| LED Digest 2143: Offline Promotional Methods |
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================================================== 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 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 .............................................. April 20, 2006 Issue no. 2143 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Beginning Marketing ==-- ~ John Brumage "My best ROI has been putting my [URL] on clothing items and giving them away." --== Site Loading Times ==-- ~ Steve Warriner "Go to watson.addy.com..." ~ Martha Retallick "...clients were not impressed that I'd have to look at their site after I got off the phone." ~ Tom Aman "One thing that can be done with images is to use software to optimize them." ~ Jim King "...learning CSS and using div elements is worth the effort." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Help with Backups ==-- ~ Brad Waller ~ Richard Dudley ~ Becky Neilson ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: John "Zeke" Brumage Subject: Marketing > We are a small American Ceramic design and craft production > company. We have not been doing any marketing of our website... > I want to develop a plan to increase our internet business. - Mackenzie Andersen, LED 2141 I also subscribe to a marketing newsletter that has given me insight into other-than-web media. http://subscribe.chiefmarketer.com/subscribe.cfm?tc=NLSUB My personal best ROI has consistantly been putting my website address on clothing items and giving them away. Since my website www.bikinibreak.com covers beach and disco dancing spring break activities, the most successful items have been girl's T-tops, which I bought as closeouts for 3 or 4 bucks each and had silkscreened for $2. I then approached attractive girls and offered to give them the shirt if they would put it on right away. Baseball caps are another venue. Is your website address on the front and back of every vehicle you own? It doesn't have to be big. Look for "vinyl lettering" under the signs heading. It doesn't need to be big, but be sure to use Scotchlight materials. But not ballpoint pens... the only time you read the name on a pen is when it stops working. News flash: I finally hit #1 last week in a Google search for the phrase disco legend. ....WITHOUT MY NAME! it then points to a review i wrote on Amazon. So even submitting, PARTICIPATING in the internet beyond the scope of your own pages, builds your relevance. John Brumage Disco Legend Zeke -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Steve Warriner Subject: Loading times > Is there any good evaluation software out > there that allows a designer to simulate site > interaction at various connections speeds? - Dave Starr, LED 2140 Go to http://watson.addy.com/. Fill in your URL, check "Compute estimated download speeds" and submit. Steve Warriner -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Martha Retallick Subject: Loading times Well, here I am again, the creator of sites with large graphics and a tub-thumper for Web Standards. Talk about a contradiction. Any-hoo, my conflicted self would like to add this US $.02 worth to the broadband vs. dialup loading times discussion. I had dialup for many, many years before I was finally able to get DSL. This was because the phone company was slow to bring DSL to where I was living (and working), and also because the landlady forbade me from having cable service installed. During this time, I became increasingly aware that clients and potential clients were not too impressed with my saying that I'd have to look at their website after I got off the phone. (At the time, I only had one phone line, which was used for the dialup Internet and voice calls. This was because the landlady wasn't too wild about the idea of my having a second phone line installed.) Well, in July 2004, I ditched the dialup for DSL, and I noticed a positive effect on my productivity, and on how clients reacted to my work setup. In November 2004, I ditched the landlady and moved into my own house. And one of my first decisions as a homeowner was to ditch the DSL for even-faster cable Internet, and productivity went up another notch. Moral of this Story: Having broadband has had a positive effect on my productivity and on how my business is perceived by others. I wouldn't go back to dialup on a bet. Martha Retallick Western Sky Communications Web/Graphic Design & Consulting http://www.westernskycommunications.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Tom Aman Subject: Loading times > Visitors to my sites... need to be delivered > a photograph online that has adequate size > and resolution to be able to determine if > they want to buy it. - David Spahr, LED 2142 One thing that can be done with images is to use software to optimize them. *Optimize*, in this context, means to reduce the file size with little or no loss in apparent image quality. It is very often possible to reduce the file size of an image file by as much as 50% (so the 100K graphic becomes 50K, the 40K image becomes 20K) although the actual reduction achieved will vary with the actual image and its use. A greater loss in quality to gain speed can often be tolerated for some images, while relatively high quality (= less optimization) must be maintained for others (such as David's photographs). But the optimization is still worth doing, even for small image files. The effect can be a dramatic decrease in page loading times. One product that does this is ULead's Smart Saver Pro - see http://www.ulead.com/ssp/runme.htm. There are others but I mention this one because I have used this product for a number of years and have always been happy with the results. Of course buying such software (Smart Saver Pro is $59.95US) only makes sense if you need to optimize large numbers of images or if you want lots of control over the process. Optionally, there are free alternatives, some online, some downloadable, that give varying degrees of control and various levels of quality for the output although, for the most part, they do a good job. Some free sites are: http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/imageoptimizer/ http://www.netmechanic.com/GIFBot/optimize-graphic.htm http://www.spinwave.com/crunchers.html (requires a membership to download the most optimized images meaning anything over ~30% in file size reduction). Do a Google search for *image optimizer* for more choices of sites and / or software. Tom Aman Aman Software http://www.cyberspyder.com Home of CyberSpyder Link Test -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Jim King Subject: Loading times > I've found that the tables-based sites give the visitor > that "blank screen" display for several seconds, and > sometimes that can stretch out to minutes... - Martha Retallick, LED 2141 I agree about tables. If you rely on AdSense or other outside sites (Amazon, a counter, a script, etc.) to complete the rendering of your pages and they are in a table on your page and the outside site happens to be down or slow to respond, your visitors can wait a long time for the browser to time-out even on a fast connection, and you could lose a potential visitor or sale. IE is especially notorious for waiting to see all the table elements before rendering. More than just web standards and validation, learning CSS and using div elements is worth the effort. Jim King ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Brad Waller Subject: Backups > I have never backed up my hard drive and I know I really need > to. Sometimes I'll be working and the computer will freeze... - Sherry Faye Rodarmor, LED 2141 The simplest and cheapest solution? Buy a hard drive and copy everything over. If you have a USB 2.0 or Fire wire card, buy an external drive. Many come with backup software, but if they don't, just copy over everything once a week and turn the drive off. In the event of a catastrophe, you will likely be getting a new PC with a new system, so you will have to buy or re-install your applications. What you can never replace is your data. Hard drives are cheap and easy to use. I saw an 40 GB internal drive for $10 recently, and a 300 GB external drive for $120. Brad Waller Manage and Sell your own site advertising http://adjungle.com waller, adjungle.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Richard Dudley Subject: Backups Does your PC have USB ports? If so, perhaps the easiest backup option is one of those external hard drives from Seagate or Maxtor. You can find them in a number of capacities pretty cheaply at Staples or Target (probably Wal Mart). This is the type of contraption I'm talking about: http://snipurl.com/pg0l [staples.com] You install the driver, plug it in your USB port, hit the backup button and let it run. Rich Dudley rjdudley.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Becky Neilson Subject: Backups I used to have Windows 98 on old PC. Then a little over a year ago I had my son build me a new computer. We took my old hard drive and made it a slave drive on my new computer with windows XP Pro. Then I just transferred the files I need to the new much larger hard drive and did simple backups on CD's. Now I don't have to worry about losing my critical backups and my computer runs like a race horse with no more freezing and reboot problems. With the low prices on computers you can buy a complete system for about $350-500 and pay a good computer shop $50-100 to put your old hard drive in like I did. It is well worth the investment and you will find you our saving time and money, plus the added bonus of sleeping good at night. Becky Neilson H. L. Supply www.hansons.net ------------------------------------------------------- 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. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye." - Antoine De Saint-Exupery |
