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JimWorld Gazette Issue #23 10/03/1997![]() Gazette - Issue #23 - October 3, 1997CONTENTS-- Personality Is Important-- Time To Tackle Traffic Reporting - I -- Snippets -- Tips From The Hitman - XIII Link to this issue of the Gazette as http://gazetteworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=g23 This week we want to welcome the members of the Irish Internet Association. The association is now mailing a copy of the Gazette to all of its members. In the coming weeks I will make it a point to include tips especially helpful to sites in Ireland. Welcome! Just got this in from Wally over at Surfer's Choice http://www.technomax.com/surferschoice/hotzone.htm : OK Jim: We're impressed. Enough votes came in today (like a herd of wild horses) to assure your site the site of the month award. We use 200 votes as our standard for sites in a one horse race as you were this month. Well you shattered it. You have quite a loyal following there. No wonder we have made you are great Guru of all things Internet. But are we worthy? Congratulations. In keeping with Hayden's series on how to handle your email, I have been getting caught up on my incoming-and-not-handled pile of email this week. Consequently, this week you get lots of Tips and Snippets of things to do next week. We haven't had an issue with a target-rich-environment, so it was absolutely time for this. Thanks for the elbow-in-the-ribs, Hayden. Why-am-I-talking-in-dashes? I...should...go...back...to...my...usual...way.... I have updated the Awards We've Won page http://www.jimworld.com/ourawards.html I need to break it into 2 or 3 pages. With 60 awards on the page it is a bit slow to load. The response to the WebSuite Personal Web Server has been so overwhelming we have had to put of finishing the METAbot for a short time. I'll let you know as soon as we can get back to it. I don't want to release it until it is 100% and better than anything else you've seen. Thanks for being patient. PERSONALITY IS IMPORTANTAs I sat down to decide what topic to write on for the VirtualPromote Gazette, I thought back on my past three years of running an online business, trying to identify what had been the most important lessons that I had learned.What revelation could I share with Jim's readers that would be as valuable as the tidbits that he shares with us on a weekly basis?? What words of wisdom could I impart to the group that Jim had not already covered in one of his extensive newsletters?? Still trying to come up with a great topic, I looked back through my special Eudora folder that was the home for all of my past issues of the VirtualPromote Gazette. As I scanned through the newsletters, page after page of information, I realized how amazing it was that I "always" read every word of Jim's Gazettes. Well, maybe not that "helpware" paragraph at the end (I already read it once). "OK, big deal, so you read an entire email", you may be saying. "Yeah, but have you seen how LONG Jim's newsletter is??? Especially on those weeks when he's really on a roll on a topic!" I reply. I would be thrilled if I thought that the readers of our weekly coolshopping.com email newsletter pored over the information like I pore over the VirtualPromote Gazette. "OK, other than trying to rack up some really good brownie points with Jim, what's the point?" you ask. The point is, that I think there are two reasons that I find Jim's newsletter so appealing. One reason is content -- the information he provides is CONSISTENTLY high quality, usable information. Yep. We all know content is king. That's our whole focus at coolshopping.com. Fresh new, high quality shopping sites added daily, a cool site showcased daily, a bizarre, wild web soap opera that people are compelled to return just to see what utterly strange twist will happen next, yada yada yada yada. End shameless plug. The second reason I think that I always read every word of Jim's newsletter is that Jim has personality. His newsletter exudes personality. It's a real person talking to you, sometimes rambling, often very humorous, sometimes even ticked off. We can relate. Which brings me to the point I wanted to make. I suggest to you that personality and making a sincere effort to relate to people as real people goes a long way on the Internet. From my own personal experiences, I feel that it's a great way for a small business to obtain a competitive advantage. As the Internet continues to evolve, and people will have increasing ability to push, pull, broadcast, and tune in to information in an automated way, I think it is important that we remember how effective it is to relate to people as people and not simply as IP addresses. Here's an example.....
The friendly tone of the message sucked me in. And the emoticon (smiley) was the icing on the cake. They amazed me with friendliness and I would suggest that's something I won't soon forget, even if it's just a subconscious perception. The personal touch goes a long way. Also, similar positive perceptions can be built even in an automated fashion. Here at coolshopping.com, anytime anyone fills out an online form, we always email the customer an automated response immediately. This gives them a warm and fuzzy that their submission was successful, and it is a nice way to push information to the customer that you can feel fairly comfortable that they are going to read. And I'm not talking some form letter-sounding response. Typically, you'll be taking the information that the customer entered on the screen and formatting it in an email back to your own company. It's literally about three seconds worth of work to also take that information, wrap some nice text around it, and jot off a second email to the customer simultaneously. Suppose you asked them for their name, their URL, and a description of their site on a form. Send them this back: Hi Jim! This is just a quick confirmation email to let you know that your email request for a listing has been sent to YourSite Name. We'll be reviewing that information in the next 48 business hours, so you can expect to hear back from us in that time frame. We'll recap the information you submitted below. Thanks again for submitting! Amy Strycula, Customer Service YourSite Name, Your URL Here's what you submitted: Their Site Name, Their Site URL Description.................. To me, an email like this makes me feel better about my submission. I'm clear on how the process will work, and when I can expect to hear an answer. Plus, if you're careful not to be too obtrusive, it's possible you could do a little low-key selling in that "personalized" auto-response email. For example, in our response email for coolshopping.com submissions, we encourage the customer to "create their own personal start page," and we go on to say, "What a great way to monitor your competition!". Who could refuse that?! It doesn't take a lot of time to add that 'personal touch' to the way you do business online, and the results go a long way. Try it and you'll see what I mean! Amy Strycula, Creative Director mailto:shop@coolshopping.com coolshopping.com http://www.coolshopping.com ---------- Jim Here -- Amy, thanks for such a well thought out and right-on-target article. I know the effort it takes to create a complete analysis of a subject. I know you'll be getting lots of positive strokes from the Gazette family, but I just wanted to be the first stroke. I really like the trend that is occurring. Several people have already contributed outstanding articles for the Gazette because they felt they had something to share. Each has been extensively researched and very well written. I hope this trend continues. I originally thought to ask Amy to come up with a different reference than all of the nice things she said about the Gazette, and me. But I couldn't come up with a good reason for her to have to rewrite that section. After all, she is right. --> TIME TO TACKLE SITE TRAFFIC REPORTING - PART IAmy's excellent article is such a natural lead-in to this topic that I held it over for a week so I could use it to launch this new topic. We're going to start talking about the information you should have available about visitors to your site, and what to do with it.You'll please take note of the fact that in the previous sentence I referred to the activity on your site as visitors, not as traffic. Traffic is that endless stream of cars on the highway that gets in your way and makes you late for work and puts you in a foul mood. Visitors are folks you invite to sit at the kitchen table, have a cup of coffee and swap rumors and secrets. I get a lot of mail asking about traffic reports on web sites and what they mean, and don't mean. It's time I stopped putting this subject off and we jumped right into it. In order to really understand traffic analysis, you need to understand how things move around on the web. Servers. Packets. DNS. Referer_log. If you are less than fluent in these subjects, you will be glad to know that I have created a new tutorial just for you. It's at http://www.jimworld.com/traffic1.html and it will get you up to speed before we start digging into traffic analysis next week. I was going to put the information here in the Gazette, but it got a bit too long, even by my rather loose standards for how big a newsletter should be. SNIPPETSIt's now time to go to http://phlip.net/ and cast your votes for the best push channels of 1997. There are a lot of channels to pick from in several different categories. You should browse through all of them for ideas, good and bad, of what to do with a push channel. You will be pushing content, one way or another, in the very near future if you aren't already. Of course, while you are there, you just might go to the Online Networks/Publications category http://phlip.net/phlip.ixe?topic=Networks and vote for the Amazing VirtualPROMOTE Gazette. Right up there near the top cause it starts with an 'A'.---------- Need a nice list of newsgroups and discussion lists with reviews of each one? Try the new one from Jaime Oikle, president of IntrepidNet http://www.intrepidmarketing.com/ReadingList/index.html Well done. Now if he'll just review the other 14,980 we'll be all finished with that subject. ---------- The Web Masters' Award Site at http://mads.com/award/welcome.html is a new award sponsored by the International United WebMasters' Association and MassADS, Internet Advertising Associates. They have big plans to create many award categories. Touting themselves as 'Finally, A Web Award Worth Having' is probably going to keep them from winning any of the other dozens of awards that have been worth having for a long time. I'm sure that the team at Point 5% and Starting Point Choice and the many others will be surprised to hear that they aren't worth having. But stop by and apply for it anyway. It might last long enough to get an attitude adjustment (or a better copywriter) and wind up becoming a new award also worth having. Gee, guess I can stop giving out the Way Cool Hot Site Award now that I know it's not worth having. You can read their whole press release at http://www.prweb.com/prweb/getprs2.fwx?prid=1625 which is a good way to get you over to the PR Web site to look around. As to the award committee, you might want to dial back a bit on the attitude. Your attitude and approach won't win you any friends among the prestigious award reviewers that have been here a lot longer than you have and have developed some pretty serious reputations on the web. Gosh, I wonder if I'm still in the running for the award? Seriously, I hope they can tone it down a bit and earn their right to brag about their award. They are right. We need more good awards. They are wrong in thinking that there are no good awards already in existence. They will be judged by the quality of the sites they select to receive the award. The awards that currently count on the web are tied to the reputations of the sponsoring sites and the reviewers. If you trust my judgement and like the types of sites I select, then you will give value to the Way Cool Hot Site Award. If you don't (yes. it could happen.), you probably won't bother to visit the award page at all. We won't be able to evaluate the quality of the Web Master's Award Site panel of judges, as they intend to keep their identities a secret. They've unnecessarily chosen a big, rocky field to plow. They should try to find an easier way. And now for the moral of this story: When I encourage you to write creative copy and to do it all the way, this is not what I mean. Be careful that you don't attack sacred cows. Don't tell people that everything they have done is crap and you are going to show them the true path. Especially don't do this when your site consists of 2 pages and a submission form. Show the better way THEN brag about it. ---------- On a positive note, check out the press release about the cool new features and user interface that RevNet has released for their Group Master product at http://www.prweb.com/prweb/getprs2.fwx?prid=1624. That is the service I use to send out the Gazette and I couldn't be happier. ---------- Are you wondering where to go to promote your visual art? The Academy of Cultural Arts at Pagosa Springs at http://post-dogmatist-arts.net/academy/acad-003.htm has developed a very nice page of resources for the visual arts. Lots of reviews of resources where you can promote your art, or places to learn more about art promotion. Warning to the bandwidth-challenged: this page is almost 500K of download, so it takes a long time. A tip? Turn graphics off in your browser and you can read all about the links in the directory, which is absolutely worth the effort. I've talked to the developer, and he is going to make the site more bandwidth friendly while still retaining the visual appeal. ---------- Galaxy2020, a well known ISP is about to launch a new submission engine called MegaURL. It plans to have tons of features like on-going position monitoring reports, a huge list of directories and search engines that it submits to, and management reports. Don't know any specifics yet, but it bears watching. They are planning to offer a Reseller Program that lets webmasters earn commissions for generating sales. Swing by http://www.galaxy2020.com/ for information. ---------- Hot!Hot!Hot!, the net's first online store selling a variety of hot sauces at http://www.hothothot.com has launched the Hot!Partner Program. The HotPartner program allows other web sites to earn referral fees based on links back to the Hot!Hot!Hot!. Sites earn 5% of the total sales generated by the link. ---------- Who's Marketing Online? at http://www.wmo.com/ is full of information for the e-marketer. Tips, tutorials, analysis, links to resources and great look make this a premium site for you to bookmark and visit every time you've got a little time on your hands (after you finish visiting VirtualPROMOTE, of course.) ---------- If you aren't receiving your free subscription to New Media magazine (all about the Internet) rush over to http://newmedia.com/subscribe/ and fill out the online subscription form. I get this one and have been surprised to find myself reading the whole thing every month. I usually just skim magazines for new ads and interesting articles. ---------- It's time to make plans to attend the @d:tech '98 West http://www.ad-tech.com Internet advertising & marketing conference and exposition. In Hollywood January 12-14, 1998. Lots of good workshops and exhibits. Right there in Hollywired. ---------- Webmaster Wanted! CIO Magazine (now includes the gone but not forgotten Webmaster Magazine) has a big list of help wanted ads for good webmasters at http://www.cio.com/forums/wmf_job_posts.html. When you get that new job, don't forget to move your subscription to the Gazette. We just hate being left behind. ---------- Internet.com's eCommerce Guide http://e-comm.internet.com/ is a well designed and executed directory to tons of resources on the web for everything dealing with electronic commerce. ---------- This just in from Amazon City http://www.amazoncity.com Hi everyone, We have some chat areas in Amazon City, a city for women on the Internet, and we are looking for some chat hosts to cover topics relating to women on a weekly basis. This is a great way for you to promote yourself and your business and meet new people. If you are interested, first, please stop by Amazon City and try the Talk City chat room, to make sure you can use the software. (It's in the Cafe at http://www.amazoncity.com/cafe) Then send me a proposal with a bio to let me know what topic you want to chat about at what time(s), and what experience you have with chat. YOU MUST be able to commit to the time you specify, every week. If you can't make it for one week you are responsible for coming up with your own replacement. If we use you, we will add you to our chat schedule and let you handle the chats every week....it should be a lot of fun! Send your proposals to: mailto:amazon@amazoncity.com ---------- GOLDlinks: http://www.goldlinks.com The Ultimate Business Directory is looking for Independent Internet Consultants to join their team. Work at your own pace for as much or as little as you want - earnings based on commissions. You will work with clients to market their websites through the GOLDlinks Mall and Search Engine. Sales experience good but not required. For more information, please contact Kathy Gold at mailto:sales@goldlinks.com ---------- Charles Heath Publications at http://www.bizopaddict.com has categorized resources for the biz-op folks. If you're looking for help getting your home-based or small business off the ground,check this out. ---------- There's a new fund to encourage innovative content development for the World Wide Web. Sponsored by WebLab in association with PBS ONLINE, the fund will underwrite independent projects that promise to seek fresh perspectives on complex issues. Guidelines for the new initiative, called the Web Development Fund, are available online at: http://www.pbs.org/weblab with a November 2, 1997 deadline for proposals. The fund will seek proposals for projects that make imaginative use of the Web and its capabilities as an interactive, participatory medium to explore both personal and public issues in new ways. ---------- Northern Light's http://www.nlsearch.com database is the largest of any search engine according to the September 1997 Search Engine Showdown. In this comparison of the database size of the most-used Web search engines, Northern Light came out ahead of all its competitors, including Alta Vista, Excite, HotBot, Infoseek, and Lycos. The Showdown http://imt.net/~notess/search/index.html, which "reviews and compares the search features and database scope of the Internet search engines", highlighted all of Northern Light's features in a detailed review. If you haven't been to Northern Lights and submitted, you're starting to get behind the curve. Get over there. ---------- It's not free beyond the first 20 pages, but there is a handy new tool called javElink http://www.javelink.com. javElink is a service that lets anyone monitor hundreds or even thousands of web pages efficiently. Simply make a list of pages you want to monitor in your password-protected account. Daily, javElink checks those pages for change, highlights recent changes, and stores the history for your review. ---------- Lots of changes recently over at Wilson Web (no relation) at http://www.wilsonweb.com/wct/ A very ambitious site covering more of the web than any one site I've run into before. If you haven't bookmarked it, you haven't been doing what I tell you to do. You can't survive without this site (in addition to VirtualPROMOTE of course) ---------- Looking for a reasonably priced site hosting service? Look at the lists on BudgetWeb http://budgetweb.com/budgetweb/index.html to get some starting points. Remember, don't take anyone's word for it. Check out the ISP and see if they offer what you need, and talk to a couple (or more) of their customers. Find out if they give good service and is the server up most of the time. Thanks to Alan E. Hersh (Editor) The Hersh Web Site Observer http://CyberJournalist.com/ for this tip. Check out the Observer. Good resource. ---------- If you want to be kind to visitors who are able to access the web at work (Maynard yells WORK?!?!? - BTW, I've only seen the show in reruns! Yeh. Right.) you might want to go to http://www.donsbosspage.com/ and get a Boss Button. Put it on your web site. Visitors hit the button and anybody walking by their desk will think they are actually doing some boring, ol' work related drudgery, when in reality they are planning their company's conquest of the Web. Or reading the latest cartoon strip. Of course, we don't need one for VirtualPROMOTE because when bosses catch their employees reading VP they normally give the employee a raise and promotion for being so tuned into marketing research. (Could happen!) ---------- New 7-days-free classified ad site at Redding Cyber Mall http://www.c-zone.net/mav1054/Classified/CyberMall.htm. ---------- 50WEBMASTERS.COM is currently conducting a world-wide search for the TOP 50 webmasters on the Internet. 50WEBMASTERS.COM is the brainchild of Jennifer Moss and Mallory Lubofsky, successful web designers and promoters of high-traffic sites, including BABYNAMES.COM, KNOWLEDGEWORKERS.COM and the upcoming UNIXSYSADMIN.COM. The site will include a listing of the Top 50 webmasters, employment listings, an exclusive message board, industry news and "sage advice" for the Internet development community. The TOP 50 WEBMASTER nomination form can be found on the http://www.50WEBMASTERS.com/ site. Nominations are being accepted through October 15th. The TOP 50 webmasters will be announced and listed on the site on December 1st, 1997. ---------- Want another easy way to have a sweepstake on your site? Vacations have such a broad base of appeal, everyone likes to take a vacation! Now, you can offer your visitors the chance to win an Extended Weekend Getaway at an Upscale Hotel or Resort. Visit Something Ventured at http://free-vacation.com/imc/susan.html ---------- Got spammed by a site and thought you might find a lesson there. Actually, it's not a site, but you'll see that when you get there. If your site looks anything like this, I'm just gonna hafta write longer Gazettes until I get the right combination of words to turn on the lightbulbs. http://members.aol.com/Octoprizm/index.html ---------- Another example of adding more content to a site: Flying Solo, a widely-distributed weekly newspaper column that discusses complex life transition issues, is introducing free interactive Chat Seminars to their web site beginning October 1. Hosted at http://www.flyingsolo.com experts from across the U.S. will present useful information on subjects like divorce, disability, long-term care, and other matters concerning the elderly. Visitors who attend the chat sessions will be able to share experiences and get answers to questions on the topic of the day. ---------- I think there's a new banner sort-of exchange program, I guess. It appears that you sortof buy blocks of click-throughs in advance I think and maybe the money is shared with the banner-hosting site, but you can run banners on your site and I think lower your cost maybe. I'm obviously way too confused and babbling from system over load. Go to their great looking site and let me know where I went wrong. I must have missed a couple of pages in the 'How It Works' section. http://www.pennyweb.com/ I get the impression they're trying not to say 'You give us money. We send you traffic. Cheap.' Since that's what we're all looking for, they should just spit-it-out. It's what we want to hear! ---------- Skytown.com is a great looking site that is growing traffic at a steady pace. This would be a good time to go submit for the 'Mayor's Choice Award' before the competition gets too stiff. I don't think they will pester you to contribute to the Mayor's Re-election fund.http://www.skytown.com ---------- If you have any content that you would like to charge for each time it is read, there is a new system that will at least give you the background on a direction you could go. It's called Pay2See at http://www.pay2see.com/ Try to ignore the blinking, flashing, not-seen-on-the-web-for-2-years graphics blitz. The content is actually pretty good. ---------- Are you listed at Alcanseek http://www.alcanseek.com? Why not? Didn't submit? ---------- SiteFinder is an experimental directory that might get some good traffic at http://www.profind.com/site/ Go get listed. ---------- SelectSurf is up and running at http://www.selectsurf.com/. Better get over there and submit. Second notice. Better hurry. ---------- CyberContact, a new software program, claims to solve a problem that troubles many Internet users: how to organize and keep track of the amounts of information retrieved from the net. It looks pretty good to me. Download it for free at http://www.liraz.com/cybercontact. ---------- EPage claims to manage almost 10% of all the Internet's classified sites. From the looks of their site, they are probably right. Lots of ads. You can have a free classified ad site to your web site - free. You might even make some money! Classifieds are placed and read on the host site; the reader never knows that EPage is doing all the behind-the-scenes work. Webmasters can sign up for our Classified Service Provider (CSPTM) program for free, and choose their own categories for classifieds or auctions. http://ep.com/b/csp.html ---------- If you follow the technical side of search engine technology, there is a new newsgroup for you. news:comp.infosystems.search Just got going, so might not be extremely active yet. ---------- Clickables http://www.compunotes.com/clicks/clickables.htm is a free email list sent to thousands of internet users twice a week advertising the latest in web pages! The people who use your site or service can also add their web sites to Clickables for free! TIPS FROM THE HITMAN - PART XIIIJim Here - The poor dodo that Hayden is talking about with the 500+ unanswered emails in the inbox is NOT me. I never ACTUALLY reached 500. Not by a mile! No sir. Not Me. Never!! Somebody else, sure, but NOT ME!We are talking email. In the last "episode" I got into the need to respond to your email in a timely fashion, and gave some of the reasons I feel are important. I was going to move into the actual management of the volume of mail you receive. If you set up a system now to be ready for the day of breaking 100 messages the first time, or if you are long past that point and have fallen prey to the "buried alive" syndrome and have 500 unanswered emails, this is something that should be a top priority. I said I was going to move into this area, but during the week I of course thought of something I had not mentioned. It is something that can mean the difference between getting a new customer, or making a new enemy. Making enemies??? How are you going to make enemies with your email? Well, believe it or not, if you set up a Web page for any reason, be it business or personal or whatever, and if you put an email address on this Web page, sooner or later you will get a nasty email. How can this be?? Well, if you figure you have the potential to reach 50 million people with the content of your web page and if you compound this by actually doing business where you are providing a service that someone can find fault with, you will sooner or later piss off someone. It will happen. Trust me. (ask Jim, he will tell you about "interesting email messages") When you get one of these messages, it will no doubt make you mad, you may be accused of being an idiot, a cheat, a thief, wrong, stupid or someone may use more colorful language to describe you, your Web site, or your business. What you do when this happens is important for a number of reasons. The first thing I suggest when this happens and you are ready to hit the reply and inform this $%^#* what you think of him and his mother, stop. Just stop. Mark the message to be replied to later and move on with the rest of your messages. Why? If you act on impulse and fire back with equal or greater insults, comments and fervor, you not only will be reducing yourself to the level of the person sending the email, but you can make an enemy. Making an enemy on the Internet can be dangerous. You have no idea just how tenacious some people can be if they decide you have validated all their original thoughts about you by firing back insult for insult, or making a threat or whatever. Some of these people are very good at making your life miserable if they decide that you deserve some special attention. I will not go into any of the horror stories I have heard, that is not the point I am trying to make. If you receive an email that seems to be bordering on crazy ranting, the best thing to do is often just not reply at all. Let someone else get this guys attention by responding, he is waiting for it so he can move on to round two. Most of the time this will result in no further messages as a real target will be found and you will never hear from the person again. Now, if the email is regarding your business or service, this is not the best approach. You want to respond, but wait till you cooled off a bit. Sometimes one of these message can really get the blood boiling. I have discovered that a polite businesslike response is in your best interest. I know the urge to fire back can be strong but fight it. You would be surprised. I have had people who sent in an order for services on a Saturday send an email on Monday because I had not confirmed the order yet (my site says within one Business Day, not one day) I mean a nasty email, accusing me of stealing the credit card number for ill gain, not providing services as promised, you name it. Here is how I handle this these situations. ---------- Dear, (bent out of shape customer) I am sorry you are upset. I have received your order and was preparing to send your confirmation within one business day as promised at my site. I have not charged your credit card yet, and never do so till I am ready to complete an order. Our office is closed on the weekend and I did not see your order until this morning. I am sorry for any inconvenience. I will cancel the order. Your credit card has not been charged. Hayden Mitchell Web Themes ---------- This type of response does one of two things. One it diffuses the situation. The customer no longer feels he is being taken advantage of. Also, this response will almost always result in a very meek and apologetic letter back from the customer more or less begging to be forgiven, offering lists of reasons why he had good reason to fear being ripped off for placing an order on the Internet, and how he would really appreciate it if I would consider taking the order and doing the job. I accept the apology, I get a customer not an enemy. The other way to handle it is to fire back as soon as you read the email, and lose the order, the customer, and maybe start a war of words that will result in a stream of nasty, threatening email for your trouble. The choice is yours to make. Hayden Mitchell - Web Themes http://www.webthemes.com/
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