JimWorld Gazette Issue #59 07/24/1988

Gazette - Issue #59 - July 24, 1998

This week Hayden starts off a series of reviews of the primary submission software on the market. Next week it will continue with another review from Hayden and two from me. We will wrap this series up quickly so that you can make a decision about buying a site submission program. The entire submission software category is undergoing a great deal of change as the search engines and directories try hard to stay ahead of the submission spammers. Software that worked well 4 months ago is now just a waste of space on your hard drive.

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I have started a review this week of the ClickTrade <http://www.clicktrade.com/default.htm> service that allows you to automatically arrange to be paid for putting links on your site to other sites that are listed in the service. You'll see a few of the ones I found in their data base of particular interest to Gazeteers. Over the next few weeks you will see how this well established service shakes out in the real world.

Helpware Directory Update
King Of Scumbags Found! - Part II
Tips From The Hitman - Part XXXVI
Of Myths And Mice And Make-A-Wish
Affiliate Programs - The "Secret" To Internet Marketing
Your Site Isn't Listed In The Search Engines
Get Linked
Snippets

Link to this issue of the Gazette as http://gazetteworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=g59

HELPWARE DIRECTORY UPDATE

The Helpware Directory is progressing better than I had ever hoped. We just passed the 1,000 sites listed mark and continue to grow.

1,000 sites may not sound like a lot until you consider that it represents 1,000 sites, all displaying the Helpware button and sending traffic to the directory that then goes on to visit other sites in the directory.

The only problem is.... me. I made a boo-boo while making the final run to be caught up in reviewing the sites submitted. I lost 58 submissions that came in on July 20 and 21. Gone. Never hit that button. It makes a boo-boo.

If you have submitted your site and it is not listed in the directory, please submit it again. I'll avoid that button and get your sites in right away.

If you haven't submitted your site yet, why not? You are missing a great, steady flow of traffic to your site.

A recent email to the Helpware address revealed that:

"Dear Web Site Owner or Media Professional -

This is a one time notice to inform you that your web site, Helpware, or that of your client, will be featured in an upcoming edition of The Hersh Web Site Observer within the next three to four months."

Visit the Observer at <http://CyberJournalist.com/>

http://www.helpwaresites.com

KING OF SCUMBAGS FOUND! PART II

It has been a wonderful week. Not one single spam from Bull's Eye 'You can be a spammer too.' That is a reason for celebration. I am accustomed to finding up to 20 Bull's Eye messages in my in box each day. Hope it is over.

The first reaction I got from last week's article on Bull's Eye, having posted the address and phone numbers of the notorious spammer came from someone with a similar name:

"I am Christopher MICHAEL Knight. The loser they are referring to is Christopher LEE Knight. Two VERY different folks.

I will be calling the editor of VirtualPromote later this morning to ask for a CLARIFICATION, as they're blast of Christopher LEE Knight has caused me financial harm."

And then "...I'm waiting for VirtualPromote to print a CORRECTION to their not -totally-accurate and very damaging report today."

Now, I can imagine that Christopher MICHAEL Knight is wondering why he hasn't received a response from me to his email. (He never did place a phone call.) The answer is simple. The statements that the story has "caused me financial harm" and "very damaging report" are legal wording and I would never respond until I hear from his attorney.

Maybe his attorney can explain how I am responsible for the name given to him by his parents.

Being a Jim Wilson, I have never actually seen any other Jim Wilson mentioned in the news, so I have not had the opportunity to sue someone for not mentioning that I am not the Jim Wilson they are talking about.

I'm sure that the Wall Street Journal would be happy to print, after every article about some other Jim Wilson, that "This is not the Jim ROBERT Wilson that publishes the Gazette. Nor the Jim ANDREW Wilson that owns the Coffee Haus in Chicago. Nor the Jim BRANDON Wilson that......"

Then came news that on Friday, July 17th, 1998, the four TidBITS editors living in Washington State filed suit against WorldTouch Network for numerous violations of Washington State's new anti-spam legislation. <http://www.tidbits.com/anti-spam/>

Just a wild guess, but the fact that I am no longer being spammed by Bull's Eye probably has more to do with the lawsuit than with the article in the Gazette. But I could be wrong.

BTW - Christopher MICHAEL Knight: It's "their blast" not "they're blast". Just thought you would want to know.

BTW-2: Next time, just try a simple "Hey, Jim. Could you mention that I am not the spammer you wrote about?" It would work much better than thinly veiled threats. Good manners almost always work better.

TIPS FROM THE HITMAN - PART XXXVI

Tools of the Trade

I have decided to move into a new area in the next couple of articles. The day to day job of maintaining, improving and marketing a Web site requires the collection of and use of an array of programs that are tools of the trade, so to speak. That is unless you have an unlimited budget, and can afford to out source everything that gets done to and for your Web pages.

I am going to talk about some of the tools I use on a regular basis. Some of what I say will actually fall into the category of a review of the latest version on some of the programs so it might help you make the decision to buy or upgrade if you have been thinking about it but were not quite sure about the value or usefulness of a program or the latest version.

I think I will start this series with a program I use literally every day. One of the keys to the success of any Web site is placing your site link in as many places as humanly possible. You can find people all over the Web who will submit your site to some number of Search Engines, Directories and other sites. Most of these services use programs to accomplish this task.

In the past, I was a strong proponent for hand posting site data. Over the years now, I have discovered some key factors that have influenced my thoughts on this subject. The fact is, there are really only a handful of sites that absolutely must be submitted by hand. And, of this list, there is only one that is an absolute essential site to the promotion of any Web site and that is Yahoo. Yahoo cannot be properly submitted by any program, and getting a listing in Yahoo now requires a degree of understanding and even diplomacy to get the job done. I suggest you check out the Search Engine Forums Yahoo section before you even attempt a posting to Yahoo.

Because the Web is growing so fast, and there are so many sites that come and go, I have found the best way to get great overall posting exposure with the minimum of effort is to use a good program that has good customer support in the way of constant upgrades to keep up with changes. I use Submit Wolf Pro. http://www.msw.com.au/swolf/ It is reasonably priced at $65.00

Contrary to stories I have seen floating about the web, the Search Engines are not blocking submissions from program submissions ( at least not this one). I am sure that there is plenty of room to abuse the system and get banned but I use the program and know it works.

I have read many times that you must submit the major Search Engines by hand, but after examining results for hundreds of customers, I know that this program submits the information in an identical manner as going to the site and entering the information by hand. Think about it, the most a Search Engine asks for is URL and email address, this is not a programming challenge. There are sites that do present some problems but the problem most notable is category selections that are a little different on every directory type site. The truth be told, the amount of time or expense to get the category exactly right by hand submitting is now not as important as it once was. There are many more sites getting a small piece of the action now, and the selection has always been subjective.

Submit Wolf does select categories and when you are talking about posting to 800 sites, it does the job well enough. These selections are developed by choosing from three sets of choices: Class, Category and Type for the site being submitted.

Submit Wolf Pro does allow you to select or de-select any site in the 1,000 plus that are in the data base. So, if you choose to do the major engines and selected directories by hand, you can deselect them before submitting. Also, it does not submit your site to places it does not belong. By this I mean it will place the link for a business site on as many as 800 sites, where as an Adult submission will only be sent to maybe 200 on the list that will accept adult sites. Many programs I have tried in the past will submit a site to everything in the data base regardless of the site guidelines. This is not the case with Submit Wolf, it has all acceptable categories and restrictions in the site profile and will not send your URL to pages that do not want your submission. Of course the acceptance of any submission is up to the individual Webmaster.

Submit Wolf creates a list of all sites submitted to and indicates if the submission was successful. The list is done by HTML page and there is a link in the submission page to go direct to any page and check the results. Submit Wolf saves each job as a file. This file is saved to be used again in the future and remains available until it is deleted. You can run a page to all engines directories and Free for All's one time and the next time select only Free for All's to avoid excessive submissions or chancing a resubmission on a page with a high position at one of the Search Engines.

The key is to spread your URL around to as many places as you can and repeat the process at least twice a year to catch all the changes and new sites. It has gotten to be a numbers game.

All in all Submit Wolf is a valuable tool for keeping up with the ever growing, ever changing lists of submit sites. Yes there are a couple of drawbacks too. One is that to have the maximum number of sites in the data base you have to buy additional engine packs. Engine packs are new groups of 100 sites each that come out every month or two. These packs add the newest sites to your data base. There are now 6 packs and they cost $25 each. The basic program will submit the average site to maybe 400 places, with the packs the total on average is just over 800. If you are thinking the numbers just do not add up, it is because the Free for All's come and go so fast that there are always dead sites on the list. The main program is updated often enough that it will always do a fair job, but maximum results can be had only with regular purchase of the engine packs.

The Pro version does allow you to write and install a profile to add any site you wish, so you could add or delete anything you want on your own including FFA's which are rather easy. But, at twenty-five cents per site for the packs, it is not worth my time!

The only other real drawback is the database is a real memory hog if you have many individual jobs saved. I have about 30 job files and they consume 50mb of disk space. This is because the data for every site posted is saved for each job until the project is reset or deleted.

All things considered, the ability to keep your site posted to all major engines and directories and resubmit to FFA pages on a schedule of say once a month makes this program worthwhile to anyone who is on a budget and has more than a very simple site with only a few pages. This program allows every page is your site to be submitted on some kind of regular schedule with the minimum of effort.

One last word, it is fast to boot, the program opens 20 sockets and can post 800 sites in half an hour on my 33.6 modem connection. Like I said, I use it everyday.

Hayden Mitchell
The Web Hitman
http://www.webthemes.com

OF MYTHS AND MICE AND MAKE-A-WISH

Myths and legends have been around since man learned to talk. Ancient myths spoke of dragons and monsters. American folklore spoke of Indian spirits and Babe, a blue ox. So, are you helping spread modern myths?

Recently a woman walked into our offices to collect business cards because she said her office received a fax from the Red Cross. It seems a dying 17-year- old boy named Craig Shergold had a wish through the Make-A-Wish Foundation to be in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most business cards.

She learned to her horror that her entire morning had been wasted on a hoax. Craig Shergold did have a wish (although not through Make-A-Wish) - back in 1989 - to get in the book for the most greeting cards before he died of a terminal brain tumor. Fortunately, Craig's tumor was removed in 1991 and now he wishes the cards (business and greeting) would just stop coming! (Remember that old saying about being careful what you wish for?)

But wouldn't this make a great story? Wouldn't you like to pass that on in an e -mail to all your friends so they can send business cards as well?

The Internet is also an enormous breeding ground for hoaxes and myths. Ever receive an e-mail talking about an "URGENT e-mail virus alert, be sure to send this to everyone you know"? All these messages are chain letter-type hoaxes. The only way a person can receive a virus via e-mail is to download AND run an executable file on a IBM-PC computer. These kinds of viruses have disappeared over the years on Macintosh computers.

So how does a person identify a hoax?

The Computer Incident Advisory Capability (CIAC), a division of the Department of Energy, offers these tips:

The hoax contains technical sounding language which sounds plausible but does not have any basis in fact.
The hoax will list credible sources (i.e. Microsoft, Apple, America Online). None of these organizations use e-mail to disseminate information.
The hoax creates urgency (i.e. "It was announced today..." or "Immediately send this to..."
The hoax is passed to you via e-mail. As mentioned above, if the situation really was grim, the company would be on the nightly news and sending press releases to newspapers.
Be sure to validate the warning. If the hoax lists a source, check it. Visit their web site, check a site which lists known hoaxes, etc.

We can all best serve the Internet public by being aware of modern hoaxes and myths, properly identifying them, informing the sender of the hoax (list the sources below) and then hitting the DELETE key.

US Dept. of Energy's Internet Hoaxes Page
http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html

Urban Legends
http://www.urbanlegends.com

Make-A-Wish Foundation hoaxes
http://www.makeawish.org/craig.htm

Computer Virus Myths home page
http://www.kumite.com/myths/

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Tom Chaplin
Another Empty Bottle at http://www.alcoholismhelp.com
Chat Rooms Help Groups Weekly Column * Anonymity Guide
Discussion Information Hotlines Links Stories and more!

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JIM NOTE: Remember to ask yourself: Does (Microsoft, Apple, AOL, whoever) really need your help to let the world know about a virus? Especially when you can't find any reference to it on THEIR web site? Have they told themselves that they don't need to tell their millions of visitors about this bug because YOU are taking care of the whole situation by tell a few of your friends?

AFFILIATE PROGRAMS - THE "SECRET" TO INTERNET MARKETING

by Joe Haedrich
President, Web Cards, Inc.

Affiliate Programs are partnerships in which on-line marketers pay a commission for the business they receive from Web sites who send customers their way. One has only to look at the success of Amazon.com, which recently announced that it had 60,000 affiliates and was adding 500 per day, to see that affiliate programs are booming. CD Now, Barnes & Noble, TechWave and many leading on-line retailers have discovered the value of these programs.

My experience at Web Cards <http://www.printing.com> has convinced me that affiliate programs are as close as we have come yet to the "secret" of successful on-line marketing. We now have more than 700 affiliates and are adding new ones at the rate of approximately 200 per month. Our affiliates bring us more than 100 leads per day which account for more than half of our new clients.

The simplest model for affiliate programs is "pay per click" on a banner which means the site owner is paying for a "visitor". If her experience is that 1 out of every 100 visitors buys a product and that purchase results in a $5 profit, then she can pay .05 cents per click through ($5 per 100 visitors) to break even on the sale--hoping that she will make money when the customer comes back to make another purchase or recommends her site to a friend who buys. This system is popular with adult oriented sites but has gotten a bad reputation not only because of the content but also because there has been so much bad "rap" on discussion groups about sites who don't pay their affiliates.

A more sophisticated version of "pay per click" is "pay per lead" which we use at Web Cards. This system offers a higher "bounty"--in our case $1--for each person who clicks on a banner and then fills out a form requesting samples- -essentially generating a "lead". As with many purchases, our customers don't usually buy when first discovering our site. In fact, it can be months after getting samples, our newsletter and several of our promotional Webcards in the regular mail before they eventually buy. We have enough experience knowing what percentage of these "leads" will buy to know how much we can afford to pay for them.

Probably the most popular type of affiliate program is the commission one used by Amazon which pays a sliding rate depending on the type of book purchased and can range from 5-15%. Here the customer clicks on the Amazon button on your site (often after reading about a particular book) and hopefully makes a purchase for which you get a commission. Amazon has received praise for the smooth operation of its program but criticism for capturing future business from the acquired customers without paying commissions. However, in Amazon's defense, it is difficult to continually manage commissions for thousands of affiliates and millions of transactions.

As in many business relationships, most of our referrals come from a small percentage of our affiliates. About 10% of our partners account for 90% of the commissions which can exceed $500 a month for better sites. Some Web Cards affiliates generate new "leads" regularly because they are continuing to attract new visitors to their sites while others generate a burst of traffic initially which trails off after all the "regulars" have found out about the product.

Key to a successful affiliate program is trust. An affiliate must feel that they will not only get paid but also receive the fair amount due them. At Web Cards, we set up a Web page for each affiliate to track their responses real time at any time. When their visitor fills out our form, a credit is immediately added to the affiliate's total at their private Web Page. Other affiliate programs (such as Amazon) notify participants about results regularly by email. We issue checks to all sites due more than $10 in commissions promptly 10 days after the end of the month. (Amazon waits for the total due to reach $100 and pays quarterly). Payments to our foreign affiliates are made by credit card because of the problem of cashing U.S. checks in other countries.

How do you set up an affiliate program? We developed our software internally but the choices are numerous. They range from services that handle the entire process such as Be Free http://www.befree.com which administers the Barnes & Nobel program and costs many thousands of dollars to simple programs such as ClickTrade http://www.clicktrade.com and LinkShare http://www.linkshare.com which you can set up your program on line. A good description of affiliate program software can be found at http://www.associateprograms.com/howto.html.

As we look to the future of our program, we will be adding benefits to create a richer experience for our affiliates and thus more rewarding for us. We will soon put new software on line which pays affiliates both per lead and a commission for sales--helping them share more in our success. We do regular mailings to affiliates suggesting ways to enhance their program. Contests and other incentives are also planned. We have also found that affiliates often turn into customers.

The nature of the Web is that many sites have an almost unlimited amount of potential space for links to affiliates. Many sites also have huge amounts of traffic but little source of revenue. Affiliate programs are an easy way for them to take advantage of their traffic and space by partnering with businesses who sell products on line.

There are several good sources on the Web for further information about affiliate programs.

One of the best is James Marciano's Refer It http://www.refer-it.com which lists and rates hundreds of programs.

Another good source of information is Allan Gardyne's http://www.associateprograms.com.

Mark Welch publishes a list of affiliate programs at http://www.markwelch.com

Another new service is http://www.sitecash.com

The Amazon referral program is spelled out in great detail at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/...ssociates.html.

Web Cards has been growing by more than 25% per month over the past 18 months-much of it thanks to our affiliate program. Setting up the program was only slightly more complex than setting up our Web Site. You can see the details of our program at http://www.printing.com/bannerinstructns.html. Considering the growth of Web Cards, Amazon, CD Now and TechWave, affiliate programs promise to be a key to on-line marketing in the future.

YOUR SITE ISN'T LISTED IN THE SEARCH ENGINES

...... And Other Virtual Lies

I've noticed a trend in many of my clients' spam mail, and I end up sending them the same e-mail over and over again.

Right after I finish designing a client web site and begin submitting the site to the search engines, of course, the new site's e-mail box is bombarded with spam about the site not being listed in the search engines. If my clients are newbies, I would expect them to react with concern because they just don't know that these e-mails are spam. To help many of the newbies and online marketers with this typical form of spam, I thought I'd share the same e-mail and conversations I have with my own clients that helps alleviate their concerns.

First, all search engine and directory submissions have lead times. What this means is that your web site or web page is submitted to the search engine, the site has been recorded by the search engine spider, but it will take some time before your web page is added to the search engine catalog.

For a directory, your site must be reviewed first, accepted into the directory, and then added to the catalog. The time between submission and addition to the catalog is called the lead time. Infoseek's, Hotbot's, and AltaVista's lead times are about 2-5 days. Excite/AOL NetFind, WebCrawler, and Lycos have a lead time of about 3-4 weeks. Yahoo's lead time is the longest, about 8-10 weeks, but Yahoo is a directory. So I would expect their lead time to take the longest.

Now, I've noticed that the spam mail usually comes after a Yahoo submission, but I'm sure other promotion companies have found similar trends. If you have a new web site and if your site was recently submitted into the search engines and Yahoo, when you get an e-mail stating that your site is nowhere to be found in the search engines, delete that e-mail.

Your site has not had enough time to be added to the catalogs, and these scam artists are trying to take advantage of peoples' ignorance about lead times. If you hired a good search engine optimization specialist, your site will show up eventually, just not immediately.

Also, these scam companies assume that they can figure out your keywords and key phrases just by looking at your meta-tags on one page. A good online marketing specialist knows how to strategically place keywords throughout your site, not just in the meta-tags, for search engine indexing. He/She knows how to use singulars and plurals, synonyms, and well-written headings throughout your entire site. Just because one keyword does not get you in a Top 10 position does not mean that your site cannot be found on search engines.

Only you can determine which keywords and key phrases people are using on the search engines and directories to find you (on your site reports). You might find that people are finding your site using a certain phrase or your service and a location name, such as "web site designer Illinois." Once you determine how people are finding your site, then you can adjust the HTML coding accordingly.

So please don't be in such a rush to hire these scam artists. They are relying on your ignorance. In fact, just last week, the scam promotion company that e -mailed my client stated that their site was nowhere to be found on any of the search engines. Her site is currently #1 on HotBot, AltaVista, Excite, and Magellan for one key phrase, and #2 on both HotBot and AltaVista on another key phrase. Her site was added to Yahoo in 10 days (a personal record for me). I had to print out these results and mailed them to my client to show her that the e -mail was just spam.

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Shari Thurow
Grantastic Designs-Custom Illustration and Graphics
For FREE design and marketing tips, visit us at: http://www.grantasticdesigns.com

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Jim Note: Shari goes back to the days when JimWorld was just a page of bookmarks. I'm glad that when she decided to finally send us her first article, she chose such a good subject. This problem is a pain in the neck of every site promoter. If you are a site promoter, consider sending this article as part of your new client information kit.

You don't have a new client information kit? Got some ideas about what should be included in such a kit?

Visit the Get High Forums at http://www.gethighforums.com/ Select the forum 'Gazette Suggestions' and look for the 'The New Promotion Client Welcome Kit' thread and post your suggestions. This is our first Interactive article. The goal is to pose questions and supply a forum where we can better tap into the amazing wealth of knowledge available in the Gazette community.

While you are there in the Forums, drop in on the "WYSIWYG editors vs. TEXT editors " thread. It is as good of a debate on the issue of hand coding vs. WYSIWYG editors as you will find anywhere. Complete with discussions on the major WYSIWYG editors.

Now that we got you into the Forums, stay a while and share some of your knowledge, or just soak up some ideas and knowledge from the thousands of messages already there.

GET LINKED

PedagoNet
http://www.pedagonet.com/

Do you have something on your site that educators would be interested in? Then you should post a 'classified ad' at PedagoNet. Their database lists resources for educators and requests by educators for information. Stop in and list yours.

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Small and Home Based Business Links
http://www.bizoffice.com/frame_index.html

If your site caters to small business or home based business, you should get a free listing in this directory.

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WomenOwned.com
http://www.womanowned.com

A directory of over 1,000 women owned sites and sites of value to women owned sites. Very nicely done resource, and you should get over there and submit your site. If it fits, of course.

SNIPPETS

Site Launch
http://www.sitelaunch.net/

Looking for more good information about the webmastery arts? Check out this new site. Site Launch has a great start towards becoming a true content driven resource for you.

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Trans Surf
http://www.transurf.com/

If you want access to all of the web sites that are not in your native language, you now have the option of doing so with Trans Surf for only $9.95 per month. They translate any web page you go to while you browse. Pretty neat service and you can get a free 10 day trial. Everyone should try it. It opens a whole new world of web content.

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Ace FTP
http://www.visic.com/aceftp/index.html

I downloaded this flexible FTP program, not really expecting much. After all, what cool stuff can FTP really do? And how much of that do I really care about?

The answer comes as soon as you try it. With the integrated viewer, you can view or listen to files before sending them. Any file such as graphic image, HTML file, Java Applet, Active X control or sound file can be viewed or listened without leaving AceFTP.

And, how about opening several remote servers at one time and uploading files to all of them at the same time? That's a pretty cool feature for professional webmasters or software vendors. How about opening all of the servers at once that contain download copies of your shareware program and uploading the newest version to all of them at one time?

I'll be doing a full revue of this, but thought you would want to know about it now.

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Link-O-Matic's Free For All Links
V1.51 Available Now!
http://www.linkomatic.com/getyours.cgi

If you have been having problems with Free For All Links V1.5 you'll be glad to know that V1.51 has been released, and you can download it right now at the URL above. There are several small bug fixes which should make your links page even more reliable. Download it now!

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From old-timer (around here anyway) Joseph Morris comes this note:

"Jim, its been a long time, I have saved every single Gazette newsletter you sent me, since your 1st one, and I greatly appreciate everything you're doing to even help CyberShop Express Network in design and development. I've taken lots of your advise, I.E.: I DO NOT SPAM!

A web site called DummiesDaily.com picked CyberShop Express for this article: CyberShop Express

Clean and Honest Advertising works wonders, thanks to your help! 2,500 visitors in one day!"

Joseph goes on to talk about getting his site ready for the Christmas shopping season. July. Christmas.

Yes, if you have an e-commerce site, you should NOW be preparing for the holiday shopping season. Get your site 'look' ready. Get your new products in place. Lock in your product orders. Decide on your specials. Get your media plan in place and ready to go. Make your media buys now, if you aren't already too late. Christmas season is a great time to host your first sweepstakes or contest. Get the promotion out for the contest unless you want to get buried on the last page of the contest newsletters.

For retailers, Christmas starts in July.

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Anchor -- New resource for web developers
http://www.ahref.com

Anchor, a new developer resource, offers articles, a bookstore, conference listings, and discussion forums. The site also features the Anchor Web Index, a searchable/browsable index of top web development sites.