| LED Digest 1801: Are Free Services Worth the Price? |
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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 adam,led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com ................................................ May 12, 2004 Issue #1801 ................................................ .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== <Moderator Comment> ~ Old posts --== Are Free Services Worth the Price? ==-- ~ Marc Holt "Have any other LED'ers had problems with 'free' services...?" ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Froogle Feeds ==-- ~ Waitman Gobble "Ideally you would create an automated process to upload daily..." --== The Demise of Email? ==-- ~ Brad Waller "...I think that affiliates are often blamed erroneously." ~ Tom Anson "Maybe someone should start a spam-reporting service..." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Marketing (Anything) Online ==-- ~ Leon Simmons ======= NEW ===================================== <Moderator Comment> Since things have slowed down a bit, I've taken this opportunity to clear out some of our archived posts. Old posts, but they're still pertinent. By the way, now's a great time to send in new posts if there's a topic that's burning inside you :-) Best wishes, Adam ------------------------- From: Marc Holt Subject: Are Free services worth the price? I registered for a free bulletin board in early 2000 with BeSeen.com. However, I recently installed my own bulletin board on my server when I realized that we were losing a lot of website visitors to the BeSeen.com server. Visitors were bookmarking the bulletin board at BeSeen.com and not even bothering to come to our online export directory. When I wrote to BeSeen.com asking them to take down the board, they refused, claiming that I was not the 'owner/administrator' of the board. As I have the original email they sent to my email address with all the board set up information, user name and password, I sent them a copy. It is very clear that I am the 'owner' of this particular bulletin board. However, they have refused to take down the board. As a result, I am losing visitors and business. The person who has responded to my requests has been extremely rude in some of his emails, and I must say I am extremely disappointed in this company. Have any other LED'ers had problems with 'free' services like this? Cheers! Marc Holt, Managing Director Holt WorldWide Co Ltd http://www.holtww.com/ ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Waitman C. Gobble Subject: Froogle > ... I'm trying to get my feed in to Froogle. - Tom Anson, LED 1800 Hello Tom, For a Froogle data feed, you just need to create a flat delimited text file per the instructions provided when you sign up for an account. You would list each particular product on a separate line. Each product has a link URL and image URL that links the Froogle listing to your product page. As long as you provide a valid URL, there shouldn't be any problem. (ie the # and cgi-bin stuff should work fine). If you already have your products in a database or spreadsheet, and your site is dynamically generated - then it should be a piece of cake to prepare the file for upload. Please note that you want to upload at least once every thirty days. Ideally you would create an automated process to upload daily, and then you could pretty much forget about it. Best Regards, Waitman Gobble EMK Design http://emkdesign.com/ ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Brad Waller Subject: Email demise > Seems to me that the vast majority of spam that I receive is from > people who are affiliates of one company or another. Perhaps > someone can find a way to make the companies that have > affiliate programs accountable... - Jim Winters, LED1799 As someone who has quite a bit of experience in the Affiliate area, and who has somewhat of the pulse, I think that affiliates are often blamed erroneously. I also get a ton of junk and see codes. Quite often these are tracking codes used by the mailers or redirect information. I don't know of a program that allows anyone to email indiscriminately. Earnings from bulk email sent contrary to the terms of service will be forfeit, so you can hit them where it hurts if you want. Since a large number of programs use CJ, BeFree, Linkshare, or another service provider, most of the links will have to go through them. If you want to take the effort, click on the link to see what merchant you end up at. Then you will have to look to see if they have an affiliate program and who runs it. You can contact the 3rd party provider, but I would not put my faith into them to forward a message like this. Instead, use the company's main contact method (usually a form nowadays), and also see if you can contact the program manager. Lots of managers have their contact info readily available, and others you can only get it when you sign up for a program or through the 3rd party interface. Also, many programs have online support forums that the program manager monitors constantly that you could post a topic to about this. You can find the forums from the site itself (try searching for "brandname affiliate forum" or some such), or check out these locations: http://abestweb.com/ (can get a bit rowdy) http://iafma.org/gm/forums-main.html (offline, hopefully back soon) http://www.associateprograms.com/discus/ (Allan Gardyne's) http://www.affiliateboards.com/ http://www.a4uforum.co.uk/ Brad Waller, VP Affiliate & Business Development www.ep.com waller, ep.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Tom Anson Subject: Email demise I would agree with Jim Winters (LED 1799) that most of the spam I get is from affiliates -- hence, 5-10 of the same message on any given day. And, as Tom Aman and Frank Zipperer say, spamming affiliates can be reported, and in many cases, these affiliates will get dumped. However, if going through and deleting spam can be a full-time job, following the steps needed to identify the parent company and notifying them of spam would be an unbearable burden. Maybe someone should start a spam-reporting service, where all of us can forward the spam, and the service could do the grunt work of reporting to parent companies. ;-) Tom Anson Anson Aromatic Essentials http://www.therapeutic-grade.com ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: Leon Simmons Subject: Marketing Aerial photography > Any advice on increasing advertising revenue [on my > aerial photography site] would be welcomed... especially > an idea of traffic (hits) volume needed to produce a viable > income. - Jonathan Webb, LED 1723 This is in reply to Jonathan Webb's request for any assistance in promoting his product. It is important to accept the fact that the internet is not always the best way to promote a particular product. And to rely on the internet as the only or main source of income is generally unwise. All marketing techniques require that you identify and target the prospective purchaser and present him with the opportunity of buying something that he is attracted to (sell the benefits). Now I haven't got a clue about aerial photography but I would be looking very closely at tourism in the North of England and North Wales, particularly the thousands of hotels and guest houses that line the coastal regions (and inland) of that part of the world. Many of these establishments have websites with pictures of their establishments and many of them could be interested in either purchasing an aerial photo of their building for their internet site and/or to hang up somewhere in their business premises. E-mail them and phone them and introduce your products - and (if they are within easy reach to where you live) make an appointment to see them personally with your portfolio of photos for a consultation and take an order. Exploit this technique of marketing in a professional manner and you should do extremely well. Once you have sold photos to a hotelier get him/her to recommend any other hoteliers who would also benefit from having your photos hanging up in their lounges of hallways - you will be surprised at how much business you will get from recommendations if you push for it! Forget traffic hits, etc., they are absolutely meaningless unless you are actually deriving an acceptable income from this source. 'AIDA' (attention, interest, desire, action) Go for it! Leon Simmons www.lookit-up.com info, lookit-up.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2004 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "You get the best out of others when you give the best of yourself." - Harry Firestone |
