Poor Richard 20
#020/20-Nov-98
POOR RICHARD'S WEB SITE NEWS
Geek-Free, Commonsense Advice on Building a Low-Cost Web Site
Editor: Peter Kent
Top Floor Publishing
IN THIS ISSUE
- Beginner's Column: Do You Need Permission to Link?
- Distribute Your Email Newsletter for Free -- Part II
- The Problem With Free Email Services
- Tara's Researchbuzz Newsletter
- Poor Richard's Web Site -- The Book
- Using URLs in Email Messages -- Part II
- The Problem With Links
- A Business-Card Web Site
- More Email Newsletter Directories
- Six Degrees -- Part II
- Free Book on Internet Marketing -- Part II
- Poor Richard's Web Site in the Press
- Reading Back Issues
- In Future Issues
**** IF YOU FIND THIS NEWSLETTER USEFUL ... FORWARD IT TO FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES ****
Beginner's Column: Do You Need Permission to Link?
I often hear a couple of questions from Internet newcomers; is it okay to reference a Web page in a book without asking permission first (Yes!), and, less often, is it okay to link to another Web site without permission (Yes! ... well, perhaps ... ).
First, can you mention a site in a book, magazine article, newsletter article, and so on, without permission? Well of course. After all, you can reference a book or magazine article in a bibliography. In my book, Poor Richard's Web Site, I include around 750 or more links to Web sites. I didn't ask for permission from any of them, for two reasons. First, I don't need to, and secondly, because to do so would have been a huge job.
Can you link to another site from your Web site without asking permission first. Yes. Unless ...
If you are simply creating a normal link, or a link that opens a new window, then you _can_ link without permission. The only time there's really a problem is if you are framing someone else's information. For instance, at your Web site you have a series of links in a frame on one side of the browser window; when a visitor to your site clicks a link, information from another site opens in another frame, with the first frame remaining in place. The visitor's still at your Web site, yet he's viewing information from elsewhere.
In such a case you could run into problems. There have already been court cases concerning this kind of linking; in one case a Web site was framing information from major news sources, for example. So if you want to frame someone else's Web page, you should probably ask permission first, unless you know for sure the information is not copyright (you could frame US Government pages without permission, for instance).
I've had a few emails recently from people asking if it is okay for them to link from their sites to mine ( http://PoorRichard.com/ ). The answer, of course, is "Yes! Go ahead -- no need to ask!" In fact, if you _haven't_ thought of linking to my site, you really should ... so go ahead, do it today!
Distribute Your Email Newsletter for Free -- Part II
After the last issue, in which I discussed free services you can use to host your email newsletter ( http://PoorRichard.com/newsltr/019.htm#newsltr ), a reader sent me information about yet another service:
ListBot:
http://www.listbot.com/
Having said that, maybe there are reasons why you _shouldn't_ use a free service. Read on ...
The Problem With Free Email Services
In the last issue, I listed several free mailing-list services -- services you can use to publish email newsletters or mailing-list discussion groups. I soon received an email from a reader with a great question -- if there are free email services, he asked, why do you ever need one that you have to pay for?
In the last issue I also mentioned Tara Calishain's research newsletter. At that point Tara was hosting it at one of the free services -- OneList: http://www.onelist.com/
Well, a mutual friend, Randy Cassingham, emailed Tara and sent a copy of the message to me. Randy explained to Tara, in a very lengthy missive, why she needed to pay for an email service rather than use a free one. Randy has allowed me to condense and publish his advice and comments here. I'm not suggesting that nobody should use one of the free services I mentioned in the last issue. If you have a small newsletter along with a small budget, you may want to start out with one of these services. But at least you'll know some of the drawbacks of the free services, and advantages of the for-pay services.
So the following comments are from Randy, summarized by me. Note, incidentally, that they are related specifically to the OneList service, so some of the comments may not apply directly to the other services.
- One major problem Randy sees is that these free services leave very little room for customization. They have some simple forms that are used for inviting people to join the list, for instance, but these forms can sound very impersonal and almost like spam. For instance, the "invitation" form sent by OneList is supposed to be a personal invitation, yet it has lines like these:
"Hello,
I would like to invite you to join the researchbuzz mailing list.
The description of this mailing list is:"
This sounds anything but personal.
- At OneList anyone wanting to subscribe to a list has to register at the OneList site. In other words, you give OneList your email address and a password, _then_ you subscribe to the list. OneList says that information provided when you set up an account may be used at their Web site, though they don't say where, when, or why. It should be possible to subscribe to the list without actually setting up an "account."
- To subscribe you have to go to the Web site. As Randy pointed out (and I agree entirely), it means you're going to lose a number of subscribes who don't want to take that extra step, or perhaps who don't even have Web access. There's another reason that it's a bad thing, too. As I explained in an earlier newsletter ( http://PoorRichard.com/newsltr/016.htm#1900 ), I have a partnership with two other newsletters to help generate extra subscriptions. We use a program called cgimail running at our Web sites to work this little operation ... if we were using a service that couldn't accept subscriptions through email, then we couldn't have this partnership.
- In all, these steps complicate the subscription process:
- Go to the Web site.
- Discover that you have to set up an account.
- Decide whether you want to provide all the information -- whether you trust them or whether perhaps you're being set up for spam.
- Once you register, you're _not_ told that you've successfully joined the list. As Randy discovered, it's easy to make mistakes while digging around trying to figure out whether you've subscribed or not, and end up getting browser error messages.
You'll lose subscribers at each step, so the more complicated the subscription process, the more people you'll lose.
- After subscribing there was no "welcome" message with a greeting, no background info, and no unsubscribe information.
- Each subscriber is actually worth something, in terms of dollars or cents. For instance, in Randy's case the more subscribers he has the more he gets for advertising; the more books he sells; the more paid "upgrade" subscriptions he gets, and so on. Other publishers may get value from subscribers in harder-to-measure ways -- the value that comes from promoting their own product or service in the newsletter, for instance. As Randy points out, a free list is not truly free. If you force people to jump through hoops to join, you'll lose some of them -- so you'll lose money.
I also noticed that although OneList provides a way to add names to the list of subscribers -- a very important feature -- it won't let you do so without sending the people a "welcome" message. But you may not want to do that. For instance, when I first started my Lyris account, I already had around 2,000 subscribers to this newsletter; I had to add this list to the Lyris database. To send out 2,000 welcome messages would have caused nothing but confusion among my subscribers.
In all, the major problem with free services is that they are not very customizable and have few of the sophisticated features of the for-pay services. In a future issue I'll explain what you'll get with a more advanced mailing-list server.
Randy pointed out that there are other "free" services that perform better than his first impressions led him to believe OneList does. Randy believes -- and I agree with him entirely -- that whatever system you use, it should be one that uses "normal" e-mail commands to join the list.
By the way, Randy, some of you will no doubt recall, knows of what he speaks. He's the publisher of a humor column, "This is True," one of the earliest mass email publications on the Internet. He's been publishing it for almost four and a half years (that's a long time in terms of Internet years when you consider that, back in June of 1994, few people even knew what the Internet was), and today he has around 160,000 subscribers.
This is True: http://ThisIsTrue.com/
Tara's Researchbuzz Newsletter
Tara was evidently persuaded by Randy's argument. She's moved her Internet Research News newsletter across to Lyris, which is probably the best mailing-list service. (Randy, I, and now Tara use this system.)
To subscribe to Tara's newsletter, visit http://www.coppersky.com/ongir/news/
To learn more about Lyris, visit http://www.lyris.com/
I'll be talking about Lyris soon, perhaps in the next issue.
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Poor Richard's Web Site -- The Book
When I began this newsletter early this year, I started off with a list of around 1,000 people who'd signed up to learn more about my book, "Poor Richard's Web Site: Geek-Free, Commonsense Advice on Building a Low-Cost Web Site." I created the newsletter as a promotional tool for that book -- I'll give people useful information, I thought, and as the newsletter spreads the word will get out about the book.
Since that time the list has grown to over 12,000 subscribers -- this issue will go to around 12,250 people.
So it's just occurred to me that many subscribers may not be aware that there's a book called "Poor Richard's Web Site: Geek-Free Commonsense Advice on Building a Low-Cost Web Site."
This is a book recommended by BYTE magazine, Windows Magazine (David Methvin recently called it "a great book that explains it all"), Publisher's Weekly, Library Journal, USA Today, Amazon.com, SmartBooks.com, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and many more (see the reviews at http://PoorRichard.com/review.htm ). In fact this may well be the most widely reviewed computer book in computer-book history (please, if anyone else out there knows of widely reviewed computer books, let me know!), having been mentioned scores of times, perhaps over 100 (few computer books get mentioned more than half a dozen times in the press, if that).
If you are in the process of setting up a Web site, this book really can save you time and money -- David Garvey, writing in The New England Non-Profit Quarterly, said that it had saved them "thousands of dollars and many hours of work."
So check out the Poor Richard Web Site, and see why you really do need this book! http://PoorRichard.com/
Using URLs in Email Messages -- Part II
I received a number of comments about the "Using URLs in Email Messages" article in the last issue ( http://PoorRichard.com/newsltr/019.htm#begin ). Most pointed out that in fact Microsoft Outlook _doesn't_ recognize email addresses that aren't preceded by mailto:, as I'd claimed.
Well, I was both wrong and right. It's apparently true that Outlook 98 doesn't -- but Outlook 2000, which I'm using, _does_ recognize email addresses without mailto:. I have a beta copy of Office 2000, so I tested Outlook 2000 ... but I forgot to mention which version I was using.
By the way, if you want a copy of Office 2000, you can get a pre-release version from Microsoft for $19.95: http://www.microsoft.com/office/2000/office/cpp/default.htm
The Problem With Links
I've said it before, and I'll say it again -- always check your links. Before sending an important email message -- such as an email newsletter -- or before publishing a Web page, make sure that the links you've typed actually works.
Now, if I could just remember to follow my own advice.
Some of you noticed my mistake in the last issue. I misspelled the http://www.lockergnome.com/ URL. (Luckily the http://www.lockergnome.com/coolstuff/ URL was correct, so you could still find your way there.)
Still, even if you _do_ type all the URLs correctly, something can still go wrong. The URL I mentioned last week for the "Web-Based Graphics Effects Generator" _was_ a good URL. In fact I copied it from my browser and pasted it into the newsletter, just an hour or two before I sent out the newsletter. By the time many of you received the newsletter, though, the link didn't work -- the server was evidently down. Try again, it should work now: http://zippy.sonoma.edu/kendrick/webfx/
There was another URL problem in that newsletter, too. The link for FindMail (one of the free email services I discussed) didn't seem to be working right before I sent out the newsletter. I included it anyway -- along with a note saying that it wasn't working at the time of writing -- because it had been working recently.
Soon after sending out the newsletter I got email from a reader saying that http://www.makelist.com/ actually points to eGroups, one of the other free email services I'd listed; indeed that's right, apparently makelist.com was modified -- right at the time I was sending out the newsletter -- to point to egroups.com. Apparently FindMail is somehow associated with eGroups.
Oh, and one other problem link; the sixdegrees.com link didn't work for some of you, because Sixdegrees was having problems with their server.
Well, I think that's the worse run of link luck I've had so far ... but, excepting the first problem (which was of my own making), sometimes there's not a lot you can do about these things!
A Business-Card Web Site
Here's an idea you may not have heard about. It sounds so obvious -- but it's one of those ideas that you know can't be obvious, because almost nobody's using them. This is the idea of creating "business-card Web sites."
I must admit that this isn't my idea. I first heard about it from Tom King, host of a US radio show called CompuTalk ( http://www.audionet.com/shows/computalk/ ). I'm not sure if he used the term "business-card Web site" -- he may have -- but he was the first person I'd heard describe the concept, which I've elaborated on here.
First, here's the basic idea behind most Web sites. Set up a Web site, register with the search engines, and hope people visit you. You're in cyberspace, so you work on trying to get people in cyberspace to visit you.
The business-card Web site is different in the sense that you don't really care if anyone in cyberspace finds you or not. You don't care too much if you're registered in the search engines, for instance. Instead, the Web site functions like an extended business card, a card you can pass out to people even if you've never met them.
Here's how it works. You set up a simple Web site, perhaps just a single page. The purpose of the site is really to get people to call you; you include all your contact info -- business name, phone number, email address, and so on. Then you put the URL to your Web site wherever you can.
For instance, let's say you're a house painter. You put the URL on the sign that you post outside houses you're painting. Of course you want a distinctive URL, something like BostonPainters.com, PaintPaintPaint.com, WePaintQuick.com, or whatever. (By the way, all those URLs are available. With a little imagination, it's still possible to find a distinctive URL that will work on a sign.) You _don't_ have to use a domain name that is the same as your company name -- the important thing is to pick a memorable and descriptive domain name.
Now, as people drive by your sign, they'll see a phone number (you do put your phone number on your signs, don't you?) and a URL. They won't remember the phone number, but if they see the URL a few times, there's a good chance they'll remember it. They'll be able to reach your site; in effect, you passed out a business card, without either you or the recipient realizing it at the time. Of course the URL can be pasted on everything -- the side of your trucks and cars, employee's uniforms, windows ... anything you know people will see.
People don't go online to look for a house painter, or a lawn service, or a plumber -- they use the Yellow Pages. But if they've seen a memorable URL a few times, they'll remember it and may go to the business-card Web site.
This is a great little system that costs very little -- less than a Yellow Pages ad -- yet can be very effective. (You could probably create one of these sites for around $3 a week, including the domain name fee.)
Business-card Web sites can work well for delivery services, carpet-cleaning services, plumbers, house cleaners, kids cutting lawns, milk-delivery services, diaper services, window cleaners ... .
More Email Newsletter Directories
I've expanded my directory of places to register an email newsletter; I've added 13 more places to register the newsletter, and three more resources for people publishing newsletters.
See the "Places to Register Your Email Newsletter" report at http://www.poorrichard.com/freeinfo/special_reports.htm
Six Degrees -- Part II
In the last issue I discussed Six Degrees, a fantastic networking system that shows you links from you to the friends and associates you enter into the database ... and from those friends of associates to other people ( http://PoorRichard.com/newsltr019.htm#6 )
A couple of readers wrote to tell me they'd used Six Degrees and found it very useful. One wrote to tell me that it _is_ true that everyone in the world is separated by at most six degrees -- six connections -- though she offered no evidence. (I had said in the newsletter that I didn't believe it.) A day or two later I was a little perturbed to receive this month's issue of Discover magazine, with the title "6 Degrees of Separation: A real-life math story" on the cover. Oh, dear, I thought, someone's proved that it _is_ true, and I'm going to have to eat humble pie and admit I was wrong. Luckily the heading overstated the article -- it doesn't prove the 6-degrees theory -- but if you're interested in reading about the mathematical concepts behind such networks, see: "Discover," December 1998, page 85. (My current belief on the 6-degrees thing? Perhaps most people in the world, or a very large proportion, are connected by 6 degrees, but it's unlikely that every single human being on the planet is thus connected.)
Six Degrees -- the Web service -- still seems to be having some server problems, but with almost one and a half million people listed in the database and thousands being added weekly, this could be a really significant service, so I hope they get their problems sorted out. http://www.sixdegrees.com/
Free Book on Internet Marketing -- Part II
Thanks to all of you who asked for a free copy of "Poor Richard's Internet Marketing and Promotions: How to Promote Yourself, Your Business, Your Ideas Online." (Written by me and Tara Calishain.) Please, no more requests! (Unless you are a reviewer.) I was hoping for a couple of hundred requests, and got that many within 24 hours. We're now up to 450 requests, which is a lot more than we can handle.
By the way, this just goes to show the power of an email newsletter. As long term readers of this newsletter know, I believe that many Web-based businesses can use newsletters as a very useful adjunct to their Web operations. In fact I regard a Web site as merely the center of one's Internet operations -- lots of other things should be going on around it, newsletters being just one of those things.
When I first published Poor Richard's Web Site (the book), I had to go looking for people who might want to read it -- I wanted testimonials to put in the front of the book, so I needed to find people who might want to read the book in electronic form before it was published. (The book originally had five pages of testimonials, though I've now replaced those with press reviews.) I won't say it was terribly hard to find people -- I posted messages in a few newsgroups -- but certainly it was nothing as easy as this. Nor did I find 200 people in 24 hours! It took a few weeks.
That's the great thing about doing business on the Internet; the more you work with it, the more you experiment, the more ways you'll find to use it.
Poor Richard's Web Site in the Press
Poor Richard's Web Site keeps on turning up in the press.
- I've found a great book that explains it all: Poor Richard's Web Site... This is a practical, no-nonsense guide that lucidly covers topics like how to set up a domain with the InterNIC, how to promote your Web site and how to actually use all those features that hosting services provide." David Methvin, Windows Magazine
- "Setting a new standard, it really does provide reliable, commonsense advice. You may have a tough time finding this much information elsewhere. It's a great way to start building your own Web site." Karen Steele, Technical Communication (Journal of the Society for Technical Communication)
For many more reviews and testimonials, visit ...
Poor Richard's Web Site is in many bookstores, and can be ordered by others; it can also be ordered on-line, through the mail, by fax, or by phone.
See ...
Order direct from the publisher, and you'll get a 100%, 1-Year Guarantee. If the book doesn't help you set up a low-cost yet effective Web site, send it back for a refund!
Reading Back Issues
If you need to refer to back issues of this newsletter -- and search the archives -- you can find them at the following location:
http://PoorRichard.com/newsltr/
In Future Issues ...
All sorts of things too numerous to mention ... just keep reading, and forward the newsletter to friends and colleagues!
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