I thought there was a thread on this here. I can't find it. But we have a thread or two on it on the http://ultranerds.com/forum forum.
We've been gearing up to offer new products and add ons that increase the value of your site, and allow you to charge, not just collect passive content advertising like google or click banners.
We have a number of products coming out, but we do have several that can be used to market your products and services.
One of them is the Postcards.cgi script. It allows you to set up images, and let users send notifications on them. The images don't actually get sent, so there is more control on them, and you don't clog users email boxes. The templates you serve come from your URL, so your content ads serve properly, and you bring the people into your site.
The biggest postcards sending season is coming up. First the Halloween-Newyears cards, then Valentines day 6 weeks later.
Most sites just put cards into the site as a page, hoping to get "hits" with them. They don't really promote the site, or interest people in your site.
Using a combination of our plugins (and/or others) you can take your postcards images, and have them pop up randomly along the sides of your site, like a banner (check out the left image on the http://posterlist.com site, that is pulled randomly from the database).
I've done a few tests, and these sort of random insertions, generate anywhere from 5 to 30x as many clicks as a single click through link. On two of my working sites, a single static image is generating 6x the clicks as the "Send a Postcard" link generated.
Ultra Package holders should have most of the parts they need, but if there is a demand, we can probably upgrade the postcard.cgi to include the random image puller and displayer. Now is the season, and the data I've been seeing lately shows these random insertions GREATLY increase the click throughs, and thus increase your exposure and chance of getting new eyeballs from the postcards.
Even the recommend this link program, if you use the thumbshots template, to pull the OTP thumbshot, increases click through about 10x over the bare text ad.
For many businesses on and off line, this season is the make or break. They weathered the 3 years of .com decline, and have put their last eggs into the small upswing that has happened (out of need -- not economic improvement -- people have to sell, they have to buy, they have to advertise, eventually). But, if this season doesn't pan out, not just hype, not just flash, but substance (eg: SALES), there will be a lot of crashing and burning in January. Already around here, many businesses pulled the plug before entering the holiday season. Vacant store fronts in formerly active rows is a chilling sign.
Trickery isn't going to work, but good marketing, good advertising, and adding interest to your EXISTING offerings (no major changes, just let people see them in a new light), is going to be the key to success this season.
There is speculation (including mine) that the new google bots are designed to catch the sites that don't appear the same to the human eye (browser MSIE or Mozilla) as they do to Lynx. That will kill off most of the spam sites, and increase traffic to content sites, right before the holiday.
Are you ready?
(BTW: I've starting using H tags, with CSS (and I hate CSS) to format the pages. The lynx spider sees the "<H1>" tag, but the user sees 16pt Verdanna. Only do that at the beginning of major blocks -- <BODY>, <DIV>, <TD>, and such. Avoid it with <P> tags, since a <P> tag is interpreted as a content-contenainer, not as a formatting division, and it could even get your pages knocked down depending on the spider's programming. Use it to highlight important divisions -- major keywords -- in your page, and make sure the content in the rest of the container matches up. Just a few thoughts.... ;) )
PUGDOG� Enterprises, Inc.
The best way to contact me is to NOT use Email.
Please leave a PM here.
We've been gearing up to offer new products and add ons that increase the value of your site, and allow you to charge, not just collect passive content advertising like google or click banners.
We have a number of products coming out, but we do have several that can be used to market your products and services.
One of them is the Postcards.cgi script. It allows you to set up images, and let users send notifications on them. The images don't actually get sent, so there is more control on them, and you don't clog users email boxes. The templates you serve come from your URL, so your content ads serve properly, and you bring the people into your site.
The biggest postcards sending season is coming up. First the Halloween-Newyears cards, then Valentines day 6 weeks later.
Most sites just put cards into the site as a page, hoping to get "hits" with them. They don't really promote the site, or interest people in your site.
Using a combination of our plugins (and/or others) you can take your postcards images, and have them pop up randomly along the sides of your site, like a banner (check out the left image on the http://posterlist.com site, that is pulled randomly from the database).
I've done a few tests, and these sort of random insertions, generate anywhere from 5 to 30x as many clicks as a single click through link. On two of my working sites, a single static image is generating 6x the clicks as the "Send a Postcard" link generated.
Ultra Package holders should have most of the parts they need, but if there is a demand, we can probably upgrade the postcard.cgi to include the random image puller and displayer. Now is the season, and the data I've been seeing lately shows these random insertions GREATLY increase the click throughs, and thus increase your exposure and chance of getting new eyeballs from the postcards.
Even the recommend this link program, if you use the thumbshots template, to pull the OTP thumbshot, increases click through about 10x over the bare text ad.
For many businesses on and off line, this season is the make or break. They weathered the 3 years of .com decline, and have put their last eggs into the small upswing that has happened (out of need -- not economic improvement -- people have to sell, they have to buy, they have to advertise, eventually). But, if this season doesn't pan out, not just hype, not just flash, but substance (eg: SALES), there will be a lot of crashing and burning in January. Already around here, many businesses pulled the plug before entering the holiday season. Vacant store fronts in formerly active rows is a chilling sign.
Trickery isn't going to work, but good marketing, good advertising, and adding interest to your EXISTING offerings (no major changes, just let people see them in a new light), is going to be the key to success this season.
There is speculation (including mine) that the new google bots are designed to catch the sites that don't appear the same to the human eye (browser MSIE or Mozilla) as they do to Lynx. That will kill off most of the spam sites, and increase traffic to content sites, right before the holiday.
Are you ready?
(BTW: I've starting using H tags, with CSS (and I hate CSS) to format the pages. The lynx spider sees the "<H1>" tag, but the user sees 16pt Verdanna. Only do that at the beginning of major blocks -- <BODY>, <DIV>, <TD>, and such. Avoid it with <P> tags, since a <P> tag is interpreted as a content-contenainer, not as a formatting division, and it could even get your pages knocked down depending on the spider's programming. Use it to highlight important divisions -- major keywords -- in your page, and make sure the content in the rest of the container matches up. Just a few thoughts.... ;) )
PUGDOG� Enterprises, Inc.
The best way to contact me is to NOT use Email.
Please leave a PM here.