JimWorld Gazette Issue #77 05/22/1999

JimWorld Gazette - Issue #77 - May 22, 1999

This issue we have three very nice letters from Gazeteers that not only offer praise for my inspired writing (since that goes with out saying, of course) but more importantly they serve as a bit of inspiration for you that there is light at the end of the promotion tunnel. We all need that now and then.

When I first started all this Net nonsense mumble-mumble years ago, the one thing that would have helped would have been some words of encouragement letting me know that hard work would actually pay off. It isn't always intuitively obvious that virtual life works that way. Especially at 3 AM when the server is down one more time and your email program just misplaced four days worth of orders.

New On JimWorld
The Littleton Article
Think Before You Submit
It Works. Yes, It Works
Effort-Free Low-Bandwidth Buttons
Configure Your Server The Right Way
Yes It Works
Feel Safe Now That You Have A Redirected Domain Name?
Finally, A Truly Free "Refer My Site" Service
The Ezine Revolution
When They Print It, You've Got Them
Welcome To My Home Page
A New Twist On Email Advertising
Get Linked
Snippets

Link to this issue of the Gazette as http://gazetteworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=g77

NEW ON JimWorld

Keyword Research

Want to find the best keywords for your site? Ones that are actually used by surfers on the major search engines and directories?

Now you can find extensive research materials to help you solve the keyword puzzle. With 23 places to look at real search words being used, the Webmaster Resources directory on JimWorld is the definitive answer to keyword research.

----------

I'm compiling a directory segment to help you find templates for web pages. The kind that come complete with HTML code and all of the graphics. I've found about 25 sites offering free or low-cost templates, but if you know of some, please stop in at the Webmaster Select Tools directory and submit the places you know about.

http://www.toolsforthe.net/

THE LITTLETON ARTICLE

After sending out the last issue of the Gazette, which included my response to the Littleton shootings, life quickly got very interesting.

I sent the Gazette out about 2:00 AM and promptly turned in to get some much needed sleep. Upon awaking and getting back online at 8:00 AM I had several hundred email messages to download, beyond the normal amount of mail after each issue.

As I started reading, it became obvious that the article touched many Gazeteers and that first day I processed over 700 requests to reprint the article on web sites, in ezines and in local newspapers in several countries.

As the next 2 weeks wore on, the level of mail stayed high and by the end of the first two weeks I had received over 17,000 emails related to the story with over 5,000 of them asking for permission to re-use the article.

Response was about evenly split: 16,970 were in mostly total agreement with the sentiments in the article, and 30 people took serious objection.

23 were very upset with me since I am obviously "a gun nut in favor of people hunting each other" as one person put it. Another was pretty interesting: "I didn't subscribe to your newsletter to hear your right wing lunatic ignorant thoughts on current events. Stick to writing about things you know something about."

Then there was the opportunist in Canada that wrote a very insulting message blaming the entire thing on "you stupid Americans" and how I should be sure to list his URL right when I "blasted" him in the Gazette. He even started a forum on one of his site directories in order to gain some notoriety by posting his insulting response.

Sorry dude, but I won't give you the attention and traffic you so desperately want. I did take both of your directories out to The500 and unsubscribe you.

I've heard from ministers, Fortune 100 CEO's, judges, social workers, a plethora of teachers and school administrators. People in countries all over the world that responded that taking responsibility applies to everyone, not just Americans. Many asked me why I only talked about Americans instead of universally. The answer is that I am an American and can only speak for what I see. It is up to everyone to look at their own culture and take a stand on issues that will improve life for their countrymen.

From the messages it appears that the article found its way into several million email boxes and the response from those republications started a whole new round of email.

All in all, I'm thrilled with the number of people that read the article. Thousands responded that they were going to actively get involved in life in their community. I hope they do, because that will bring about change. Reading doesn't make change, but action does.

To any of you that asked for permission to republish the article and didn't receive a response from me, sorry. Please make whatever use of the article that might reach more readers who might respond and swing into action.

In a stroke of irony, the Littleton article, which I had intended to be freely used, appeared in the issue of the Gazette that carried a strong warning against infringing on my copyrights. That warning was included as a result of three different incidents of serious infringement that I was dealing with that same week. I'll tell you about them next issue because every one of them was resolved favorably and so many of you write asking for ways to deal with infringement on the Web.

Now, my personal favorite response: "If you don't think Marilyn Manson, teaching kids to 'kill your parents, kill yourself,' had nothing to do with this, you must be an idiot. Everything comes from the mind and what's inside. Externals don't help. Living in a nazi concentration camp such as the life you describe is not a cure. Stick to web promoting."

THINK BEFORE YOU SUBMIT

The following dittys are culled from submissions made to the award review service at JimWorld. People that are silly enough to use ridiculous email addresses in an effort to avoid email. While it does keep them from getting on anyone's list, it does one additional thing. It makes it impossible to give them the award they were seeking. Seems to be a waste of their time, doesn't it? One of these silly addresses we only noticed after sending a response that they had won our award. Guess they didn't want it.

Return email addresses of:
junkmail@somewhere.com
billyNOSPAMbob@hicksville.com
UpYoUrS@youamanidiot.com

Then there is the all too typical lack of attention paid to the submission process. The following is an actual description of a site who's owner wanted an award. Not badly enough to submit a literate request however.

"this is a great site with ltos to do,come and see"

The moral of the story is: Pay attention. If the award or listing you are requesting isn't worth the time it takes to put your best foot forward, why bother. Slow down and do it right.

IT WORKS. YES, IT WORKS.

Hi Jim,

I want to thank you for my copy of JimWorld Gazette. Your help has been irreplaceable over the last year (only been a reader since issue 54.) What I like most would be that I don't have to research anything (for which I don't have the time,) but I can typically implement ideas immediately.

So your newsletter must in some respects, be responsible for the success of my company. Three weeks ago after reading every past issue of the JimWorld Gazette I built my own weekly newsletter. After two publications I now have over 64,000 subscribers. Wow!

I hit the one niche in the market which wasn't taken, and through an idea of yours (Helpware) it has publicised itself. These are early days, and I wanted to thank you just once (since I know how much mail you must get) for all your help. If there is anyway I can help you, don't forget to ask. My newsletter can be found here, if you're inclined to look:

http://nerds.co.uk/The_Briefing/

Regards,
Kyle Lamb mailto:Kyle@nerds.co.uk
NERDS> Editor http://nerds.co.uk/
The Ultimate Computer Magazine

----------

Kyle, congratulations on your amazing fast-start. I've just got to make time to go read all of those back issues of the Gazette. It took me almost 2 years to get that many subscribers. BTW - nice signature file.
--Jim

EFFORT-FREE LOW-BANDWIDTH BUTTONS

Building, and endlessly re-building navigation buttons is about the least enjoyable part of site design and development.

Sometimes I get to the point where I just ignore making a new navigation button while finalizing a site.

Boring. Boring. Boring.

There is now an alternative to building that endless stream of buttons.

Using the background image in a table element allows you to use a "blank" button and let the browser put the text on it when the visitor loads the page. It even looks pretty nice.

Won't work for old browsers, but people that can't get around to downloading a new browser once a year can't expect a lot anyway. They'll just see text links.

Here is a sample page I built for you to take a look at: http://jimworld.com/buttontrick/

It might interest you to know that the page would be only 3,581 bytes of download had I only used one color of button. As it is it's less than 5K of total download, HTML and graphics.

Using this technique for a production site would simplify your life, and your visitor's. You can pick up beautiful blank buttons by the tens of thousands on hundreds of free graphics sites. Use the same image repeatedly on the page so the browser only has to download the image once regardless of how many times you use it. And imagine your joy when you need 'just one more button' two months after the site is done. No more firing up Photoshop, finding the blank button template file, figuring out which font you used, and what point size and how much leading and what color was that drop shadow?

For the purists in the audience, fear not. You can use this technique to save countless hours while designing even the most tasty of eye candy sites. Use this technique until you've finished beta testing the site and making all of the changes that will cause. Then you can grind out those tasty, bandwidth-hogging buttons all at one time.

The enticing part of this technique is the flexibility it would allow when creating a site that lets visitors dynamically customize the site to meet their needs.

Hmmmm.

That might be fun to play with on JimWorld.

CONFIGURE YOUR SERVER THE RIGHT WAY

Use your browser and try to reach "your" web site(s) the following two ways:

http://www.yourdomain.com
http://yourdomain.com

If you reached your site both times, you can skip this tip. Congratulations.

So, you only reached it with the www. included in the URL. That means that your server is not configured correctly. You should be able to reach it both ways if your ISP has set up the server configuration files correctly.

There are so many different servers that I am not going to tell you how to set up the configuration files. Instead, I'll tell you that many ISP's are a bit lazy when it comes to configuring domain names and skip the second part of the configuration that allows the server to respond with or without the www.

Call you ISP and tell them to fix the problem. Tell them that you should not be charged for the fix since they should have done it right the first time.

If your ISP says it can't be done, or that they don't do that for their customers, my advise to you is to move your account to a real ISP. One that looks out for their customers.

YES. IT WORKS.

Jim,

I just wanted to email you and let you know how much I appreciate your VirtualPROMOTE site and your Gazette newsletter. The Gazette is one newsletter which I read all the way through, regardless of the length. I've taken your advice to heart over these past 18 months or so, and have gotten excellent results.

Our site, Yellowstone Net, is now listed in the top 6 (out of 20,000 or so results) on ALL the major search engines using the keyword "yellowstone"

We are #1 on Excite, HotBot and Infoseek; #2 on MSN and Goto; #3 on Lycos; #4 on AltaVista; #5 on Yahoo; #6 on WebCrawler. (Could this be some kind of record for a major keyword? )

In addition, we are in the top 3 at dozens of minor search engines and directories, and have some 900 sites linked to us, as measured by Infoseek.

All of this was done with no money (other than a few dollars spent on GoTo), but a TREMENDOUS amount of time and effort.

The site is now two years old, and we are getting nearly 2000 home page impressions daily, translating into significant revenue through the Central Reservations service we offer for the Yellowstone region.

Thanks for your help, and if you can tear yourself away from your computer for a few days, come visit Yellowstone, and we will give you a free rafting trip down the Yellowstone River!

----

Bruce Gourley mailto:gourley@yellowstone.net
Yellowstone Net http://www.yellowstone.net

----------

Dear Jim,

I want to thank you - PROFUSELY - for your article about Server Side Includes. As a webmaster for a very large site with lots of traffic, I had always thought that SSI's were something too complicated & time consuming for me to learn about, plus I thought they would slow down the load time on our pages. AND, I thought (erroneously) that I would have to rename the 100+ pages on our site to end with .shtml extensions.

After reading your article I did a little research and found out that I was very much mistaken. It turned out that the our Apache server was already configured to parse ALL HTML for SSI's, so we already had whatever delay could result from the parsing process might as well benefit from the includes. I started adding includes to my pages and was utterly amazed at what these could do. Talk about saving time!!! And the really neat thing is that it is all totally invisible to the end user - they just see a page that looks like it is written in standard HTML. And none of the browser compatibility and debugging problems you get with Java & Javascript.

Our site is so big that the conversion to includes will have to take place gradually over time, but I am already thinking of great ways to use this to enhance our pages and usability. One problem with a big site is that no matter how well organized, it ends up that information is not always easy to find. I now see that I can use includes to integrate the same data in several different areas of the site.

So, again, I just wanted to thank you. I feel like you have shown me how to do magic, and I am absolutely delighted. I also feel like I now have a very big secret - my site still LOOKS the same, but I am actually creating my pages dynamically.

----------

Abigail Marshall
Dyslexia, the Gift Webmaster
http://www.dyslexia.com

FEEL SAFE NOW THAT YOU HAVE A REDIRECTED SITE NAME?

Once upon a time there existed the problem of getting your GeoCities (and other) free hosted site listed with the search engines. There was the added frustration of promoting and building traffic to a URL that might change when you moved the site to another host. Not a good business model to have your "business address" in the hands of total strangers.

Then came the free redirection services. You could have the longest URL in the world but with the redirection service, your address of http://me.get.to would whisk your visitors to that long URL on your free server. Now life was good. You could move the site from server to server and only have to inform the redirect provider about the change and 100% of your traffic would switch to your new server in less than a second. Cool. Safe. Great answer.

Not.

Take a look at this paragraph from one of the popular free redirection services < http://come.to/ >:

"NO SPAM

It is very important for us that our members don't spam their V3-URL. If you plan on promoting your V3-URL please read the FAQ first. We have a strong policy regarding spam. Accounts are deleted and we redirect them to http://come.to/spam.html. If you want to report a spammer please write to us by using the webmaster contact form or mail us directly at abuse@come.to. Please include the original spammed message if possible."

You go forth to promote your GeoCities site and instead of promoting the address of www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Set/5555/fifthelement1.html you are instead promoting the address http://fifth.come.to safe in your belief that the come.to address will be yours forever, just like you were promised when you signed up for the redirection service.

These are just a few of the events that could sink your virtual boat:

- Someone reports you for spamming and suddenly all of your traffic, instead of being redirected to your web site, is being redirected to a page that says:

"THIS ACCOUNT HAS BEEN DISCONNECTED

You have reached this page after typing an URL that was in conflict with our site policy.

Please don't complain to us about this single account anymore. The account has been disconnected and we have done everything we could to stop the abuse."

What are your rights in resolving this terrible injustice? Your rights don't matter. The reality is that you have lost your traffic, you are publicly branded as a spammer and your only recourse being to sue the redirect provider in court and wait years and thousands of dollars to get justice.

- The redirect provider could go out of the redirection business leaving you with zero traffic. Your only option being to start from zero and rebuild all of your traffic sources and search engine listings.

Do you think this is unlikely to happen? Get real. Just because someone opens a service on the Web doesn't mean they have the money, ability or desire to make a go of it. I've seen dozens of redirection services bite the dust just in the past few months.

- The redirection service's servers might get slow as they become more popular. If they don't have the ability to generate advertising revenues, where are they going to get the money to add more servers and more bandwidth?

Does all of this mean you should never consider a redirection service? No. But it should be the last thing you consider.

It is still best to have your own domain name. Many services will provide you with domain name server services to redirect your own domain name to any URL you want, including the free hosts such as GeoCities. The advantage being that you can change your host and your redirection service when conditions require a change.

The disadvantages? It costs money. You have to pay for the domain name ($70 for 2 years for .com) and you will have to pay for a redirection (DNS server) service. Many are $25 per year.

FINALLY - A TRULY FREE "REFER MY SITE" SERVICE

Most of the services that enable you to put a "Let your friends know about this site" form on your page wind up stealing your traffic away. Many times the visitor kind enough to put forth the effort to do you a favor and let friends know about your site just never seems to come back from the referral service.

Not cool.

Now there is one that is flexible, easy to set up, doesn't steal your traffic and it's free.

The service is called Let 'em Know! at http://LetEmKnow.com

The customizable referral form allows visitors to recommend the web site they are visiting by entering just a few pieces of information. When the visitor submits the form, a customizable referral email is sent immediately to their friends. An advanced version -- also free -- allows up to five referrals at once.

Take a moment, sign up for a free account and be operational on your site in about 5 minutes.

Be sure to read the advanced techniques tricks. They'll give you some ideas to help you get more referrals from each visitor than you would expect.

Just one more great idea from the creators of MarketingChallenge.com.

THE EZINE REVOLUTION

Electronic newsletters have been around since the beginning of e-mail and are an important medium in the new technology age. Many people have realized their publishing dreams due to the low barriers of entry into this field. Publishing an ezine is an inexpensive and effective way to target a specific audience. Similar to the magazine industry, you can find ezines which cover virtually any topic imaginable.

Unfortunately, the rise of ezines as a marketing tool has inevitably led to exploitation. Due to their very targeted nature, ezines are a popular and effective way to advertise goods and services. Many individuals see ezines as nothing more than a billboard on which to place their ads. They reprint articles under the guise of content and overwhelm their readers with classified advertisements. These publishers have no concern for their reader's interests and exist solely to generate as much ad revenue as possible.

The majority of ezine subscribers hope to learn from these publications. Therefore, content quality is vitally important to the success of an ezine. Readers appreciate the effort put forth to produce original, relevant content. They in turn reward that effort with their loyalty and trust.

The gold-digging publishers have shed somewhat of a negative image on the ezine industry. However, we are starting to see a shift, as legitimate ezine publishers recognize the importance of quality content. Some have gone to 100% original content in order to attract and maintain subscribers, following the lead of such original-content ezines as the Gazette. These publishers are leading the shift and are quickly building the trust and loyalty of their readers.

BestEzines was designed to recognize and reward those publishers who see quality content and responsible advertising as the most effective way to attract readers. So far, the response has been fantastic and there seems to be a movement underway to raise the standards of ezine publishing. These new standards will be especially important as the electronic publishing industry grows along with the Internet.

----------

Scott Owen is the founder of BestEzines.com, where you can find online newsletters that deliver original content and low-impact advertising. Visit http://www.BestEzines.com to subscribe. While you're there, check out Scott's "BestEzines - Marketing" list. You'll find several new ezines you'll want to start reading.

WHEN THEY PRINT IT, YOU'VE GOT THEM

If a visitor can be motivated into printing out part of a Web site, that person has suddenly moved up significantly towards the status of "Customer."

One way to motivate a visitor to print your site's content is to offer them the option on each page to print that page in a "printer friendly format."

Create a nice graphic button that can be easily recognized throughout the site.

On each page of the site, put the button and link it to a different copy of the page. Printer friendly pages have the following features:

No background images. Use white as the background color.
Drop all non-essential graphics.
Do not include any site navigation except a text link to return the user to the non-printer friendly version of the page.
Format the content to fit nicely on letter-sized paper.
Use text colors that read well when printed out on a black and white printer. Don't use light colors that vanish when printed in grayscale. Test this one carefully.
If the site uses frames, do not use them on the printer-friendly pages. It is difficult for most people to figure out how to print a specific frame on a page.
At the end of the document include the URL of the page (in clear text, not as a link), the name and contact information for the company.

Two weeks after printing the page, when the prospect decides to return to your site to order something, everything needed to get that prospect back to your site is right there on that nicely formatted print-out.

WELCOME TO MY HOME PAGE

Did you know that the English language has an estimated vocabulary of a million words? We have words to describe every object, movement, feeling and thought on the planet; we can pinpoint each little nuance of meaning, simply by choosing the right word for the right spot.

Isn't that incredible? What bounty!

Shakespeare, who was one of our most prolific and enduring writers, used approximately 22,000 different words in his published works. Well-educated people today, use about 5,000 different words when speaking and about 10,000 in their writing. Most of us have a 'working vocabulary' of 2,000 and the most commonly words used are: the, of, and, to, a, in, that, is, I, it.

Isn't that scary? What a waste!

Those ten little words (and I do mean little), account for 25% of all speech.

There is a group of fifty words, which make up 60% of everything we say - and only two of these have more than one syllable - which brings us to....

WELCOME TO MY HOME PAGE.

Wouldn't you like a dollar for every time you've seen those words? What do they tell you about the site you're visiting?

Not a lot.

You're searching for Peruvian tap-dancing aardvarks .... you find the URL ..... the excitement mounts as you wait for the page to load ..... and what greets you? Welcome to My Home Page.

You want to tell the world about your collection of antique whalebone knitting needles - you have images so real they leap off the page and poke you in the eye, you have maps of the areas where they're still used, you've included diagrams of how to make your own - and what greets the visitor to your page? Welcome to My Home Page.....

I could go on (and on and on ...) but I think you get the picture.

HOW TO WRITE A BETTER HEADLINE

Given that there are approximately 998,000 words knocking about that we rarely use, it should be a simple matter to improve on the Welcome to My Home Page style of headline!

If someone asks you what your site is about, what do you say? (I bet it's not, Welcome to My Home Page.)

So, how do you start to write a better headline?

Think about the content of your site and try to describe it in about ten words or less.
List all the words that describe what your site contains. It might be software / soccer balls / scouts' tents / summer vacation snaps / whatever.....
Then list a few words to explain what your site offers - a behind the scenes look at cake decorating / the best camping spots on the east coast / free trial programs / help with writing / a guide to taxation ....
Now, look at what you've written and cross out any words you've used more than once.
Look at all the nouns and verbs you've used and try to think of at least two synonyms for each (synonyms are words which have similar meanings). Grab a thesaurus and check for more.
Play around with these words until you come up with a short statement that captures what your site is. Read each headline out aloud to yourself. Check that what you've claimed your site is about, is, in fact, what it is about - people don't like bein misled.

TONE IS IMPORTANT, TOO

Tone is the general impression you're trying to convey - it can be casual, formal, persuasive, business like, academic and so on.

What impression are you trying to give? Here are three of the many possibilities (and how to achieve them):

CASUAL

use short sentences
include plenty of colloquial expressions
ask questions of your reader
use contractions e.g. you're, don't, I'll
use personal pronouns e.g. I, you, we, us
choose shorter, rather than longer words e.g. fire not conflagration, truth not veracity, shop not emporium
use the active, rather than passive voice e.g. you must remember to .... instead of, it must be remembered that...
vary your use of punctuation - dashes (-), ellipses (...), exclamation marks

A casual style is friendly, relaxed and intimate - you feel that the writer is speaking directly to you. This is the most popular tone used on personal home pages and many web business sites.

FORMAL

sentences are longer and more complex in structure
vocabulary is also more complex and specialised (according to the subject matter)
punctuation is more formal (no place for dots and dashes here)
passive voice can be used (but don't overdo it - it can be too impersonal)
personal pronouns (I, me, my, we, us, our) are usually avoided in favour of it, one and they

A formal style is business-like, no-nonsense, no time to waste writing. It is designed to inspire confidence in the ability of the writer to get on with the job and is commonly used by larger organisations and companies.

PERSUASIVE

makes great use of emotive words - consider your response to these pairs of words: home & hovel; confusion & shambles; unemployed & dole bludger. By choosing the appropriate word, it's possible to sway your reader's feelings to your way of thinking.
sentences are usually short
ideas are organised very simply - in chronological or reverse chronological order
content is carefully selected to present one particular point of view
personal pronouns are used, especially us and them

A persuasive style is used when trying to sell something or when trying to win support for a particular cause.

You can see from these short examples, how important it is to work out what tone you want to convey in your headline. On the web, you only have a few seconds to convince your readers to stay if they receive a favourable impression, they'll keep reading,

if not ....

Take a look at your home page. What tone does it convey? (Look at the word choice, sentence length, punctuation etc and compare it with the short list above.)

Is this the tone you want to send to your visitors? Does your headline convey an accurate picture of your whole site! If not, you now have a few ideas on how to change it.

----------

Jennifer Stewart offers professional writing services - copy writing, editing and proof reading your: web pages, press releases, technical booklets, newsletters, business proposals, reports or any other writing projects.

Jennifer has a degree in English and History and taught senior High School for over twenty years. During that time, she was Head of Department, responsible for devising and implementing teaching programs, and for supervising young teachers. After leaving full-time teaching, she wrote (and now markets) writing courses for students and adults who want to improve their writing skills.

A NEW TWIST ON EMAIL ADVERTISING

MailSwap
http://www.mailswap.com

MailSwap provides members with a free service to exchange e-mail ads with other people who send email. Once a user has joined MailSwap, ads are automatically added to the bottom of the e-mails the member sends. For every three e-mail ads the member delivers, she gets two in return. The remaining one is sold to advertisers to keep the service free of charge for its users.

This service does not host your mailing list, but rather works on the basis of all email you personally send through your SMTP server. That means that ads will appear in notes to your Granny and correspondence with your customers.

Does not work if you send your email through: AOL, CompuServe or WWW based e-mail services like Hotmail.

Members are only allowed to send a maximum of 150 emails per day through the MailSwap server unless their limit is approved in advance by MailSwap. Any messages beyond the limit will be rejected and returned to you. So, if you send 300 copies of your newsletter, you would get 150 rejected messages in your email in-box and have to send them again manually after changing your email set-up to use some other SMTP server and after that change your SMTP server back to MailSwap.

I can think of a few ways to use MailSwap that would be useful, but it isn't for everyone. One obvious advantage being that placing your ad in other people's personal email gives you a high confidence that the email will actually be opened and read, unlike many other types of email.

A few improvements by MailSwap would help the service reach a broader audience.

The daily limit is a problem that could be solved either by establishing a monthly limit or allowing the mail to go out through the server but not insert ads in messages beyond the limit.
Offer control over what types of ads are inserted in a member's mail. Currently there is no categorization offered.
Offer list hosting to allow a broader range of content. Most people sending newsletters do not send them from their desktop email program. Smaller lists are hosted on the free list hosting services.
The service should monitor and clearly state in its Terms and Conditions that bounced mail will be deducted from the member's credits. This keeps members from sending 150 messages per day to bogus addresses just to run up their credits.
There should be a way to disable the ad insertion into a message. A simple "*" as the first character of the Subject line would tell the server to send the message without inserting an ad after deleting the "*".

GET LINKED

This issue there are 43 new places for you to submit your site in the "What's New?" page of The1000. Go get 'em.

http://the1000.com

----------

PureSeek
http://water39.com/

If your site relates to water purity, water filtration, health information involving water purity, or any other water-quality related issues, you should submit it to this new directory. The site is being promoted heavily starting June 1, so get listed now.

SNIPPETS

CyberTip.NET
http://www.CyberTip.NET/

While talking with the operator of the CyberTips.NET I discovered that only a few hundred of you subscribed to their free daily Online Marketing Tips as a result of last issue's Snippet. That just won't do. Go on over and sign up. If you don't like it you can always unsubscribe, but I doubt that you will. Every morning you will get one tip that you can read in about a minute, which is a great way to focus your energy for the remainder of the day.

----------

Free Search For Your Site
http://www.jayde.com/customizer.html

Jayde.com now offers a free, customized search engine for web sites. Add Search Smart power to your web site within minutes, tailored to match your site's look and content. Jayde provides the search power... you provide the look that you want your visitors to see.

----------

Free Links Network
http://www.FreeLinksNetwork.com

A new link trading service has just hit the Net and you can get in free. It appears to be well thought out and cleanly implemented. With just a bit of effort this service could generate some serious traffic for you. Stop by and see if it's right for you. If you do sign up, remember not to spam in your desire to get the ball rolling.

Any Gazeteers that give it a try, please let me know how it works out for you. I'd like to hear your experiences for a future article.

----------

Yum. Yum.
http://www.jill.net/links

"I'm in the process of creating a directory of recipe sites, and I'd be grateful if you'd let the VirtualPROMOTE subscribers know about it. At the moment all the directory contains is recipes from my own collection (Jill's Gradely Scran - http://www.jill.net/ ), but I'd like to open the directory up to a broader range of sources. I'll only accept URLs that point to individual recipes - no home pages or listings."

----------

SendFree
http://www.sendfree.com

There is a new service which combines email autoresponders with opt-in advertising and offers a free 2 for 1 ad exchange program.

The company is called SendFree and bills itself as the Internet's first autoresponder ad exchange.

Here is how it works. SendFree offers unlimited free autoresponders. Every two times someone requests your autoresponder message - you get one free ad sent with another SendFree member's autoresponder thereby giving you free advertising.

The best part is that you control who sees your ads and which ads are featured with your autoresponder messages. You can target your ads based on subject categories. You can also filter out ads that are inappropriate for your autoresponder.

SendFree also sends a daily digest of all inquiries sent to your autoresponder, including their email addresses.

----------

Hello Jim,

I was just surfing your Web site and think I might have something that will interest you and some of your readers. My company is currently running a promotional giveaway for Webmasters and site owners. We are giving away an ad space in our daily humor ezine, The FunnyMailer, that goes to well over 70,000 opt-in subscribers.

Once a month, one lucky winner will receive a top-placed exclusive advertisement to be included in our mailings. If you would like more information about this sweepstakes, point your browser over to http://www.funnymail.com/advertise/ and take a look.

----------

XOOM.com Easy Store Builder
http://www.xoommemberstores.com/website/

Want to stick your toe in the e-commerce water to see how it goes? Would it help if you could do it for free?

XOOM has announced their Easy Store Builder where you can create a free three product ecommerce site and start selling immediately. XOOM supplies all the software you need to create your store online using your browser.

You even get to list your store in their high-visibility XOOM Members Store directory.

If you need more than three items on the shelves, you can upgrade to 100 items for $89.95 per month.

----------

Mining Company Is Gone
http://about.com/

miningco.com is gone, but in name only. The new name about.com becomes the official new name on May 20, 1999. So far the change does not appear to extend beyond a name change, although about.com says they are positioning themselves more in the mainstream of ecommerce.