Last update: 6/9/01; 19:40:54.
Thoughts and ideas as they occur to me.
Wednesday, November 1, 2000
Affiliates, rate the programs in which you're enrolled. AffiliateVoice is an independent rating system that enables affiliates to voice their opinions about the programs they participate in. This independent rating system enables merchants to better understand how well their affiliate marketing programs are operating and provides affiliates with valuable information about a program before they sign up. 7:12:26 PM
Have a digital camera? You need FlipAlbum! Are you tired of clicking on every file in your PC just to find a picture? You should use FlipAlbum! Simply select a folder and FlipAlbum will create a page flipping album complete with thumbnails, table of contents and index. Grab it today!
This product automatically simulates a 3-D photo album digitally on your computer. Are you looking for a way to share photos of your family, special events, or even a digital catalog of your arts and crafts? Check this program out. (Sorry, Mac users, this one's PC only.) 6:40:31 PMHost Your Website with a Leader You Can Trust . The Internet is an integral part of Dell's direct business model. By the end of January 2000, Dell's online sales averaged $40 million a day! Dell launched DellHost to share its extraordinary E-Commerce knowledge with other businesses. Now, YOU can have your site hosted by DellHost. Get your own website for only $14.95 per month at DellHost. E-commerce solutions are available, too! 6:19:53 PM
Praise for an outstanding program -- SiteSell. Partly as a counter-balance to that last item, but mostly because this is an outstanding program, and a company that offers outstanding products at a great price, I want to take a moment and praise Ken Evoy's Five Pillar Club.
I lucked out and joined this program when I didn't know anything about affiliate programs. I've learned more from Ken Evoy than I have from everyone else combined.
I'm not the first one to sing Ken's praises, but even so, this is a heartfelt thank you to him.
If you're the least bit interested in affiliate programs, let me give you one tiny piece of advice. Take his free five-day email Affiliate Masters course. It's easy to get, and he'll send you an email every day for five days. At the end of the course, you'll have quite an education about how to work with any affiliate program, with lots of examples of how his program works and a good education about the products he offers.
He's recently rewritten this course and it's much better than the first version -- which was better than anything I'd found previously (or since for that matter, other than his updated course). The fact that he gives this away, and then invites you to join his affiliate program and get even more great information and advice (over 1,000 pages if you download all the prior affiliate newsletters) just shows how interested he is in building a business with you as a partner, and not just someone who yells out a company's name with a banner ad.
Ken's book, Make Your Site Sell! is a masterpiece, too. The electronic version (Adobe Acrobat .pdf file) sells for only $25.00 Canadian, which translates to under $18.00 US, depending upon currency conversion rates when you purchase. I paid $16.90 and downloaded it in less than 45 minutes in the middle of the day. There is a wealth of information in that book that I didn't know, and I've been working on the Internet since before it was the Internet.
I'm not going to try to sell you that book. That's your choice. But, do yourself a favor and sign up for his Affiliate Masters course. You'll get quite an education, it's free, and there's no obligation. then join his affiliate program and get the other free stuff. Then it's up to you what you do with all your new knowledge.
To get the free course, send a blank email to:
tamssellmoreonline@sitesell.net
Don't do what I did, and join every program you think will work for you. Research it first. Then move carefully forward.
I'm happy with the way I went about it, but that's just my personal quirk. You don't have to do everything I did. After all, as Ken continues to point out, 20% of the effort consistently returns 80% of the benefits.
JD 5:46:14 PMPet Peeve Department -- LinkShare. I've spent the last two months evaluating affiliate programs through several companies, including Commission Junction, LinkShare, BeFree, Revenue Avenue, Quin Street, and several private programs. There are things I like, and things I dislike about each of these, and that's to be expected.
When I want to learn about something, I bite off a big chunk and then work as hard as I can to chew it up. I did this with affiliate programs back in early August. I joined several hundred companies' programs and fully intended to work with them. Since then, a number of these companies have pulled their programs, some with no warning, and upon learning more, having a better understanding of what all of this is about, and focusing more narrowly on what I'm attempting to do, I decided to drop many of the programs and concentrate on just the ones I'm really comfortable with and which fit well.
So, I started with LinkShare early this morning. I find that I'm comfortable with a number of the companies whose programs I joined, and I'm proud to represent them. Other companies just are not a good match for what I'm doing, although I thought they might be, at first. Some I'm going to continue working with just because I like their products on a personal level.
So, back to the story. I started going through the merchants with whom I'm affiliated through LinkShare and now I'm about half steamed. It's easy to join programs, it's easy to get link codes, but it's darned hard to drop these programs. You have to go to the program controls screen under your Account to drop a program. Then you pick from a drop menu to choose which company you want to select. This brings up a new page -- which takes a long time. It didn't seem as long this morning as it does now. When the company appears on the screen -- if it appears on the screen, more in a moment -- you can see the details of the agreement with the company and there's a button to drop out of the program.
So, click the button. A dialog appears asking if you're sure. Say yes. Now the fun begins. It's a bit of a crap shoot whether you'll return to the program controls screen or whether some unknown logic will redirect you to the email screen. The email screen is one of the slowest I've ever used, and even after I went through and read all my messages and deleted all of them, it's still slow.
Why? Why? Why is it so slow? Why does the program control screen (or at least the logic that controls it) keep sending me back to the mail center screen? A few moments ago, I came darn close to just deactivating my account, but there are a few companies I want to work with. No sense "throwing the baby out with the bath water."
It doesn't have to be this frustrating, LinkShare!
Just to be sure, I just went and looked through all the options I could find, and I didn't find anywhere that I could drop more than one merchant at a time. I was impressed, however, at all the reports they offer. That's a good feature!
JD 5:25:53 PMHandmade beads from around the world. Cool, handmade beads from around the world, and more, at BeadRoom.com. All they have are beads, but they have some wonderful beads! Add distinctive accents to your crafts with beads from BeadRoom.com. 4:50:02 PM
So Many Business Books...So Little Time. You're too busy to read entire business books or know which of the hundreds of new business books published every season are worth your time. Yet you need to stay on top of the latest best practices in leadership, business strategy, global business, customer service, or be familiar with the biographies of the people and companies shaping business today. BusinessBookReview(tm) is a best-in-class book summary and review subscription service founded by Dr. Jag Sheth in 1983. Since then, BBR has selected and summarized over 700 of the best business books that executives, managers, business owners, educators, and students should read, if you had the time. BBR summaries have provided substantial educational value to busy people in every field of business. Perhaps they can help you, too. 4:40:47 PM
Smart Products for Kids and Adults--at Britannica Store. Not only is Britannica.com the best place to start researching anything on the web, but they have a cool store, too. You can get the Encyclopaedia in print and software format, as well as a variety of gift items including the ever-popular dinosaurs. This should be one of your first stops if you're looking for a gift for that young (or not so young) nerdling. I love this store! ;^) 4:45:36 PM
Announcing the Great Gear Giveaway from the Great Outdoor Cy. From November 1 through December 31, 2000, beOutdoors will be giving away product prize packages and beOutdoors Gift Certificates every week!!! And Monthly Prizes, too! No purchase necessary. We'll be giving away tents, micro-tools, fishing tackle, binoculars, electronics -- all kinds of neat stuff -- just in time for the holidays. All you have to do is register on the beOutdoors.com web site and record daily entries. We'll pick prize winners every week and give you a second chance with a monthly drawing, too. Click the headline for details and to register in the Great Outdoor Cyberstore's Great Gear Giveaway sweepstakes. 4:00:51 PM
Average Internet User Stats Did you know that (in September 2000) there were a total of 147.7 million Internet users and 89.1 million of them actually surfed the web during the month? Would you believe they spent an average of only 50 seconds on each page?
These numbers and more are now available for September 2000.
12:51:48 PMUsing Tables for Web Site Layout. After learning HTML, the first technical question a new Web developer has is "How am I to position all this stuff on my screen?" Edward Tanguay goes through the basics of all-encompassing tables including size, position, and dividing them up for faster rendering. 12:36:30 PM
StuffIt Deluxe 6.0 Available. From Aladdin Systems, Inc.'s press release: StuffIt Deluxe 6.0 is a perfect complement to the Mac OS X public beta, as well as supports Mac OS 8.1 and higher; new version and update notification option tells users when updates are available after they connect to the Web; StuffIt Expander supports more file types than ever before with improved file classifier technology; recovery feature for damaged archives through Verify menu item.
Other features that set StuffIt Deluxe 6.0 apart include: ability to create self-extracting archives for Windows (.exe) from your Mac; create StuffIt or Zip files to send to Windows users -users can choose to create a Zip archive or use the superior StuffIt compression; DropConverter updates old StuffIt archives to the latest format; creates multiple format options, including popular Windows formats, such as .uu and .zip files with Archive Via Rename(tm), exclusive to StuffIt Deluxe. By simply adding or removing the UUencode (.uu) or Zip (.zip) suffix, those files will encode, compress or expand. Secure Delete allows users to permanently and completely remove sensitive information by securely deleting it from their disk(s)
Pricing and Availability
StuffIt Deluxe 6.0 for the Mac is available now. With an estimated street price of $79.95 (U.S.), StuffIt Deluxe is available directly from Aladdin Systems, major retailers, and mail order from around the world. [Such as Mac Connection, click on the link to the right to purchase. --JD]
Customers who purchased StuffIt Deluxe 5.5.X in October 2000 or later and have a proof of purchase are entitled to a free upgrade. Upgrade information is available at: http://www.aladdinsys.com/deluxe/upgrade.html
For $29.95, registered users of earlier versions of StuffIt Deluxe, DropStuff, DropZip and StuffIt Lite can upgrade to StuffIt Deluxe 6.0 for a limited time, directly from Aladdin or get a $50 retail and catalog mail-in rebate. All StuffIt rebates are valid in the U.S. and Canada (see rebate terms and conditions).
Users can register their version of StuffIt at: http://www.aladdinsys.com/register/index.html or contact Aladdin Customer Service at 831-761-6200 or sales@aladdinsys.com.
System Requirements StuffIt 6.0 requires a Power Macintosh with System 8.1 or higher (including Mac OS X public beta) with 15 MB of disk space and 6MB available RAM. 10:56:58 AMUNCA Celebrates Native American Heritage Month. The University of North Carolina at Asheville will celebrate Native American heritage throughout the month of November with a series of events held at UNCA's Highsmith Center Lounge. 10:11:16 AM
Fifty Lessons from Fortune. Joseph Nocera & Tim Carvell offer fifty thoughts about the old economy, the new economy, and the impact of the Internet.
9:32:29 AM
© Copyright 2001 John L. Dilbeck, jd@johndilbeck.com.