JimWorld Gazette Issue #44 03/06/1998

Gazette - Issue #44 - March 6, 1998

-- Some Housekeeping
-- Tips From The Hitman - Part XXVI
-- Let The Buyer Beware
-- Gadget Heaven
-- Snippets
-- It Does Work
-- Link-O-Matic Update
-- Are You Web Centric Or Web-Based?

Link to this issue of the Gazette as http://gazetteworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=g44

SOME HOUSEKEEPING

This week will see the Search Engine Forums pass their first major milestone: 1,000 postings. Few Forums ever reach this high of a number, and even fewer after only being online for six weeks. There is some remarkable activity going on. The amount of good information is staggering.

Thanks to Danny Sullivan for listing in this month's Search Engine Report the Search Engine Forums as one of the three places online to discuss search engines. The other two were discussion lists. If you haven't been over to Search Engine Watch <http://www.searchenginewatch.com/> lately, you need to get over there. There is so much change going on daily at the search engines, you could fall behind in just a few days. If you really want to dig in and get results, you'll subscribe to the subscription area of Search Engine Watch. Great info that I use every day.

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No Gazette next week. Internet World is happening and I don't intend to miss it. I'll be there as many days as my body will stand it. I'll be looking for cool new tools to tell you about. I hope to run into a few Gazeteers while I'm there.

If you're going to be there and standing still in a booth so I can find you, drop me a line and tell me where. If you want to look for me, find the 6'4" guy that looks like the the offspring of Yoda and Chewbacca. That's me.

I keep going back to this: If you aren't going to shows and conferences, you're going to have trouble staying in the game.

If you are attending, keep an eye out for good stuff. If you find something that looks good, tell them to contact me about getting it into the Gazette.

I'll see you after the show.

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This one has nothing to do with promotion, but is just something I think you will find of real value on the Net.

The National Partnership for Women & Families today launches its new Web site - located at <http://www.nationalpartnership.org>. The National Partnership for Women & Families, formerly the Women's Legal Defense Fund, unveiled the new site as it announced its new name and the findings of Family Matters, a national poll on work place and health care issues. The site offers something for everyone: from practical consumer information to sophisticated policy analysis. It is easy to navigate, searchable, and full of information and resources on issues that matter to women and families.

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Some Housekeeping:

When you want to send me a message, unless it is a request for some action on your subscription, please send it directly to jim@jimworld.com> instead of using the Reply button in your email program while reading the Gazette. This causes the mail to go through the RevNet server and causes a delay in reaching me.
If you are using the Reply button while reading the Gazette to ask for a subscription change, please delete the body copy of the newsletter before sending. When I have to go through several responses that contain the entire newsletter I frequently miss the one or two lines of your message.
If you have an autoresponder attached to the email address that you are using to receive your Gazette subscription, this is the last issue you will receive. It causes an unmanageable number of messages for me to go through, and I get the same messages every week. I can no longer afford the time to wade through all of these 'Thank you for sending me a message' messages. Please visit the Gazette site and resubscribe under a non-autoresponder address.
If you have trouble unsubscribing or changing your email address using the RevNet Web interface (even though it is very easy to use, best in the industry) just reply to the Gazette using the Reply feature and putting "Unsubscribe" or "Please change my email address" in the body of the message. First, delete the newsletter copy that would normally be quoted in a reply. That will help me a lot.
The Digital Promotion Postcards are starting to catch up with the Forums in popularity. Normal traffic is about 100 postcards being sent each day. If any of you talented artists out there want some good publicity, design a postcard or two. They must have obvious use in marketing a web site. Things like "thanks for the business" and "We'd really like to do some business together". You'll get lots of exposure and a write-up in the Gazette which will bring you lots of new business. Just ask (I promised I wouldn't mention her name until she caught up with all of the Gazeteer orders).
This week I will be upgrading the Search Engine Forums to the new release of the Ultimate Bulletin Board version 3.5. It has some incredible new features, like only showing you posts that you haven't read yet. Coming soon will be some major improvements like being able to ask that any responses to your post be emailed to you automatically.
The UBB software is becoming so popular that Ted, the author, put out a plea for help. He needed some people that could install the UBB for people for really modest fees. I told him I could do a few each week. If you want one installed, let me know.
If you haven't yet discovered the joys of adding some technology to your site, I can tell you that adding the search engine to allow visitors to search the JimWorld site and the Gazette archives has eliminated about 20 messages a day asking where to find such and so thing that was in some past issue. Like I would remember. I barely remember what's in this week's issue. The downside of living past 30. Way past.

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WebSuite, our powerful web server, has picked up some new tricks. The Virtual Tour feature is a powerful way to support customers through their browser. The user turns over control of their browser to you and you can walk them through any type of presentation you want. The applications in software and hardware customer support are the first to latch onto this feature and it is working out great for the users.

BTW - Version 2.0 is about to come out of beta testing and packs some very useful enhancements. I'll keep you posted.

Check out the Virtual Tour at <http://24.1.171.99/tour/sdtour.html>

TIPS FROM THE HITMAN - PART XXVI

I was working on one of my sites tonight, and it gave me the idea for this weeks article. The site is called Celebrity Net's Best. This site has absolutely nothing at all to do with Internet advertising. Judge for yourself <http://themaniacs.com> Just another entertainment site with celebrities you say.

Now here is the punch line, this site has everything to do with advertising and marketing on the Internet. As a matter of fact, the entire reason for the creation of this site, and the only reason for the creation of this site, was to get more visitors to one of my income producing Web pages.

How can this be? Well, let's take a closer look at the entire project. I am involved with many sites and a couple of partnerships across the Internet. These partnerships formed by way of pooling talents with other web site operators who wanted help with advertising and marketing their sites.

I fell into these now profitable arrangements by simply doing one of the things I have emphasized in past articles. That is to answer all your email in a timely fashion, and try to be helpful without always expecting something in return. I have had my responses to email turn from simple exchanges of information to use of my services to formal proposals to become involved with interesting projects. One such alliance is with the Short Term Stock Selector, a stock market site that uses Neural Nets to predict the stock market and it does a very good job of it. <http://www.flash.net/~hesler/>

In working on the promotion of this site as a partner responsible for advertising and marketing, I of course did all the regular things I do best, Search Engine placement, posting services, targeted opt-in email, etc. We tried all the regular avenues, building good links, banner exchange networks, participating on topical discussion groups, newsgroups and the like, and even the expensive banner ads at Yahoo. This work did bring the daily hit count past one thousand, past two thousand. We still wanted more!

Then one day I found an interesting list at www.eyescream.com This was a list of the 200 most searched words at Yahoo. The list is not only interesting <http://www.eyescream.com/yahootop200.html> but, it also presented a clue as to the nature of a good deal of the searching going on the net. One of the first things you notice is a pre-occupation with sex, after that, other more marketable patterns emerge. We noticed another thing, that was a high interest in some of the top female celebrities.

With this in mind, we came up with an idea. Why not build a clean site that lists the best links to some of the most popular female celebrities. And that is what we did.

How does this help market a stock market site you ask? Well, if you take a good look at the site, you will notice that there are a couple of banner exchange banners at the bottom of the page. We all know these are good for one banner showing for each site hit. Well, we have two banners on different exchanges, so this means one banner exposure for each hit to the site. How can this be worth the work? It is very simple, the site went from zero to one thousand hits a day in 3 weeks. It then peaked at 10,000 hits a day at about two months of advertising it and now with no advertising it holds at 6,000 hits a day. That is 6,000 banner exposures at banner exchanges that allow targeting and we don't target entertainment. We have several good banners that deliver about 5% click through so we are getting 300 targeted hits to the stock market site a day and more from this site.

So, as you can see, the development of a page that is in an area of high interest to the surfing public can be turned into a vehicle for driving hits to your business sites. Oh, and by the way, a site getting six thousand hits a day also sells a little advertising space to boot.

Now that I have given you the idea for your next project, you can return the favor by going to toptenlinks.com and cast a vote for Celebrity Net's Best so we can stay in the top 10! <http://www.toptenlinks.com/entertainment/celebrities.vote> (Hey, if Jim can do this, so can I)

If I hear you liked this one, maybe I will do an article on my 2,000 hits an hour experience, another marketing technique I doubt you have read anywhere else.

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Hayden Mitchell
Web Themes <http://www.webthemes.com>

LET THE BUYER BEWARE

I was out cruisin' the Net for promotional resources when I came upon another service that submits your URL to Free-For-All sites for a modest fee. The prices looked good at us$35.00 for 6 months of service. That's a good price if I can submit my URL every week for 6 months.

There is another option that has them submit your URL every week for 36 weeks for us$10.00 per URL. Not bad. I'm still interested.

Time to take a look at their list of sites. Go to the page of sites they submit to. Scroll to the bottom. Wow! 398 FFA sites they submit to. That's a pretty good number. Now let's take a look at how many are real. Test a few and try to project that across the whole list. Expect to find a few dead ones. Impossible to avoid that. Back to the top of the list and let's start looking.

First three work fine. Number four is dead. So far, so good. Number five is.... wait a minute. This is InfoSpace. I know this one. It isn't a FFA site. You don't keep submitting to this one. OK. Probably just a mistake. Six through ten are OK. Oops. Eleven is dead.

OK. We've got about a ten percent 'dud' factor, so our 398 turn out to be about 358 actual FFA sites. Not too bad

Pulled out my trusty copy of InfoLink <http://www.biggbyte.com>, currently my favorite link validator, and run it against the list. Yep. 357 active links.

Let's browse through the names of the rest of the list and see if we recognize any other 'mistakes' like the InfoSpace listing.

Hold on. What's Galaxy doing in here? That's not a FFA. It takes a lot more information to register with Galaxy than this service has on their form. Slow down and look more closely. Oh No! HotBot is on here! I don't want them spamming HotBot every few days and getting me banned forever! OH NO! Lycos? A FFA? AOL NetFind? Like I really want to spam the Excite engine. OpenText. At least that won't hurt too much. Excite? GoTo.com? Starting Point? PlanetSearch? Whew! At least they missed Yahoo!

If I really wanted to lessen the load on my server, I would let these people submit my site for a few weeks. I would be banned from most of the big search engines and in lots of trouble with lots of other directories. I think I'll pass on this one.

You can follow my footsteps on this one by visiting Auto-Link at <http://www.career-pro.com/autolink/index.htm> Don't take your credit card with you.

BTW - did you know that you can use a link validator to check links on other people's sites? Sometimes it is a good way to gather information about a company you are thinking of doing business with. Do yourself a favor and don't bother running one on JimWorld. At over 6,000 links it takes a long time to check the links.

GADGET HEAVEN

Here are a few impressions of the electronics used at the winter Olympic games in Nagano, Japan, from Cary Brown, who worked as a producer with CBS during the games. When Cary got back from Japan, we got to talking about how fast technology can change. Here in the US we tend to think that we are on the leading edge of technology change. The truth is that we are falling farther behind every year. Just thought that you would find this story interesting.

Cary, an old friend, is an Emmy winning writer, producer and director. He spent the last few weeks covering sports and learning about gadget heaven.

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Cell telephones are everywhere. The phones are small (approximately 4" H x 1.25" W x .75" D), light and effective. Sound quality is peaked for voice, tinny but clear, about what you hear from a tiny radio. The effective, but unnerving, noise-canceling microphone is far your mouth. The instrument costs less than $100.00us. Calls run as high as $1.95us per minute, with the CALLER paying the bill.

Also, tested during the Olympics is a "Dick Tracy" wrist-phone. The approximately 1.5" square, 3/4' thick device is too small for a keyboard, so its developers incorporated voice recognition. The current model understands Japanese. To use: hold your wrist close to your mouth and slowly speak the desired number. My Japanese is poor but the phone was able to dial on the first try. The speaker is loud enough to be heard several feet away; so much for privacy.

As a test, the host broadcaster provided high-definition, three-dimensional television. The videotape presentation was available shortly after each event. Presented on motion picture sized screens, using two LCD projectors and stereo sound, the effect was impressive. Quality was as good as very-good 16-millimeter film, presented on the similar sized screen. Wearing Polaroid glasses, the three-dimensional effect ranged from exciting to nauseating. Hockey sticks seemed to jump from the screen. Birds flew over head. However, foreground objects in tracking shots are blurred, uncomfortable to watch.

High-definition, wide-screen televisions (approximately 30") can be purchased for less than $1,000.00us. Picture, color and sound are excellent. Projection televisions (over six feet wide) with supporting sound systems, are available in department stores. The television networks have provided new cameras and camera mounts that allowed the audience a sense of the speed and danger the sports offered. Speed skating and skiing particularly benefited.

Panasonic unveiled a six-inch deep, plasma-screen, letter-box television. A few continuously burning red pixels destroyed their close-to-perfect picture. I checked several sets and each had a few (3 to 6) pixels operating improperly. The next day I passed the same sets and the pixel problem had gone away. Wow, a $19,000.00us television that fixes itself.

IBM provided Internet service including e-mail and instant access to all events' statistics and results. High speed Internet connections are available at all venues, the broadcast and press centers and at many hotels and sponsored sites.

When finished, an event's video is instantly accessible using touch screen "Video-On-Demand" terminals located throughout Nagano. The system's compressed sound and video are very good.

Video telephones are available throughout Nagano at stores and hotels. If the sales person does not speak your language, he/she dials a number and a translator appears online. The ability to see you and what you are talking about provides a major advantage.

Retina scans are part of a very complex and secret security system.

Buses and cars are equipped with navigation tools that show the vehicle's location as well as the nearest gas station, rest stop and 7-11 store. The driver can switch to television and receive a satellite transmission. Even in the mountains, the picture remained sharp and clear without ghosts or breakup. Picture loss did occur inside tunnels. Olympic vehicles carry infrared transmitters to control traffic lights.

Hotel rooms are small. Room for just a bed, television and desk. No closets. No drawers. But, lots of gadgets, including: electronic pants presser, a magnetic-induction hot water heater and enough light switches and dimmers to satisfy a gadget freak. A clock, heating and air-conditioning controls, dimmers and duplicate lighting switches are built into bed's headboard.

Many bathrooms in Nagano are unheated. Instead, the toilet seats are heated. They also contain an amazing set of controls along the right side that provide for several type of water spray, to clean one's privates, a warm air dryer and a sound effect machine to reduce the chance of offending.

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When Cary is not working on sports projects, he is developing a production management system for the motion picture industry. Cary can be reached at <http://www.studioline.com>. Oh, and he's a pretty good cook, if you like vegan. Most of you know where I stand on meat. Vegetables are just things to add flavor to the roast. Anyway, his recipes are available online at <http://www.spice-of-life.com>.

SNIPPETS

Want some inexpensive help getting into the top spots on the search engines? Check out Traffic Builder <http://www.dnai.com/~pickle/traffic> He guarantees his work or you get your money back. $80 for five search engines, one URL and one search phrase or word.

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Want to barter for something? Subscribe to the twice-weekly Barter Fever newsletter <http://www.rhoram.com/barter.html> by another Gazeteer (of course). You can list whatever you have to offer for barter and sit back and wait for the offers to come in. Services are a much sought-after barter commodity. Who said all of the good ideas for businesses and services on the Net have been sewn up already?

While you are at this site, try out the Recommend-It button on the home page. This is a cool tool you can add to your site for free. People can use it to send a message to someone telling them about your site. Takes very little page space. Works great from what I hear.

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Dear Jim

Thanks for a very informative and entertaining newsletter. When I received my first one I was a bit nervous about getting such a long email each week but now find myself reading it all the time.

Can we just call you the "Paul Harvey of the Internet"??!! Keep up the excellent work.

Best regards
Mark Robins
New Zealand Wines Online <http://www.nzwine.com>

--- Do I get free wine for life? -- Jim --

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Jim,

Thanks for the mention in your newsletter. However, I thought I should let you know that I was spammed into the ground today, including 3 separate messages that I know had taken my address from your list since they quoted bits of your newsletter back at me.

PLEASE don't misunderstand... I don't mind a bit! But I thought you really should know that other people who you mention in your newsletter may receive similar "unwanted attention". I am not sure whether this would be feasible, but you might want to check with people before publishing their email addresses (for comments or tips they send in to you)? Dunno, just a thought...

Edwin
Pr2 : Free Website Promotion & Marketing Course
Doesn't the world deserve to know about your site?
Sign up today at <http://www.pr2.com/>

-- Jim -- I have heard this a couple of times, and the answer seems to be to stop including email addresses in the newsletter, except for our regular writers. I get so much spam that I forget how bad it is to suddenly find yourself in the HitParade of spammers. I will continue to publish URLs for all contributions and if people can't find your email address on your site, shame on you! ---

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Hello Jim I had to email and tell you that your piece entitled 'No opportunity left on the net?' in VP Gazette #43 hit the mark with me.

My site is an example of such a site which has opened up a new place for like minded people interested in Organized Crime.

I originally launched my site after the desire to put 'something back' into the internet overcame me. Since launching, last October, I have a steady stream of unique visitors each month and email a News digest and Newsletter to valued subscribers.

However, this has not been without hard work and a lot of promotion tips gleaned from the Gazette and others. Thanks to you and your staff for all the advice I have received and will receive.

Before I sign off, I have a topic that bugs the hell out of me... I don't get much feedback from visitors but what I do get is always good. I know this is not bad news but my visitors are a very quiet bunch any tips on generating a bit of a storm to generate some response? Its difficult to know if your doing something right if nobody tells you otherwise.

Regards,
James Graham

Informer! Organized Crime news delivered via email. Free subscription
at <http://members.tripod.com/~orgcrime/index.htm>

-- Jim -- Getting people to respond takes a steady effort and lots of invitations. Setting up and promoting a forum is one technique. It is much more effective than a guest book. Personally, the JimWorld users have always been a talkative bunch and never shy about talking to me. That is what makes this job so much fun. ---

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OK Jim,

You went right ahead and outdid yourself this time! The mouse over and menu tools you mentioned in today's issue of the Gazette has left me here with my mouth hanging open. Gosh, it never ceases to amaze me what is available on the 'net, and for FREE! THANKS! I will definitely be using that site on a regular basis, and like you, I felt it was worthy of a bookmark.

I've been a Gazette groupie for many months now. I've faithfully read every issue....well, OK, I did miss a couple, but I read ALMOST all of them! Thanks so much for dishing out so much free information every week. I really appreciate it. It has made a huge difference in my web sites.

I've got a pet web design peeve that I've just got to get off my chest. I'm sitting here at my computer, surfing the web and I click on a link for "Jim's Web World" (fictional page). What do I find when I get there? Another link that says "Click here to enter". Well I thought I already had done what it took to go to the page. What, did they think I was kidding when I clicked on the link, or what? I keep finding more and more of those pages every which place and I'm becoming more inclined to just hit my browser's back button rather than visit the site. I guess I just have a perception that the people that are doing sites like that must have a low IQ. Maybe I'm wrong, and these are perfectly intelligent people, BUT they are wasting people's time! OK, I feel better now anyway. Thanks!

Well Jim, thanks so much for providing us with so much useful info every week! Keep it up, I'll be waiting by my computer!

Gretchen Aitken

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Get On Line Associates: Quality Web Design Services
<http://www.pioneer-net.com/agreatday/gola.htm>

>Family Partners Welsh Ponies & Cobs
<http://www.pioneer-net.com/pony>

--- Jim --- I couldn't have said it better myself. I just love drilling down from doorway to doorway. Not. When you set up a doorway page to get higher placement in a search engine, put forth some effort to put content on that page. It doesn't have to just say 'Click Here To Finally See My Site'. It can be an intro to the information they were looking for in the search engine. ---

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"I have been reading the Gazette for quite a while and appreciate the ongoing help Jim. It's funny how human nature always looks for the easiest way out and it's not any different where it concern's building web site traffic. Hopefully I have learned my lesson and have moved from just being another sign board on the edge of a highway somewhere to being a content rich site, which gives people the help and assistance they need concerning the fine art of living debt-free.

Through helpful articles, links, as well as building my e-zine "Tip's Secrets & Strategies To Living a Debt Free Life-Style." I am beginning to see that actually applying the helpful guidance which I receive each week is far better than simply reading and wondering if it is worth the time and effort."

Thank you
Scott Johnson
Debt Free America
Free E-Mail Magazine, subscribe today
<http://www.ulink.net/~prosper/debtfree>

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Just go visit. There's more stuff there than you can shake a virtual stick at:
Dr. Webster's Web Site of the Day <http://www.drwebster.com>
The Free Site <http://www.thefreesite.com>

Submit for the award. It's one you want to have. It generates real traffic.

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Nick was researching Yo-Yo's this week on the web. I didn't realize what a craze they have become (again) Of course Nick and his friends are sure that their generation invented the whole thing. Until I dug out my favorite 50's Yo-Yo.

Most of the sites were pretty thin on information. Just online brochures, which you know I just love.

But he ran across one site that had a lot going for it. <http://www.nmia.com/~whistler/> Information about each Yo-Yo. Why it was good or bad. How the different types of designs effect performance for different tricks. All in all, a great start on a really hot site. Desperately needs a shopping cart, but he'll get there. Check out this content rich site for ideas. Bet you can't get away from it without ordering just one!

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Rank This <http://www.rankthis.com/> is a free online service that lets you look up you site in all of the major search engines using as many different keywords and phrases as you want. The news is that they have now added Northern Lights and Planet Search to their service. Go check out your site's search engine performance.

IT DOES WORK

Hello Jim,

Thank you for the help that I have received from your efforts. You may not know me or my web site but here is the story.

Some months ago I got brave and down loaded Microsoft's Front Page beta version and looked at it for a few more months. Finally I decided to "create" a web site to share knowledge, and maybe sell a few pieces of my equipment. Of course I fell into the trap of using fancy flashing graphics, animated gifs and so forth.

Then about a couple of weeks ago I learned about meta tags, hidden input lines and some other helpful tools to get a better rating with search engines. Thanks to your sharing of this information, my web site <http://www.hypothermia-ca.com> is #1 at Magellan, #2 at Excite, #1 at Web Crawler, was #14 but now #21 at InfoSeek, was #10 but now #12 (how does that happen?) at Lycos, #2 at AOL NetFind, and #4 at Infohiway. This happened after I learned about how search engines work.

Again, thanks Jim.

-- Jim -- Still haven't visited the Search Engine Forums http://www.searchengineforums.com? If you had, you would probably have results like these. ---

LINK-O-MATIC UPDATE

If you've been off-planet and haven't heard me talk about Link-O-Matic, here's this week's update.

Traffic continues to be about the same. This week, each visitor generated by this service cost me about 1.25 cents. That's still the best deal going. For $100 you get enough credits to promote your site every week for about six months.

Here's how it works. Each week (or however often you want) you visit their site, enter the URL and description of your site and hit the send button. That's it. A little later, you get an email showing every site that accepted your listing. You are only charged for the successful listings.

Link-O-Matic submits your listing to about 400 free-for-all sites. Each one doesn't generate a lot of traffic, but when you can get listed on 400 of them, it adds up to lots of visitors.

Subscribe at <http://www.linkomatic.com/index.cgi?10097> A portion of your subscription helps to keep JimWorld growing and reaching a larger audience.

ARE YOU WEB-CENTRIC OR WEB-BASED?

by: Kenneth Vogt

The promise of internet -- it's like a utopian dream. Reach (insert your favorite large number here) new customers just be being on the WORLD WIDE WEB! Readers of this journal know that there is a lot more to it than that. The problem is, many folks use a business model that would only work if putting up a website was a guaranteed way to get in front of millions of customers at little or no cost. Let's call these operations web-centric.

What is web-centric? Web-centric is the outlook that all business you do must be done on the web. Why are so many outfits web-centric? It looks easy. They figure they can avoid expensive human interaction. They see it as a way to multiply their small staff (maybe a part-time staff of one). They operate under the misguided notion that they can look just as big as the big boys because their website is so very cool.

Why doesn't web-centric work? Because, ultimately, customers do business with you because of relationships. Sure, there are a few sad souls out there who can develop a relationship with a nonmortal website. But most people (yes, the customers are actual people) will need at least some inkling that a fellow human being is involved in the transaction. So how do we make use of the reach of the internet while maintaining that human touch? We will call it being web-based.

What does it mean to be web-based? It means that you use the web as your launching pad. It is the beginning of your interaction with your customer or client. It might end there for some folks. Not the relationship, just the use of the web. They may want something mailed to them on old-fashioned paper, or they may want to talk on the phone. Others will choose to use the web for their own convenience. They will interact by email, by browsing your site, or by downloading information. But if they don't have the choice to interact with you in a more traditional, familiar way you will lose a good portion (maybe even all) of your business.

Why be web-based? First, you can use the web to enhance what you offer current customers and current markets. I personally like to be able to email companies I do business with. I also like to be able to get a phone number (preferably toll free) if I want to talk to someone. Can your customers and potential customers go to your site and EASILY find your email address, your mailing address, your phone number? If they can't, the message they hear screams, "Unprofessional, fly-by-night, low-budget, probably gone tomorrow!"

Second, you can reach new markets. We sell Tupperware online. While 2% of our home party sales go to men, 30% of our online sales are men. These men have wanted to buy Tupperware, but the traditional methods have locked them out. So we reach new markets on the internet. Also, while upper income career women know and love Tupperware, they don't have time for home parties. We reach this new market online also.

Third, the web offers a host of customer service opportunities. Every week we hear, "I can't find a Tupperware dealer anywhere." With $1.4 billion in sales, you would think a Tupperware lady is on every street corner. They want to buy, they have a problem, they want to make use of our lifetime warranty. Does your product or service have a market saturation like Tupperware's? If not, you can bet people are looking for a way to buy and can't find one. The web offers a way for them to find YOU.

Why does web-based work? It allows customers and clients to do business the way THEY want. Do they want to order online? You are all set. Do they want to have a print catalog? It's in the mail. Do they want to place an order by phone or fax? You are ready to answer the phone. We have answered the phone as late as midnight and as early as 6:00 AM. (Or is that as early as midnight and as late as 6:00 AM?)

You don't have to be rich and loaded with staffers to provide great service. By being web-based rather than web-centric, you make use of the web without excluding everything else you've got.

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Kenneth Vogt is president of Modern Shopping Inc., where you can find great, hard-to-get products like Tupperware.

Kenneth Vogt mailto:ken@modernshopping.com
Tupperware by Modern Shopping