NewByDesign » Promoting Your Site

Buying Hits – Is It Worth The Money.

Tim Hicks — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 22:01:34 +0000

I remember when I first started building websites, it was great seeing the sites take shape as we went from “blank canvas” to “ready for display.” One thing was disappointing, however. No matter how good I thought the sites were, they never got a lot of visitors fast enough to suit me. After all, what fun is it to have a great site that no one sees. It’s bruising to the ego and, worse yet, it doesn’t make you any money. That’s where the temptation to take short-cuts comes in.

In my search to get people to visit my sites, I tried a lot of things. I paid for submission to search engines, joined banner exchanges, joined site rotation schemes, pay-per-click ads, etc., If you can think of a way to promote a website, odds are that I’ve tried it at one time or another. Some worked much better than others. One technique still sticks out in my mind. It is the use of “purchased hits.”

If you go on eBay or search the web, you can find many companies offering to send you thousands of visitors for a small fee. This sounds really good and you may be tempted to take the plunge, but be warned. Things aren’t always as they seem.

When you purchase hits, the vendor usually sends your site out as a pop-up or pop-under window on other sites. So, while you are technically getting the number of hits you paid for, you’re not getting qualified, interested traffic. A good number of visitors will not even be English speaking and, for those who do speak English, they have not requested to see your site so they have no vested interest in it. In fact, most of the people who are seeing your site are likely to view it as a nuisance instead of something they are interested in. This is a double whammy. Not only have you gained negative attention for your site, but you’ve spent money to do it. Ouch!

Oh, it gets worse. In addition, many web hosting companies consider this activity as a form of SPAM and may close down your hosting account. Talk about adding insult to injury.

All-in-all, I don’t believe that paid hits are the way to go. I would suggest using that money for more reputable advertising, such as pay-per-click or e-zine ads where you are at least getting visits from people who really want to see your site.

Tips For Mailing Your Visitors

Tim Hicks — Sun, 03 May 2009 01:28:01 +0000

One thing a lot of new webmasters (and many experienced ones) want to know is what is the best way to send e-mail messages to your website visitors? Well, you basically have three options. You can:

Use your e-mail client (Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, etc) to manually send e-mails to your visitors.
Use a script to automate the process and send the messages directly from your website’s server. And. . .
Use a paid service.

Let’s take a look at each option so you can decide which one is best for you.

Option 1 – Using Your E-Mail Client: This option may be OK if you are e-mailing a small group of people (say less than 50). Once you are sending out messages to more people than that, it gets to be a real headache. First off, you have to manage subsciptions manually and make sure that you remove people promptly when they unsubscribe – unless you want to be in violation of numerous laws.

Secondly, you are likely to run into trouble with your ISP (Internet Service Provider). Most ISPs limit the number of people you can send a message to. This limit is usually around 50 recipients, but you should check with your ISP to make sure.

Thirdly, this process can take a long time to complete, depending on the number of recipients you have.

Additionally, if anyone reports you to your ISP for spamming (sending unsolicited commercial e-mail), whether you are or not, you could find yourself blocked out of your ISP. Ouch! That’s not a good thing.

So, I would say that this might be a good option if you are running a small, personal site and you are only writing to 25-50 people at a time. I certainly would not recommend using this for business.

Option 2 – Using A Script On Your Website’s Server: This is a better option to be sure. Many webhosting providers offer some great scripts preinstalled, such as PHPList for example. These scripts automate subscriptions and removal requests and send the messages. Whether this is a good option depends, in large part, on your hosting provider. Like most ISPs, many hosting providers put a cap on the number of recipients you can send an e-mail message to at one time. This is to avoid spam complaints. As with ISPs, webhosts may also terminate your service if you receive such complaints.

An additional downside to this is that most of these scripts are somewhat difficult to configure, even the pre-installed ones. If you don’t get the settings just right, your messages may not go anywhere, or, if they do, they may not look as you intended.

Even if you find a script that is easy to use and your ISP has a pretty good cap on recipients, you have to ask if the system has room to grow. Again, this isn’t so important if you have a small list for a personal site and know that it will never grow very big. On the other hand, if you are using your site for business, this is a very big concern. What happens when you get 10,000 subscribers or more? Well, a list that size uses up considerable resources. In order to keep your site from dragging down the performance of other sites that share the same server, your webhost may require that you move to a dedicated server. This will greatly increase your hosting bill (possibly by 1,000% or more). That smarts.

Even with all the negatives, this may still be a good option if you’re:

…running a large site that is making good money so that the increased hosting fees don’t hurt too bad.
…a techy type who likes to tinker with software and wants to have total control over the process.

For most of us, the best solution is going to be number 3.

Option 3 – Using A Third-Party Service: This is the option that I highly recommend for people running business sites, especially those who either have large lists, or aspire to someday. The reasons are quite simple:

The software is already set up.
Your list is managed by professionals.
Each subscription request is recorded (including IP address). This comes in handy if you have to fight spam charges.
The subscription management process is totally automated. You don’t have to manually add or remove subscribers.
You won’t get in trouble with your ISP or webhost for sending out too many e-mails.
Your e-mails will look more professional because most services offer very professional templates that you can use.
You get the option of sending plain text messages (which work with most ISPs, but are not too pretty on the eyes) or HTML messages (which look like mini websites) or a combination of both.
Most services allow you to have multiple lists at no extra charge.

This is the option that I have used for sometime. If you are running a business site (or even a large personal one), this is the option that makes the most sense. Once you decide that this is what you want to do, you then have to find a good service. Here’s where you want to be careful. If you choose a fly-by-night operation, and they fail, you lose all of your subscribers, or, at the very least, you’ll have to contact them and ask them to re-confirm when you move your list somewhere else. People really hate that.

You also need to watch out for services that overprice their service. There are companies out there charging $100 per month or more for “e-mail marketing.” That’s just “name brand crazy.” I wouldn’t suggest paying anywhere near that for the service. In fact, I think $20 per month is usually too high.

For stability, service and price, I recommend two services: AWeber and GetResponse. I’ve used both over the years and have found them both to be excellent. When I first started creating e-mail newsletters and lists (several years ago), I used AWeber and I found them to be great and full-featured and they still are. Then, one day, a friend suggested I try GetResponse using their free option and I did. I really liked it. It had many of the same features that AWeber offered, plus a few additional ones and the paid version was a little less expensive than Aweber. So, over time, I made the switch and we’ve been with GetResponse ever since. That doesn’t mean that you have to use GR.

Both services offer a great value for the money. What I suggest you do is visit each site, look at their features and costs and decide which service works best for you, your site and your business (if you have one.)

Click here to check out GetResponse.
Click here to check out Aweber.

Happy e-mailing.

Tim

BTW, Aweber offers a free “test drive” of their service. As for GetResponse, they offer free acounts (with some limited features) so you can test their service as well. I’ve included sign up boxes below if you would like to sign up for one course or the other (or both). Enjoy.

Would you like to receive a FREE,
seven-lesson email course
that will power up your email
marketing and profits?
Sign up
NOW

Remember, your privacy is safe!

The Truth About Traffic Exchanges

Tim Hicks — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 04:50:46 +0000

Once you have your new website up and running, it’s only natural that you want to get traffic to it. After all, it’s no fun if you’re the only person who ever sees your site. If your site is business-related, a lack of traffic can be deadly to your business goals. With that in mind, it is easy to see why so many people are attracted to “traffic exchanges.” Sure, the premise looks good. You look at other people’s websites and, in return, they visit yours. What could be wrong with that? Well, actually, there is plenty wrong with that.

You see, it’s not mere traffic that you’re looking for. It is targeted traffic that you want. You want people who visit your site because they want to be there, not just because your site was the next one in rotation. These visitors will not care about the information on your site or (for business sites) what services or products you offer.

What’s worse is that these sites cost you something much more precious than money. They cost you time. Folks, let’s be real here. Time is your most precious commodity. You can always earn more money, but time is not a renewable resource. Once it is gone, it is gone forever.

With most traffic exchanges you look at websites belonging to other exchange members. Once you’ve viewed 2,3 or 5 sites (depending on the exchange), your site is shown to one member. Can you see how this could take a very long time to generate any real traffic. You end up spending time that could be spent productively, and waste it looking at sites on the exchange. It’s almost insulting to realize that you’ve wasted hours to generate a few hundred hits to your site, only to have them be disinterested in your site or, even worse, to be your competition. You have to remember that the other people in the exchange are looking at exchange sites for the same reason you are. . . they want hits on their site.

Now, if your goal is to bump up your Alexa ranking so that you can have some bragging rights for your personal blog, I guess this is OK, but if you’re looking to draw real, targeted and interested visitors, this is not the way to go.

Now, some traffic exchanges offer you the opportunity to buy credits that will get your site shown throughout the exchange without you having to view sites yourself. This is a little bit better because it doesn’t cause you to waste your time, but you are still getting non-targeted traffic and now, you’re paying for it!

No, you’d be better off to take that money and use it to drive targeted traffic to your site via pay-per-click advertising or other, proven techniques.

Spammers Hijack Popular Promotion Technique

Tim Hicks — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 18:37:00 +0000

Have you ever been to a great website and noticed a link asking you to share the site with a friend? Odds are that you have. It is a very popular way of using word-of-mouth advertising for the site. After all, we’re much more likely to trust the recommendation of a friend than we are to trust hype and ads from strangers. It’s that friend-to-friend approach that makes this technique so appealing.

Here’s the way it works. You go to a site that you like and click on their “share this site” link. Once the page loads, you simply put in your name, your e-mail address, the e-mail addresses of your friends and a brief message. Then you click “send” and then software on the website’s server sends your recommendation to your friends. It sounds good, right? Well it was good, but now (like so many other things) it has been co-opted for SPAM.

You see spammers are going to these sites and loading them up with harvested e-mail addresses and a “personal message” that is nothing more than an ad for whatever product or site they are really pushing. I cannot tell you how many times a day I get some alleged “recommendation” from someone I don’t know, only to find out that it is a thinly disguised ad for some medication, home refinance scheme or porn site. It’s not only annoying, but it’s downright criminal!! The spammer is not only stealing the legitimate site’s bandwidth and reputation, but they are also putting the legitimate site in danger of having their IP address blocked by ISPs for spam.

As a webmaster, you should really think long and hard about this before putting this type of link on your website. After all, it’s your reputation and site that gets hurt from this type of attack. You’ll note that we do not have a “recommend this site” link on our website. This is the main reason why. As for me, I think I’ll stick to safer and, in the long run, more beneficial promotion methods such as article promotion, pay-per-click advertising, search engine optimization and forum participation. That’s my recommendation for you, too.