| LED Digest 2057: Marketing by Radio, also VoIP vs Landlines |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest post, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. December 19, 2005 Issue #2057 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== NEW ======================= --== Voice Over IP vs Landlines ==-- ~ Viggie Bala "IP phones seem capable to [replace] good old telephones..." --== Radio Marketing ==-- ~ Tom Aman "...radio is still a very, very powerful medium..." --== Screen Display Sizing ==-- ~ Paul Bromby "Does anyone know what the statistics are now for screen display size?" ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Linking with AdSense ==-- ~ Steve Pronger "Picture this: a store that actually sold nothing." --== The Reciprocal Linking Thread ==-- ~ Dirk Johnson "Each link is a relatively inexpensive marketing opportunity..." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== pair.com ==-- ~ Rod Aries ======== NEW ===================================== From: Viggie Bala Subject: Missing out on VoIP Hi Adam, I have not responded immediately to your call on reader's views partly because of the long winding link debates in LED - which I tend to skip more regularly these days, and partly because I am more into another exciting internet development that is completely ignored here. Readers of LED will surely have at least a brush with the VoIP technology. The companies that purchased VoIP servers or phone accounts now increasingly use IP phone calls than emails to their branches, group companies etc. The features and facilities of VoIP services are growing very fast every day. The IP-PBX servers that work like an office intercom (but sits on office LAN) now supports Instant Messaging, besides wireless IP phones have started appearing in the market. These communication devices depend entirely on the internet and have to be maintained via web browsers. Besides office based server solutions, now one can purchase call minutes for various countries online, and use an IP phone connected to broadband. I am interested to hear from fellow LEders on their experience in using these services. Email effectively replaced the snail (postal) mails at least for personal use. I can't remember when was the last time I handwrote a letter and sent thru post to my friends or relatives. The change is unnoticeable and smooth. We don't long for the goold old days in this area (of posting a letter and waiting for a week for it to reach another country). The IP phones seems capable to do the same to good old telephones, and in double quick time than it took email to replace postal mails. Regards, Viggie Bala Helping Websites to Work http://www.viggie.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Tom Aman Subject: Radio > And radio could be the subject of another thread > altogether; I had no idea it could be so powerful. - Noah Masterson, LED 2055 Noah was commenting on the unexpected effect on site visits and sales after his wife was interviewed for a local radio show. I can give you another story along those same lines. Bear with me, it takes awhile to get to the point of all this. We have a local woman (Ellen Kellaway) who runs a store that combines knitting and (wait for it...) hunting. It is called the Knitting Nimrod. Ellen is an avid knitter and she loves to hunt (and fish). She is a bit of a local character but she is very good hearted and she is also a walking encyclopedia on local background and history and on some areas of antiques things. One of her loves is vintage buttons (and some vintage buttons are worth a lot of money - just check out eBay). There is a specialty channel TV program call "The Antique Hunter" where the host visits various and often unusual places to show off a wide variety of antiques. Somehow the host heard about Ellen and so did part of one program on her and her buttons. Obviously, people in the broadcast industry do a lot of networking (pun not intended). So, a few weeks later Ellen got a phone call from a gentleman called Stewart MacLean who hosts a weekly RADIO show called The Vinyl Cafe on the Canadian CBC network. Stewart's show is kind of folksy with a bit of music, a bit of humor, some fun and/or heart-warming stories, etc (my wife and I are fans). The shows are taped at various venues across Canada and he had an upcoming show to be taped here, in Belleville, Ontario. His researchers had been talking with the Antique Hunter researchers with the result that Stewart wanted to talk with Ellen. He was intrigued by the knitting / hunting combination, also he picked up a lot of information on local stuff that he used on his show. The show that had been taped here was broadcast on CBC radio a week or two after it was taped. At the opening of the show he got a little humor out of the knitting / hunting store, talking about the number of male hunters learning knitting and the number of female knitters learning hunting (the male hunters learning knitting is actually true, I don't know about the other part). Fast forward a couple of days: the number of hits on Ellen's Web site went through the roof (even though the actual URL had not been given on the radio program) and her email volume went way up. But the biggest surprise to her was the number of emails that came from places on the other side of the world - like little South Pacific Islands. What she didn't realize was that, in addition to their short wave service, the CBC stations, like many others, also broadcast via the Internet and these broadcasts are heard by a world wide audience (they have a very dedicated following). The result has been some unexpected business, with some people, particularly from the US, actually planning their vacation itineraries so that they can visit her store. For those who might be interested in the background details: Ellen's Web site is at http://www.knittingnimrod.com/ CBC radio can be found at http://www.cbc.ca. They actually run two networks called Radio One and Radio Two (and are presently in the process of deploying satelite broadcasting on Radio 3). The programming for all of these is available on line. Radio Two is mostly classical (often with a good bit of humor), Radio One is a bit of everything. Stewart MacLean's Vinyl Cafe can be heard at 10AM (Eastern Time) on Saturdays on Radio Two or at 12 noon (Eastern Time) on Sundays on Radio One. All of this just confirms that radio is still a very, very powerful medium and even a small mention can have a huge impact (some of the best advertising cannot be bought for money), particularly if the station happens to also broadcast on the Internet. Tom Aman Aman Software http://www.cyberspyder.com Home of CyberSpyder Link Test -------- new post - new topic ------- From: Paul Bromby Subject: Screen display Size Some years ago there was a statistic about the screen display size that people were using: - 640x480 pixels: 20% - 800x600 pixels: 50% - 1024x768 pixels: 30% Many prominent sites, like for instance, news.bbc.co.uk, still stick to a smaller screen format. Our policy is to design for 1024x768 on sites with corporate clientele, but to stick with 800x600 if we believe there will be visitors with older computers. Does anyone know what the statistics are now for screen display size? Paul Bromby www.pdcnet.org.uk info, pdcnet.org.uk ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Steve Pronger Subject: Linking > Go to any mall, how many ads for other stores do you > see in a specialty shop? How many flyers promoting > other businesses are handed to you? Take the hint. - Robert Bass, LED 2055 What if the store owner was paid every time a customer took a flyer? And not just quarters, $5, $10 and more? Picture this; a store that actually sold nothing. Instead, you walk in to find information, displays, advice and resources on a niche that is of particular interest to you. Neatly integrated amongst the displays are those income-producing flyers promoting topically-related products and services from outside suppliers. Would you enter that store? I would. It would be a lot like a content-driven, Adsense "monitized" website don't you think? Agreed, AdSense isn't for everyone. For e-commerce sites designed specifically to sell a particular product they will detract from your sales. But to leave a site for no other reason than it has a few text ads on it seems self-defeating to me. I leave a site if the content doesn't hold my attention, not the presence of a few ads. If those ads are thoughtfully integrated and topically relevant then I will occasionally click on them. If I was alone, Google wouldn't be generating billions in income for themselves and their partner publishers. >... a commercial website is there to promote > and sell products or services FOR MONEY. A commercial website is there to make money. The income generated from Adsense looks just the same to me as that generated by any other means. I suspect this guy, Jason Calacanis, has a similar opinion: http://snipurl.com/kvzt [calacanis.com] LONG LIVE LED! Cheers Steve Pronger http://www.stevepronger.com ------- new post - related topic ------ From: Dirk Johnson Subject: Linking > In that vein, I thought I'd comment on some unintended, > but positive, consequences of adding links on our site, > dc-baby.com...The unintended result occurred when > a local radio show interviewed my wife about the book. - Noah Masterson, LED 2055 Thanks Noah, What you experienced is unique, but it is not unusual that proper linking generates secondary benefits for a site. Those benefits can be far reaching and fundamental, or sometimes just novel. Sales are made, new dealers and affiliates are found, press and newsletter mentions get written, good search results derive from it, and on and on. Links beget links. That is well known. Links help sites get noticed. The World Wide Web is, quite literally, built on links. HTML is an acronym for Hyper-Text Markup Language, and "hyper-text" is merely geek speak for...a link. The more links you have, the larger your reach, and subsequently, the more opportunity you have to get more links. That's pretty fundamental. Avoiding good and relevant links that are readily available is a very curious approach to marketing a website. Frankly, it baffles me that some people actually advise just that. You never know who might take notice, such as your local radio host. Without links, it may never have happened. In fact, for many niche portal sites, they used good link directories as a primary visitor feature of their sites, long before Google came along and rewarded them for it. YAHOO! itself was originally a link directory. People are attracted to useful and relevant link directories, especially niche-subject directories. Proper reciprocal linking requires work, patience, discipline, and, for best success, gracious cooperation with other site owners who offer to do it. Maybe this kind of mutual cooperation runs counter to some people's thinking. They'd prefer to be islands unto themselves. So be it. They'll get none of the primary, or secondary, benefits of linking with other cooperative, relevant sites. I just find it fascinating that those in the anti-reciprocal link crowd stridently advise others to follow their own path. They always say, "Hey, look it worked for me! I don't need those links". Could they be doing even better, if they weren't so constrained? Can they guarantee that not doing it will work of your site, too? And what if it doesn't? In one recent post here, Michael Martinez said that "The average business site needs fewer than 100 inbound links in order to accomplish these goals." To be fair, he was referring specifically to search engine indexing. I am not here to argue that statement, since I look beyond the search engine benefits. But I would point out that, using an automotive site as an example, there are proven to be hundreds and hundreds of relevant reciprocal links available to any other automotive site that wants to do the work and earn them. That kind of link popularity provides substantial reach, and a considerable primary and secondary benefit. I guess some people would prefer to turn their back on that. I am an old marketing / sales grunt, with 25 years in business, covering a wide variety of roles. Sometimes, with some endeavors, things got lean. So any opportunity to get the word out was welcome. That's how I look at reciprocal linking. Each link is a relatively inexpensive marketing opportunity that is either pursued, or wasted. But then again, I still pick up pennies off the sidewalk.... Best regards, Dirk Johnson, Partner - Operations DomainDrivers LLC www.domaindrivers.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Rod Aries Subject: pair.com Adam, i don't know if you want comments like this, but it is true, and is good for pair... This is not in response to anything other than the pair.com advertising that appears in each LED issue. It is sometimes easy to ignore them due to the constant drip, drip, drip nature of the ads because they are always there, and you tend to become desensitized to them - but you shouldn't. I have over 100 accounts at pair, and I have had them at pair for several years. This email is in regards to an upgrade they just installed on all their servers to fight spam. Because I have been on the net for almost a decade, and I own over 13,000 domains, I have had many of my email addresses culled, spidered, scraped, sold, exchanged and indexed, including, probably, posts I have done previously to LED. About 9 months ago I was easily receiving between 50,000 and 60,000 email each and every day. I contacted pair several months ago to see what they could do (they are actually one of the few companies that responds to support requests in not only a prompt manner, but a competent manner as well) to reduce my spam. That little "wahoo" you heard occurred when they did an interim spam filter upgrade and my spam email dropped to only 2-3,000 emails a day getting through to my Eudora account, then fighting through hundreds of filters. While that still is a good deal of spam, I was stoked to only be receiving that much - I mean how much Vl@---gra can I really order? Anyways, they just installed their latest update to their servers and I am now down to about 200 spam emails a day -- I can only imagine how much the 50,000 to 60,000 daily spams has increased. So, besides good ol' fashioned quality hosting at a cheap price with exceptional customer service, they now have given me back my computer - no more 5 minute downloads of emails every 20 minutes. As you may have understood, I am very pleased with their service, and I am not even a paid representative or an affiliate. :) rod aries ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2005 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "A loving person lives in a loving world. A hostile person lives in a hostile world. Everyone you meet is your mirror." - Ken Keys |
