I have just read the articles on the latest Gazette. "When Building Community - Go for the Throat" is particularly interesting.

In the article, the author stated that you can get people to help you by simply "Just Ask". Is that true?

Even though VP did have many helpers on all directions, does the formula work on other sites?

I posted a help wanted notice on my site 2 weeks ago. About 2000 people have visited that page (okay, so it's not really a big site), only one person asked.

Does any one have any experience on getting helpers? Or does a one-man site works out better?

At last, how could I give out benefits to the people that helps me?

Sorry if this post is a little bit long.
I would truly appreciate your input on this.

THANKS,
Sam

First of all, I will tell you, what I've noticed with my site http://www.4freestuff.net as far as advertising goes. Well, I've noticed that free stuff sites seem to get higher click throughs due to the nature that the visitor is going to leave that site, however, which link the visitor leaves on is the big question. So I've found that the click throughs are substantially higher. I usually have a click through rate of about 5%-8% on banner advertising and of about 7%-%16% on text advertising. However, that's for targeted traffic. It is also substantially cheaper than advertising anywhere else. Basically, it can go as low as $.75 cpm as compared to $5 minimum cpm for targeted traffic. This is true with most all free stuff sites.

Now, other sites that are good for traffic are http://www.brainfox.com and http://www.searchcactus.com. I have noticed that I get a high number of click throughs on each of these search engines by bidding on search terms. The problem is that with search cactus, most people just click on the link to make money, and then leave it immediately. Then with brainfox, most of those that click on your links seem to be other webmasters interested in checking out those that are bidding against them on terms.

I feel that the best form of marketing is through a newsletter, however, the pricing for a newsletter often times is outrageous and you get little return. Mine, I seem to have better success with click throughs than most, but I keep my prices low anyway, because I'm all about helping others get started. I usually charge only about $200 for about 35,000 subscribers. The traffic on that list is targeted to those that want to see new websites, so it's a great list. However, I have found most newsletters, ezines, lists, etc usually charge about 3 times that amount. So, it's not always easy to get cheap advertising.

The basic consensus however is to just go for the easy freebie sites. Depending upon your content, I know that a freebie site like mine could easily target your traffic towards your audience. Even pay sites have considerable luck on free stuff sites as long as their prices are competitive.

I hope that helps to some extent.

My name is Peter , Im a graduate student who runs a few web sites.
A while back i got fed up with having to plow through lots of spam everyday so I have been doing some research into how the harvesting programs work and how to stop them grabbing
your e-mail.
Would anybody be interested in my findings ?

Peter..................

I just went and visited your joke subscribe page. You should list what type of jokes you
will be sending. Give the potential subscriber an idea of the type of newsletter, jokes, subscriber base that you have.

Also, have you been to the newsletter announcement areas to promote your newsletter?

Just a few suggestions.

Have fun,

George

I also use Recommend-It for my newsletters and that works as well. I put the link in my .sig everyday but at least every couple weeks, I put the link at the top of the mailing asking people to use it to recommend the list to a friend. I get maybe 14 or 15 referrals a week per newsletter that way. It's not huge but over time, that adds up.

The prize is Personalized trading cards. Hard to expain(I will have a page with examples shortly.) You send in a photo and recieve 16 fully laminated reproductions with whatever message you would like on the back.

Does it even sound like it might draw enough interest?
Does every 100 entries sound fair?
I was thinking of announcing the winner in the newsletter.

PART 1

Some of this might be known but other bits of info may be new.
Im going to publish this in parts with a little background to start with.
I first started getting a lot of spam about
3 months ago and 100% traced it to my web sites as there were certain e-mail addresses
that were unique to certain pages.
Most spammers use "fresh" email addresses to avoid to many bounces which can alert ISPs.
Now instead of being angry , i found this quite interesting as i played around with my site to adjust certain addresses to find what techniques would stop harvesting software
from reading certain unique addresses.
I also downloaded the latest versions of various harvesting software to try it on my
own site to see how it would react to various
counter measures.
If you look around the web there is a program
called wpoison. This is a CGI program which
generates fake e-mail addresses so the early
generation of harvesters would suck up all these e-mails and flood their databases with
huge lists of 100% bouncing mail.
The only trouble is that the latest versions
of programs have learned to avoid these pages.
AHHHH but this is good because by using a link with cgi behind it with wpoison in the
url (eg. http://yourdomain.com/wpoison/)
will stop harvesters following that link.
Also using a link page with over 50 emails
hidden in the html will stop a harvester from
indexing that page.
You can just show the one you want your web page visitors to click on.
Also putting the words "wpoison" "spam" on
a page (even in a text or comment tag) tends
to block a lot of the harvesters as they are wary of any page with those words.

Last idea (I want 10% if you use it ;-) is if you have any skill with CGI, to create a script and allow people to add HTML to their site which would get a new 'daily joke' from your site. Of course it would also include a link back to your site. I guess what this all boils down to is since the subscription is on your site you will need to focus on driving traffic to your site, which will help drive the subscriptions to your newsletter.

(disclaimer , i cant spell

I have heard it said that you can use a CGI formmail program instead of the normal
mailto: command. to stop harvesting.
Not true , I have proved many times that
cgi formmail such as matt wrights famous
script can be stripped of the mail because
the mail address is in the html.
So if you use a cgi mail program use one which stores the e-mail address in the *.cgi
or *.pl file.
There are a number just look around the cgi
sites.
The mailto: command can be protected by again
using various techniques such as the hidden e-mails or using hidden links to various wpoison type pages. (although the harvester wont follow the links it also wont suck up the e-mail on the page which the links are placed).
Its getting a bit late so maybe i will go into various techniques such as scripts , java applets when i post next time.
Thanks for reading.

Peter.........

I hope to make this an ongoing discussion as im sure i have not encountered every type
of anti-spam measure so if i dont mention
something feel free to join in with your findings.

I just wanted to mention something about spam
filters , there are a lot of filters around
the internet for mail programs such as procmail and readers such as eudora which do a fairly good job but dont stop your e-mail
address being harvested to more and more spammers.
The filters have great weaknesses and have to
be updated as new spamming techniques come along.
I think they help BUT i think its like catching water in a bucket if your roof leaks ! Obviously the answer is to repair the roof!
I just recently found a great web page with
lots of cool info and a great javascript which generates a mailto on the fly.
I have tested this script out and it 100% stops harvesters from grabbing your address
Check the page out at http://www.turnstep.com/Spambot/html.html

Peter..............

[This message has been edited by Peter (edited 12-12-98).]

btw, thanks for posting this information, I have seen some of it but some is new to me.

Yes , I agree

Theres nothing worse than having the nagging doubt that someone who wants to get hold of you will be sent to dev/null !
Something i would like to say is that i dont have anything against people making money on the web or in any other way.
I just feel there should be an opt out scheme
for people who dont wish to recieve UCE.
Now some mailers offer a remove list .
I would not recommend at this time to reply
to these requests as some mailers use these to confirm the email adddress is good!
So you will probably get even more mail.
Most people arnt that bothered by UCE , some even like it !
Another little trick i discovered which may help if you have a virtual domain with unlimited e-mail addresses is to use the address nospam@yourdomain.com as a lot of the list handling programs will strip the nospam
off (which will make the mail bounce) or ignore the mail altogether.
Now in conclusion the safest defence is to have the email address behind a CGI link which harvesters wont follow.
So what if you dont have CGI ?
Well heres another trick i discovered , make
a directory named cgi-bin
ie http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/
Now just add your e-mail address to a plain old html document but the harvester will not follow this link because they are wary of any cgi program.
(they dont like spidering any link with cg-bin in it )

Peter................

[This message has been edited by Peter (edited 12-13-98).]

Just to finish up with a few points, about
the point of stopping the harvesting programs.
What you will find is that the amount of UCE you recieve will slow up very quickly as your address becomes more and more diluted.
Its important to have fresh addresses
ie mailers dont want bounces because
(a) too many bounces alerts the ISP
(b) too many bad addresses slows the sending program dramatically.

Now the easy way to follow if your techniques
are working is after you have implemented the
changes is to change your e-mail to a new unique address which hasnt been registered
anywhere else.

Now something that you may consider is that your address maybe located on someone elses website as a contact ect.
Infact this maybe be where your e-mail is being harvested the most if it ranks well with the search engines.
So run a seach on the web for your address and try and get the website owner to change the mailto: link to your cgi-bin link page.

Also check on places like bigfoot to see if your e-mail address is on record with them.
You might want to try and change it or get it removed.
This is where a lot of email is harvested from.

Newsgroups are the number one source of harvesting. If you dont believe me try this experiment.
If you have a virtual account use a throwaway
address such as abc@yourdomain.com and post some test messages in a couple of popular
newsgroups !
Now the trick is to add something into the email address to make it bounce or fail.
ie you@yourdomain.take-this-out.com
dont use nospam in the title such as
you@yourdomain.nospam.com as most mailing lists have been programed to take this out.
Another trick is to make the address quite long as most mailing programs ignore these addresses as being false.
you@yourdomain.TakeThisPartOutToSendMeEmail.com

Don`t under any circumstances use a false address with a correct domain as this will take up the resources of that domain.
Even if you made up the username of the e-mail address the spam may still get delived
to that doamin as some people have "catch all"
accounts which get all mail sent to that domain regardless of the username.
The domain holder may trace your posts on the newsgroups !
Always use false domain , go to internic and
do a look up for something stupid
I hope some of these tips are proving useful ?
I found that my UCE is only 5% of what it was before making the changes.
Im still getting the odd hit from old addresses but this is gradually decreasing.
I could have easily forwarded then to dev/null but i was interested to see what effect the tricks would have.
I think untill a time where all bulk emailers
behave in an ethical manner, its only fair that webmasters have there own opt out list.

Thanks for reading and feel free to comment.

Peter..............

[This message has been edited by Peter (edited 12-13-98).]

I would encourage Jim to keep this bit of useful information on these forums for a long time. And if you ever do a purging again in these forums, please consider archiving this thread.

Thanks again Peter. Good job!

Well, rather than letting this extra posting go to waste, I'll use it to ask a question.

I was just wondering Peter. Do you have this information on your web site? And if you do, it would be nice to add a URL that goes directly to that page of information.

Jim,

Would you mind if Peter placed a URL of that page (if he has a page for it)?

Or maybe Peter could list it in the HELPWARE web site from VP - that's an idea too.

[This message has been edited by Curt (edited 12-21-98).]