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JimWorld Gazette Issue #95 07/05/2000

JimWorld Gazette - Issue #95 - July 5, 2000

CONTENTS

  • From Our Sponsor - LiveHelper
  • The End Of An Era - Site Searching
  • From Our Sponsor - Gomez.com
  • Central Ad - Review
  • Why Bother With All This "Self Development" Stuff?
  • JimWorld Update Report
  • The Big Bang Publicity Campaign
  • Your Web Site - Do It Yourself? Or Get Serious
  • bCentral Bites The Dust
  • Snippets
Link to this issue of the Gazette as http://gazetteworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=g95


FROM OUR SPONSOR

LIVEHELPER.COM
http://www.livehelper.com

Communicate LIVE with visitors to your company's web site, absolutely FREE!

This new, innovative text and voice chat solution can be set up in 30 minutes, and it is FREE!

Livehelper is the first free text and voice-over IP CRM solution on the market.

There is no need to spend thousands of dollars in set-up and monthly fees. You can customize everything your customer can see with our Skin's Package, as well as enjoy features such as having the text and voice chats recorded, pre-set messages and images, a full queue system, as well as the ability to transfer calls and customize feedback forms.

Try it, it's Free!

Interactive customer care is just a click away.

LIVEHELPER.COM http://www.livehelper.com

VISIT NOW

----------

Note from Jim: Our testing of Livehelper continues on JimWorld. It is fun to use and I've gotten lots of email from subscribers who have added the free service to their sites with good results.


THE END OF AN ERA

I am somewhat relieved to report to you that I might never again be called upon to write articles about how to deploy a search engine for your web sites. After 5 years of exploring every new program and service that comes along, I found the answer in last week's Gazette.

The ad for ATOMZ.com caught my eye. Free and fast. That's the right stuff for me.

I installed ATOMZ.com to handle search functions for the CommunityBuilding.com http://communitybuilding.com tutorials. They have always been a problem tosearch, as they require complex search phrases if they are to return meaningful information. The installation took verylittle time even though I diddled with the options until I probably drove the ATOMZ server nuts. Only I can really drive aserver nuts. It takes massive skill.

The ATOMZ spider indexed CommunityBuilding.com and the search was ready to go. Just that simple. I set the spider up to gather new information each Sunday morning at 4:00 am PST. Or I can visit ATOMZ and tell it to spider anytime I want. Way cool control.

The searches are fast, as I said before. The most complex queries can be cobbled
together by the visitor and meaningful results come back. And they come back
without a bunch of advertising. In fact, they come back with no advertising.
Just a little "bug" graphic for ATOMZ. That's friendly.

Controlling areas that are to be excluded from the search database is simple and powerful. The basic exclusion allows you to enter URL's of directories or files you want excluded. For our High Geek readers, you can even use Regular Expressions to control the exclusions. If you don't already know what Regular Expressions are, give it a try. They have a great reference on their site about building regular expressions.

The free service only allows you to index up to 500 pages, but that's a pretty high limit.

I noticed that you could upgrade to their paid service for larger sites. Anticipating that this was the fly in the ointment, I visited their pricing page fully expecting to see high prices. That is what I am accustomed to in most free services. Prices that are beyond the reach of just about everyone.

I was in for a pleasant surprise. Their prices are OK.

You can grow to 1,000 pages for $300 per year and 2,500 pages for $800 per year.

With the paid service you get a few more goodies. Nightly indexing of your site, no ATOMZ graphic button on your search results, and phone support.

If you haven't signed up yet, go look into it now. It is worth the effort.

< http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=962222529 >

< http://communitybuilding.com >


FROM OUR SPONSOR

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*(as ranked by Gomez.com)

NextCard's Affiliate Program has a lucrative offer for online entrepreneurs.

NextCard will pay you AT LEAST $20 for every sale that originates from your site. Plus, it's FREE to join! Can you imagine a better way to make some extra cash? We can't.

http://banners.nextcard.com/affiliates/affiliates.shtml?ref=tpibo


CENTRAL AD - REVIEW

I've been running CentralAd for about three months to rotate all sorts of advertising throughout all areas of JimWorld. It's time to tell you about this outstanding product.

Normally, I would not need to run software for that long before writing the review, but several things ganged up on me to extend the process.
  1. Advertising rotation and tracking is one of the most critical functions used by a web publisher.
  2. The CentralAd system has so many features and options, it took this long to discover everything I could do.
  3. I wanted to wait until I had used CentralAd to rotate several flavors of third-party served ads.
Like many of you, I went into this adventure with a large community of sites using hard-coded advertising on all of the pages. The only way to track impressions was to use my server logs to count page views. Not accurate and I was always far off the mark when comparing my "stats" with third party ad servers such as Dart. Changing an ad campaign meant changing the HTML on every page containing a client's banner, and hoping I could find all of the pages.

In short, a nightmare.

Sound familiar?

The nice folks at Central Ad installed the software on my server and I was off and running.

First, I set up "Regions" for each of the various sites/areas of JimWorld. This would allow me to track impressions and click-throughs for each unique area of JimWorld. This is important to allow the ad manager of a site to fine tune any campaign. Why not run the ad more heavily in Regions that perform better for any given ad?

Then I set up "Accounts" for each advertiser currently in the media mix. Next I added each of their banners, badges and buttons to their account record and indicated the percentage of that client's impressions to be allocated to each banner. In setting up a banner record I was able to paste in the URL to which click-throughs should be sent and the URL from which to fetch the banner, badge or button. Several of the ads were being served by a third-party service so I just pasted in the code they sent for both of those fields.

The next step was to set up a "Campaign" record for each advertiser. This allowed me to indicate start date, end date and impressions and/or click-throughs for each advertiser's banner, button or badge.

The final step of the Central Ad set-up process was to access each Region's record and tell Central Ad which Campaigns were to be served in that Region and in what percentage compared to the other Campaigns in the same region.


By now I am only about 2 hours into the whole process. Time for a cup of coffee and back for the main event.


Now begins the painful part. Adding the ad insertion code into every page of JimWorld. Made me tired just thinking about it.

Central Ad allows both CGI calls for insertions and Server Side Includes (SSI) and I decided to use both.

Everything in the JimWorld root directory I coded as SSI which only involved inserting a one line code to include the banner and the related random codes necessary to overcome a browser's cache. Not randomizing the insertions causes the browser to keep getting the same banner from its cache as the visitor moves from page to page, instead of calling for a new banner for each page. Central Ad handles this beautifully in both CGI and SSI modes.

All sub-directory pages and database-generated pages were assigned a Javascript that calls for the ad image and link plus generates the random number for cache -busting.

By the time this was all accomplished I was no longer on my first pot of coffee for the day, but the end came sooner than I had expected in my nightmares.

Now I sat back and watched the site just hum along smoothly. The software performed flawlessly.

Reports from Central Ad are robust and flexible. I was able to run reports by dates, Regions, Campaigns and Accounts. I was able to mix and match those options in an almost endless array. Daily, weekly, monthly summary and daily reports can be run at any time for any period of time.

The reporting is usually the Achilles heal of any ad rotation system. It's not unusual for Webmasters to get into heated discussions with advertisers and agencies when the third-party's statistics vary from the Webmaster's stats. This is such a common problem that it is probably the most important feature when selecting a software package or a third-party serving solution.

During the test my site served ads from 18 different sources including FlyCast, Burst, AdFlight, DoubleClick, eAds, and AdForce. In every case but one, the stats generated by Central Ad were within a couple of percentage points. That was pretty amazing to me and not the experience I had expected.

I even threw in the process of serving ads to some sites I have on other servers and was unable to see any problems. If you have a network of sites, this will please you.

A feature of Central Ad that advertisers and ad agencies like is the ability Central Ad gives them to log into the system using a password and run any types of reports they want for their campaigns. This gives everyone confidence that they are not being ripped off.

The only service I served ads for that did not match stats with Central Ad was AdForce. The fault was not Central Ad's. It was the extremely poor performance across the board of the AdForce system. Random changes to the delivery of banners being served was common. If you remember seeing those Privacy Partnership banners all over JimWorld you'll be interested to know that every one of them was a mistake by AdForce. When in doubt they serve up that default banner. I guess serving the right banner is beyond their terms of service. As is serving speed. Or even returning calls.

Central Ad, for all of its sophisticated campaign/media balancing, reporting and tracking features is a real speed demon in serving up the banners. Whenever I saw one not loading I was able to track it back to a third party server that was bogged down.

Central Ad is happily serving between 2,000,000 and 2,500,000 banners and badges each month on JimWorld. I have no problem anticipating a doubling of that number before starting to worry about server load. Or more.

Unless you have massive traffic or too much money, you won't do any better than Central Ad. I know. I looked at 18 competing systems before selecting Central Ad.

Central Ad Software
<http://centralad.com/>

Central Ad 4.0 - US $595.00
Installation - US $50.00 (Have it installed!)


WHY BOTHER WITH ALL THIS "SELF DEVELOPMENT" STUFF?

There are lots of opportunities out there to make a killing on the Internet.

All you need to do is join the latest pay plan, fixed matrix or downline club, and get yourself a web page, bang out a load of free ads and search engine submissions, and "Eureka," the money starts rolling in.

Or, better still, join some affiliate programs, build a web site with lots of great content, even publish an ezine - it's all smooth sailing from there on in!

There are so many "Guru's" who would have us believe that it is easy to build a business on the internet, all we have to do is to copy them.

Wrong!!

Sorry to disappoint you but that definitely is not the case.

Ok, there are many people making a lot of money on the Internet and there is room for many more.

The thing is though, most of these leaders have already spent long hours learning the trade, building relationships, forming and cultivating ideas, painstakingly testing and trying different methods of presentation, burning the midnight oil working on their plans and goals.

In effect they have been developing their attitudes, building up their confidence, and generally motivating themselves to achieve their dreams.

The same is true of all successful businesses on or off the net.

Yes, there are some scam artists, fly-by-night tricksters who can con a lot of money out of us, but they normally end up in trouble. And yes, there are a few individuals who seem to be able to achieve massive success quickly, but equally quickly lose it again.

The fact remains that if you want long term achievement you must be prepared for long term personal growth, even if your goals are not financial.

There is no short answer. There is no get-rich-quick scheme and there is definitely no way of achieving your dreams by relying on others.

Well, maybe I'm wrong - there is always the lottery.

"If it is going to be; then it's up to me".

Whether you call it "self development" or by any other name, the fact remains that if you want to achieve even part of your dreams, you will have to develop beyond your own little "comfort zone."

Don't be fooled into believing that it's easy, and that its OK for "them" - "they've" got it made. Everyone has the same chance, it's just that some people take their chance and develop it into an achievement.

We are now faced with perhaps history's greatest opportunity to achieve whatever it is we dream to achieve, but only if we build a mindset for success. Learn to work consistently on our goals and develop a self-belief that we CAN do it.

Otherwise we are doomed to frustration and disappointment. It might have been better had we never been tempted to dream at all.

Don't let this happen to you.

Read those books, listen to those tapes, do those exercises, meet with positive people, learn all you can. Then you will have a far better chance of success.

Believe me, I know.

Having had a burning desire to break away from the normal rut of life, I've learned the hard way that there are no short cuts.

Success requires sustained effort on your part. Just remember: "Where the pupil is willing; the teachers will appear."

----------

Malcolm Harvey - Publisher 'The SuccessTrain'

Success is a journey not a destination. For free provisions and route maps go to: < http://www.successtrain.com >

To subscribe to 'The SuccessTrain' send a blank email to: mailto:subscribe@successtrain.com?subject=subscribe


JIMWORLD UPDATE REPORT

Read About Our Latest Way Cool Hot Site Award Winner

1000 Web Site Tools
< http://jimworld.com/hotpg.html >

----------

JimTools <http://jimtools.com/ >

Want free news feeds on your site? They build return traffic and loyalty. Take 30 seconds to generate the exact news feeds you want, cut and paste the simple HTML code into your page and you are done. Use the new JimTools Moreover News Feed Generator. Free, of course.

The Keyword Research Tool now allows you to research top keywords using the Fast, Google, Go/Infoseek, LookSmart, Magellan and WebCrawler search engines. The response to this improved tool has been fantastic. People are discovering keywords to target in large numbers.

The free Search Engine Submitter has been updated and now submits to 52 spider -driven indices. No FFA pages or directories. Just search engines. And, it tells you exactly the result you received from each engine to which you submitted.

The free Free-For-All Submitter has been updated to remove broken or missing FFA pages and 100 new FFA pages have been added. Given that on any given day, approximately 15 percent of FFA pages are "down" you can expect to get listed on approximately 1,000 FFA pages when you submit.

If you have a FFA page and would like to have it included in the Submitter, please let me know. Please make sure that your script allows remote submissions. Many don't but can be easily fixed to allow you to receive the benefits of being listed in the JimTools Submitter.

Look this week for the long awaited unveiling of the new Directory Submitter. The programming is complete and I am busily adding directories to the database. Expect about 150 directories when it launches with rapid growth to 300 directories. No FFA pages, just real directories.

----------

Search Engine Forums <http://searchengineforums.com/ >

By popular demand, Google now has its own forum and it's busy. If you want more traffic from this top engine, get over there and join in.


THE BIG BANG PUBLICITY CAMPAIGN

Famous is as famous does and the famous get known through publicity. Yes, that's right, fame doesn't discover you, you create it through strategic campaigning. What's more, the techniques for increasing your exposure isn't as difficult to attain as you might think. A great publicity campaign starts with courage, then planning, and lastly, it succeeds through persistence. If you're not sure why you should seek fame, consider fortune because the two go hand in hand.

Fame will bring your business into the forefront of your target audience faster than any advertising campaign can hope to do. It solidifies you as an expert and creates a deep, abiding confidence in the consumer. It makes you a shining star with infinite possibilities. So what's are the steps you ask? Well paste a gold star to your forehead and let's get started.
  1. Press Releases: Increase awareness through a press release. Yes, I know, press releases have become quite the popular little tool around cyberspace with releases being blasted hither and there, but is it working? Probably not. Blasting your press release will bring blasted little results. Instead, thoughtfully put together a very dynamic one page press release and target publications that would be most interested in you and your business. Don't drone out the details, make that press release sing your praises. Then send it to a real live editor and follow up with a phone call. In other words, let the press release be the invitation to your follow up phone call. Begin making connections with the media. Be polite, be excited, and be patient.
  2. Create A Press Kit: A Press kit is basically an exaggerated press release turned into a package. It's more complex, tells more about you and your company, and is all pulled together into a nice neat folder. Of all the questions I receive, first is, what is a press kit? Simply, it is a folder of information about you or your business. It should contain:

    1. An Introduction Letter
    2. One or Two Press Releases
    3. A Fact Sheet (This contains the facts about you or your business.)
    4. Bio Sheet (Which is a biography of you and your accomplishments.)
    5. Copies of Published Articles
    6. Company Literature
    7. A Business Card

    Send your press kit when an editor, publisher, or producer wants to know more about you.
  3. Newsletters Offline. Don't forget that a whole world exists offline. Locate newsletters or smaller print publications offline and submit articles. This can be a very dynamic way to increase your exposure as well as add to your press kit. You can locate newsletters in your subject area by visiting the local university library reference section. Ask for a directory of trade newsletters and do your research. Once you have been published, it's easier to step up to the larger publications. Fame starts small and then snowballs onto itself.
  4. Speak Up! Yep, that's right. Start giving speeches on your area of expertise. Start locally at civic clubs and local educational programs. Then find the local talk radio shows and make your case to the producer. It's surprising how many talk radio shows are actively looking for new speakers. Once you have achieved Talk Radio, the opportunities will start coming to you.
  5. Publicity Pitches: Put together several dynamic article ideas. Just the ideas, not the actual article. This is called a Publicity Pitch. Take those ideas and then pitch them to editors of targeted publications. This can work very well as it saves Editors time and puts the outline right into their hands. As a past Editor I know how well this works. Editor's love ideas, especially ideas that are completely outlined and correct for their readership. This means don't send pet article ideas to cooking magazines. Send pet articles ideas to pet publications. Seems like a no brainer, huh? But you'd be amazed at what editors see that don't apply to their own publication.

Fame comes from planning and persistence. It has it's rejections, but if you can learn not to take it personally, it will eventually work. Remember, once you start, keep going. Once you stop, you have to start all over.

----------

Anne Marie Baugh is a noted publicist for cyber-stars such as Rick Beneteau, John Harricharan, Marty Lund, Rhoberta Shaler and more. She also owns and operates Write-Promotion an online business that works hands-on with businesses looking for promotional avenues and avenues to cyber-success!

Visit today at: http:www.write-promotion.com or write to: mailto:write@write-promotion.com We look forward to hearing from you!


YOUR WEB SITE - DO IT YOURSELF? OR GET SERIOUS

FACT: Your web site appearance can make you thousands of dollars OR it can kill your business - DEAD!

Why is it so crucial? Given a choice of restaurants, which one would you enter? The one with the entrance under construction, the bizarre color scheme and the hand written menu? Or the one with an immaculately dressed host standing in the doorway welcoming you to a table where even the color of the menu coordinates with the rest of the decor which is, well, just right?

Lesson: the first impression has tremendous IMPACT on how visitors to your site perceive it from there on. The exit is only a click away for the unimpressed!

Take a minute to review my story and see if it rings a bell with you. Above all, learn a VERY important lesson:

I started on the internet about a year ago full of enthusiasm to get my first web site up and running. I dabbled with FrontPage. The first results were encouraging - so I thought. Then I started noticing other web sites out there - professional ones. Hmmm. Now I was not quite so content. Compared to some other sites I saw, the whole thing began to look rather 'amateurish'. After countless frustrating hours fiddling with various programs, kicking the computer and feeling more and more frustrated, my site still looked like the work of a greenhorn!

I liked the color scheme of black, red and orange for some reason. After a couple of months some thoughtful person who had visited my site sent a brief message: "Sorry to say, I could hardly read a word on your site! Your body text is orange, one of the worst choices you can make!" I was shocked. The page looked so nice in my Internet Explorer window. So orange was a big mistake! Time for a redesign.

OK. Off we go again. I changed the colors to red and grey with the body text in a dark grey. Very smart I thought. After hours and hours laying out many pages and formatting the paragraphs I was well pleased with the results. I came across a copy of Netscape's browser and decided to install it to see how my site looked to a large chunk of the internet community who did not use Internet Explorer. HORROR! What a mess! The page that looked good in IE4 was totally disjointed in Netscape. The paragraphs were all uneven and the tables didn't even line up. Picasso would have been proud!

My dissatisfaction was growing. On top of that, I read a comment from a savvy internet entrepreneur who said there was only one design program he was aware of which delivered clean html code which looked good in all browsers. Which one? Dreamweaver from Macromedia. Gulp! You mean I had spent the last four months sweating with FrontPage only to be told that the design program of choice is a different one? Could I stomach another sharp and tedious learning curve?

Around this time I received an interesting offer from a guy named Micah Cranman. He owns a web design firm, Sybren Design (www.sybren.net) and is also a subscriber to my ezine The High Achievers Journal. He had taken a look at my site and suggested a total reorganization. I was skeptical. After all, I had given birth to this thing, we were bonded, it was mine! Anyway, his offer sounded good so I accepted.

After a couple of weeks the new site was ready for my first appraisal. With great curiosity I opened it up. First impression? Wow! Nice! This is my site?

The colors of blue and gray were just right for complementing the site theme of goal achievement and personal development. Serious and business-like - that's the effect I wanted.

The menu system and categorization were brilliant. It made navigation so easy and piqued a visitor's interest to investigate further from any page. Instead of the previous mish mash of doorway pages, ads and serious articles mixed into an undefinable soup, there was now purpose and order to the site.

Now began an intensive period of communication with Micah as we worked together on the small details. His input was invaluable.

Out went some 'cheesy' looking bullet graphics to be replaced by plain but professional list items.

The body text color was changed to black.

A small paragraph introduction was added to the top of each category section.

Unnecessary ads were removed from the sidebar to give a clean uncluttered look. Instead, links within the main articles were used for the promotions.

The color and formatting of the hyperlinks and article boxes was fine tuned.

At the end of the day do I miss my very own do it yourself web site? Quite honestly NO. I now have a professional web site I am proud of and one which is now set up to accomplish my business goals.

Have I got any results to boast about yet? Yes. My visitors' behavior has changed radically. The tracking records show visitors are now hitting an average of 4 pages per visit as opposed to 1 before. The navigation system with categories has made sure of that.

If you've got a minute, just take a look for yourself and make your own appraisal. http://www.vitalstop.com/index.htm.

What is my recommendation? Do it yourself web site design is good to a point. It may satisfy your desire to get under the hood and tinker with the engine. It can give you a working knowledge so you can fine tune things later. But quite honestly you can save yourself days and weeks of sweat, frustration and grief. It took me about six months to learn this lesson. You can learn it in five minutes from reading this article.

THE LESSON: If you want to get a professional web site up and running quickly which will be a spring board for your business, do yourself a favor - Get the help of a web site designer and GET SERIOUS!

----------
Mike Jones writes regularly in The High Achievers Journal. Subscribe to receive great articles on creativity, communication skills, marketing strategies, speed learning, image building. mailto:highachievers-subscribe@egroups.com or visit the resource site at: http://www.vitalstop.com/home.htm


bCENTRAL BITES THE DUST

MSN Search has finally given up on their efforts to sell keyword targeted links on their search site. The keywords links had gained an almost instant bad reputation right from the beginning and their announcement should come as no surprise to anyone. The links were off to the side and all but invisible to searchers. Here is the announcement from the bCentral.com site:

IMPORTANT NOTICE: THE KEYWORDS INTRODUCTORY TRIAL HAS BEEN DISCONTINUED.

If you are a Keywords customer and you have funds remaining in your account, we offer you two options:
  1. Request a refund. We will refund your remaining account balance back to your credit card.
  2. Transfer your balance to buy listings on GoTo.com. GoTo is one of the world's top search engines, with more traffic than MSN Search. GoTo will give you a larger, more prominent listing that is located in the main area of their search results, instead of on the sidebar. A more visible listing, seen by more people, is much better advertising for you. Click here for more information about GoTo.

BONUS FOR NEW GOTO CUSTOMERS: If you have not used GoTo before, you'll receive a $30 credit when you transfer your Keywords account balance to GoTo.

Please log in to your account to select one of these options. If you take no action, your account balance will automatically be refunded to you on Tuesday, July 18, 2000.


SNIPPETS

Thanks to all of you who responded so fast to last week's announcement of the newest version of the JimTool Extractor. If you operate or maintain any type of mailing list, the Extractor is a must have. Try it out for free and find out why so many list managers now consider it part of their arsenal.

< http://jimtools.com/extractor/ >

----------

Raging Search
< http://www.raging.com/ >

Looking for a faster way to search the AltaVista index? Want to bypass all of the portal features and just search? Use Raging Search. Same index. Much faster. Operated by AltaVista.

In contradiction to comments I've seen elsewhere, my testing shows that the two interfaces give back different results than AltaVista. Might be a good idea to check your position in both interfaces.

----------

CRE@NET
< http://www.creanet.com >

If you would like to charge for access to your Web site it isn't too hard to do in the U.S. However, the rest of the world is a bit trickier for a Yank. Now you can charge access and CRE@NET will handle the billing and administration for you.

----------

The Ultimate Geek Fashion Site
< http://tshirtfreebies.com/ >

Free T-shirts!

They don't come along too often. Not the totally free ones anyway. But when they do this site will post it to their Free T-shirt Alert Newsletter so you can get yours before they are all gone.

You may get 2 or 3 emails in one day. You may not hear from them for 2-3 weeks at a time. It all depends on when they find a new free tee offer.

----------

Another of my favorite slices of Spam:

" Hello Unspecified,

You have been invited to Wrist Care Workshop"

So, now my name is "Unspecified?"

If you are going to use a Spam Machine, read the manual and test it. For all of the heartache you'll get just from being a Spammer, you don't need to humiliate yourself this way too.

----------

Behold, the "Unspecified" sender got upstaged by a highly personalized mailing the same day:

"Hello,

"I was browsing the web earlier and I came across the web site http://jimworld.com/ffa2/links.html where I found your business and contact info.

"Interesting! Can tell you put a lot of time and effort into it. Anyway, I'm emailing you because based on what I saw at the web site, you might be interested in additional ways to make money from home."

Wow. They saw the minutes and minutes I put into setting up that Free For All page! I feel so loved and appreciated.

----------

KMGI.com, Inc.
< http://www.kmgi.com/ >

If you have enough bandwidth to make it worthwhile, head on over to KMGI to see some outstanding examples of Flash banners, splash pages, screen savers, web sites and web commercials. These things will be mainstream someday, so you might as well start getting used to them.

----------

I now have the second candidate I've needed to launch a new database called "The World's Worst ISP's" and you can look for it very soon. Eternal First Place honors go, of course, to Canada's Dezines. As it should be.

It seems that Christine at LoveUSA.com has a new ISP, or her existing ISP has hired a kid right out of high school where he was known as the class wise-guy. You know the type. Always doing some weird thing to get attention because actual achievement was way over his head. Now he works as a Spam Nazi at Christine's ISP and she apparently loves the idea. She's letting him destroy her chance of success at her ecommerce site.

Our high school loser has set up about as useless of a spam fighting system as I have ever seen and Christine is using it to destroy her future on the web. She thinks it is helping her avoid spam when in fact it is helping her avoid all online communications.

Christine's months-old Gazette subscription bounced last week with the following message coming back from her high school clown in his efforts to appear intelligent and hip. Looks more like a loser helping another loser get by in life. This childish attempt at humor will help Christine put an end to her online efforts so she can get on with trying a different Net plan. She'll have to change her name too if she wants to avoid being remembered by everyone who ever heard of her unprofessional antics.

Don't you wish you had written the following? Or is your ISP doing something even worse to your reputation? Or don't you even know? If your ISP is http://aimweb.com/ it is probably already too late to save yourself. Better get a new domain name.

- - - - - -

"I'm afraid your message was undelivered because our email system had reason to believe it was junk email or spam. Therefore, your message was sent to the spam filters.

If your message was genuine, please accept my apologies. If you resend it directly To: (not BCC) one of my valid email addresses (see below) it should get through the filters just fine.

Please be aware my email filters are set up to reject all messages that contain the following keywords. For future correspondense, please remember NOT to use any of these words when sending your messages:

Keywords in Subject: money, free, opportunity, sex, business, ADV:, Hot, new, Save, $, submit Keywords in Body: remove, babes, porn, nude To: addresses starting with a '<' character will also trigger this filter.

Full contact details are here: http://aimweb.com If your message is urgent, use this address: pager@aimweb.com

----------
*** DO NOT HIT 'REPLY' ***
spamfilter@aimweb.com
*** WILL BOUNCE! ***
----------
MESSAGE FOR SPAMMERS:

In order to get your Internet Service (ISP) account cancelled, Please fill in this order form:

Name:______________________
Company:___________________
User Name:_________________
Password:__________________
ISP:_______________________
ISP Website:_______________
Address:___________________

Send this form along with $1,000,000,000 in an envelope to: Advanced Internet Marketing PO box 341 Salt Lake City, Utah USA

*** SPECIAL OFFER WHILE SUPPLY LASTS ***

Never mind the order form and the money, with any unsolicited email sent to our address(es), we will automatically send a complimentary spam report about you to your ISP FREE OF ANY CHARGES!! THIS IS A LIMITED TIME OFFER WHILE SUPPLY LASTS (ie: YOUR ACCOUNT)!!!

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If you are interested in distributing a "private labeled" version of the Gazette to your clients or subscribers, drop me a line at mailto:jim@jimworld.com and let's talk about it. Several lists, both large and small, have responded to this offer. This should be fun to watch it evolve. Expect a report on the results in a few weeks.

 

 

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