JimWorld Gazette Issue #27 10/31/1997

Gazette - Issue #27 - October 31, 1997

-- New Way To Maintain Subscriber Info
-- Scumbag Watch
-- The Insanity Continues
-- Snippets
-- Think Before You Change Your Site
-- Email Help For Mac Using Gazeteers
-- Need Some Hits?

Link to this issue of the Gazette as http://gazetteworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=g27

This week we have zoomed right past the 6,000 subscriber mark. That's a lot of Gazeteers. I don't know if your folks know it or not, but you are picking up one heck of a reputation. Every time some tasty morsel appears in the Gazette, you visit and submit, or subscribe, or whatever, in massive droves. Advertisers report that you are the most responsive group that they have ever advertised to. I knew all along that Gazeteers are the coolest people on the web, but now your reputation is spreading far and wide. Just thought you'd be interested in the locker room talk.

Next week there will not be a Gazette, as I need to update a couple thousand links on the JimWorld site. They are getting a bit long in the tooth and need some TLC. See you week after. With the time you save not reading the Gazette next week, spend some of it over at Search Engine Watch. There's more than enough good stuff there to occupy your 'spare' time.

There is a wonderful new trend for sending Spam email. Low-forehead types have noticed that several email programs can now receive HTML documents as email and display them as if a browser were looking at the email. That is true. It is also true that only about one in a thousand people on the web actually are running this particular type of email program. The rest of us just get the mail and shake our heads while grumbling about the rapid de-evolution of the human race. Integrating two facts is apparently beyond the mental capacity of most Spammers.

However, there is a bright side to this. It was incredibly easy to set up my email filters to look for HTML tags and send the message where it belonged. To the trash.

NEW WAY TO MAINTAIN SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION

Things have gone so well with the RevNet Group Master software that is being used now to send out the Gazette each week, that I am going to implement the next step: letting you maintain your own subscription information.

If you want to change your Gazette to a different email address or if you want, unlikely as it may be, to cancel your subscription, visit http://gs1.revnet.com/GMG/ctrlpanel/0/74

The first time you visit this page, you should ask the program to send you your password. Just enter your email address and within a few minutes you will receive your password via email. This is your permanent Gazette password.

There are a couple of options on the page that are not applicable to your Gazette subscription. Change to digest mode and send a message to the list do not work. Those options are for discussion lists, not for newsletter lists.

A quick tip. I have *a lot* of passwords to keep track of so I use a simple trick to keep track of them all. I bookmark the site or page that is password protected. I then change the description in my bookmarks to include the username and password as part of the description. Saves me a lot of time.

SCUMBAG WATCH

-- Jim here -- We've had mail response before, but the Scumbag stories last week have generated over 300 email to both TJ and myself. TJ's story has already been republished at least a dozen times on different sites that I know of. So I guess you guys want to know more about Scumbags and how they damage you, me and the Web. Since I have a never ending supply of Scumbag examples every day in my email in-box, this will not be a problem. The following report was written by a Gazeteer about an offer that was so profitable the offerer couldn't even afford a decent hosting service. --
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Hello Jim,

I received this issue of the Gazette in the same mailing as the mailing I received offering the following:

[START]

Hello Fellow Netizens! :-)
P*L*E*A*S*E DO NOT DELETE THIS MESSAGE!
You've got to see this!

While surfing the net one day, we found the secret to generating "truck-loads" of orders!

A very simple system:
Secret Web Site SHOCKS Online Marketers Worldwide!
Here's what you'll find:

150,000 Fresh and Responsive Opportunity Seeker E-Mail Addresses.
FREE Bulk Email Software!
FREE 5 Page Web Site!
FREE Autoresponder!
FREE Opportunity Newsletter!
FREE Web Design Software!
FREE Animated Graphic Software!
Get Exclusive Resale Rights On The Hottest Selling Book On The Net!
Awesome Email Address Extractors!
Private "Members Only" Forum and more!

http://members.tripod.com/~comebehad/index.html
*"*"*"*"*"*"*"*"*"*"*"*"*"*"*"*"*"*"*"*"*"*"*"*"*"
To be REMOVED from our list, mailto:hotline1@ix.netcom.com and type the word "remove" in the message. Upon receiving we will remove your name from our mailing list immediately and you won't be contacted by us again ever.

[END]

I feel your newsletter had arrived just in time. You see I received the above mail just before your newsletter in the in-box. As I usually do, I clicked on the URL in the message and looked at the site while going through my mail. The site was good enough for me to click on the secure order button. I went there and while it was loading I opened your newsletter.

Wow, is this a coincidence or what! I looked at your first paragraph about Scumbags and decided that this was too close to the same type of thing you were just talking about. I decided not to get the "BRAND NEW BOOK! Discover How To Generate A Massive Income Stream On The Internet!" with reseller rights.

You know when we view these things we don't look at the things we should to make better decisions. I started looking at the 'secret' web page and realized the following (numbers are in order of the web page):

The secret web site is on a free website (Tripod). They must offer the same web-pages that they are using (free).
The email forwarding and autoresponder are probably attached to the same activity (free).
Ditto
Anyone can build a forum (BBS) with a little knowledge of CGI scripts that are available (free).
The Newsletter can also be set up fairly easy for customers. This actually makes it a subscription newsletter. There are too many good free newsletters that are available such as the Gazette!
I'm not sure about the Cybermailer Pro software as I don't use bulk email processing and probably never will (I say probably because if a legal way of using it without upsetting prospects comes about I as well as many others would use it).
There is no discussion of the 175,000+ Opportunity Seeker E-Mail Addresses. It may just be the previous customers or prospects of this offer! But you can bet they are selling the same 175,000 names to everyone. I bet that list has been overworked months ago.
There are web page building scripts available on the net and if the selling party is of the "Scumbag" variety they will even buy one and use it illegally in their pursuits. Most have licensing fees (the one I'm planning on using has a $50 payment with a $120 a year license fee).
Adding personalized graphics to a site is easier than ever these days. There are even free programs to do it. AniMagic software is try before buy and costs $29 to register. I'm sure it is the shareware version.
FTP Explorer is a program that is free for Home and Educational use. To register and license it for commercial use is $30. Again is this the shareware? I think so.
They tell you to download Winzip95 or PKunzip to unzip the files. Its obvious they are not providing this.
The Book! "Discover How To Generate A Massive Income Stream On The Internet!". I'm sure this is a few pages that are delivered online. This is a good method of delivery for pamphlets but a book I'm not so sure! And if they are calling it a book and its just a few pages, then that itself is mis-leading.

And all this for $24.95. Sounds too good doesn't it? Well I think your newsletter helped me clear my eyes for a second and take another look. I am trying to develop an honest and up-front business online and I look at these offers to make it easier. I guess we need to stick to the saying that if it looks too good it probably isn't.

I am tempted to get the "Complete Internet Business Start-Up Kit" as its called just to see what is entailed and to report on it. That may be a good starter project on my site. It may help my customers and visitors to my site avoid offers on the net that are known to not provide good content and to reward the ones that do provide good content.

What do you think about this? Do you think the cost involved is worth the effort to review this program? Thanks for reading this and I respect your advice.

Butch Weber - Home-Base dot Com http://www.home-base.com/

-- Butch, I can't think of much to add to this. You summed it all up when you said: If it seems to good to be true, watch out. If someone discovers secrets that the rest of us don't know, they are not going to sell them for $24.95. Not when they can keep them secret and make millions from big companies positioning their web sites at the top. These 'offers' are everywhere and creating new victims every day. Is it any wonder the Web has such a raunchy reputation? --

THE INSANITY CONTINUES

The war between search engines and web promoters continues. On the lunatic fringe are the web promoters who will stop at nothing to reach the top spot on a search engine. We've all seen the pages with thousands of keywords being loaded into the search engines with invisible text and other tricks.

According to Alta Vista "Half of the 20,000 URLs submitted to AltaVista every day are bogus junk, loaded with excess keywords and other devices to trick its Web search engine into finding them."

Alta Vista has taken some aggressive steps to make it stop. They have new detection software in place and any site that is flagged for 'spamdexing' is sent a warning. If the situation continues, the spamdexing site is permanently banned from Alta Vista.

There's a good article on this subject at http://www.abcnews.com/sections/scitech/spamdex1030/index.html which quotes Eric Ward of Netpost. Eric is the author of the JimWorld Guest Tutorial about how to pick an online public relations firm. That is one of our most heavily read tutorials. I neglected to mention in the credits of that article that Eric is also a seasoned and respected site promoter. Check it out at http://www.urlwire.com/uhome.html.

SNIPPETS

The Focus Associates Award Site Submission Service is really pumping along. If you visit there, you can submit your site for lots of awards automatically. Very easy way to get started in your search for awards and recognition. And Free! http://www.focusa.com/search/award_sites.htm

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Some people are just good folks. This week we take a look at http://www.folksonline.com Folks Online. Here you can read stories about people who use the Net to start a dream business or to make a friend or two. There are also plenty of chat rooms and message boards. Be sure to check out the Helping Hands section for an article about discovering your family tree online. There's always time for a site that makes us feel good.

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Be careful about the promotional tricks you play. Tricks (and treats) can be fantastic attention and traffic getters, but there are lines that are dangerous to cross. You can wind up being world renowned as a site that should never be visited. Virtual leprosy.

PCWorld Online, the online version of PC Magazine has a Trick-or-Treat page that makes you think that all of your files are being deleted from your hard drive, or that they have captured your credit card number from your files, and other gags that PCWorld thought were cute. They are getting some feedback to the contrary.

Do you really want to place the thought in your visitor's minds that your site is a threat to their online security? Of course, most computer savvy folks will quickly figure out it's a joke and maybe even like it and send it along to their friends. But what about the vast majority of web users that are not savvy? You could scare them more than you wanted.

The message? Think before acting.

The full article.

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This week Rockwell announced the development of the fastest modem to date. 1MPS which is 10-20 times faster than anything on the dial-up market today. It uses standard phone lines and requires no special installation. The full story is at http://www.rockwell.com/News/PressRel/PR971028.html Things are looking up in the bandwidth department
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I've gotten a bunch of email about how cable modems aren't really as fast as they advertise they are because you have to share the bandwidth with your neighbors. I even had one Gazeteer (obviously new) write me that his T-1 line seemed faster than his friend's cable modem. Let's see. The $1,500 per month T-1 was faster than the $35 per month cable modem. Gee. I hope so. The reality is that I have used fractional T-1's, 56K modems, ISDN 1 and 2 channel lines, and cable modems. No matter what your friends tell you, the best value on the market is the cable modem. When Steve and I became beta testers for @HOME, we were the only users in our whole neighborhood. Now there are lots of users on our segment of the cable and neither one of us can tell that there has been any decrease in speed. Unlike ISDN, you are connected 24 hours a day so you can even run a personal web server on your desktop machine. Of course, WebSuite http://www.smartdesk.com is the only good personal web server. For those of you new to the list I feel compelled to note that WebSuite is a product of VirtualPROMOTE's longest running sponsor, so I might be showing a bit of favoritism, in spite of the fact that it is the best.

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Wonder what a good web word-smith is worth? Probably more than you might think. Check out http://www.salonmagazine.com/media/1997/10/30money.html for the inside story. Then it's time for a raise. All they can say is NO.

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Here's another cool newsletter that is all to do with website promotion. Not as cool as the Gazette, of course, but still, it has a lot of cool tips and tricks in it. Not to mention articles from the top site promotion experts around. Not as good, of course, as the articles in the Gazette, but still good. So, if you promise that you will still make reading the Gazette a higher priority, subscribe to the Promotion World Informer by sending a message to mailto:informer@oaknetpub.com with SUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.

Or, if you want more information first, see the Promotion World Informer's website at http://www.islandnet.com/~jreimer/informer/.

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If you have a Spam phobia you may be defeating your self when you send out email. I am starting to get a trickle of messages from people who are using the trick of putting NOSPAM as part of their email address. For instance, mine would be mailto:webmasterNOSPAM@jimworld.com Of course if you tried to send me something at that address it would bounce back. So if I sent you an email asking for a favor or some information I would have to rely on you to cut and paste that address into a new message (of course, you can't just hit reply because it will keep bouncing) and then you would have to delete the word NOSPAM from the address. Then you would have to cut and paste my original message into the new message and then answer my question and send it off. You would have to be pretty motivated to send me an answer if I was insensitive enough to use this method.

Guess what I do with all of these messages? Right. Delete. Guess what the emaill address harvesters do? Right. They fix it automatically. So you wind up getting ONLY spam mail and no response to your community building efforts. Way to go.

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Just when you think it has all been done, along comes another great idea. The WebLinks Company http://users.aol.com/hilwag/weblinks.htm has launched a new and unique service for busy webmasters. For $495 they will research your needs, develop a link plan and locate and document 40 good links that you should publish on your site to offer good destinations to your visitors that will interest them. They maintain this list for as long as you are a customer. This is a great service to busy development companies. $495 is not a lot when you consider how long it takes to locate the 40 best links to publish on a site.

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Got a story to tell about anything? Need that one more article to fill out your latest newsletter? Don't have a budget? Then you need to head over to World Wide Information Outlet http://certificate.net/wwio/index3.htm. Everything there is free -- both for writers wanting to get some exposure and for publishers needing article to publish. If you have an article you want published all over the web, submit it. Every time someone publishes your article, they must leave your byline and link in the article. That sets up a steady flow of traffic to your site and builds a professional image of you and your work.

We've talked several times in the past about this. Producing articles for publication in other people's newsletters is a fantastic path to fame. Just ask the people that have had article published in the Gazette. Many of those articles get published, with permission, in many other newsletters and on web sites. Our requirement is that the article must contain in the byline a statement that 'This article is reprinted with permission and originally appeared in the Gazette on (date)' with a link to JimWorld. This is in addition to the information and link for the author.

If you are a publisher of a newsletter and need some material at the last minute, this is a good place to go. The limited selection of articles already available are not of especially good quality, but that's because they haven't heard from the Gazeteers yet. You have a great chance of getting your articles picked up. Establish yourself as an 'expert' in your field by having your knowledge published on other people's web sites. That's how it's done. Just make sure that what they publish raises your reputation, not lowers it. Do your homework. Write a good article. If it's really good and about web promotion, of course, send it to me. I get first dibs!

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This just in from Adam Boettiger:

I've created a list for those who wish to hold an unmoderated discussion on Advanced Internet Advertising and Marketing. "The AdSpeak Discussion List" will be monitored by myself. It is meant to be a place where industry and ad agency professionals can discuss in a type of unmoderated "fireside chat" environment.

There will be no commercial advertisements allowed. There will be no sponsor ads. If you wish to join, please read the Welcome message carefully for posting guidelines. Post by post or digest settings are available (see the welcome messgage).

The AdSpeak forum is not a place for beginners to ask questions, rather for advanced marketers and industry professionals to hold a relaxed discussion about the industry and where it is headed.

Newcomers to the industry are welcome to join this list, however the NetPromotion list is the best place to ask basic questions and obtain help with promotions.

Subscribe to AdSpeak at: http://www.exposure-usa.com/lists/

THINK BEFORE YOU CHANGE YOUR SITE

Traffic killers abound on the web when you don't pay careful attention to what you're doing. I was researching broken links on the Hot Sites page and saw several examples of the most common mistake made that results in huge losses of traffic that took months to build up.

Not to pick just on them but Computer Graphics World Magazine (CGW) offers an award. It is a well established award and probably attracted a lot of traffic to their site. In fact, they put enough value on the award that they rebuilt the award sub-site to have automation in the maintenance of the pages. That was a smart move. So now the link to the award sub-site is at http://www.cgw.com/cgw/Connections/index.asp This takes you to a dynamic page of html. Very cool.

Unfortunately all of the links all over the web are still pointing to a page at index.html. The old index page. No problem to handle that. Just put in a redirector page at index.html to send the traffic to index.asp. No problem if you do it. But CGW didn't do it. So most of the traffic they were getting is now being lost to 404 File Not Found. They now have to rely on people like me that have been sending them traffic to take the time to track down the new page and then take the time to change the link. They are putting a bit too much value on how badly I want to link to them.

If they valued the traffic others send, they could have taken the time to look in their referrer logs and find out who all of the traffic senders are and asking us to change the link, or just put in a redirector. They could have done lots of things, but they didn't do any of them. Now they face the task of rebuilding their traffic to the award pages from the ground up. And many webmasters will be irritated enough to have no interest in putting the link back up on their site.

Like I said at the beginning, I don't mean to pick just on CGW, but they are a typical example of the problem from a company that should have known better. This type of critical mistake is common when programmer types work alone on web sites without the involvement of a marketing type. The programmer just wants the site to run well and have cool features. The marketing type wants to protect current assets and build even more traffic and sales. Together, these two people make up one good webmaster. Without both, the site suffers damage every day. If you choose one person to be in charge of your web site, make it the marketing type, not the programmer. The reasons are obvious.

Traffic generating links from other sites are a privilege, not a right. If you abuse them, they will go away. Your slogan should be 'Research and think -- before -- making changes.' Especially when the change involves a change to the URL of pages.

BTW - Thanks to Tom Dahm - Project Leader - NetMechanic http://www.netmechanic.com for running the NetMechanic on the hot sites page for me and sending the results. Shows you what links are broken on a page. One page down, 93 to go.

EMAIL HELP FOR MAC USING GAZETEERS

"I'd like to add to Hayden Mitchell's excellent article series, Tips From The Hitman. Macintosh users who would like use an email client with spell-checking, multiple addresses and mailboxes, and filters -- those features that Hayden so likes -- should look at Claris Emailer 2. Although Eudora Pro for the Mac is available, Emailer 2 also allows collection of mail from CompuServe and AOL, among other providers."

That's the message that I sent to Jim after I wrote to Hayden about including us poor Mac users. :-) Jim asked me to write a review on Emailer 2. Having already done so for our Mac Users Group, I offer this for those of you who use a Mac and have not yet seen Emailer. Rather than pasting in my previous review, I'll point out those areas which I use and that I believe are needful for conducting business online.

As with Eudora, Emailer allows multiple addresses and mailboxes. For my business, I have set up main, sales, support and info addresses. The last three addresses are aliases that my ISP has set up, but Emailer doesn't care: when I create a new message, I select the appropriate account (address) from the Send Via popup menu and Emailer addresses it from that account. When Emailer checks my main account, the messages are examined to determine to which account they are addressed, and Emailer files them in the appropriate folder (mailbox).

That message examination is done by mail actions, or filters as Eudora calls them. Mail actions let me automatically file a message in a particular folder and/or print it, reply to or forward a message, and add the sender to my address book, based on finding a set value anywhere within the message. For example, finding VirtualPROMOTE in the subject causes Emailer to file the message in a special folder. Simple auto-responders can be set up in this manner.

Depending on the address from which you send mail, you may want to have a different signature. Each account has a default signature, but you can change the signature for each message or even randomize it. Multiple signatures allow me to have a short sig with email addresses for my support messages and a longer sig with snail mail address, phone number and PGP key for sales messages.

Spell checking is included. Most importantly for me, however, is Emailer's ability to handle mail not only from the Internet, but also America Online, AppleLink, Claris OfficeMail, CompuServe and RadioMail. This feature ensures that all my mail is accessible in one application.

BTW, Jim mentioned that he hates e-mail that contains HTML tags. Emailer is scriptable using Applescripts. I don't know if there is a comparable feature for Windows, but the MacOS allows applications to control other Applescript-aware applications. Emailer can also use Applescripts in a manner similar to plug-ins, allowing you to delete messages with HTML, strip the HTML tags, or open the message in your browser.

Interested Mac users should check out both Emailer 1.1, the free version similar to Eudora Lite, and the 60-day trial version of Emailer 2.0v1. (Emailer 1.1 does not offer multiple signatures or spell checking and limits the number of accounts.)

ftp://ftp.claris.com/

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Don Morris mailto:lasermedic@compuserve.com
LaserMedic Laser Printer Service http://www.lasermedic.com

NEED SOME HITS?

Are you listed at SiteSeek? If not, get listed (free) and start getting your site to the top of the returns by getting people to vote for the quality of your site. The better the votes, the higher your site appears. http://www.SiteSeek.com/

Toddle on over to Email Announce and submit your site http://www.emailannounce.com/ They will send it out to their opt-in list of people that want information about sites like yours. You should also register to get weekly mailings about sites you are interested in. Free and well done.

-- Thanks to Gazeteer Alan E. Hersh, The Hersh Web Site Observer http://CyberJournalist.com/ for digging up the following places for us all to submit.

Spider Web's BizSearch has a straightforward categorized index of sites. Submit yours at http://www.corenet.net/melton/websearch/

Shakka Search at http://waimea.hawaiian.net/~sparrow/newsearch/nssearch.html is accepting submissions to their directory.

Wafoo! is worth visiting for a giggle and a link. http://www.infovlad.net/websearch/

Surf the Wave at http://www.web-magic.com/wave/ is another place to submit.

Ditto WebSprinter at http://207.86.159.55/websprinter/index.html

Search Me at http://www.halcyon.com/welcome/search_me/index.htm is asking for submissions.

Ralph's Pretty Good Search Engine at http://www.tage.com/search/ has already built up a good collection of links. Might as well get yours in.

Rainfall at http://www.rainfall.com/guide/ is just starting. Get listed.

Majooh at http://www.luxembourg.org/ even has a robot running to index sites. Might be a good one soon.

LYComm Net Guide at http://www.lycomm.com.sg/directory/ appears to be growing rapidly. You should get listed here.

The Link Engine at http://www.linkengine.com/ is worth submitting to. Take a look around, the site is well done.

Submit you site to Galactoid at http://www.galacticgalaxy.com/

Just follow the footprints to Expawsed Links http://www.lpc-net.com/expawsed/default.htm

Dummy. Made for idiots by idiots at http://www.mookie.com/dummy/ is fun and a good place to submit.