======================================================================= 1- Intro 2- AOL Netfind changes 3- How to get in top 10 of HotBot 4- Email Marketing vs. Email Spam ======================================================================= 1- Intro Welcome to our monthly newsletter. In this month's newsletter we have information on recent changes with AOL Netfind search engine, how to get into top 10 of HotBot and information about email marketing without getting in trouble with the law. Hope you enjoy this month's issue and as always we ask that if you like our newsletter, please forward it to all your webmaster friends or whoever that might be interested. Subscription is completely free and can be done at: http://www.submitexpress.com/newsletters.html Thanks, Submit Express ======================================================================= Want to increase traffic to your site and generate extra revenue? http://www.everyone.net?DM=09z_sen Everyone.net gives you the first and only, turnkey email service that gives you total control to customize your email service with your logo and brand. Using our simple online wizard, you can add customized, web-based email @yourdomain to your site in less than 1 hour, with no calls to make, no applications, and no delays. Get extra revenue as visitors repeat their visits to check their mail. Add email to your site now! http://www.everyone.net?DM=09z_sen ======================================================================= Place your ad in our newsletter and thousands of webmasters or website owners will see it. 17,000+ webmasters just saw the above ad. By next month we will have more than 20,000 subscribers. If you are interested in advertising please see details at: http://submitexpress.com/cgi/banners/count.cgi?ad.html ======================================================================= 2- AOL Netfind changes AOL Netfind until recently was using the Excite database for its listing. Just last week they switched to Inktomi. Inktomi is a search engine database provider that provides the back-end database for many search engines such as HotBot, Yahoo, MSN Search, Goto.com, Canada.com and ICQiT.com. However, the listing orders in each of these search engines may differ, since each search engine can customize their results. By doing some research, we have found that the AOL Netfind listings are now the exact listings of HotBot, starting from number 11 and on. The reason for this is that HotBot uses DirectHit.com for their listings from 1-10 and then uses Inktomi from 11 and on. Please see the next section (3) for details. "Add URL" page of AOL Netfind has not been put up yet, so meanwhile you can just send your listing to HotBot or use our free submission service to get listed in AOL Netfind. ======================================================================= Webmasters join affiliate programs offered by leading websites and enter in a chance to win $5000. CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW FOR DETAILS http://submitexpress.com/cgi/banners/count.cgi?a.html ======================================================================= 3- How to get in top 10 of HotBot If you have noticed when you do a search on HotBot, on the bottom of the first results page it will display a logo stating "Powered by Direct Hit". However on the bottom of the listings from 11 and on it displays "Powered by Inktomi". So what is "Direct Hit" and its relation to HotBot? Direct Hit is a search engine and database provider similar to Inktomi. The main algorithm they use to rank sites is "Click Popularity". In the last month's issue we told you about "Link Popularity", which is different than "Click Popularity". Basically "Direct Hit" keeps track of the number of clicks visitors click on each search result, and the amount of time they spend on each site before they come back to the search engine. The more hits a site gets and the more time people spend on the site, the higher up it will move on the search engine results. We highly recommend getting your site registered with them at: http://www.directhit.com/submit.html However it will be very tough to move your site into the top 10, unless you already have a popular site, or if your search terms are not competitive. Click Popularity is not the best method to rank sites in our opinion, since many of the sites that are already on the top will automatically continue to get more hits and always stay on the top. ======================================================================= Submit Express recommends Homestead.com to help you build a sophisticated and powerful Web site - no programming required, no annoying pop-up or banners, and lots of disk space. Add a chat room, a stock ticker, pictures, animations, and lots more to your page in minutes. Sign up for Homestead today and find out why Homestead won PC Magazine's Editor's Choice Award for free Web publishing. No ads. No programming. No headaches. http://www.homestead.com/splash.html?142 ======================================================================= 4- Email Marketing vs. Email Spam Many of you have probably at some point received email offers from companies offering to sell millions of email addresses on one CD for a very reasonable price. This offer may look very attractive, but the truth is that these emails are all collected without the permission of their owners via email harvesting software from the internet. These companies may promise you that these emails are very fresh and 100% working or they may offer you various emails in different demographics that look very attractive, but one thing they will not promise is that these are 100% opt-in lists. If they claim they are 100% opt-in, make sure to research them to find out they are not lying. Usually these companies will send you these emails from a non-existing email address or one provided by free email hosting services. The best way to know if you are dealing with a legit company is to email them back by hitting reply. If their email does not bounce and someone actually replies to you, chances are that they are a legit company. Usually these types of companies will not put their actual email address or web address on their mailings, because they do not want to get in trouble with the law and they want to make it hard for the authorities to catch them. They will usually provide a phone number where you can FAX your order. If you see this type of mailing, rest assured that it is a spam and delete the email right away. We recommend that you do not reply to them to be removed, because chances are that if your email does not bounce, you will then be placed in a database of "100% working emails". If you end up buying one of these mailing lists and start emailing these people, you will get in trouble first with your ISP and then with the law. Why? Because these will be considered "unsolicited email" or "junk mail" or "spam". Your Internet Service Provider will cancel your account and many of the people will report you anti-spam organizations. If you want to do email marking there are various companies that do legit business with 100% opt-in lists. These are lists that people willingly sign up for and request to receive info in their interested categories. You may have seen such a form on our site when you submitted your site http://www.submitexpress.com/newsletters.html and you may have already received a few emails from various companies with valuable offerings. By signing up on this type of lists, you can rest assured that you will receive emails only from responsible companies that have offerings or information about a subject you are interested in and they will offer an easy way to be removed from their lists at any time. In our case, we monitor and approve every single mailing that goes out and we make sure to only send emails that are appropriate in the given categories. Our lists are available for advertisements through PostMasterDirect, who is the leading provider of opt-in email marketing. We have many lists in various categories such as webmaster, website promotion, affiliate programs, small business, games, music, free stuff, contests, etc… Our lists have had a response rate of 5% to 15%, which are a lot better than banner ad response rates currently at .05% to 1%. If you are interested in a 100% opt-in email marketing campaign please contact us for details and mention this newsletter to receive a 10% discount rate. You might also be interested in becoming an affiliate for our email marketing service. We split 50-50 all the sales generated by emails collected from following a link on your website. If you are interested, you can sign up at: http://affiliates.postmasterdirect.com/welcome?owner=Submit_Express Since we are on the subject of spam, we might as well tell you how you can avoid getting junk mail. The number one way people receive junk mail is by publishing their email addresses on their websites or posting on the news groups or bulletin boards. If you have a website, we highly recommend not to publish your email address in text format; instead use a feedback form or publish your email in a graphic image. Email harvesting software will usually look for the @ sign or mailto: tag on the websites to find email addresses. If your email address is in a graphic image, there is no way these email harvesting software can collect them. On our own site we use a feedback form for this reason. http://www.submitexpress.com/feedback.html In addition a feedback form will give the benefit of collecting additional data, such as asking where your visitors are coming from. You can even program auto-responders with a feedback form. If you need help setting up such a form on your site, please email us and we'll be glad to provide you the script or point you to the right direction. ======================================================================= Is your site anywhere to be found in the search engines? Do you need to be in the top 10 of search engines, but don't know how? Are you tired of trying everything you possibly can and still are nowhere to be found? If you need help getting your site in the top 10 of major search engines please check out our search engine optimization services: http://www.submitexpress.com/optimize.html We guarantee results or your money back. We can also give you free advice when you order our 800+ search engine submission. We will visit your site and send you a list of suggestions on how to improve your rankings. See details at: http://submitexpress.com/cgi/banners/count.cgi?s2.html Don't just submit your site to the search engines, SUBMIT IT RIGHT. ======================================================================= Submit Express Website: http://www.submitexpress.com/ Email: newsletter@submitexpress.com Submit your website to 40 top search engines for FREE! ======================================================================= Copyright 1999 Submit Express - No part of this newsletter may be copied or published without prior permission, but please feel free to forward this to all your friends as long as you keep it in its entirety. # $seq