Poor Richard 34
#034/03-Sept-99
POOR RICHARD'S WEB SITE NEWS
Geek-Free, Commonsense Advice on Building a Low-Cost Web Site
Editor: Peter Kent
Top Floor Publishing
http://PoorRichard.com/
35,000 Subscribers in More Than 100 Countries!
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------------------------------------------------------------IN THIS ISSUE
- Welcome to Lockergnome Readers
- Beginner's Column: An Easy Way to Add Forms
- The Lockergnome Promotion
- Poor Richard's E-mail Publishing -- Almost Out of Print
- FAQ: How to Get Insanely Rich on the Internet
- Banner Ad Update
- Poor Richard's Web Site and Other Top Floor Books
- Book Reviewers Wanted -- Poor Richard's E-mail Publishing
- Reading Back Issues
**** IF YOU FIND THIS NEWSLETTER USEFUL ... FORWARD IT TO FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES ****
Welcome to Lockergnome Readers
This newsletter's subscriber list grew by more than ten percent last week, from somewhere around 31,000 to 35,000. Although I won't know the numbers for sure until I send out this newsletter and read the delivery report (to see how many good addresses are on the list right now), I suspect that it grew by about 3,500 names during three days.
Why? Thanks to a large influx of Lockergnome readers. I'll explain how this came about a little later in this newsletter; as my long-term readers know, I like to share real-life experiences in Internet marketing in this newsletter. In the meantime, I'd just like to welcome the new Lockergnome readers to the newsletter. And the rest of you might want to check out Chris Pirillo's Lockergnome: http://www.lockergnome.com/ , which goes to around 150,000 subscribers every day.
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Beginner's Column: An Easy Way to Add Forms
Adding functioning forms at your Web site can be a bit of a problem. The most common way to add forms is by installing a CGI (Common Gateway Interface) script, but for most normal people (i.e., non-programmers), CGIs can be quite difficult to work with. Well, there's another way. There are a number of services around the Web that allow you to set up forms at your site and direct the output to programs running on their Web servers.
When you send data to the program processes it for you. For instance, take a look at this code:
<form action="http://www.bravenet.com/emailfwd/senddata.asp" method="POST">
<INPUT type=hidden name=userid value=ce211fg2202>
<INPUT type=hidden name=webpage value=Submission_Review>The <form> tag tells the Web browser what to do when the user clicks on a Submit button. In this case it's being told to send information from the form to http://www.bravenet.com/emailfwd/senddata.asp. The bravenet.com site is a utility service, and senddata.asp is a program running at that site. You'll also notice that the next line is a hidden form field, called userid. This sends an ID number (in this case ce211fg2202) to the program, identifying this information as coming from your Web site. There's also another hidden field, one that identifies the Web page.
So as you can see, you can place a form on your Web site, but run it on another site. What type of forms and services can you use? These sorts of things:
- Address books (that can be shared by friends and colleagues)
- Autoresponders
- Cartoons (they change periodically)
- Chat rooms
- Classified Ads
- Countdown timers
- E-mail Forms (forms that e-mail the information to you)
- Forums (Message Boards)
- Free-For-All Links (pages that allow visitors to your site to add links)
- Greeting cards
- Guestbooks
- Hit counters and site statistics
- Mailing Lists (for newsletters and discussion groups)
- Navigation tools (such as drop-down list boxes or buttons that act as links)
- Random links (the page the visitor is sent to when clicking on the link is picked randomly)
- Referral tools (so visitors can let their friends and colleagues know about your site)
- Search utilities
- Web "polls" (visitors can vote at your site)
I won't go into detail about how to set these things up. You'll need to know a little HTML, though not a lot. And each service functions differently. Here are a few places to find such services:
- 1-2-3 Web Tools (Some interesting stuff, including countdown timers and navigation tools) http://www.freeguestbooks.com/
- agum Network http://www.agum.com/utilities.htm
- Beseen http://www.beseen.com/
- BigInfo.Net (A list of around 50 free-utility services) http://www.biginfo.net/pages/FreeServices/
- BoingDragon's Lair http://boingdragon.com/
- Bravenet http://www.bravenet.com/
- CGI Free http://www.cgi-free.com/
- Inside the Web (Free message boards) http://www.insidetheweb.com/
- Komy.Net http://www.komy.net/
- ukibi (An online address book) http://www.ukibi.com/
The Lockergnome Promotion
I've long believed in the power of e-mail newsletters (if I didn't, I wouldn't publish this one, after all!). Last week I carried out a little promotion that illustrates this power. Let me tell you the story.
I wanted to promote Poor Richard's E-mail Publishing, a book my publishing company, Top Floor Publishing, released just a couple of weeks ago. It's written by Chris Pirillo, the publisher of Lockergnome, so an obvious target for a promotion was Chris' newsletter.
I set up a form at the Top Floor Publishing Web site at which people could sign up to win a copy of the book (we were giving away ten copies). It would only take them a few moments: they would click on a link in Chris' newsletter, arrive at the form, enter their name and e-mail address, click Submit, and that's that.
I also included two option buttons, Yes and No; I asked whether the entrants wanted to receive a subscription for this newsletter, Poor Richard's Web Site News. (Which is why I have 3,500 or so Lockergnome subscribers joining this week.)
We received 5,765 submissions. Here are a few statistics, to give you an idea of how these things work.
Forty nine of the submissions were useless, either completely blank (people clicked the Submit button without entering information) or they included a name without an e-mail address. In all, a little less than one percent were entries without e-mail addresses.
There were a number of duplicates, people submitting twice. It's difficult to know how many, though; some people may have been using different names and different e-mail addresses. I quickly scanned the first few hundred entries, though, and would estimate that under one percent were duplicates.
I'm sure there must be a few dozen bad e-mail addresses. I searched for commas, and discovered five people had typed a comma in place of a period -- "aol,com", for instance). With that many submissions there must be more spelling mistakes, I'm sure.
Now, here's something interesting that I noticed concerning the Yes/No option buttons. I set the buttons to Yes -- that is, the entry form was automatically set up to subscribe to this newsletter. Of course the entrants could change the buttons to No, and many did; about one third did so. The interesting thing is that in earlier contests the percentage who have changed the setting to No was much, much lower. When I first started doing these kinds of contests (this is how I originally built this newsletter), I learned that only one person in twenty, just five percent, would turn down the subscription. That number's grown to one in three. Is it a function of the Lockergnome subscribers in some way? Or are people becoming more selective. I suspect the latter. I think that so many of us are getting overwhelmed by the information glut that we're more likely to reject an offer of more information! Still, whatever the reason, this updated information is useful ... it gives me another rule of thumb to work with for future promotions.
Did the promotion sell books? It most certainly did, it was our busiest three day period ever. Chris had been concerned that holding a competition would stop people from buying books. To allay his fears we made this offer on the entry form; enter now, buy a book if you want, and if you win we'll refund the cost of the book, including shipping, and even let you pick another Top Floor Publishing book for free.
Poor Richard's E-mail Publishing -- Almost Out of Print
Talking of Poor Richard's E-mail Publishing, it's almost out of print. It sold so well in the first week that it hit #1 on the Ingram Desktop Publishing best seller list. Ingram is the world's largest book wholesaler; perhaps 1/3 of a typical American book publisher's books are sold to bookstores through Ingram. (Why the Desktop Publishing list? Who knows, it wasn't my choice.)
This is a real-life example of the power of Internet marketing. The whole Poor Richard's series -- from Poor Richard's Web Site, through Poor Richard's Internet Marketing and Promotions, to Poor Richard's E-mail Publishing -- has been built by Internet marketing, on a shoe-string budget. Poor Richard's Web Site hit the best seller list at Amazon for a short while, too, and became the most widely reviewed and praised title in computer-book history. All based on Internet marketing. As for Poor Richard's E-mail Publishing, it soared from a ranking of #640,000 at Amazon.com to #43 weeks before it was even in print, after Chris Pirillo mentioned the book in his newsletter. This Internet marketing thing really does work!
So, if you've been thinking of getting a copy of the book, I suggest you do so now! They may be unavailable soon. We've gone back to print, but it'll take a few weeks to get them back in stock, and I suspect we may have a couple of weeks or more when they're not available.
For more info visit http://PoorRichard.com/email/
And if you want to learn more about the power of Internet marketing and promotions, visit http://PoorRichard.com/promo/
FAQ: How to Get Insanely Rich on the Internet
I had to let you read this great little article by Linda Cox J.A.M.G. (Just Another Marketing Guru).
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Welcome to the Total Idiot's Guide to Internet Success!
Let's begin:
Q: How long will it take me to get insanely rich?
A: Depends on you. Probably two weeks. Some people take as long as a month.
Q: Does it take hard work or long hours to get insanely rich?
A: No. This is the internet.
Q: Can just anybody get insanely rich?
A: Yes. This is the internet.
Q: How do I proceed?
A: As you're surfing around the net you'll see banners and links that say things like "Make Fourteen Million Dollars in Ninety Days, Click Here to See How!" Simply click the link to get started.
Q: It won't really take ninety days though, will it?
A: Of course not. They just say that so you'll be pleasantly surprised and so it doesn't sound like hype.
Q: Okay, I've found one that says "Retire to Your Own Caribbean Isle in One Month!" Is that good?
A: Perfect.
Q: What does MLM mean?
A: Nobody really knows. Morons Lose Money has been snidely suggested by the little-brains.
Q: I signed up and now I sell low phone rates. They say it's the easiest thing to sell because everyone uses a phone. And since it's MLM, by the time my third level is operating I'll be making $345,915.45 per week.
A: Conservatively.
Q: They say the first step is to get my mother into the program. Why is my sponsor happy that Mom has Alzheimers?
A: Your sponsor is a shrewd business person. People with any sort of memory disorder make the best targ... uh, clients. You can switch your mother's long distance carrier for her, and then start calling the other members of her support group.
Q: That sounds a little fishy.
A: The ends justify the means. You are offering people substantial savings on long distance. It's for their own good.
Q: How else can I get new business?
A: Spam. Spam. Spam.
Q: I thought spam was bad.
A: No, spam is good. Anyone who says it's bad is just jealous because their brains are too small.
Q: But won't I lose my web host and ISP?
A: In the get-rich-quick business, it's important to cultivate a zen-like non-attachment to service providers.
Q: What else can I do to promote my new business?
A: Here's a list of suggestions:
- Sign up with a free website provider and fill your site with zany colors and flashy banners.
- Join every free banner exchange.
- Get your own free-for-all links page.
- Join every opt-in email list with the word Money, Rich or Lackwit in the title.
- Buy software that submits your site URL to the 15,000 most important search engines.
- Buy software that submits your ad to the 50,000 most-read free classified sites.
- Buy software that submits your link to the 100,000 most popular free-for-all link pages.
- Hire a bulk emailer.
- Sponsor a golf tournament.
Q: Okay, I've done all that and I'm still not rich. I haven't even driven my hitcounter to its knees yet. What am I doing wrong?
A: It's possible that you're not very bright. Consult one of your friends who has retired on their internet earnings.
Q: What if I don't have any friends who have retired on their internet earnings?
A: Then contact someone on the internet who has retired on their internet earnings.
Q: What if I've never heard of anyone retiring from their internet earnings?
A: Well, then maybe you can be the first.
Linda Cox (J.A.M.G.) was actually a real-world corporate marketer for many years before going on the net without a net.
Now she's Just Another Marketing Guru.
MORE LINDA! http://www.LindaCox.com
If you need a laugh, visit Linda's site for more of this stuff!
Banner Ad Update
There's an interesting article about banner advertising titled "AdKnowledge: Click Rates Not Enough" at eMarketer. Here's a quick summary
- Click-thru rates are not enough. According to an organization called AdKnowledge, banner ads with really high click-thru rates rarely have a high "conversion rate." In other words, they may get clicked on, but the people clicking through are less likely to take action. Actually this strikes me as obvious; if you play games to get people to click on an ad you can increase the click-thru rate ... but then you have people who aren't interested in your product, they were interested in the teaser (the pretty girl, the odd question, the ambiguous headline, or whatever).
- Banner advertising rates continue to drop, about 2.1% a quarter. Average cpm (cost per thousand impression) rates are now $34.23.
- Banner advertising continues to grow. The number of sites and networks accepting ads grew 16.3% in June.
By the way, I have a theory about banner advertising. I think it's teaching business things about advertising that they should have known before, but which they could conveniently ignore because they had no direct statistics. These days we can measure the effect of advertising pretty directly; we can see how many people who saw an ad clicked on it, and when they get to a site we can follow them and see where they went on the site and if they bought anything. This can't be done for print and broadcast media. So companies spend billions of dollars on print and broadcast mostly on faith; they have no real, solid indication of to what degree it works for them, beyond the fact that the advertising industry tells them it works.
Thus the downward decline in banner-ad rates, as companies learn that ...
- Advertising isn't worth as much as they've been paying for it
- Most advertising simply doesn't work
- Viewers like "cute" ads ... but that doesn't necessarily turn into increased sales
If you'd like to see the article (it's pretty short), click here: http://www.emarketer.com/estats/083099_oar.html
Poor Richard's Web Site and Other Top Floor Books
Top Floor Publishing now has five books in print:
Poor Richard's E-mail Publishing
http://PoorRichard.com/email/
Poor Richard's Web Site
http://PoorRichard.com/
Poor Richard's Internet Marketing and Promotions
http://PoorRichard.com/promo/
The CDnow Story: Rags to Riches on the Internet
http://TopFloor.com/cdnow/
MP3 and the Digital Music Revolution: Turn Your PC into a CD-Quality Jukebox
http://TopFloor.com/mp3/
Order direct from the publisher, and you'll get a 100%, 1-Year Guarantee. If you feel the book wasn't worth the money, send it back for a refund!
And remember, these books are discounted at the Web site, and you pay just one shipping cost regardless of how many books you buy!
Book Reviewers Wanted -- Poor Richard's E-mail Publishing
Do you review books for newspapers, magazines, newsletters (electronic or paper), Web sites, or other media spots? If so, perhaps you'd like to review Top Floor Publishing's latest book, "Poor Richard's E-mail Publishing." Or perhaps you'd like to review one of the other books I mentioned above?
Contact my Marketing Director, Missy Derkacz, at reviews@TopFloor.com. Include your full mailing address, the name of newspaper/magazine/whatever in which the review will appear and the probable date of publication, and the editor's contact information.
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/
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