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Classified IT hints
by Jennifer Stewart (J_fersOffice@bigpond.com) http://www.users.bigpond.com/J_fersOffice/index.html
When you first connect to the internet,
one of the things you'll find, is that you accumulate passwords and IDs faster than your
letterbox gathers junkmail before Christmas. You'll start by thinking you'll remember them
(wrong). Then you'll scribble them on little scraps of paper that you put in a safe place
(wrong again). The next step is to write them all on a large sheet of paperthat you
definitely wont lose (need I tell you?....). Buy yourself an inexpensive little index book
with a hard cover. Enter all your passwords and IDs under their title and then
cross-reference!
About That Password ...
Its not necessary to dream up a new password for every Classifieds Ad page, BBS, chat
group, Webring or mailing list that you belong to - that way lies madness (and chaos). Come
up with a simple word that you'll remember and use it everywhere. The only
exception here would be for your secure order form - when you need to be conscious
of security. But for the majority of cases, you're not dealing in state secrets, you just
need an easy word that you can recall in order to get onto your Message Board or whatever.
How To Generate More Traffic To Your Site
By Chris Small, a cyber entrepreneur and host of the very successful 'World Deal Center'. His main website is http//www.WorldDealCenter.com/
Traffic is the life blood of any web business and the most obvious place to start is the Search Engines. You will want to personally go to the big Search Engines like Yahoo, Lycos, Alta Vista, InfoSeek, etc., and place your links and info. After you're finished with the big ones though it really makes sense to use a submission service to reach the hundreds and hundreds of smaller search engines. These little Search Engines can be very valuable sources of niche traffic.
Another great way to use Search Engine traffic to your benefit is to actually operate one yourself. It's much easier than you would think and the cost really has come down. You can even recoup the initial cost by selling advertising space on it just like the big guys do.
Okay, now that you're registered with the search engines how else can you drum up some traffic. Well you can install traffic generating plugins. Quite simply you give people something for FREE. I personally use FREE Reports, FREE Classified ads, FREE PostCards, FREE Reminder Services, FREE For All (FFA) Links Pages and a few others. These tools will bring people into your site and keep them coming back again and again. You do have to promote them though. Yes, go back to the search engines and register these URL's too.
The next three methods are my personal favorites and in the past few weeks have generated ten's of thousands of hits to my site and hundreds of new ezine subscribers.
1) Banner Advertising - Do Banner swaps with other webmasters, participate in a banner exchange program, or buy banner space on high profile sites. The key here is to have a very effective banner. It is advisable to seek professional guidance on the design and wording. There are certain colors and words that will stimulate people to click through your banners. Another variation of this is to operate your own Banner Exchanger. You just encourage visitors to put their banner into your system and place the specified code on their web pages. For every page view that comes from their site they get their banner displayed on another site. The beauty of this program is that below the customers banner is a little strip banner that displays your message and URL. Every web site that participate s in your Banner Exchange has your message on it.
2) Ezine Ad Swaps - This one is a no brainer. You just approach other similar ezine publishers and ask if they would like to swap ads with you. This dramatically improves your exposure to the market. For a list of over 600 ezines go to "http://www.site-city.com/members/e-zine-master/ also http://www.site-city.com/members/e-zine-master/ Try to limit the amount of advertising that you place in your ezines so that you don't overload your readers. Some publishers send out special ad sheets that are separate from their regular newsletter. It's also a good idea to key code your ads so that you know where the responses are coming from.
3) Article Submissions - This one isn't for everyone. But, if you have an ability to write interesting articles that would appeal to a broad base of readers, you can generate a lot of traffic for free and possibly even get paid for it. You don't have to write about marketing or the Internet. Just find a subject that you are knowledgeable in and start writing. Go to the above list of 600+ ezines and get in touch with the publishers of ezines that are appropriate to your subject matter. Let them know about your article. They are often looking for interesting articles for their subscribers. These methods will all work very well for you but you must work them. As Alexandra Stoddard said "What we do today, right now, will have an accumulated effect on all our tomorrows." Let's get busy!
- Start your own Sub-Banner Exchange for
FREE in 5 Minutes!
- Plug in your OWN Search Engine in 2 Minutes!
- Submit your site for FREE in 1 Minute!
- Grow your traffic daily with FREE Animated Banner Ads!
- Free Stats for your Website!
- And, earn some extra Revenues while you are at it!
Take one second of your time and click on the link: http://www.free-banners.com
Using {http://www.nnnnnnnnn.nnn/}
will produce more results than simply typing {www.nnnnnnnnn.nnn}
<<< brackets are not part
of the link and used only for clarity. Specific pages within a web site generally do not
have a "/" (forward slash) at the end of the ".html or .htm" but the http://
is all important.
II
1. Don't spend so much time recruiting new distributors while
neglecting your existing ones. Keep them on track.
Remember, their work is to your benefit as well.
2. EXCEED CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS. Give customers more than they
expect. Deliver more than you promise.
3. Believe in your products so much that you see no reason why
every person you talk to wouldn't want
what you've got.
4. Answer all complaints immediately. You may not be able to
solve it, but acknowledging it is
sometimes ALL IT TAKES!
5. Ask for referrals from every satisfied customer.
6. Speak and write enthusiastically about your business
without going so far as to hype it. There is certainly enough of that around and if
your product and comp plan is good, it doesn't need hype.
7. Concentrate your time on projects that produce the highest
returns.
8. Set daily, weekly, monthly and annual goals - and do whatever
is necessary to achieve them.
9. Utilize technology to automate redundant activities so you
can concentrate on marketing. Use autoresponders and submission services
to save time.
10. Get a website if you don't have one. A website is critical
in on-line marketing.
III
1. Challenge yourself. See yourself as having
already succeeded. Reward yourself for reaching your goals.
2. Have so much fun in your business that others want to join you.
When you enjoy what you're doing, it shows. Enthusiasm is contagious.
3. Concentrate on what you can do for your distributors and customers, not
on your own profits. Help enough people get what they
want, you get what you want.
4. You are what you think. Read self-help books. Attend
seminars. Listen to tapes. Stay positive. It won't always be easy.
5. Don't overlook the international market. We're global. And
English is the language of the internet.
6. Tell others what they are interested in knowing, not what you think they
should know. Develop your pitch by answering this question, from your prospect's
perspective, "What's in it for ME?"
7. Don't deliver some times or most times, but all the time. Consistency is
critical, it creates credibility.
8. First, seek to do an outstanding job on one thing rather than
introduce a whole string of opportunities all at once. Build on that
after you're successful at one or two things.
9. Schedule tedious yet important tasks so that you get those done first so
you can spend the rest of the day doing those aspects of the business you enjoy most.
10. Beware the silent distributor. That is the one who will just disappear.
Welcome them to share their concerns or disappointments with you so you can
handle them.
11. Do it right. Do it now. Do it right now!
Why & how to build communities?
Building Communities That promote your business (by dr. Ralph F. Wilson, full version at: http:www.wilsonweb.com/wmta/communities.htm)
"Community" is an Internet buzz word these days. The dictionary defines it: "1. a unified body of individuals ... b. the people with common interests living in a particular area, broadly, the area itself. c. an interacting population of various kinds of individuals in a common location...." (Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th Edition, p. 233)
FUNCTIONS OF COMMUNITIES ON THE WEB
1 Communities on the Internet provide information
2 Communities also beget loyalty. Members get in the habit of returning to a site again and again. They get used to your site, and begin to develop almost a sense of ownership, especially if they are involved in an ongoing discussion.
3 Communities also build your business. Communities build "stickiness" (the tendency to spend a long session at a particular site), and stickiness builds loyalty, loyalty builds traffic and trust, and trust is the common currency of business.
COMMUNITY STRUCTURES
NEWSLETTERS
Newsletters by definition are one-way communication, and real communities require interaction
DISCUSSION LISTS One of the best ways to build a sense of community is through e- mail discussion lists. In a typical discussion list, the listserver software allows a member to send her message to the list address, and then broadcasts or echoes that message out to all the list members, all within a few minutes. .
E-MAIL DISCUSSION LIST . All messages from all the members are echoed to all the members as soon as they are received.
E-MAIL DISCUSSION LIST DIGEST . The digest collects all the messages sent to the list, bundles them, and e-mails them in one e-mail to subscribers either daily or when the accumulation reaches a certain size, depending upon how the list is set up. A digest helps control the level of e-mail, but tends to inhibit spontaneous interactions between members on the list.
MODERATED DISCUSSION LIST DIGEST. Large discussion lists are eventually forced to limit the quantity and screen the quality of messages that go out to list members.
BULLETIN BOARDS One of the struggles of e-mail-based communities is keeping "threads" (different topics of conversation) separate. Sure, the Subject line usually includes the topic, but if you are reading 15 messages a day that aren't sorted by topic, things will feel disjointed. One solution to this is a Web-based bulletin board system. Their great strengths are:
* Keeping threads separate, and
* Allowing posts to be read, searched, and researched later by individuals who may not have been part of the original conversation.
CHAT ROOMS The final type of community building tool is the chatroom,, if you need an occasional facility, but participants all need to register as group members to use the chat room.
NECESSARY ELEMENTS What's necessary to build a successful community?
* Clear focus for the community that makes sense to prospective members
* Technical capability through your own software and hardware or a free service
* Structure, guidelines, and parameters for the discussion to keep the group on target * Moderator responsible for each group or list
* Clear strategy for how the community will benefit your business.
Communities take a lot of maintenance, so it has to achieve something to make it worth your while.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Just what effect can you expect a community to have on your business's profit and loss statement?
* Customer satisfaction through effective customer support is difficult to measure, but the availability of customer support will make your product or service more attractive, and therefore affect sales.
* Increased traffic will produce more traffic. You're now offering a service that participants will tell their friends about, and news media will write stories about.
* Repeated use will develop loyalty.
* Moderating or sponsoring a group puts you in the role of an expert in the industry and gives you and your business high visibility.
* Narrowly focused groups you sponsor will attract your very best prospects -- those who have a clear interest in your product or service.
* When your list is well-developed you can earn some advertising revenue from e-mail ads or banner ads, but don't start a list expecting this to be your primary revenue stream -- it probably won't develop this way for probably a year or two, if at all.
WHAT'S RIGHT FOR YOU?
Building a community can be an extremely valuable strategy in developing your online business. But one warning: if you treat communities as novelties to set up and then desert, they'll soon become a negative rather than a positive. Make sure your community building strategy is part of a carefully designed business plan that you are committed to maintain over the long term.
2
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The Add Me! Newsletter *** ISSUE #49 ***
8 Ways To Get People
To Visit Your Web Site Again And Again! by Larry Dotson
1. Polls
Hold an interactive poll on your web site. Ask visitors a poll question. Have them
e-mail their vote or opinion. People love to give their 2 cents worth. They would
also like to read the results the next day or week on your web site.
2. Prize Drawings
Hold an ongoing prize drawing on your web site. The prizes should be
something of interest or value to your subscribers. Most people who enter will
continually revisit your web site to get the results.
3. Original Content
Give your visitors content they can't read anywhere else. I'm not saying all
your content has to be 100% original, but a portion of your web site should have
original information. People will usually read information they haven-t read
before.
4. Quizes
Give your visitors a quiz or a series of trivia questions. Post the correct
answers weekly on your web site. The people who participate will want to come back
to your site to see if they were right.
5. News
Supply news stories related to your web site topic. People want current and
up-to-date news. If you can be their first source, they will become repeat visitors
to your web site.
6. Jokes
Give your visitors a little humor now and then. Don't be so serious; tell
them a joke. If they associate your web site with being happy they will visit again
and again.
7. Free Stuff
People love to get free stuff. List free stuff on your web site. It could be
software, services, sample products, e-books etc. The freebies should be related to
your web site topic. Keep the freebies coming and your visitors will return
regulary.
8. Directories
Tell your subscribers about Web sites related to your web site topic. The web
sites should be interesting and helpful. Become your readers web site directory and
they will come back.
How to Get Your Pages
Indexed and Then Keep Them That Way (From : http://www.webposition.com/mp-current.htm)
Here are a number of techniques you should consider to make sure your pages are not among
the majority of Web pages that are not found in any search engine:
1. Make sure ALL your pages get indexed.
The more pages you have indexed, the greater chance you have of being found. Does
this mean you need to submit every URL of your Web site? No! In fact, many
engines don't like you to submit more than one URL per day. One of the best
techniques to get all your pages indexed is to create and submit a single
"hallway page" as described in last month's article at: http://www.webposition.com/mp-0799.htm#ONE
This hallway page will link directly to all the other pages on your site that you want
indexed, including your doorway pages. Many engines will only spider down one
additional level, sometimes two levels looking for pages and will then stop.
To better explain how far a search engine will spider through your site, let's say you
have a home page for your Mexican food site called index.htm that you plan to submit.
That would be considered LEVEL 1 of the Web site "tree." If the
index.htm page linked directly to other pages such as taco.htm and burrito.htm, then those
pages would be on LEVEL 2. If taco.htm then linked to cookbook.htm, cookbook.htm
would be on LEVEL 3. Finally, a link from cookbook.htm to orderform.htm would put
orderform.htm on LEVEL 4. In summary, the layout would look like this:
LEVEL 1 Index.htm
LEVEL 2 tacos.htm and burritos.htm
LEVEL 3 cookbook.htm
LEVEL 4 orderform.htm
The problem is that most search engines refuse to spider more than two or three levels
deep. Therefore, all your pages on LEVEL 4, and for some engines your pages on LEVEL
3, would never be found by the search engine unless you submitted them directly.
However, submitting them directly is not recommended since it can lower your
rankings and is difficult on engines that employ daily limits. That's why you should
either design your site to be no more than two or three levels deep, or create a hallway
page which links directly to all the pages on your site. This page is basically a
table of contents for your Web site for the spider to "feed" on.
2. Order your hallway page links by importance.
It's believed that some search engines limit the number of links they will spider on a
single page. The exact limits are unknown (at least to me), so I'd recommend you
order your inks based on importance. As an additional precaution, you might also consider
keeping your links to 50 or less per hallway
page.
3. Be patient after submitting.
The search engines will vary in the amount of time needed to index you from one day to six
weeks. The WebPosition Submitter will give you an estimate of the time required for
each engine and keep track of when each page was submitted. However, if you submit
your home page, or a hallway page, expect to
wait another week or two before the spider returns to index your pages on the second and
third levels. Most engines will put second and third level pages in a lower priority
queue. Ironically though, once they do spider to the lower level pages, they will often
rank them higher than if you submitted them directly.
4. Consider multiple domains if page limits are a problem for you.
Many engines employ limits to the number of pages they will index for each domain.
The number varies, but generally you'll be lucky to get more than 400 pages indexed
on a single domain. I've heard of people getting 800 or more indexed, but they are more
the exception than the rule. If your Web site has
a LOT of pages on it, consider creating separate domain names to host different areas of
your current Web site. That way you would be more likely to get more total pages
indexed.
5. Avoid CGI generated pages.
Most major engines will refuse to index pages that point to a CGI script. These type
of pages often include a question mark and ampersand symbols to separate the parameters.
An example of one of these URLs would be: http://www.mysite.com/cgi-bin/generate.pl?category=cars&subcat=porsche
Instead of submitting a URL like the one above, you should create separate non-CGI pages
for the search engines to index.
If you have dynamically generated pages that are generated without special parameters in
the URL and without giving any indication that the server is generating them on the fly,
you should be OK.
6. Verify that your pages stay indexed!
Once you've submitted your page, use the WebPosition Gold URL Verification feature in the
Reporter which will keep tabs on whether a page is still indexed. Combine this
feature with the Scheduler to save time. After running your mission, check the
"URL Submission Verification" link on the report menu to see what pages are
currently indexed.
Caution: It's important to setup the URL Verification feature properly to get accurate
results on each search engine. Before using this feature, read this page on how to
avoid the potential pitfalls of verifying whether your page is currently indexed:
http://www.webposition.com/urlnotfoundhelp.htm
7. Keep content fresh
Search engines are known to drop pages that have not changed for a long-time in favor of
fresher pages. Excite is probably the worst about being picky on what pages they
decide to keep. Therefore, you might consider freshening the content periodically for your
main pages. However, for doorway pages that already rank high in the search results,
you should think twice about changing anything significant that could jeopardize your top
ranking.
8. Re-submit often?
Some Web marketers recommend resubmitting often to improve the odds of staying indexed.
I don't see anything wrong with this strategy if done within reason such as once a
week, or once a month. However, don't try this tactic with directory engines like
Yahoo! or Snap.
Existing WebPosition Gold users: We just released version 1.10.9 on August 6th which
adds Snap.com support and the ability to schedule the same Submitter mission to run over
and over again without the need to re-select the URLs after each successful run.
This should make it more convenient to auto-submit as
often as you want. Other enhancements were also included.
9. Ultimately your position is what matters most.
Getting your pages indexed is generally not difficult. However, most people make the
mistake of stopping there. You must take steps to make sure you rank in the top 10
to 20 matches for keywords which are important to your business. Achieving that goal
by hand can be a very daunting task which is why
we created WebPosition Gold to step you through the process.
The Page Critic in WebPosition Gold will gather the collective knowledge of all our
newsletters since 1997, our 120 page book, our staff's most recent research, and the
statistical averages of tens of thousands of top ranking pages. It will then
analyze your page and offer custom-tailored advice on
exactly what you should do to make your page rank in the top 10 for YOUR keywords on the
search engines YOU specify. We're proud to say there's no other product on the
market that can come close to doing that. It's like having an expert Web consultant
in your hip pocket.
If you've not already done so, be sure to download your free trial of WebPosition
Gold at: http://www.omni-comm.com/wpgoldsetup.exe
Double your money just by linking
Since June 1997 thousands of sites have been linking to http://www.webposition.com and earning 15% of the
WebPosition sales resulting from their
referrals. Many referral or affiliate programs on the Web offer just 5% to 10%
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