JimWorld Gazette Issue #82 09/20/1999

JimWorld Gazette - Issue #82 - September 20, 1999

I Must Be Crazy To Give This Stuff Away
New Thrills In The Forums
Rest Break
A Must Have JimTool - FillOut
Free Email For Fun And Profit
PR Should Stand For "Profit Resource"
Affiliate Programs At The Speed Of Light
Get Linked
Snippets

Link to this issue of the Gazette as http://gazetteworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=g82

I MUST BE CRAZY TO GIVE THIS STUFF AWAY

New JimTools
http://jimtools.com/

Some very popular new tools this time. Give them a try. You'll be addicted.

Research keywords on GoTo.com and creates a report of the costs to be at various positions in the first page of returns. Hard to describe. Just try it and you'll see why it is soooo popular already.
Spell check your page with some real style. This one looks great and works too. What more is there?
Just look around. There are a couple more new tools for you to find.

The position checker is undergoing major overhaul to make it easier to maintain. Should be back in about 2 weeks.

REST BREAK

I found a great page of computer one-liners at http://www.oneliners-and-proverbs.com/

I haven't lost my mind; it's backed up on tape somewhere.
(This one is destined to be my new slogan for 2000)
I hit the CTRL key but I'm still not in control!
It works! Now if only I could remember what I did...
There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
Why do they call this a word processor?It's simple, ... you've seen what food processors do to food, right?
Daddy, what does FORMATTING DRIVE C mean?
Failure is not an option, it comes bundled with the software.
A paperless office has about as much chance as a paperless bathroom.

The above must be rapidly followed by a visit to BusinessElite.com at http://www.businesselite.com/index1.htm specifically to their page entitled "New Buzz Words for 1999" where you will find a growing dictionary of Techno-Speak. Just a taste to get you going:

Irritainment: Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying, but you find yourself unable to stop watching them. The O.J. trials were a prime example.

Blamestorming: Sitting around in a group discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.

While you're at BusinessElite.com you can see if they have any 7-digit jobs just waiting for you to show up. It's a very well done site with an attitude targeted at job-switchers in the higher tax brackets. Please don't press your nose to the window and fog up the glass. It won't help. At least it didn't help me get a 7-digit offer. I'll be really upset if it works for you.

A MUST HAVE JIMTOOL - FILLOUT

FillOut Manager
http://www.theill.com/fillout/

This is another of those tools that will make you wonder "How did I ever get along before FillOut Manager?"

Just run the program, enter all of the information you need when promoting your site then venture forth and promote with speed and efficiency.

FillOut Manager allows you to build a data set for each of your sites. You can enter URL, descriptions, keywords, name, address, phone... well, anything you need when filling out forms.

Just visit a submission page at any of The1000 submission sites and start dragging information from FillOut Manager and dropping it into the appropriate fields in your browser.

It doesn't get much easier than that (Yet).

The program's author indicates that there are some problems if you are running Windows 98 and Internet Explorer. I am running Windows 98 and Netscape 4/5 and having no problems at all.

The program is freeware, so give it a try. It's a Must Have.

Next issue I'll tell you about a Password rememberer that actually WORKS!

FREE EMAIL FOR FUN AND PROFIT

It seems like everywhere I go lately, the subject of offering free email accounts comes up. Until a couple of months ago, it was pretty much a black hole in Cyberspace. Or maybe I just wasn't tuned into the right frequency.

The ad in the last Gazette for Everyone.net got me curious about the status of free email accounts, so I did some digging and talked to a bunch of people that are already offering the service on their sites.

Without exception, everyone I talked to said that the free service was working some magic in their communities. Traffic up. Member satisfaction up. And all from a service that costs nothing to offer. I like that.

Here's the story.

You can offer your community members a free email account using your own domain name. They become billybob@yourdomain.com. They can use this address for anything they want, including designating it as their primary email address.

Now you have people running around the Web spreading the word about your domain, and so far, no cost to you. If your community has regular visitors, they will want to show off their "insider" status in the community by using your domain name. Kind of like free advertising, isn't it?

Several times each day when your members check their email, they have the opportunity to easily drop in on your site to see what's going on. That equals more traffic. That's good.

Every time they send an email, the person receiving the email is reminded that you exist. That's also good. Eventually they will stop in to see you.

If you are using Everyone.net to host your free email, you don't pay for the service because they split the advertising impressions with you. So instead of paying money out each month, you have lots of new banner inventory at your disposal. I didn't find any others offering this financial arrangement, but I didn't look at all of them.

So here you have a service that serves your community, enhances your domain name image, generates traffic to your site, costs you nothing, gives you banner inventory to sell and doesn't load down your server.

Excuse me. What else do you need in order to offer this to your community?

PR SHOULD STAND FOR "PROFIT RESOURCE"

The most boring thing in the world is listening to PR people try to explain what they do. I'll tell you what they do. They start a high ticket taxi meter running and take you for as long a ride as possible. When their income is based on dollars times hours, being efficient works against their own interests.

Thus begins the newest Guest Tutorial on VirtualPROMOTE. With a start like that, you can imagine where Martin Winston goes from there. With 20+ years in the PR biz, Marty has a straight-forward view of what PR is, and isn't.

Read the entire story at http://jimworld.com/prwinston.html

AFFILIATE PROGRAMS AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT

JimWorld Goodies
http://shop.affinia.com/adman/Store/

Just when I think I've seen it all, I get blind-sided by someone's really cool idea. But ideas are cheap, everyone has lots of them.

Implementation is where most great ideas run off the road and wind up in the ditch.

Not so with Affinia, Inc.

Affinia has gathered up a TON of product offerings from sites such as Amazon, Egghead, ValueAmerica... broken them down into 19 logical categories, and deployed one heck of a storefront generating system that will let you set up a storefront in about 30 minutes.

It works like this for site owners:

You register with Affinia and create your storefront.
You customize the look of the site to be compatible with your site.
You select the products you want to offer in your store. Each product shows how much you will be paid for each person that clicks on the link to the vendors order page.
You start promoting you storefront.

Start to finish, about 30 minutes, and the results look great. Click on mine
above to see what I mean.

Affinia only offers products that are willing to pay for click-throughs, not for commissions on sales. That makes the system easy to audit. They pay the earnings to the storefront owners each quarter (which is one of the few flaws I found in the system) but you can monitor your store's performance through the excellent and professional management reports available online to their store operators.

Their system has several advanced features such as allowing the store operator to select products to be featured on the site, and the ability for the store operator to enter her own comments and review of each product.

An excellent advantage to their system is that store operators can now promote their click-through programs in e-zines and email, unlike the Click-Trade system that disallows anything but a web site link.

The system has only a few areas that need improvement:

As stated above, quarterly payments are a red flag in an industry where entire trends can last only weeks and the mortality rate of sites is astronomical. I'd prefer to see people getting paid monthly even if Affinia has to use their own funds to cover their receivables cycle. This is one of the features of Startpath.net that has impressed me the most. They take the risk, not the web site operator. On the other hand, you don't have a lot to lose even if you never get paid. This represents a new revenue stream.
The product selection process is cumbersome, but functional.
It takes a while for a new visitor to figure out how they will get paid. It could be made more clear by tellingvisitors on the front page that it is a click-through based system and not a commission system.

Affinia is in Betatesting now, but everything is working remarkably well. The fact that I was impressed by this only shows how far we have lowered our expectations of new launches.

If you are an evendor, you can sign up for the Affinia program even if you do not have any type of affiliate program in place. This could be an excellent way to find targeted traffic on a cost-per-visitor basis.

I think I'll leave my store in operation and see if it makes any money. Could happen.

GET LINKED

Visit The1000 at http://the1000.com/ for 11 new places to submit your site for a free listing.

SNIPPETS

Datamation/Dice IT salary tracker
http://www.datamation.com/PlugIn/workbench/itsvc/stories/9909web.html

9/21/99 12:00PM
If you are a web developer in Atlanta or Seattle, sorry about that. According to a recent Datamation survey, you could earn a lot more by moving to New York or Silicon Valley. A professional web developer in New York earns an average of $78,000 per year and Silicon Valley pays $74,000, but Atlanta feels that the job is only worth $57,000. Seattle isn't much better at $59,000. The $19,000 difference buys a lot of subway tokens.

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Manage Your Bandwidth Demons
http://www.elronsoftware.com/guidebw

Elron Software is making available its free guide for network administrators: "Attain Vision, Take Control: A Guide to Bandwidth Management." This 21-page guide provides network administrators with a resource to evaluate their risks from unmanaged Internet traffic. Unmanaged traffic on a company's Internet connection can result in slowdowns across the LAN (Local Area Network) -- creating drains on performance and overall business productivity. Internet traffic, according to ZD Market Intelligence, is the second largest consumer of network bandwidth.

Get bandwidth under control to insure that enough is available to keep customers and employees all doing what they need to do during peak selling seasons.

Download the free report at http://www.elronsoftware.com/guidebw

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Bid.com Reseller Room
http://www.bid.com/storefronts/us/default.asp?hStore=1&sStorefrontID=RESELLER

If you know about computer hardware, you should drop in at the new Reseller area of Bid.com. Their new Reseller service lists computer products that have been factory refurbished and offered at significant discounts. Currently I only saw Compaq systems, but the deals were great. How about a P133/12.1 inch screen laptop for only $377? Not a speed demon for the multimedia guru, but checking email or writing a book should fit on it pretty well.

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Is $6,000,000.00 US Enough for these Domain Names?

Communication-Services.com
Communication-Services.net
Communication-Services.org

Find out at http://www.internetwire.com/technews/tn/tn984161.dsl

Let me know if you buy one. I have www.nobodycouldeverrememberthisURL.com for sale at the greatly reduced price of 3 million US. Cash sale only. No checks.

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Thousands of travel lovers around the globe are touring the states today without packing a bag or spending a dime. They're hitching a free ride on the Information Superhighway at http://www.PostcardsFrom.com joining a writer and a photographer as they drive across America, publishing live postcards from the road.

Never miss even the most obscure ideas when building community.

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This Is True
http://www.thisistrue.com/

Take a break and laugh a bit. The following sample should get you to click and visit.

"If It's For Me, I'm Not In. Zach Williams, 18, was robbed in Chattanooga, Tenn. He tried to run away and was shot to death. One of the things the robbers stole: his pager. Police, upon learning about the beeper, figured "why not?" and sent it a page. When the murderers returned the cops' call, it was traced to George Morgan, 19, and his cousin Antonio Morgan, 18, who were arrested and charged with murder. (AP) ...Bit by bit, Darwin is being proved right."

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Deadbeats Who'S Who
http://www.classichits.com/dbww/main.htm

A new ezine and web site started operation this week, and it is a hoot. Their purpose in life is to list people and businesses that don't pay their bills to other people and businesses on the Net. The publishers hope that the result of being listed in their ezine will be the payment of real debts.

The publishers ask the person complaining of not being paid to send in complete documentation of the debt, and then they offer the debtor the opportunity to counter with their own information about the issue, or to pay before they are added to the list, which has already happened once.

The operators of the site and ezine have announced that they will be offering an e-debt collection service. You can also advertise in their ezine.

Talk about shining a light on someone! If you owe anyone money for online goods or services, you might want to pay them today. If you have valid receivables you now have a small way to get some attention from that person that won't even return your email and phone calls.

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Consumer E-Commerce Revenues to Grow To $18 Billion in 1999
http://www.emarketer.com

eMarketer's recently released eRetail Report, estimates that consumer online purchases will total $18.6 billion in 1999 and that the top two e-retail categories, travel and computer goods (hardware and software), alone will account for just over 60% of this amount. Other top five categories include books, gifts and flowers, and music.

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OnYourSite
http://www.onyoursite.com/

Have you seen the very cool tool at the bottom of the JimTools.com pages? http://jimtools.com/

You can put this gadget on your site and let your visitors look up the time anywhere in the world. They select from a drop-down list of countries and hit the button. Up pops a small window with the correct time. The service is advertising supported so it is free to web sites. With their techniques, you never lose your traffic and the service is popular.

The banner on JimTools is just that - a banner ad. And it is getting a lot of clicks, but on your site the services is only the drop-down list of countries, not the banner ad.

I've found myself using it frequently when I need to estimate when I might hear back from someone, so I plan to keep the tool on the JimTools site even after the banner campaign is over.

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Understanding Color
http://library.advanced.org/50065/colorj/

Color surrounds us everywhere! It affects the way we see, the way we live, the way we react. It is an important aspect in everything we do in this world. This site is designed to provide you with information on how color plays a role in our lives by examining the properties, theories, meanings and effects of color.

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Free Computer Keyboard
http://www.rocketboard.com

RocketBoard is a high-quality keyboard with an extra row of keys that, when pressed, get you right onto the web! It launches your browser, it connects -- just hit a key and you're there. There's no catch. No contracts. They're giving away millions for free. Sign up now and be one of the first to get on the web in the easiest, fastest way possible.