I saw an advert on UK TV for a site called Just35.com and took a look yesterday - guess what? I think they are using links to power it! I thought I would register some of my sites and got a phone call to day - they wanted £2,600 $3,900 to get registered!is this a record? I said I would reciprocate when mine goes live (www.intheuk.net)for a free listing but that was not possible. Anyway if it is links it shows how popular it is becoming!
take a look @ http://www.just35.com

Iain
www.photo-ads.co.uk

I say good luck to them!

But they are charging an incredible fee for something most other targeted index sites do for free, for $100-$200 per year or quarter for to add a logo.

There is a conflict of interest if you pay a site $4,000 for a "review".

The best sites are supposed to be "Editor's" or "Users" picks, not paid reviews.

http://www.postcards.com
FAQ: http://www.postcards.com/FAQ/LinkSQL/

They ARE using links SQL :-)

I'm not sure how many people would be willing to pay what appears to be a very large fee to be listed. I'd want to be assured of LOTS of hits if I was going to pay that much !

Hi All,

Yes! we are using links for Just35.com. The reason you say that the fee may be a lot is because the company has plowed £millions into a TV advertising campaign which included over 4000 adverts in July alone. Plus the advantage is that there are only 35 reviews in each sub category, so you are guaranteed being seen.

The site is still in its infancy and has a lot of work still to be done. There are various ideas in the pipeline. We have based the site around the links software purely because there is nothing else like it on the NET, nit with a support section like this.

If you would like to get your site listed at a reduced rate then reply here or email me. I may be able to get a better deal for you in return for mods, design, etc. with future projects.

Thanks for all your help and support.

Regards

MDJ1
http://www.isee-multimedia.co.uk

Didn't realize it was your site. I might have been more diplomatic.... not that I still don't see a conflict of interest in paying for reviews...

It's an interesting idea, but it's just a variation of what other search engines have tried -- such as "pay for performance" and such.

Unless you can get listed in the search rotation on MSIE, I don't how you can draw enough people in, even with a large advertising campaign.

The problem is TV/Radio/Newspaper/Magazine does not translate well into web-clicks -- or more importantly -- branding/loyalty. It's expensive, and an uphill battle all the way.

Paying sites to put your button all over the Internet the way Reel.com and Amazon, and others have done would probably be much more beneficial. That way, people are where you want them to click, and if they like you, they can bookmark you right away.

And, before someone jumps on it I chose Amazon and Reel.com for a reason. Even with all the publicity, and money it spent, Hollywood Video shut down the ecommerce portion of Reel.com because it was never profitable and their video rental stores were _very_ profitable. And, Amazon, who created a "brand" name over the past 3+ years, has poured more money into creating that brand then they could ever hope to recapture, even if they become the success they are banking on.

How can a "startup" hope to compete and succeed, where that sort of investment money has not?

Just something to think about.

http://www.postcards.com
FAQ: http://www.postcards.com/FAQ/LinkSQL/

Valid Pugdog I agree,

At the end of the day i am not to quibble about what this company wants to achieve, I beleive they will do well, and subscriptions to the site are considerably high. Im just paid to do what they want me too. The design etc etc is all their ideas. I just put it together. Some people may "slate" the design, but its what they wanted!

Anyway, i think this is wandering off the purpose of this forum, and i don't want to be accused of inapropriate threads. I like to think that i have a fairly good reputation here with some of you "Guru's" and try to help the newbies where I can. and i dont want to distroy that rep.

if anyone would like to discuss this further you can private me.

Please lock this thread if you beleive this is wandering.

Regards

MDJ1
http://www.isee-multimedia.co.uk

I'm not a moderator,... but this really isn't wandering. It's a serious discussion of someone pouring real money into a Links SQL website. I think it's a very valid thing to bring up, and if people have different slants on what sort of use/publicity/business model a site could use it is again valuable.

For someone to use this program as the basis of a multi-million dollar advertising campaign, should give people the confidence in deciding on Links to build their site -- even if they disagree with the "example" site's business model.

I think turning the "Communitech" thread into a discussion of Pokemon might be considered wandering :)

But, the concept that people (businesses) would pay $4,000 for a listing on a web-directory has to be of major interest to people here.... as just about everyone here is webmaster of a "links" type site :)



http://www.postcards.com
FAQ: http://www.postcards.com/FAQ/LinkSQL/

In the past people have tried to get 'paid' search engines going but I've yet to see any be a real success (by this I mean an annual fee of some kind) - go on someone, point a few out to me :-)

The nearest model I've seen to paid listings is GoTo with its $0.xx per click where you bid for keywords and search terms, but I can imagine you need a lot of software, hardware and manpower to manage a large scale system such as that.

Whereas you might get a few businesses who are prepared to pay a large fee (and £4,000 IS a large fee!) I'm pretty sure that over time those people would get comments from other business people along the lines of " ... you paid HOW MUCH?" and some quick advice on free listings resources.

Limiting each category to 35 listings is a nobel idea and I assume its done to create some 'interest' in getting listed, but its not going to provide a great deal of variety for search results no matter how creative you get with your category names!

However, it is an interesting concept and it'll be interesting to see how successful the model is - I wouldn't mind getting £4000 per listing :-)))

All the best
Shaun

One question,

does any of you guys use or know someone who use
The Jackhammer (sorry to discuss competitior's products in this forum), which is claimed to be working like GoTo.com?

We are thinking to buy it/or do smth like this in Links if it will be possible with the new version.

Regards,
Slava

I am not a moderator either, but discussions of competing products IMHO is not appropriate for any forums in the Gossamer Threads site. Try contacting the JackHammer forums or support channels.

Good luck!

Regards,

Eliot

And I fully agree with Eliot, except to add that listing the differences (strengths or weaknesses) between products should be fair game, as would be saying why you chose one or the other.

Comparason shopping is part of life. We shouldn't shrink from it here. If another product has a strength that Links doesn't, maybe it's a great place to stick in a mod. All around, I think Links is the best product out there for this type of site. How many times do we use "Yahoo-like xyz" or "Altavista Style Navi Bars" ??

Promoting or bad mouthing a competing product is non-productive. We are all here because we made the choice to use links, and I think most of us have not regretted that decision in any way.

I believe several competing products have programmers who scan the forums here, and Links itself was based on the idea of the cgi-resources.com site.

http://www.postcards.com
FAQ: http://www.postcards.com/FAQ/LinkSQL/

Hi Eliot,

thanks for advice, but what if I wanted to get an unbiased view? Whom should I contact? And especially if I had a chance to try Links 2.0 and personally like it a lot? I agree more with Pugdog
____________________________________________________________
Comparason shopping is part of life. We shouldn't shrink from it here. If another product has a strength that Links doesn't, maybe it's a great place to stick in a mod.
____________________________________________________________

I don't think people buy Links only because they did not have a chance to know about other products.

For now I think we'll wait till the new version to see what we can do with it and how good it will run on Oracle and then decide. Not without contacting Jack and his support forum of course, after your advice.

Regards,

Slava

If you need to run Oracle, then that would be the prudent thing to do.

If you plan to run MS7 or MySQL I believe there are people who are currently running Links SQL with both.

Oracle is _more_ powerful in some ways, and less in others. Because of the "power" such as transactions (and rollbacks) some of the things you can do in MySQL are not possible, or are much more complicated in Oracle. I know people who use oracle will say "You can do anything..." but sometimes bigger, is not always better.

If I was running a financial application, and need transactions/rollback type of functionality, Oracle would be my first choice -- perhaps the only choice.

But, my needs are simple database, and if I loose a click here and there due to a crash or other catastrophe, it's not tragic, fatal or anything but annoying :)

I've grown to like MySQL for its simplicity, and it's design for the web.

I've played with oracle a bit (they gave away trial copies for awhile, and I used it on an Intel and Solaris box). It intimidated me :)

I'm not saying if you are currently using it, it's no good, or you should change (I wish I could afford to run Oracle in a scalable system/network).... but I'm not sure how many people are using it with Links SQL (I've only seen a few posts asking for it) and none of us really know what is in the next version, so waiting a few more days and looking around is a good idea for you.

No one program -- or solution -- will work for everyone. That is why there is discussion. Look how many mods have been done by several different people, in several different ways. No two sites (even "generic" sites) are the same!

http://www.postcards.com
FAQ: http://www.postcards.com/FAQ/LinkSQL/

No offence intended to mdj1 or the rest of the crew at just35.com.....but I just took a look and it does nothing for me!

Im not keen on the design and I cant see why anyone would pay thousands for a listing!

I study Business Management at University and my theory is this:

Charging $000's for a listing is SERIOUSLY narrowing your target market as only websites with very high incomes are going to pay that sort of money. Therefore you are limited in how many people will actually signup.
You may get a few hundred or a few thousand signups per year bringing in about $1 million.

However....if you reduce the fee to $00's you will have a much larger target market and would get hundreds of thousand of people signing up and would probably end up making more money!

Anyway....just my opinion.

Thanks
Paul Wilson.

anyone know how much Yahoo! charges?

true.. if you charged hundreds instead of thousands.. you'd get more people.. but it takes 10 hundreds for every 1 thousand.. 20 hundreds for every 2 thousand..

ok.. now i don't know how many sites are listed on that page.. but lets just say 500.. thats 500 thousand.. it'd take 5000 hundreds to "quote" probably end up making more money! "unquote".

i don't think they'd be able to get 10 times as many people by lowering their prices 10 times less.

if they lowered their prices to hundreds.. they'd get all the big spenders (that would pay thousands) and probably four or five times that will pay hundreds.. so.. if you remember algebra..

Let x = number of big spenders
Let 5x = number of people who will pay hundreds

(x plus 5x)(100) (<=>)? 1000x [wwwthreads doesn't take plus signs]

just say x = 500..
that'd be.. 300000 < 500000

maybe they have 10000 people listed?
that'd be.. 6000000 < 10000000

and yes.. it does go up in a ratio of 5:3.. so it'd be proportional no matter how many people..

Jerry Su
widgetz sucks