JimWorld Gazette Issue #74 03/18/1999

JimWorld Gazette - Issue #74 - March 18, 1999

Jayde Online Directory has launched their Gazeteer Site Submission page at <http://www.jayde.com/cgi-bin/addurl3.cgi> Get fast service on your submission into the very popular Jayde engine. Cool.

New At JimWorld
Is Book Burning In Utah Coming Soon?
Some Peace Of Mind For Webmasters
The Advertiser Advocate
Reach Out To Consumers With Email Lists
Capturing Those Elusive Email Addresses
Get Linked
Snippets

Link to this issue of the Gazette as http://gazetteworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=g74

NEW AT JimWorld

Lots of new stuff for you on the JimWorld site. http://jimworld.com

The venerable old list of 500 Places To Submit Your Site is all gone. Rest in Peace.

In its place comes The1000. No longer just 26 HTML pages, but rather a complete Hyperseek Directory <http://hyperseek.com>. There's everything you would expect from a Hyperseek directory. Searchable listings, Add URL forms, What's New list, What's Cool list, comments posted by users, ratings voted by users which gives you some feedback as to how good each listed site really is.

The1000 is already a bit of a misnomer since the directory already contains 600 listings, but I really didn't want to change the home page graphic, so it shall remain The500.

With the tools in Hyperseek like the automatic link checker, the list will be much easier to maintain so that you don't get any 404's.

To gather these 600 places where you can submit your site for a free listing I visited over 2,300 different search engines and directories and selected only the ones that I thought worth the time you will spend visiting and submitting to them. What a task, but now it is done. I'll keep adding more as I find them and please, if you know of some good ones, drop by and submit them for me to review.

These's also an extensive section of specialty directories and engines for you. From Agriculture to Women's Sites. Each of these engines and directories focus on a vertical market and are absolutely worth the effort required to get a listing.

http://the1000.com

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The list of 200+ Webmaster tools has also been retired. In its place is yet another Hyperseek Directory with a categorized directory of what I consider the most useful programs, sites and services to be found anywhere on the Web.

There are some real 'finds' in there that you will find that you can't live without. Enough said. Go look for yourself.

< http://www.toolsforthe.net/ >

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The SubmitBot Free Site Submitter has grown over the past 2 weeks. Grown from 10 search engines to it's current 27 search engines that it will submit your site to and it's still FREE. Each of the 27 will then spider your site and gather up lots of your pages from that one submission. Amazing. I must be crazy to give this stuff away. Don't anybody tell my partner.

Takes about 2 minutes to submit your URL to 27 important search engines all over the world, and it even tells you which ones failed so you can try them by hand. That's hard to beat.

< jimtools.com >

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For all of you Web consultants out there, I've been promoting the classified ads in the Community Building site and the traffic is growing pretty well. Lots of visitors looking through those free classified ads just for Web consultants. Is your ad in there? It should be, unless you already have too much money, in which case Have I Got A Deal For You!

The ads are powered by SmartAds <http://www.hoffice.com/> and what a pleasure to work with. They simply never break. I just love good software.

<http://communitybuilding.com/>

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That's it for this issue. Whew! I'm tired. But I'm already working on a few other things for the next issue. You'll love 'em.

BTW - the next issue will be the final issue of our second full year of the Gazette. Going into our third year already. My, how time flies. To celebrate that momentous event, we will be returning at long last to a weekly format. I've wrapped up much of what I needed to do to the site and am ready to get back to the fun part - writing and researching.

IS BOOK BURNING IN UTAH COMING SOON?

Utah Grants Contract To 10 Stupid People, Inc.

Yes, here we are yet again discussing the relative merits of site blocking,
otherwise known as "Nothing we say is true but we'll protect you from harm."

For those of you that were not around last time I got ticked-off about this
subject, let me start by stating my position.

I believe that protecting kids from access to pornography on the Web is a valuable goal and much needed service not available from any source today.
I am against companies that lie about the service they offer.
I am against companies that provide bad service and take money just because it is a popular subject.
I am against any move to censor content for adults.
I am against any service that wrongly makes parents feel that their children are being protected when they are not. This gives parents license to not do their job.

With that behind us, let's move on to the latest scandal in virtual book-burning that is getting no press coverage. Possibly the subject is too complex for the people that read the news to us on TV?

A comprehensive study of the site blocking and censorship software in use by the Utah state-wide school system and many Utah libraries has been released. You will rest more safely at night to know that the following subversive content sites are shielded from the impressionable young minds in Utah. BTW: The teachers can't get to these sites either. Nor the visitors to the libraries.

The Declaration of Independence.
The Democratic Party platform in the year 1860.
Articles of Confederation of the United States of America.
Complete texts of several hundred famous and copyright-expired books, from Aesop to Virginia Woolf. Shakespeare. The Holy Bible. Moby Dick. Jules Verne. The Book of Mormon. The Koran. Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States.
Mr. Science discusses things that go boom - homemade cannons and catapults.
How to purchase and maintain a piano.
The Communist Manifesto.
Computer Operations, Audit, and Security Tools group at Purdue University.
Krusty the Klown (The Simpsons) tribute page.
Internet Privacy Coalition. Respected encryption industry working group.
Book of Mormon, other Mormon documents.
The writings of: Jack London, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Charles Dickens,Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, Chaucer.
George Washington's Farewell Address.
Web site of "The Privacy Forum", a respected mailing list.
A Shakespearian dictionary/glossary.
An Anti-Nazi site.
The best-known anti-hate-speech site.
Earth First!, environmentalist group.
The Starr Report.
"Marijuana: Facts for Teens". Brochure put out by National Institute on Drug Abuse, a division of the National Institute of Health!
Iowa State Division of Narcotics Enforcement.
The UK national lottery site.
History of Nevada web site.
USA today's lotto results page.
A German company which makes mirrors.
Baywatch. Official web site for the TV show.
Web server of the English department at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Basketball coaching in Israel.
Hasbro, the toy maker.
Magellan search engine.
Student Association for Freedom of Expression at MIT.
Honda automobile parts.
A listing of all the passengers on the Mayflower. Yes, that Mayflower.
Seventeen, the teen magazine.
Glamour magazine, September 1998.

OK. That's enough to make the point. I hope you aren't still laughing at this
point, as this really is a serious issue. It becomes apparent while ready the complete list of blocked sites that the folks selling this 'valuable' service to the people of Utah are doing just what they claim not to be doing. They claim that a real, live person visits each site before it is blocked. They claim not to be using programs to find sites to block. Either they are less than truthful, or they have located and put under long-term contract the 10 most stupid people on Earth. Honda parts? Mirrors? Basketball coaching? Puleeeeese!

Go get your own copy of the report. You might even find yourself listed there if your site was ever visited by their 10 Stupid People.

<http://censorware.org/reports/utah/>

Please don't write me and tell me that "Better millions go ignorant than one tender young mind is exposed to the damaging list of Mayflower passengers." I really do get that kind of email. My automated system to insure that all subscribers to this list have at least a 2 digit IQ is failing miserably.

SOME PEACE OF MIND FOR WEBMASTERS

I don't know about you, but I spend a lot of time just checking my sites to make
sure the servers are running. Call it what it is: obsessive behavior. But I bet I'm not alone, am I?

Just gotta check the servers one more time, Honey. Then I'll come to bed.

http://2hourslater.com

Now I have some help for this near terminal condition. Call it the Server Checking 12 Step Program.

Only there is just one step. And it's called Uptime.

Visit Uptime's very simple web site, enter a URL for each of your sites and go to bed. Or, God forbid, a movie.

Every few minutes, Uptime's Bot will call for that page from your site. If the page can't be reached, Uptime will send you an email. When the condition clears up and the site is again on-line, you get another email.

Now, this is a service that is worth real cash money. But noooo. Uptime gives it away for free. Not even any banners or pop-ups. Cool.

Want to really get spiffy? Have it send the notice to your pager gateway address with a customized message. Now you can go to two movies knowing that your beeper will beep when your sites are down.

Go sign up now and get some rest. <http://uptime.arsdigita.com/uptime/>

THE ADVERTISER ADVOCATE

By Jeffrey Brewer, CEO, GoTo.com

FYI: Direct Marketing Series on ClickZ

If you’re trying to build your business and drive customers to your site, you probably don’t have a lot of time to spend learning more about direct marketing opportunities on the Internet. With this column in the Gazette, I’ve given readers some information about direct marketing on the Internet. I’ve also talked about how GoTo.com is the best lead generator for advertisers on the Web, or as we like to say, "the Internet’s direct marketing engine." For this issue, however, I want to tell you about a great place to get information about direct marketing on the Internet.

ClickZ has a weekly series dedicated to on-line direct marketing. At GoTo.com, we think that this is such a great service to small- and medium-sized businesses trying to promote themselves on-line, that we’re sponsoring the series! We’re not writing the articles, their own direct marketing expert, Nick Usborne, is writing the series, so you can expect unbiased journalism, not paid advertorials. The series comes out on Fridays, and you can sign up to have ClickZ delivered to your email address.

The ClickZ series will be broad-based and each week will focus on all sorts of direct marketing issues and opportunities on the Internet. I think that the more people know about direct marketing, the more they will realize that GoTo.com is the best direct response marketing vehicle on the Internet. We don’t focus on building your brand; we focus on delivering customers to your site. As I said in my last article, if you’re spending your money only doing branding, you may run out of money before you reach "brand ubiquity."

For more information about how to get targeted traffic from GoTo.com, click here: http://www.goto.com/d/advertisers/p/generic/?o=11

To check out ClickZ, click here: http://www.clickz.com/index.shtml

REACH OUT TO CONSUMERS WITH EMAIL LISTS

Although the number of people shopping online increased sharply from last year, more people are tuning out web ads according to The Advertising Age's Sixth Annual Interactive Media Study (conducted by Market Facts' TeleNation, Arlington Heights, Ill.) If consumers are less receptive to web ads, how do you generate revenue from online marketing and increase web site traffic?

Surveyed consumers express that they are actively avoiding ads with little content and seeking more in- depth product or company information. Consequently, email lists and newsletters are effective marketing tools that help you capture consumer attention.

As an alternative or compliment to web ads, the in-depth nature of email newsletters allow you to establish relationships with potential and current customers. For example, online travel company, PreviewTravel, uses email announcements for daily travel alert and fare information, and to follow up with customers after they book a fare and take a trip. As a result, consumers not only receive the vital information they need to make purchasing decisions, but also participate in sustained communication with the company.

How can you leverage email newsletters to market your products or company? First, make wise choices when you select a newsletter type to use. A quick glance at newsletter types can help you decide which newsletter is best for you.

Company Newsletter: Use this mailing to enhance your business reputation or provide helpful content about your business or services. This type of newsletter encourages customers to come back for more.
Announcement Newsletter: This mailing is perfect to announce product updates, upcoming sales, new services, or changes within your business. It allows you to create sustained communication with potential and current customers.
Customer Support Newsletter: This mailing may provide answers to frequently asked technical or product questions, and resources for expanding customer knowledge or skills with your products. Customer support newsletters communicate that you care about your customers' success.

Another way to effectively leverage email is to choose a list server or list hosting service that allows you to do the following:
Automatically send product or company information that users request. For example, the Lyris list server has an autoresponder feature that allows you to automatically send product information or an email sales brochure when consumers send mail to an address such as: <productname@yourcompany.com>
Send follow-up email to consumers after they download your product, request a white paper, or purchase a service.
Distribute information about new products that build consumer interest. For example, Doubleday books (a division of Random House) uses lyris.net to build interest in the release of John Grisham’s latest novel by sending email sneak previews.

By effectively leveraging email communications, you can reach out to consumers and provide them with the information they need to make purchasing decisions, build interest in your company web site and products, and establish a long-term relationship with your company.

For information about the four most popular email list servers, read, "Comparing List Servers" by John Buckman: http://www.lyristechnologies.com/compare/comparingls.html

Contact for the Lyris email list server <http://www.lyris.com/> and Lyris.net email list hosting service <http://www.lyris.net>
Marlene DeVries (sales/marketing) mailto:marlene@lyris.com
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Thanks to Marlene and Lyris for sharing some of their expertise with us. Hopefully they'll come around again.

CAPTURING THOSE ELUSIVE EMAIL ADDRESSES

Anything you read today regarding marketing on the Internet contains a section on the importance of capturing email addresses. Why? Because they should be the life blood of your marketing activities. They can be a gold mine!

Let's say you have a web site which you are effectively promoting. Your site visitors are increasing everyday. But you are not selling much. It could be your offer or it could be the site setup itself. But that could be a topic for several more articles.

Once these visitors surf through and go elsewhere, you probably won't see them again. One of the essentials to successful online marketing is follow up. Most of our sales this past year have been through either our ezine or through direct email follow up. Our ezine subscriber base, now just over 3200, has been built through a number of techniques. One of the primary techniques has been offering a free subscription on our web site. A free subscription offer is right at the top of our home page. We also have a free subscription link on just about every page at our site. All they have to do is enter their email address. Easy and quick! Plus they automatically receive an automatic confirmation.

Once they are subscribers, they will receive each of our two weekly issues. This is our in-house "mailing list" as we used to call it and it's worth its weight in gold! They came to the site because they were interested in something. They also had an interest in what the ezine offered since they subscribed. And now they will be exposed on a regular basis to what we are offering.

We also offer several monthly contests and these links are on almost every page. We give away an ad on our online malls and advertising in our ezine. If you have your own domain, it's your real estate and you can just about do anything you want with the space. Giving away an online ad each month costs just about zero! Likewise giving away an ad in your ezine costs close to nothing.

What if your hosting company allows you unlimited autoresponders, like ours does. Why not have a monthly drawing for a free autoresponder. All it will cost you is your time in setting it up for the winner. Once ours are setup, which we do ourselves online, there is just about no maintenance. It's all automatic.

Give away free reports using autoresponders. Gear the report to your site theme, product or service. Our site and ezine is geared towards online marketing. We have free reports containing links to free advertising, lists of free classified advertising sites and a list of over 450 ezines. Each time someone requests one of these free reports, we automatically receive an email simultaneously with the requesters email address. These addresses go right into our follow up file. Since all are interested in advertising we follow up with an offer to become a member of the Online Classified Club and an offer to subscribe to our ezine. We have a very high percentage of sign-ups to the Club from these follow-ups as well as subscriber sign-ups.

If we didn't have these options at our site, we would be working in the dark, we would be losing sales and we would have no idea who was visiting our site. Of course you are not going to capture 100% but if you get 50% of them, you're that much ahead of the game!

Take a look at what you have to offer for free. Be a little creative. Think of the potential of having access to these visitors a second time, weekly or more.

Capture Them!!!

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Joe Reinbold, webmaster of The Entrepreneur's Home Business Link publishes a free weekly email newsletter "Home Income Quarterly E-dition" which is dedicated to assisting online marketers. For a free subscription just mailto:subscribe@homebizlink.com or visit his site at http://www.homebizlink.com

GET LINKED

The Get Linked section of the Gazette is changing - for the better. Because it is important to keep all of the recommended submission sites organized for everyone to use in the most efficient method possible, I will be adding each week's new listings to The1000 directory of submission sites. You will be able to see each week's new additions by checking the What's New section of The1000. This will allow us to continue expanding The1000 to keep up with the massive number of new directories hitting the Web every week.

<http://the1000.com>

SNIPPETS

A Beginner's Guide To Starting A High Income Business On The Internet
http://www.bizweb2000.com/freebook.htm

Many of you will recognize Jim Daniels as the author of several popular books on Web commerce. Well, he's at it again and this time he is giving the e-book away for free. I enjoyed the book and not just because of the reference to JimWorld, although that didn't hurt. Go download the book and give it a good going over. There's good info in there.

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Games.InternetWire
http://games.internetwire.com/

Games.InternetWire will host up to 100 press releases per day for free, as well as distribute press releases to more than 1,500 game industry reporters and editors for PC, online and console games. This new service launched yesterday by Internet Wire, a leader in the on-line press release distribution business, will allow you to get the word out for free if you are in any phase of the game industry. Give it a try. You'll get ink.

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Legislators Propose Law Forbidding Net Regulation
http://www.andovernews.com/cgi-bin/news_story.pl?138692,topstories

The FCC is peddling backwards as fast as their little legs will go, but still many legislators, and people too, don't exactly believe that they will keep their hands off the Internet. This interesting article follows some movement in Congress (is that an oxymoron?) to mandate hands-off the Internet. Bravo. If they actually pass anything.

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Netscape Releases Communicator 4.51

And announces on their web site that they will be laying off up to 750 employees as a result of the AOL purchase of Netscape. Ouch.

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PaceWorks Inc.
http://www.animation.com/

This one is almost too good to be true. How about a free, online graphics tool to make animated banners and buttons? Big deal you say. Well, how about one that actually turns out cool looking finished graphics? This site does just that. The banners are cool looking and very eye-catching. And my favorite word - free.

I made a few of them and scattered them around VirtualPROMOTE. You'll see them. I'll admit that I ran them through the Ulead Gif Animator <http://www.ulead.com/> and was able to knock off about 40%of the file size with no loss in quality. The biggest ones came out to under 10K. Major cool.

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Ghost Sites
http://www.disobey.com/ghostsites/

Having died, been embalmed and left on public display as a virtual Stalin, Ghost stories is feeling much better now. Launched as a Web site obituary column in the summer of 1996, Ghost Sites enjoyed more than its allotted 15 minutes of fame. Then it just started getting longer in the tooth than the sites it reported. See, Ghost Sites helps us find those Web sites that just vanish or worse, start racking up the days since last updated. But new life has been infused and hopefully life signs will stabilize and we can drop in for frequent side trips down the fairly short yellow brick road leading all the way back four years to the birth of the Web. I was happy to see that JimWorld was not written up there. Whew!

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The Internet Web Source
http://iwsnet.com/

The Internet Web Source is a nationally distributed magazine. You can get a free screen shot and description of your site with a one-year paid subscription ($29). They normally sell a listing for $225 so that would be less, wouldn't it? Their requirements: "Sites must be professional web sites with a .com, .net, .org address. We will only list useful sites in each issue. No adult sites, personal sites, MLM sites or other bogus sites will be accepted. No Geocities, Tripod or Xoom sites.You know who you are!"

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Telephone Messages
mailto:bsmith@icon.co.za

"Hi, one of my favourite moans is recorded telephone messages. You know the type: "Hi, I'm not in at the moment. Please leave a message when you hear the beep and I'll get back to you as soon as I can". Then I heard a slightly different one: "Hi, I've spoken. Now it's your turn". Won't you do me a favor. Please would you put an appeal in JimWorld Gazette, to which I subscribe, for your readers to email me their recommendations. I'd love to compile a list of alternative messages, be they humorous, inspiring, or whatever. Obviously, I'll share them with you. Could be quite fun. Thanks for your help - Pete Smith"

OK, my all time favorite was the voice mail system message for a software company in San Diego. They presented you with options to "Press 1 for sales, 2 for software support....." and several others, ending with "However, if your VCR at home is still flashing 12:00, please hold for an operator."

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Word From The Web Trenches

"Jim,
In a word, WOW!! What a tremendously helpful site. I haven't BEGUN to get all the way through it, but what I've seen thus far is really terrific. The content is thoughtfully designed, cogently written, appropriately long or short, and disturbingly addictive. In fact, I have only TWO complaints: One, that you still have updates to do, in particular the web analysis page that appears to have been stalled since last April; and two, that I'm just a Joe User with no way to really sing the praises of your web site.

I can see from your guest log that I'm not alone in my praise, but from where I stand, I'm not so much a fan of your advice (although it's terrific) as I am a gracious admirer of the way you present it. From the eye-pleasing layout, to the end-user-friendly navigation, right down to the thoughtful, clearly presented, man-in-the-street privacy statement. Just very well done.

I plan to bookmark and thoroughly exploit what you have to offer. In the meantime, thanks again, and much continued success.

-Marty"

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QuoteLand.com
http://quoteland.com/

"Hi Jim,
Open up your April issue of Wired magazine to page 162 and you will see an orange-tinted picture of yours truly in the "Readme" column with a reference to my site, Quoteland.com.

This site never would have made its critical first steps two years ago had it not been for the support that you offered in the JimWorld Gazette. I remember when I got my 100th visitor. Soon, with the search engine and PR tips offered in the Gazette, it would reach 700 a day from search engines alone. Now, quoteland.com averages 4,000 visitors and 25,000 impressions each day!

Thanks, Jim!
-David Borenstein"
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David, congratulations on the well deserved success. I think your progress might be partially attributable to the thousands of agonizing hours you invested in development and promotion. An especially arduous task since you are only 15 and still in school. You are still in school, right? -- For those of you who don't already know, David even worked in some time and wrote the popular "All About Interactivity" tutorial for the Community Building site <http://communitybuilding.com/chapter1.html> -- Jim