be measured by how well you accept and take advantage of feedback from your visitors and your peers.

Are you mature enough to recognize when someone is trying to offer you a helping hand, or are you so insecure that every critiscm is viewed as a personal attack against you as a person?

The following is an exchange of messages with a member of this community that started with his email to me suggesting I mention his site.

----------

>My site will list and put a link (along with extensive
>information) to any UNIX/Linux/etc Shell Provider. I would
>appreciate it if you would visit my site, and if appropriate to
>your audience, list my site as a place for Shell Providers
>(including ISPs) to list their site.
>
>The page is still very much in the works, however we are
>already generating quite a bit of traffic (1200k log in the three
>weeks since I began just working on the page). I will begin
>promoting my site in about 2 weeks when it is completed.
>
>PS I will also add you to my links page.. you give lots of
>great info.. especially love the info on meta tags... I'd been
>wondering what to do with those ;)
>
>Thanks,
>Zoey <http://www.eggxpress.com/>

Not an unusual request from the Gazette community. Very reasonable and I applaud his desire to get an early jump on promotion. So I visited the site and sent him back the following:

----------

> Hi Zoey.
>
> Good start to your site.
>
> It isn't ready yet for me to write about. Before you invite a
>lot of people to come you want to make sure that you are ready to
>impress them or you will never get them back again.
>
>I would suggest that you wait until your content is done before
>starting your promotion.
>
>Your idea of offering training for new shell account users is a
>great idea. It is a much needed resource and you could capture a
>real place for yourself in the informational site area of the
>web. It is a very diffucult thing for people to get their arms
>around and they will become frequent visitors.
>
>However, if you want to build that kind of serious community, I
>suggest you take a more business like approach to the site
>design.
>
>I would start by doing away with the background image and most
>of the graphics on the home page. It is at 200K download and only
>about one in fifty people will even wait for that page to load.
>They'll just move on.
>
>The animations are nice, but big file sizes. And the navigation
>buttons are large downloads as well.
>
>Try a much more simple approach using a side bar navigation
>system with small, simple link graphics and you will have a much
>leaner site.
>
> Good luck with this and let me know when you are ready for visitors.
>
> Jim

----------

Since the exchange was with a Gazeteer, my expectation was to receive a return email with some rational reactions to my attempt to give some honest feedback with an eye towards helping Zoey launch a successful web site. So it was no surprise when I got the following.

----------

>Jim,
>
>Thank you for the input. You have no idea how much I appreciate
>your input. I've been trying to get my friends to tell me what to
>change, but it is my first website and they think they are being
>nice by just telling me how kewl it looks (which in the long run
>will not help at all).
>
>I am a quick learner, and I pay attention. I will make those
>changes while I finish up my site and I will email you again in a
>couple of weeks when the site is finished.
>
>Again, thank you, :)
>Zoey

----------

Honest, carefully worked out help offered and received by a person who got just what he wanted... some help from an outside viewer that had his best interest at heart. Satisfying for both of us, and a new relationship formed based on trust and honesty. My favorite kind.

While this exchange happened via email, the Get High Forums will show you hundreds of more exchanges just like this one where people can ask for honest help and they get it in a big way. They don't just get the input of one person as in the above exchange, but they get help from many people that hang out in that Forum to get and give honest help.

When you ask for help in the H.E.L.P. Forum, you have to be prepared for honest feedback offered in the hope that it helps you. It is not offered to belittle you. So wear your best attitude and self-confidence when you participate. You'll get feedback that you will not find elsewhere. Just ask the hundreds of members and you'll find a passion to help that is the common characteristic of the entire membership.

Sometimes you will notice that a request for help is posted and only gets 1 or 2 responses and they are along the lines of: ' Dear (whoever). We have seen you post repeated requests for help and we have freely given it. But we have never seen you take the time to help someone else in these Forums. That is not the way it works here. We would be happy to help you with this request for help as soon as we notice you offering someone else a bit of your effort. That IS the way it works here.'

Is this mean spirited? No. It is honest. The people that offer their help in the Forums are not paid to be there. They are created by the help each has received in the Forums and they, as a community, have a certain expectation of all members of their community. The standard is not high. The help you give doesn't have to be earth-changing advice. It just has to be your honest effort to pay the community back for the help they have given you.

Take this same expectation of yourself into your daily web life, and you will reap big rewards.

But not every time you offer a helping hand do you get praise. Sometimes you get your hand bitten. Here is an example from a Gazeteer the he thought you would find entertaining and instructive.

The exchange started off with some helpful suggestions from Gazeteer Dr. Ed <http://www.covellichiro.com/> to The Amazing Jonathon, the webmaster of the e-commerce site who appears to have a low self image. <http://users.aol.com/amazj/tricks.html> Probably drives a Vette and wears elevator shoes. Very insecure individual. No, don't write me about the Vette comment. Yes, I also used to drive one. And as you know, I have no ego and a low opinion of the value of my opinions. Not!

----------

Dr. Ed's original message:

>Saw your appearance on Vibe last night and thought I'd check out
>your web site.
>
>I was interested in purchasing your "Weird Stuff" package, but
>the page: http://users.aol.com/amazj/tricks.html had problems,
>such as:
>
>1. It says to send a check, for how much?
>
>2. The address is FLASHING, how do you expect anyone to copy
>down the information!!!

----------

Amazing J's first response:

>1. The address is not flashing (Jim looked, and it is flashing like crazy.)

>2. I would look again. The price is there (Jim looked and couldn't find it.)

>3. The code is fine.

----------

J's second response:

>The price couldnt be MORE obvious and the design and layout are
>what make the site so popular. The fact that you dont like it makes
>it obvious to me that YOU don't know about the subject.

----------

I then sent a letter to webmasters asking if I was missing something and cc'd J.

Amazing's response follows:

>Go away.

I responded to J. as follows, somewhat taken aback:

>OK. I wasn't trying to be mean, just helpful. I think you have a great
>product and you could sell more with some minor changes to your site.
>I'll leave you alone, but I'd just like to share the few impressions I got

>right away. Again, good luck:

----------

I forwarded the messages with that previous message and got this response:

>I get approximately 30 emails a day telling me that my site is
>great (which it is). I've gotten 5 emails in 4 years telling me that
>the layout isn't very good. Which would YOU believe? You
>should learn from this site, not critique it. According to Web
>Trends Analysts Program I get on an average of 2,600 hits
>per DAY. I would say that is because it IS layed out how
>people want to see it. If you can't write an address because
>it blinks then I doubt walking and chewing gum at the same
>time is out of your league as well.

----------

First, think about that last sentence for a minute ; )

I visited The Amazing J's site and couldn't find the price anywhere. I looked because, as you may know, magic has been a lifetime passion of mine. Also, I guess I am an idiot too, because I never could write down the address with that whole screen of flashing text. It was nice to see a site that is such a throwback to the old days of really amateur design.

At 2,600 hits a day, after only 2+ years of aggressive promtion, the Amazing J. has raised his site to an estimated 60 visitors per day, taking into account the number of graphics on his site and estimating 4 page views per visitor.

Anyone ever heard of such staggering results?

It must be magic!

Back to Dr. Ed:

----------

I couldn't resist, my final response:

>OK, whatever. Did you ever think those hits come from your appearances
>rather than the fantastic web design? Maybe it's from all the spelling
>errors?! Have you looked at professional sites lately? None looks like
>yours. Have you looked at any porn sites lately? They all look like
>yours. Do you think they get hits for layout?
>
>You should step back and look at your site critically. Most good sites
>are constantly updated, not four years old. Besides, isn't the goal of
>your site to SELL your products? If so, then the layout should be
>centered around making it easy to purchase them.
>I should have realized that your site was not done by a professional when
>I saw that AOL hosted it. I should have realized that you are insane,
>when you write back to a potential customer with attitude at some
>constructive criticism.

>I've worked on sites that get 30,000 to 40,000 hits/day. I take every
>suggestion seriously. I ask other webmasters what they think and then
>act accordingly.
>
>I spent twenty hours once, re-doing my own personal site over a one-line
>suggestion. That person saw something that I didn't and I thanked them
>profusely.
>
>Bottom line, your act is great, your products are great, but your web
>site is mediocre at best.
>

>When I first sent that comment on your site, I didn't know that you were
>the self appointed Grand webmaster. I thought that you would want to hear

>from a fan with site design experience. Now that I know you are THE Grand

>Webmaster, I'll leave you alone and wait for your suggestions on how to
>make my site more mediocre.

----------

Jay has to get the last word: (Jim replaces word which is probably a technical term in the field of magic, with *&^%$,)

>Go *&^%$ yourself.
>
>YOU are not a potental customer. Anyone who can't write down
>an address because it's blinking certainly is much to retarded to learn
>the tricks from my magic kit. I wouldn't sell it to you if you were dying.

>
>Don't bother responding, you don't exist. Poof! You're gone.
>
>The Amazing Johnathan

----------

I think he should change his name from "Amazing" to "Delusional"!!

In Good Health,
Dr. Ed

----------

OK. Now I understand. The flashing text and invisible price is a test to see if you are worthy of being allowed to purchase The Amazing J's products. Had we understood that earlier, we wouldn't have intruded on this giant in the field of magic. I probably haven't heard of him because I've only been doing magic for 30 years and not a Giant like the Amazing J.

I think the lesson to be learned from the above is clear, even if you are not an iniatiate into the inner circle of the secret world of World Level Magic.

Now, let's take a look at the winner of this year's Award For Low Impulse Control. It comes as a result of an exchange between the operator of a free email service who took great exception to the list that TJ Walker is maintaining of such services as an aid to on-line merchants who are being defrauded by credit card thieves hiding behind free email addresses (which are untracable to the real owner of the account) and buying products with stolen cards.

TJ and the Winner had an extended email conversation in which TJ showed great restraint and professionalism (as we expect from TJ) and ended in this message that most likely resulted from the Winner's inability to debate the facts and his real attitude showed through.

The full exchange leading up to this winning entry is posted on the web site for anyone that wants to read it.
<http://jimworld.com/winner.txt>

Or visit the Winner's web site at <http://yachtmail.com>

In no way do I believe that this Winner's opinions represent the opinions held by any of his countrymen. I think it is a case of being able to turn over rocks anywhere on the planet and find a few like him. Sad, but true.

----------

>From: staff@yachtmail.com wrote:
>
>Within less than 24 hours, I have had enough of you already.
>
>'and other "free" anonymous email addresses'.
>It says "free" you idiot.
>
>You obviously cannot be trusted.
>
>Only an American could be so stupid!
>
>No wonder no one trusts Americans.
>99% of the Internet fraud is committed by Americans!
>
>I deeply regret ever trying to help you.
>
>You have not heard the last of this matter if
>I find my names listed along with the free email
>services on your antifraud site.
>
>Do not communicate with us again.....you are an idiot,
>summed up by your childish logo.

----------

The really amazing part of this sory is its origins. It began with an email from the owner of free email service about subscribing to TJ's database service so he could automatically filter out other free email domains, as he had it posted on his site that he did not accept credit card orders from people using a free email address to place the order.

Things didn't turn nasty until he noticed that his service's free email domains had been added to TJ's database! Then the Winning communications began flying at TJ.

Congratulations to John and his financial partners and employees for their winning entry in a hotly contested battle for this award. We now have a very high watermark against which to measure future contestants.

SNIPPETS

Search Engine Memory Game
<http://jimworld.com/memory/memory.html>

Thanks to Adam Kalsey <http://tmsonline.com> for the complete rewrite of the Search Engine Memory Game. It had not survived the move to the new server and was in desperate need of a transfusion. Adam started from scratch and created a very lean javascript that works exactly like the original but runs cleaner and faster.

If you haven't tried the game, beware. It is addicting. It is amazing, but the Memory Game gets over 200 visitors each day and the average visit is over half an hour. It is doing its job of giving lots of people a much needed break from work-work-work.

I just love having our community members jump in and adopt a piece of the site that needs some help. As this site continues to grow, it is impossible to keep it all going without your help in the community. JimWorld exists to assist you, and the growing list of 'Jim's Candy Stripers' is allowing the resource to continue growing well beyond what we can support without your help. If you see something that sounds like it would be fun to help with, jump in. Drop me a line and see how easy it is to get me to let you do some of the heavy lifting.

----------

Contest Forum, part of the Get High (Traffic) Forums
<http://gethighforums.com/bin/Ultimate.cgi>

A great idea posted in the Contests and Sweepstakes Forum by 'swspain' <http://www.w3home.com> that would help energize anyone's site contest. If you aren't yet running a site contest to attract traffic, you should visit the Forum. The success stories will send you to your site to launch an immediate contest. Put my name in the drawing for anything you give away. I'm not picky. I just love to win stuff.

'If you decide to run an ongoing contest, you may want to consider compiling a mailing list of entrants. That is, on the (entry) form have a checkbox that says "Click here if you'd like to be reminded to enter next month." Once we added that (to our contest) it helped a great deal. They did keep coming back, saw the content grow, and we ended up with a LOT more repeat visitors.'

----------

7 night Cruise to the Caribbean
<http://www.webthemes.com/ourho.htm>

From Hayden comes this well done contest that is another example of how to take the contest to the limit. Make sure you have all of the elements in place for a good contest before you launch.

This page was done for Alan Trustman, the author of "Bullitt" and "The Thomas Crown Affair", two of his books later done as movies with Steve McQueen. He is promotiong his latest book, "Our Ho" a great read. Stop by and take a chance to win a 7 night Cruise to the Caribbean, outside cabin on the upper deck, no Third Class on the Titanic here!

Check out the book and enter the contest! <http://www.webthemes.com/contest.htm>

----------

Oliweb - Free Website Promotion
<http://oliweb.com/banner/>

Gazeteers should check out the banner exchange set up by a Helpware member. If you sign up, you get 50 free banner credits, and so does Helpware. This will help spread the word about Helpware and about your web site.

----------

Web-Vantage
<http://www.web-vantage.com/wv/980515v4.cfm>

Here's a laundry list of things to consider when developing your online store.

----------

Free ads on high-traffic classified ads system.
<http://www.gold-coin.com/jlaclass/e-class.htm>