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======================================================== The Promotion World Informer Issue #71 May 31, 1999 ISSN 1488-1675 Edited by Joshua Reimer - http://www.promotionworld.com ======================================================== This issue of the Informer is sponsored by: ---------------------------------------------- OVER 100 FREE RESOURCES FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND MARKETERS Over 100 articles on running and marketing a business at Down to Business Magazine and Frugal Marketing Resources - both at http://www.frugalfun.com/. Excerpts from the amazing 384-page book Marketing Without Megabucks: How to Sell Anything on a Shoestring, articles on everything from preventing credit card fraud to coping with Y2K. Frugal Fun resources, too. All from international copywriter, author, and marketing consultant Shel Horowitz. PHONE: 413-586-2388. E-MAIL: info@frugalfun.com ---------------------------------------------- Now with over 6108 subscribers! Advertising Information --> http://www.promotionworld.com/sponsor.html ================================================================ Contents Of This Issue: - Editor's Notes - Cool Quotes - Friendly Advice from the Editor - Sponsor Message - A Site Owner's Work Never Ends - Bookmarkable Bookmarks - The Discussion Board - Sponsor Message - What NOT To Do - A Small Request - Misc. Information ======================== Editor's Notes ====================== Greetings again! Another full issue for you this week. Oh, by the way... if you were wondering why the newsletter's subscriber count has gone DOWN this week, it is just because my system administrator is cleaning out all the dead addresses on the list. It may make for a cleaner list, but it can be depressing for the list owner! The Informer is sent only to those who have expressly requested it. If you no longer wish to receive it, simply follow the simple unsubscribe instructions at the end of this newsletter. ============================ Cool Quotes ======================== Traditionally, most of Australia's imports come from overseas. - Former Australian cabinet minister Keppel Enderbery If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this. - Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads. No man who continues to add something to the material, intellectual, and moral well-being of the place in which he lives, is left long without proper reward. - Booker T. Washington Download all the past Cool Quotes by sending any email to <mailto:quotes@promotionworld.com&> Enjoy! ================= Friendly Advice from the Editor ================ Getting Links By Running A Contest by Joshua Reimer Last week I talked about how to encourage people to link to your site- just by having good content. If you missed that article, you can view it online at <http://www.promotionworld.com/informer/99may24.html> As promised, this week I am going to show you how you can build links to your site by running a contest. This is an easy, inexpensive way to get people to link to your site. In theory, it is very simple: Just advertise a contest on your website that lets your visitors enter ONLY IF they include a link back to your site. Now, for the logistics. What do you give away as a prize? Something that other people like, but you may not need. For example, for my linking contest, I made a deal with the owner of LinkBuddies exchange at <http://www.linkbuddies.com/start.go?id=100041>,whereby he would transfer 25,000 of my banner's credits in to the winners account each month. I decided that it would be more beneficial to receive the extra links to my site than to have those 25,000 banner credits, large amount though it is. Many companies look for contests they can sponsor in order to get more exposure for themselves... look into that option, as well. How has my contest worked out? Not very well, to tell you the truth. I have made some big mistakes along the way. As of today I only have 30 sites linking to mine as a result of the contest. My first mistake: I didn't require that those linking to my site link to my site from their MAIN PAGE. Or at least, I didn't really specify either way. This was a major mistake, because most of the sites linking to mine link from some obscure sub page that nobody really visits. As a result, the amount of extra traffic I have received from the contest is very small. I have changed this clause in the contest rules. In doing this I had to email everyone that has already entered and tell them about the new rules. Take this as a lesson for yourself, and do it right the first time. It isn't fun to have to go back and fix things like this. My second mistake: I only supplied large, 468x60 ad banners. I can't really expect people to display these on their websites, can I? So, this is another change I am making. I am now letting webmasters use small 31x88 buttons to link to my site. Hopefully this will encourage a greater number of linkers. My third mistake: I didn't promote it enough! As you have probably (hopefully!) noticed, I have given it a number of big plugs in this newsletter. However, I never did include a comment on my homepage about it. I should have included a big advertisement for the contest, saying something like: "Win 25,000 banner impressions! Click here for more information". This would have enticed more people to join. So, I have made a lot of mistakes. But I am hoping that the more I refine the contest, the more links and the more traffic I will get as a result. Besides, this way you get to learn from my mistakes! Want to check out my contest? Remember, you could win 25,000 banner impressions! Just visit <http://www.promotionworld.com/contest.html> I hope this article has given you some ideas for starting up a linking contest. Next week I will talk about yet another method for getting other sites to link to yours- exchanging links for services. Joshua Editor/webmaster/ad sales guy/everything else at Promotion World. <http://www.promotionworld.com> ======================= Sponsor Message ======================= DRAMATICALLY INCREASE YOUR WEB SITE TRAFFIC: ************************************************* First-time Make Me Your Home Page software users will see your home page the next time they open their Web browser. MMYHP software increases traffic to your Web site by allowing your visitors to change the home page setting of their browsers at the click of a button, to point to your Web site instead of to the default setting. This generates a dramatic increase in unique visitors to your site, providing tremendous value to sites that generate revenue from advertising . CNBC reported that, amazingly, one half of web users do not know how to perform this basic function manually. Increase Your Return Web Traffic at http://www.makemeyourhomepage.com ================ A Site Owner's Work Never Ends =============== A Site Owner's Work Never Ends by Jennifer Johnson When I finished my first site, I thought I had done the "hard part". In my mind, all that was left to do was submit the site to a few search engines and wait for the flood of traffic. After a few days when the "flood" was a mere trickle - or more like a few drips here and there - I came to the realization that the hard part wasn't over; in fact, it had just begun! Finishing a site may seem like hard work, but it's nothing compared to trying to promote and improve the site...and these things are an ongoing process. We'll discuss some areas relating to promotion first. It would be nice if you had a step-by-step set of instructions when it came to site promotion. Finish Steps A, B, and C and presto! Tons of visitors! You never have to do another thing to promote your site! It would be nice, all right, but it just doesn't work that way. One of the first steps most webmasters take after completing their site is submitting to the search engines and directories. Submitting isn't enough many times, though. You've got to check your ranking on a continuing basis to ensure that you don't slip and if you do find your site slowly slipping in the rankings, you need to take action to correct that. There are other tools related to search engine rankings, such as gateway pages, that require almost constant monitoring to be successful. You must also keep tabs on which keywords are used to find your site, which search engine sends the most visitors your way, etc. in order to develop a search engine game plan. Banner ads should be viewed as more than a one shot promotional technique. You must monitor which of your banners are most successful as far as CTR and constantly hone your banners to help boost your clicks, not to mention the fact that you must constantly be on the lookout for new and/or better sites on which to place your banners. Developing a reciprocal link program (or just a link program) is also very time consuming. You must search out sites and contact owners to request links and this is something that will more than likely be done for the life of your site. There will be a good deal of time devoted to "checking up" on your link partners' sites to make sure your link is still active (this isn't too hard to do with a good tracking program). One aspect I haven't seen discussed much in regard to linking is the fact that there are going to be sites that link to you that you DON'T want linking to you. For example, I've discovered a few adult sites that had placed a link to my site on theirs. All it took was an email requesting the site remove the link and it was taken care of, but it still takes time to research and request the removal. We've been discussing the ongoing aspects of site promotion, now it's time to switch gears a bit and get into a few of the things involved in improving a site's design over time. There are certain aspects of your site design that you *can't* polish until you've had quite a few visitors through. Sure, there are companies that can afford to do extensive research and testing before they open their doors (so to speak) online, but for the average online entrepreneur, the research and testing information comes in the form of email from site visitors after the site has been launched. Based on suggestions, complaints, and observations from those who've visited our sites, we learn what to keep, what to tweak, and what to lose. Email is valuable to a webmaster, don't ignore common problems expressed by many visitors. You can learn a lot from visitor feedback and improve your site much more than you can by trying to assess the strengths and weaknesses yourself. Needless to say, this is an ongoing process as well. I hope I've shown you in this article a few of the ways that site design and promotion are an ongoing process. Don't get discouraged at the prospect of all the work that lies ahead of you; it is hard work to develop and maintain a great site, but the rewards are definitely worth it! Good luck! PromotingYourSite.com <http://www.promotingyoursite.com> Free info on how to effectively design and promote your site. Join the "Rate My Site Newsletter" (delivered 3-5 times/week) by sending any email to: ratemysite-subscribe@listbot.com and find out how to submit *your* site for other webmasters to review. Contact Jennifer directly at: jennifer@promotingyoursite.com. ==================== Bookmarkable Bookmarks ===================== Netscape's Browser Distribution Program Distribute customized copies of Netscape to all your visitors. You can customize buttons, toolbars, menus, bookmarks, the animated logo and more! A great way to build repeat traffic. <http://home.netscape.com/partners/distribution/index.html> JavaGoodies A huge archive of sometimes useful, but more often than not just fun and pointless JavaScripts. <http://www.javagoodies.com/> WebReference Lots of good web development information here. <http://www.webreference.com/> ===================== The Discussion Board ====================== This week's quote from the discussion board: "Hi everyone, Don't really believe that "Content is King"?? Let me try to sway your opinion. First off, let me explain some things so that you can understand the story. I design "scenery" for Microsoft Flight Simulator. "Scenery" is what simmers call everything that isn't the plane, but the place the plane flies in. This includes the airport, the mountains, the downtown buildings, and everything. At my site, you can download free scenery to add to the scenery Flight Simulator comes with. (By the way, from now on, I'll refer to Flight Simulator as just FS.) Anyway, for a longish while, I hadn't really added anything significant to my site because I was busy working on some scenery for Utah. My hits were lagging significantly, dropping far below my averages. Recently, I released the scenery and made it available at my site. This caused an almost immediate surge in my hits, fan mail, and all the rest. Not only that, but the entire FS world has started to chatter about that Utah scenery. It is soon going to be reviewed in the best FS magazine there is, and it recently was reviewed at Simflight.com one of the biggest FS sites. To add to the enthusiasm, several simmers have praised it in public on a large FS mailing list. Also, I am working on getting it reviewed at another site, and setting up a race on the scenery in the coming year. Thanks, Duncan Johnson Off-topic Forum Moderator Visit DJDonline! -- Your source for FREE Flight Simulator add-ons! <http://djd.freeservers.com/>" Read and comment on the full discussion online at: <http://www.promotionworld.com/discus/messages/279/408.html> Get in on our discussions! At least stop by to see what you are missing out on. <http://www.promotionworld.com/discus/> ======================== Sponsor Message ======================== Boogie Jack's - goofy name, excellent resource. For webmasters: eye-popping graphics, easy-to-understand html and graphics tutorials, a color machine to find the code for that just right color, and a free newsletter to help you tweak your pages and promotional efforts. Browse selected articles online. For everyone: Guess the Celebrity is a contest like no other, photo warps, humor and more. All original content, growing rapidly, wildly popular, and best of all - it's FREE! Get jacked! Boogie Jack's Graphics Plus. http://www.boogiejack.com ======================== What NOT To Do ========================= How NOT to Promote your Site by David Handlos Everyone wants to keep their site content current, and the site design pleasing to visitors. New articles, tools, applets, whatever can be used to keep the web site looking fresh, informative, and fun. But what if you don't know what else to add? Or you've got a ton of ideas to improve your site, but only the time to work with one? So this isn't just one way NOT to promote your site, but two. Too many creative ideas, or lack of ideas altogether. Both have happened to me more often than I care to admit. However, they can both be solved with one solution. Ask your visitors! Since you've built your site for people to see, why not ask them what they want? If you're running a newsletter, you've got it real easy. You can create a column to ask for suggestions from your subscribers, or post your ideas, and ask your subscribers what they think. If you're not running a newsletter or publication of any kind, you might want to conduct a poll, or a survey from your home page to see what visitors think about your ideas. If you don't know how to create a poll/survey for your site, you can get one set up for free here: Bravenet <http://www.bravenet.com> CGIforME <http://www.cgiforme.com> Simply getting feedback from a different point of view can make the whole picture a lot clearer. Basically, before you worry too much about what the people want, you might want to ask them first. Happy promoting! David Handlos Crosslinkz: Your Free Web Directory! <http://www.crosslinkz.com> ========================= A Small Request ======================= If you enjoy reading this newsletter each week, why not tell a friend about it? Even better, why don't you recommend The Informer on a discussion list? The more subscribers there are, the more time I am able to justify spending on creating valuable free content for you all! Just tell everyone to subscribe by sending a message to <mailto:informer@oaknetpub.com> with SUBSCRIBE in the BODY of their message. ======================== Misc. Information ====================== To comment on the issues covered in this week's newsletter, use the appropriate forum on our Discussion Boards. <http://www.promotionworld.com/discus/> Browse the archives at <http://www.promotionworld.com/informer/archives.html> If you are looking for some good advertising deals, you might like to consider Promotion World and the Informer as places to advertise. <http://www.promotionworld.com/sponsor.html> To subscribe put SUBSCRIBE in the BODY of an email to <mailto:informer@oaknetpub.com> To unsubscribe put REMOVE in the BODY of an email to <mailto:informer@oaknetpub.com> I appreciate all your mail with your comments and suggestions! <mailto:webmaster@promotionworld.com> Newsletter Credits: Joshua Reimer, Editor <mailto:webmaster@promotionworld.com> <http://www.promotionworld.com> Jennifer Johnson, Feature Writer <mailto:jenny@promotingyoursite.com> <http://www.PromotingYourSite.com> John S. Rhodes, Usability Specialist <mailto:john@WebWord.com> <http://www.WebWord.com/> Hayden Mitchell, Search Engine Specialist <mailto:hayden@webthemes.com> <http://www.webthemes.com> David Handlos, What Not To Do Specialist <mailto:webmaster@crosslinkz.com> <http://www.crosslinkz.com> And now for the mandatory legal stuff: This newsletter is copyright 1997, 1998, 1999 Joshua Reimer. No part may be reproduced in any way without prior permission. The only exception being you may freely forward this newsletter to your friends and associates *only if* it is in its unmodified entirety.
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