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What's playing at the Bijou Theatre today Wordsworth does a great one Dictionar(ies) online Web words Free roll your own Shakespeare Insult Kit (thou fobbing elf-skinned flax-wench) What Mom has to say |
 Outbox Web Marketing Newsletter, Volume 1, #7, April 23, 2001 Copyright 2001, Paul Stokstad. All rights reserved.     |
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This week's topic is: Site Enhancement FreebiesThere are tremendous amounts of "free" information on the web. The quotes are there because you always pay for things online, but not the way that you normally pay for things. You pay in the currency of the web: attention. That's right, just by taking the time to look at a website you are giving credence to the idea that this is a valuable resource, and the website owner can turn around and sell advertising space. Of course, not everyone has the kind of traffic that makes their site attractive to an advertiser. But there are banner swapping programs, and other ways to make your visit worthwhile (like buying something). And of course, that does happen, since some sites offer free stuff (I'm going to leave off the quotes from now on, but you'll remember they are still there on some virtual level), hoping that you'll buy the more sophisticated version of the free tool. That's true of both the Microsoft bCentral site enhancement services and the Coolboard discussion group tool. If you dig down into the bCentral site, you 'will find that they have a free newsletter tool. But you can't do HTML formatting and you have to send it out with attached advertising banners. As you can see, I went for the HTML enhanced/no ads variety. I hate putting ads on things. I don't even like to wear a shirt with some company's logo on it. Not to mention all those "buried" ads in movies (yuck!). That costs me twenty bucks a month. But I also get access to a banner network (haven't bothered yet... see ad comments above), and the Submit-it site promo tool (see issue #5 ) for the same money. The Microsoft guys also do site hosting, transactions, plus providing domain name search/registration and a site design wizard. I don't use all that. I don't need a wizard. But if I ever kick open one of my 86 web product business ideas, I might need a shopping cart. The only thing I really use is the newsletter tool. It's pretty easy to deal with, and what I like is the fact that it sends both HTML enhanced and the text versions, depending on the configuration of the receiver's e-mail tool/preferences. That means that I can author the page in HTML and pop the code into the interface that they provide, plus copy and paste a text version in to another box, and I'm done. You have to remember to use absolute links (including a full url, like http://www.mysite/myfolder/mypage.html, rather than the "relative" link mypage.html that you would use if you already have people on your site). The Coolboard people offer a free discussion group, but they aren't trying to sell you a better group tool like Microsoft, they are using the freebie to attract attention to an array of sophisticated site tools that you can buy. They all look cool, but not all businesses are big enough to use them. The discussion group wizard offers many options, and is fairly straightforward to work with. Having a smattering of web skill can help you here, since you can import graphics and add your own coloring here and there if you know how make web graphics and specify web colors (more on that next week, tune in...). You can choose from four or five icon families that will represent speakers, including smilies, animated smilies, Pokemon figures, and some little humanoids they are calling avatars (if those are avatars, they must have been fairly low on the Pantheon status list before incarnating). I went for the animated smilies in my trial balloon of this tool for my wife's new website. There were so many customization tools, I got really fascinated, but when I saw the final result, I felt that it was too busy and crowded with ads, etc. I like this better. That discussion group tool (the second one) is from my favorite group of freebie-providers, (to whom I've only paid attention), the BeSeen set of tools. BeSeen isn't shy about the giveaways. Check out the list:
I'm using the hit counter now and I have used the Quizlet previously on my site, just for fun. Many of the other things look great, too, including the Buyit tool, that let's you take charge card orders online, with no merchant account, no set-up fees, and you only pay if there is a transaction. There's also an an Amazon-style affiliate tool. Which is cool. Of course, what you really want is people affiliating to YOU, but that's another ball game. I'm not selling products on my site (yet), so I don't need a lot of this stuff, but you might like them The only cost to me is putting up the BeSeen link on my site (the hit counter and the Quizlet link to BeSeen). So, some attention (i.e.- the currency of the web) may leak off my site, but I don't care. I'm happy to "pay" in your attention for the fun tools. One more thing I'd like to mention is the Cafe Press free t-shirt/mug/mousepad store. That's where I set up my OUTBOX t-shirt store. This was the coolest thing, since I just had to send them a graphic made to their size specifications, and I was in business. Since it is a matter of minutes for me to make a graphic in Photoshop, it was no sweat. That can happen to you, too, (maybe), after next week's Photoshop web basics issue. Let's talk then. (or now!) Have fun. You can do it for free. Just pay attention. -Paul
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