Contents Of This Issue:

• Editor's Notes
• Cool Quotes
• Hit Counters versus Log Analysis II, by Rod Aries
• Sponsor Message
• The Discussion Board
• Searching With Hayden
• What's New At Promotion World
• Ins and Outs of Affiliate Programs
• Sponsor Message
• Website Usability
• News Headlines
• Misc. Information

This has been an amazing two weeks at Promotion World! Articles, tools and more have been added at a blistering rate. The What's New at Promotion World section below is rather lengthy!

There are also a few new features in this week's newsletter. I'll let you see them for yourself!

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If a trainstation is where the train stops, what's a workstation...?

• Anonymous

  Scientists say there are over 3,000 spiders for every human being on earth. Does anybody want mine? I certainly don't.
  

• Chuck Bonner

  Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
  

• Abraham Lincoln

Download all the past Cool Quotes by sending any email to mailto:quotes@promotionworld.com. Enjoy!

Hit Counters versus Log Analysis, Part II
By Rod Aries

In the last issue we discussed why you need log analysis, hit counters versus log analysis and just what are hits; and in the second part we will discuss what is the most important report you can use, how to find diamonds in the garbage, how to use logs to tweak your site, how logs tell you if you really do have content and we will share a secret tip with you.

||| OVERVIEW |||
Sorry folks, hit counters just don't cut it if you really want to create an Internet business... If you expect your site to generate any revenue, you should consider adding logs to every page on your site. Using a hit counter is like driving in rain, without your windshield wipers on - you can do it, but... Logs are the tool that let you see through the rain ahead AND behind you.

||| What is the Most Important Report? |||
So what is the most valuable report you can have? It is what keywords your visitor looked up to find you!!!!!

||| Don't Mistake Diamonds for Garbage |||
Raw logs can be hard to read if you look at them manually, but just because the information looks messy and hard to read (until you get the hang of it), don't assume their is no value. There are hundreds of diamonds in the logs.

In example, I can take the following user generated search, see the terms used (i.e., discount phone rates) and see where it ranks in the search engine (Infoseek). http://www.infoseek.com/Titles?col=New+Search&qt=Discount+phone+rates&oq=Discount+phone+rates&sv=N5&lk=noframes&nh=10http://www.infoseek..com/Titles?col=New+Search&qt=Discount+phone+rates&oq=Discount+phone+rates&sv=N5&lk=noframes&nh=1 (if you want to replicate this actual search, you have to piece each of the lines together in the URL, you will see (assuming algorithm's haven't changed much) that two of my discount long distance sites (as of Mid-October 98) rank 6th ( http://www.1discountlongdistance.com/ ) and 7th ( http://www.net-savings.net ) out of 13,000,000 pages...)

By replicating the viewers keyword search in a specific search engine, I can see who is ahead of me, and then do analysis to see why. This is very valuable if you are ranked in the top 200 and need to climb a bit more to get found.

||| Logs Work for Me and Logs Can Work for You |||
OK, back to our story, once more...
Of all the techniques discussed on search engine optimization, meta-jacking, keyword frequency, content relevancy, keyword density... this simple technique of replicating user search terms has resulted in the greatest knowledge as to what works and what doesn't. I have added 5,000++ unique page views a month by just seeing how people come to my site, and who ranked ahead of me, and then 1) tweaking my existing pages and 2) adding new pages that offer more information on the keywords people were looking for -- it has been that simple. I could NOT have done this with hit counters, only with logs!

||| Using Unique Visitors to Determine if You Really Have Content ||| Now, let's address unique page views for a moment. This is one of my favorite reports together with unique visitors. A couple of examples:

Assume you have a 20 page web site. And you review your logs and find 10 unique page views and 10 unique visitors. This tells you, they are coming to your site, regardless of the web page, and then leaving without going any further. Why? They could be coming in through a back-door (not your main or index page) and not seeing a navigational bar to go elsewhere, or worse, you could have crummy content. But at least you will know.

Assume you have the same 20 page web site. And you review your logs and find 100 unique page views and 10 unique visitors. Doing the math (hey, that calculus course at the University of Washington really did pay off), you find that each visitor, on average visited 10 pages. The more pages a unique visitor visits, the more valuable your content is. Furthermore, by using your logs, you can see how long they spend at each page. If you find a lot of 2-4 minute page views, the visitor is reading your page. A lot of 10-30 second views, well you don't have the content they are looking for.

Now we all have our indicators for success, and obviously ordering your product or service is the ultimate score card, but the deeper the penetration into your site, the more you know you are on the correct content path for being of service to your potential clients.

||| Secret Tip |||
Want to know if a posting to a newsgroup, writing an article or a classified add is really generating leads? Use your logs to find out -- here is how. Take your normal web URL, say http://www.howtointernet.com/ and add a ?article or ?newsgroup to the end making it http://www.howtointernet.com/?article etc. When a visitor clicks on your hyperlink, it will show up with the ?article tag, so you can see how many people visited you as a result of that effort.

||| Logs Tell You How To 'Market' Better |||
Here is an example of how to read your logs and alter your page to meet your audience's expectation, not yours.

Say you offer life insurance for typically, individuals, but not for a company. You have a phrase in the body of your page that states, Life insurance is the 'key' to providing protection to your family." You check your logs and find someone entered "life insurance key man" because they were looking for business life insurance. You don't have "key man" as a word, but they found you any way because of 'key' and 'insurance.'

Before too long you start to see, quite a few 'key man' searches. And you see on this page that the visitor comes, doesn't see what he wants, then goes. The question becomes, do you offer "key man" insurance (if you can) if you continue to receive visitors with searches containing this combination.

||| Internet Law # 3 |||
It is not what you are offering, it is what they want. Find out how they are arriving at your site, make it easier for them to find you, and your visits will go up.

||| Using Logs to Tweak Pages |||
Assume, I had a client who wanted to use the words, "premier matchmaking service." She feels that this expresses the image and quality her clients were looking for, so the keywords "premier matchmaking service" are throughout the meta tags, the alt tags, the description, the title and the content. This owner is getting HER message across - BIG PROBLEM! How many users are going to type in "premier matchmaking service?" Not very many. Furthermore upon review of her logs, she is finding the few visitors she is attracting are saying, "personal ads." What to do?

Well, tweak your page to convey your company AND meet the needs of someone who is using layman terms to find you.

||| What to Look for in Log Analysis Software |||
Here are the features you need in log analysis software?

Most importantly:
1. Any log software you have must record the way people find you and

2. I would suggest that any software you acquire have the ability to specifically extract the keywords which were searched, by search engine, in order for the visitor to find your site.

Here are the most desired features:
Today's Visitors (hit me...)
Month-to-Date Visitors (watch those stats grow)
Top Visited Pages (which pages do your viewers find most interesting?)
Top Referring URLs (who sent them)
Top Search Engine & Searched Keywords (the core of logs!!!)
Top Browsers - Operating Systems (do you really have to design for the lowest browser viewer - this will tell you)
Entry Page (are surfers really coming in through your main/index page - I think you will be surprised that this isn't so)
Most Frequent Exit Page (why do the surfers leave from this page the most - could be a problem)

Many log programs allow a demonstration, try it on your site and analyze your logs.

Copyright 1998 HowToInternet.com

At your service,
Rod Aries -- How To Internet Your Business
Free "Optimizing Your Web Site: How to "Wu-Wu" Your Title."
Free "Search Engine Secrets That Don't Work"
Is your internet site optimized for search engine indexing?
Are you ranked high enough in the search engines?
mailto:rod@howtointernet.com ~ http://www.howtointernet.com/?article

The most important part of marketing on the Internet is to get people to visit your site and then to keep them coming back.

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Each issue in this new section we will feature a quote from a post on the message boards located at http://www.promotionworld.com/discus/. Appropriate credit, of course, will be given. What a way to get some free advertising! This is yet another reason to become an active participant in our discussion forums. Not only do you get great promotion help but you might win some major free advertising!

This week's quote from the discussion board:

"I just found this great FREE GIF compression site! Check it out, it's great! GifOptimizer http://www.gifoptimizer.com/ Hope you find it useful,

Duncan Johnson,
Visit DJDonline! -- Your source for FREE Flight Simulator add-ons!
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hall/2634/"

Visit the message boards to comment on this quote or just to catch up on the other exciting discussions going on!
http://www.promotionworld.com/discus/

This week's question for Hayden:

We have a web page written both in Portuguese and English. When we search a word (Yahoo, Altavista ...) it only shows the Portuguese sections of it. What to do?

Hayden replies:

If you have a page that is in English, submit the URL of that page not your root URL to the engines. This way the page with English will be indexed. This will work at all sites but Excite at this time.

I would suggest that you make your root URL or domain in English and link off that page to the Portuguese if the English listing is more important to your overall marketing plan. Excite only indexes the main domain URL at this time and they are important enough that you may wish to rethink your page layout.

Hayden Mitchell

=======================================================================

Send in your question for Hayden! It might be answered in an upcoming issue. mailto:webmaster@promotionworld.com

• Feature Story: SmartBrowsing... a feature or a problem?
  Netscape's new SmartBrowsing feature adds many useful new features
  for users, but how much will it cost webmasters?
  http://www.promotionworld.com/feature/smart1.html
• We have added another tool to our Online Tools Page Our new Search
  Engine Position Analyzer will quickly tell you what your ranking
  on the top seven search engine plus Yahoo is. Very useful!
  http://www.promotionworld.com/tools/position/index.html

• We have added a handy Meta Tag Generator to our website tools
  page. It is a very simple program, but if you are making tags for
  a large number of pages it can save you a lot of time.
  http://www.promotionworld.com/tools/meta.html

• We have created a page including all of our online tools to make
  things a bit easier for you... bookmark it and use the tools often!
  http://www.promotionworld.com/tools/index.html

• We have made a number of changes to the main page. The changes
  include a more prominent display of the What's New and Current
  Feature sections, as well as a new color scheme and sidebar. We
  now have "the perfect design". Of course, that's what we always
  think when we redesign Promotion World...

The Power of Two-Tiered Commissions
by Ryan Adams

In the previous newsletter we looked at programs that offer you the ability to earn commissions without having to actually sell anything. Instead they pay you for generating sales leads and product demo requests--a pay-per-lead model that has become popular thanks to above average conversion rates.

This issue we look at another type of affiliate program that has also become increasingly popular recently. These are programs which offer two-tier (or more-tier) commission structures that allow you to earn revenue from not only sales you directly refer, but also from the sales that new affiliates you refer make. Similar to pay-per-lead programs, two-tier commission programs offer an opportunity to earn revenue without having to actually sell anything yourself. The difference here is that someone does eventually have to make a sale for a commission to be earned.

Perhaps the best example of a two-tier commission program is the Virtualis web hosting reseller program. Virtualis was one of the first to offer this type of opportunity and they quickly attracted a horde of webmasters, site owners, and consultants who promoted their products. Virtualis did this by not only offering generous commissions to affiliates who made the sales, but also by paying additional commissions to the person that referred the affiliate. Using this strategy, Virtualis has quickly built a network of nearly 30,000 affiliates that promote their products and continue to help expand the membership of their affiliate program.

The advantages of two-tier commission programs can be tremendous. As a host, not only are you promoting the program to try to personally make sales, but also encouraging other webmasters who visit your site to sign up to become affiliates. For each webmaster you sign up, you can count on a portion of their commissions for each sale they make. Therefore, two-tier programs are often best suited to sites that attract not only an audience that may be interested in the product the program promotes, but also which attracts webmasters who may also be interested in making money from such an opportunity.

There are disadvantages of the two-tier commission system however. First, and most prominent, is that vendors (and affiliates) end up sponsoring many new affiliates who have no intention of actually trying to sell anything. Rather, these affiliates are simply hoping to be able to recruit their own network of web sites below them who will hopefully make some sales. This can lead to unrealistic predictions of success by both affiliates, and the vendors. A second problem for affiliates is that a two-tier program does indeed spread the word quickly. Before you know it, you may be one of thousands of web sites promoting a particular program.

However, in the end, the benefits of a two-tier commission structure outweigh the costs. After all, who wouldn't like to develop a network of web sites selling products, receiving commissions on each sale they make. That is just too great of a draw to pass up for most web site owners. And it also seems that a two-tier commission structure is also gaining more popularity with affiliate vendors. For example, the excellent One and Only Internet personals program recently switched from paying 20% commissions to all affiliates to paying 15% commissions directly, and 5% commissions on the second tier to those who referred new affiliates. Teknosurf Adwave, an excellent pay-per-click advertising network, also recently added a great two-tier referral program.

If you are interested in adding these, or other two-tier commission programs to your web site, I have compiled reviews of the best at: http://www.clickquick.com/affiliate/twotier.htm. Be sure to check them out, you may find one or more that interest you. Also note several programs which pay out on additional levels. Examples of these include FCI, Solution 2000, and the (oft-ridiculed) Spree program.

Ryan Adams http://www.clickquick.com ClickQuick : Reviews of the top affiliate and pay-per-click programs Subscribe to our Free Bi-weekly newsletter packed with strategies, tips and reviews (A HREF="mailto:subscribe@clickquick.com">mailto:subscribe@clickquick.com) Visit our message board to discuss what opportunities really work

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[Title edited for appropriateness ]
by John S. Rhodes

Let me start by telling you that the language that you use on your Web site is dictated by the language that your users use. That is, the content of your Web site is determined by what your users want and need. Furthermore, the language (i.e., the writing) you use should reflect the way that your users present themselves to you and the world.

How do you know your users' language and writing style? You must collect the data. Ask your users what they want and need. Read what they write. Visit their Web sites. Closely read their email. Read their Usenet postings, and their other rants and raves. After you have collected this data, your job is to mimic the way they write. Spend a good amount of time analyzing the way that they write. Ask these kinds of questions:

What is the general tone of their messages? How formal (or informal) are they? Do they use jargon? What kinds of technical terms do they use? What is the purpose of their writing? To inform, to persuade? What kind(s) of content do they use? Text, graphics, audio?

Better Writing

What exactly does good writing entail, that is, what must you be aware of as you write? Always be aware of your spelling, grammar, writing style, page formatting, and page layout. You really need to be on your toes. I'm not joking at all about this. If you slip up even once, you can lose the trust of your users.

Web users are notoriously fickle. If users see the smallest weakness they will let you know about it. Or worse, they will never visit your site again. This is a primary reason why you ought to invite criticism of your site. Indeed, elsewhere I advocate that you ask your users to destroy your site http://www.webword.com/moving/destroy.html. I argue that mistakes can be good things, if you understand how to use them.
http://www.webword.com/moving/flaws.html

You might be wondering about how to grapple with the diversity of your users. At this point you might be thinking about how your users are a heterogeneous collection of folks and therefore, their writing and content is diverse. The best way to gear your Web site writing and content in this situation is to be as professional as possible. Do every thing that you can to ensure that your site is the best-in-class. Compare your site to your competitors and make yours better. Relentlessly pursue content that is at the top of stack. If you need to, hire the talent.

How often do you think that you'll be able to use words like [edited by editor ]? The answer is all too simple: Almost never. Sure, you might sprinkle some "[snip!]" here and there, but you must try to limit the use of these kinds of (especially negative) emotional words. I occasionally violate this rule to stress a point. I realize that I risk losing readers because of it, but being on the radical side can really drive home important points. However, if you use words from the gutter on your Web site, or in person, it is probably because you lack the proper vocabulary to express yourself. Informally, with friends, use whatever language you want. With your Web site and with your clients, aim to be professional. Again, if you need help, hire it out.

Creating content and writing for the Web are things best left to writers, particularly writers that have experience with online writing. Web designers and information architects are often asked to write, and many do a fine job. However, a Webmaster, for example, should not be burdened with the Web site architecture, page layout, graphics design, and creation of content. It is the rare individual that can successfully perform all of these tasks. So, help the writers do their writing. Be a coach or mentor, and guide their work. Then, take that content and shape into some Web pages. Lastly, be sure to have other people proofread the work. Proofreaders can make all the difference.

=========================================================================
John S. Rhodes -- mailto:john@WebWord.com
Human Factors Engineer and Usability Professional
Internet Usability and Web Site Development: http://www.WebWord.com/

Here is a compilation of URLs to interesting news pieces on an Internet or website promotion theme.

• Microsoft Acquires LinkExchange
  

• Barney bites MSN?
  

• Function vs. Content
  

• The Big Picture: Web ads are like plane tickets
  

• Netscape To Acquire AtWeb, Strengthen Netcenter
  

• Witness says IE bundling not an improvement
  

More Internet related news headlines at
http://www.promotionworld.com/news.html

To comment on the issues covered in this week's newsletter, use the appropriate forum on our Discussion Boards. http://www.promotionworld.com/discus/

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Newsletter Credits:

Joshua Reimer, Editor