| LED Digest 2261: Domain Squatters and Growing Lists |
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This issue is packed! Tips on getting subscribers and growing lists, a new post on domain squatters and watchers, and a response to the search usability thread that is a must-read. Also more on form spam. ================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Registration from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. October 6, 2006 Issue no. 2261 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ===================== --== Domain Watching Services ==-- ~ Dina Beach Lynch "Are there any 'domain watching services' that you know of...?" <Moderator Comment> "...a squatter service quoted me $35,000 for our old domain!" ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Usability and Search ==-- ~ Shari Thurow "Search is not only about marketing or only about scholarship. It never has been." --== How to Promote an Online Newsletter? ==-- ~ Nancy Cardinali "...this is a great idea for collecting email addys." <Moderator Comment> ~ Rick Meigs "I implemented [pop-ups] on my site and doubled my subscriptions per day." ~ Bogdan Fiedur "...the most effective [method] for me is to offer [an incentive]...for joining my discussion list." ~ Jonathan Rubinstien "I have had fairly good success with two popular pay-per-subscriber services..." ~ Joe Halbrook "Do you use other ad promotions outside of your site to obtain subscriptions?" ~ Steve Pronger "I offer them something which I believe has real value..." --== Form Spam ==-- ~ A. Brantley "We use the free encryption from mailtoprotector.com and it has helped..." ~ Will Bontrager "Personally, I don't like captcha." ========= NEW ==================================== From: Dina Beach Lynch Subject: Domain Watching Service I'd like to thank everyone for your really helpful, insightful comments. I often benefit from your advice and learn something new. Now, I have a question. Are there any "domain watching services" that you know of that can purchase a domain the minute it becomes available? There are two domains that I've been monitoring for purchase; however, by the time I've gotten the notice that the domain is becoming available, the owner has renewed. Both of the sites is held by a cybers-quatters. One, wants an exorbitant amount of money for a URL that's not even in use. The other URL isn't live either. Any ideas? Best, Dina Beach Lynch, Mediator, Business Mensch ADRPracticebuilder.com <Moderator Comment> That's interesting, Dina, because just yesterday I decided to check on an old domain of ours (just for fun). Everyone remember Adventive? Well, after we sold the company the new owners didn't use the domain and let it expire. Yesterday a squatter service quoted me $35,000 for our old domain! Absolutely ridiculous. ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Shari Thurow Subject: Usability and Search Hi all- This is in response to Nathan Holley's post in LED #2255 and Rae Deisler's post in LED #2260: > ... while I commend Shari and other professionals for their > efforts to raise search to a higher level, we must remember > first and foremost [SEO/M] is about marketing, not scholarship. - Nathan Holley, LED 2255 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1075/55/ > This gives me the impression that search optimization is > not widely acknowledged as a discipline of usability, which > also gives credence to the realization that SEO is basically > a capitalistic endeavor. - Rae Deisler, LED 2260 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1125/55/ First, my thanks to Rae Deisler (and our illustrious moderator) for pointing out the statement Holley made that really rubbed me the wrong way. To be perfectly honest, I found his statement to be rather ignorant. Search engine optimization's primary goal is NOT marketing, though many people new to the information retrieval arena honestly believe this. And this just proves that SEOs and search engine advertisers really have a limited understanding of usability. Contrary to popular belief, at the core of usability is providing an interface that benefits both users and business owners, balancing user goals and business goals. Usability isn't only about meeting user goals. When the focus is only on business goals, trust me -- users can tell what garbage is being fed to them. Without other options, users pick the "lesser of the 2 evils." However, provide an interface that benefits both users and business owners? Versus the interface that only benefits business owners? Guess which interface users will pick, and guess which interface generates more income and saves more money? Well, as I said in LED 2254 [ http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1074/55/ ], people search. People search without realizing they are searching. When you use Microsoft Word, for example, and you want to save a document, initially users do try to figure out how to save their documents. Search is involved with that process: which drop-down menu is the "Save" command under or is there a shortcut (Control-S) will I have to use? How can I find the shortcut for saving a document in Word? Is there a help section I can use? Where is the help section? Search...search...search. If it were not for my desire to continue my education in the information retrieval arena (not a path for everyone to take, I understand), I would not have understood the commercial Web search engines as well as I do now. My education is not limited to university courses. I do not hesitate to take courses from Jared Spool and Jakob Nielsen and Eric Schaffer. I talk to software engineers who are on the cutting edge of search. I share my knowledge with them on search-friendly interfaces. The bottom line is that I choose to advance my knowledge about the field of search. That means understanding both business goals and user goals. It means having technical knowledge. It means admitting I don't know things, getting off my behind, and learning. If the only focus for SEO and search engine advertising (for the record, search engine advertising is a subset of search engine marketing) is business goals, or as Holley labeled it "marketing", I would say that he and anyone else who shares his belief has a limited knowledge of search optimization. I really don't care that the majority of SEOs do not share my opinion. I am very good at what I do. Search is not only about marketing or only about scholarship. It never has been. Search reaches a wide variety of industries, and the people who really get that are the ones, I believe, will have success and longevity in this industry. I'm on my soapbox. I'll come down now. Sincerely, Shari Thurow, Webmaster/Marketing Director Grantastic Designs, Inc. ~ For Free design and marketing tips, visit us at: http://www.grantasticdesigns.com/tips.html -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Nancy Cardinali Subject: Newsletter promo > I'm working on a newsletter that already has over > 100k subscribers, but the client would like to see > it go up by at least 20%... I'm trying to think of online > methods to increase the subscriber base. - Dan Jeffers, LED 2260 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1125/55/ Interesting you should ask... I just received a snail mail flyer for a large Bed&Bath store that, along with regular advertised specials, had a contest URL. Once there, you had to give your email address for one chance to 'play '. Of course you are not the winner, but you have the opportunity of sending a friend a chance to 'play', which gives you 5 (?) more chances. Also, you can 'play' once a day. Not sure how they determine the winner, guess it's in the rules somewhere, but this is a great idea for collecting email addys. Whether you use it as they did with multi media, or just as an online attraction, I think it has wonderful possibilities. I guess there's no harm in posting the URL here. If there is, I assume Adam will delete it. www.bedbathandbeyond.com/click-n-win.asp Look for the Click-N-Win advert box near bottom of page. Nancy Cardinali -------- new post - same topic -------- <Moderator Comment> I am gobsmacked (as my British friends like to say) that Nancy is the only one with a response to this. This kind of question is right up the LED alley. I've got some ideas for Dan, but I think I'll keep my mouth shut and do the proper thing. What is that you ask? Do a search of the archives! Unfortunately the archives are not all online yet, but I have most of them on my computer. Doing a quick search brought up a useful thread. I'll echo the best posts here; these are slightly dated (issues 950-962) but still pretty useful. It would be interesting to ask ourselves: what's changed since these were published? (pop-up killers for one) Here we go... you'll see some familiar names. Many of these posters still contribute! -- Increasing Newsletter Subscriber Rates -- From: Rick Meigs Sumantra Roy in LED #950 asked for feedback on using a pop-up window to improve newsletter subscription rates. I implemented this on my site and doubled my subscriptions per day. Rick Meigs ---------------------- From: Bogdan Fiedur Hello LEDers, In my opinion opening popup box on unload won't be very effective if you don't offer some sort of incentive. Opening the window is only giving you temporary attention which has to be backed up by the offer. Offering to be just part of your newsletter no matter how great it is, usually won't be enough to get proper attention from your visitors. I have recently exchanged this type of promotion when my window was opened on unload from other site. After over 10,000 of such hits, my subscription rate was as always. Not affected at all. As regarding other subscription methods, the most effective one for me is to offer possibility of free advertising (where subscription box is located) for joining my discussion list. The details of free advertising are provided in the newsletter. I get daily over 50 new subscribers and my list is 22,000 after two years of running. Also you need to register your newsletter with directories promoting newsletters. Partial list of them you will find here. http://snipurl.com/y79q [freebonanza.com] Regards, Bogdan Fiedur AdlandPro World's Classifieds ---------------------- From: Jonathan Rubinstien I have found that a pop up window that loads when the index.html page is initially accessed (requires setting cookies) is a good way to increase newsletter subscribers. Annoying -- yes, but successful. Also, considerably less annoying than a popup window that loads when you try to leave the site -- a favorite of the adult site industry. The annoyance of this feature is mitigated if you put a reasonably large "Close Window" javascript link on the popup page. In fact, I just tested the site for one week without the popup window and the subscription rate dropped drastically. I also have a subscription form on virtually every page of my site, and what I did was alter the CGI script so that I can differentiate between subscribers who sign up on the popup window page and subscribers who sign up elsewhere on the site. About 90% sign up from the popup window. Of course, a fair amount of these people would have signed up on the standard page form, so this statistic must be taken with a grain of salt. As for other methods of improving subscription rates, I have had fairly good success with two popular pay-per-subscriber services: Worldwidelists.com and Newslettersforfree.com. Both offer double opt-in subscribers for between ten and sixteen cents each. Hope this helps, Jonathan Rubinstien http://www.hotrodders.com ---------------------- From: Joe Halbrook I would definitely back off from any temptation to implement exit pop-up windows on your site. Even those solutions (Javascript or others) that promise to work only on a true exit to another site, fail under different circumstances. And, there's no faster way to "drive away" your visitors than a pop-up on every page exit on your site. To answer your questions regarding other methods of increasing subscriptions to your newsletters, let me ask you this: Do you use other ad promotions outside of your site to obtain subscriptions? Do you run ads on Web Development sites, etc.? My guess is that you do. If so, why not capture subscribers right from those banner ads or hyperlinks - without taking visitors away from the ad hosting site(s)? I also noticed that you don't capture any demographics from your subscribers, i.e. perhaps pre-launch sites vs. established sites vs. content sites, etc. No doubt you could then customize the text ads (or banners for HTML mailings) within your newsletter, and increase your ad revenues dramatically by selling to x-times as many advertisers, based on those demographics. Using the above suggestions, you could not only capture subscriptions from any URL (banners, other newsletters and discussion group posting links, etc.) but could increase your ad revenues with ad and content customization - all without redirecting your hosting sites' visitors to your site to subscribe. The best part is that you can then deliver your newsletter using the same tool that increases your subscription capture opportunities. Best of success, Joe Halbrook ---------------------- [this post is from issue 1704, there are many more in similar threads but i'm getting tired delving into all of it!] From: Steve Pronger Regarding pop-ups: > How would a person know that they want to sign up > for the newsletter before they have had a good look > around the site to determine whether or not it is > relevant to their needs / interests? - Tom Aman, LED 1703 Tom is right in suggesting that generally a visitor will not be inclined to subscribe to a newsletter after having only read your home page. Merely presenting them with a pop-up which says "Subscribe to my newsletter" isn't as effective as it once was. Instead, I offer them something which I believe has real value i.e. Ken Evoy's excellent e-book, Service Sellers Masters Course. Anyone who's read Ken's posts in this very digest will know that he doesn't write rubbish. It contains useful, relevant information to someone who's sought and found my site. I then combine that giveaway with my own course, delivered by autoresponder, AND a subscription to my newsletter. I use "double opt-in" so subscribers must confirm their email before I give them the url for the download. You do lose some initial subscribers using double opt-in but once you've got them they will usually stay with you. Overall, it is an effective method for getting subscribers, and my unsubscribe rate is low. So yes, there is a right way and a wrong way to use pop-ups. Steve Pronger http://www.stevepronger.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: A. Brantley Subject: Website email Somebody asked about how to keep spammers from harvesting your email address from your website. We use the free encryption from www.mailtoprotector.com and it has helped cut down on the spam we receive. I learned about it on this list some time ago. I'm not affiliated with them in any way, shape or form. Hope this helps. ABrantley -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Will Bontrager Subject: Form spam Ah, yes. Form spam. First, there was form hijacking, using vulnerable forms to send spam emails to many thousands of addresses from the victim's own hosting account. http://willmaster.com/formhijacklist (redirect to long URL) has a list of information links if anybody is interested. Fewer people now ask us for solutions because their hosting company has disabled one or another of their hijack-vulnerable scripts. That might be because hosting companies have disabled most vulnerable scripts or maybe because spammers are becoming smart enough to send only a hundred or so emails at a time to stay below the radar. Form hijacking is so dangerous to Internet businesses that even our free software has prevention code. Now, there is automatic submission of contact and blog comment (and other) forms. This sends the spam to whomever normally gets email when the forms are submitted. While not dangerous like hijacking (which could get hosting accounts shut down), the spam is annoying. It has to be read and deleted or denied for publication. It's especially annoying with contact forms because those are rarely filtered, their messages must get through. When you don't answer email, the sender is likely to suspect your filters and hunt for your web page contact form. Captcha can work to prevent automatic submission, whether image or text based (as Al Toman pointed out in LED 2260 http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1125/55/ ). On-the-fly image generation requires image generation software. Pretty good text based captcha can be "type the answer to 2 + 5" and "type the second and forth letters of 'word'" types of proofs. To circumvent or delay text parsing robots, the captcha clue or question might be put into a floating div, code obfuscated by moving it away from the form code. And there are other ways to obfuscate the clues. Personally, I don't like captcha. It seems somehow degrading to have to prove one is not a robot. Forms employing captcha get used only when I have no other immediate choice. Maybe I am in the minority insofar as that goes, probably am, or maybe captcha is currently seen by many as the only alternative to form spam and accepted as a necessary evil. Be that as it may, I do feel strongly about it. So strong, in fact, that I have over the past several months tested a system with spammed forms on four domains to determine whether or not the form user is a human or a robot, without resorting to visible captcha. Humans have certain characteristics when using forms -- they load the form before they use it, they require at least a second or two to use the form, they rarely require hours, they move the mouse, they click, their browser runs JavaScript (required for this system). Robots, on the other hand, have certain characteristics in common, but mostly the detection relies on negatives (there was no mouse move, for example). Beta has been completed. The article at http://willmaster.com/autosubprev (redirect to long URL) talks about the first software title to be invested with the system. It's commercial software. Our free software might or might not get this system after the commercial titles have been upgraded. I fully expect the system to be exploited sooner or later and that it will be revised in response. That's why the software comes with one-click automatic upgrades. Currently, 4 of our forms are systematically attacked by automatic submission robots, and all attacks fail every time. One is at our tech support forum. There, I allow a script to accept the spam and dump it to a file on the server. The file gives me much information. Several hundred spam submissions a month are dumped. Two are at page comment forms. Whoever is operating that robot sure is stupid. None of it ever made it on a web page since half a year or so ago, when they started, and they're still running it. One of these days, I'll make the script respond with a 500 Internal Server Error to see if their 'bot is smart enough to notice. Just for grins. The fourth is at the VCC sign-up form. These folks made a pretty smart robot. It even parses JavaScript. But it doesn't yet run JavaScript. In other words, it loads the form before submitting it and uses any variable form field names and values that are delivered by JavaScript. But it doesn't increment a JavaScript counter. Yet. Recently, I got a "normal" spam email stating they would submit my ad to 22 million blogs and forums and web page contact forms for a measly $19.95. They even proclaimed it to be one of the most effective forms of advertising because it's actually read. But they didn't mention deliverability. Sorry about the tome. Thought some of you might be interested. As a qualification, let me state that we've been involved with web page forms with a special interest in preventing misuse since we released our first script in 1998 (a "recommend my site" script with a "banned words" feature). Will Bontrager http://willmaster.com/contact.shtml ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2006 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Justice is incidental to law and order." - J. Edgar Hoover |
