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Internet Marketing Strategy For Home Business Promotion
Sat 20th Jan '01
Founding Member of iCop http://www.i-Cop.org
International Council of Online Professionals
In this issue:
1. INTRODUCTION
==>Learn from a Dummy.
2. PLACES TO VISIT
==>Web sites for you to visit.
3. TOOLS AT NOW SELL!
==>Useful tools to make your life easier.
4. FEATURE ARTICLE
==>"The Year-2000 Net Winners and Losers"
By Rob Spiegel.
Scroll to the end for subscription details.
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X INTRODUCTION X
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Hi,
WHAT A DUMMY!
I've a problem on my site. The stats show I'm getting hundreds of
404 "page not found" errors. The URL given as the culprit is a
malformed call to a CGI subscription script. I'm worried I'm
losing an awful lot of new sign-ups!
When someone clicks the submit button on any of the site's
sign-up forms, a request should be sent for the script at:
http://www.MyDomain.com/cgi-bin/script.pl.
In this instance however, the request is going to
http://www.MyDomain.com/archives/year/nov/cgi-bin/script.pl.
This location simply doesn't exist, thus the error.
I generally use root-relative paths for the links in my forms. It
enables me to put the form on different pages without changing
anything. In this case that would mean the link should be
"/cgi-bin/script.pl," i.e. the route from the main directory.
I thought I'd perhaps omitted the first slash (/). That would
make the link "cgi-bin/script.pl," and thus interpreted as a
document-relative link, i.e. the route from that particular page.
On a page in the directory "nov" this link would lead to a
cgi-bin within the *same* directory/folder. Of course, there
isn't a cgi-bin directory within the "nov" directory. However,
the full URL to this imaginary location would be:
http://www.MyDomain.com/archives/year/nov/cgi-bin/script.pl.
My 404 error!
I've checked the pages in this directory several times over the
last month or so since I first noticed the problem (yes - THAT
long!). I can't find anything wrong. But the number of new
subscribers I appeared to be missing out on was slowly gnawing
away at me! Yesterday, I determined to do something about it.
First I re-checked the pages. Same story. So then I decided to
actually create what the URL was pointing to. I made a cgi-bin in
the "nov" directory, copied the script file into it, and set
permissions. Unfortunately, and as I half expected, the server
didn't like it. The script wouldn't work.
The only other option was a redirect. I opened the .htaccess file
and added the following line:
Redirect /archives/year/nov/cgi-bin/script.pl http://www.MyDomain
.com/pages/ezine.html (all on one line)
Now, any request for
http://www.MyDomain.com/archives/year/nov/cgi-bin/script.pl would
be redirected to http://www.MyDomain.com/pages/ezine.html.
In other words, users of the bad link would be sent to my main
ezine page. On testing it worked perfectly, seamlessly landing me
on the new page in an instant. Following the process through, I
also tested the form on this, my main sign-up page.
BOY I'M A DUMMY!
It didn't work.
I clicked the submit button and nothing happened. Nothing. Not
even an "Internal Server Error" message.
Looking through the source code, it didn't take too long to find
the problem. The closing /FORM tag was *before* the Submit
button. This meant the button was not part of the form code, so
clicking on it had no effect. Simply moving the /FORM tag to the
line below the Submit button fixed the problem.
I began to wonder ... how long had it been like that? It must
have happened when I redesigned the site ... that was when I
moved host ... that was in November. NOVEMBER! Oh my God!
DUMMY!
I'd noticed the growth of Biz Bits seemed to have slowed a little
over the last few months! I put it down to the time of year. I
didn't check. As a result I must have lost hundreds of new
subscribers. And then there's the 404 error!
GET SMART!
Don't be a dummy like me. Check, and double-check your forms when
you put them online. And your links.
Of course, you could always use Site Buildit instead.
See it here
It builds your site for you, so you don't even need to know about
all this stuff - let alone get it right!
Personally however, what appeals most to me is the Site Buildit
range of promotional tools. Some smart thinking, and very nifty
programming at work there. So much so, that it's hard to see how
even a beginner could fail to get traffic.
BB
Happy Chinese New Year to you if you're celebrating!
BB
Please rate Biz Bits at the Cumuli Ezine Finder.
http://www.cumuli.com/ezines/~bizbit
BB
Tell me what YOU think! Send your feedback, comments, what you
like, what you hate, etc., to me at: mailto:azam-nowsell.com
TTFN
Azam
PS - Get 2001 off to a good start by benefiting from corporate
status. Professional Online Business Incorporation is just a
click away. To ensure your business is formed correctly and
quickly, visit: http://www.nowsell.com/go/to.cgi?l=inc
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X PLACES TO VISIT X
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http://www.projectseven.com/
Dreamweaver Web Site templates (to buy) and some good, fairly
advanced, free tutorials.
http://www.emailaddresses.com/mailto_encoder.htm
Free service encodes your email address so it can't be harvested
from your Web site by spambots.
http://www.freshmeat.net/
Scripts of all shapes and sizes at this huge resource. If you
can't find it anywhere else, try here.
http://hop.clickbank.net/hop.cgi?nowsell/coverart
High-quality ebook cover designs. The best I've seen in fact.
(written *before* I noticed I could use my clickbank account).
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"SELLING ONLINE? WANT TO SELL MORE?"
Master and use the incredible power of words. The magic,
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Web-focused copywriting course. Sales Copy, Ads, Email and more.
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X TOOLS AT NOW SELL! X
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Promotion Tools: Click Here
* Keyword Research Tool
* Meta Tag Maker
* Free Automatic Search Engine Submit
* Rapid Manual Search Engine Submit Tool
* Position Analyzer to check site rank in the SEs
* Link Generators
* Multi Search Tool
HTML Tools: Click Here
* Multiple Pop-up window code generator
* Multiple MouseOver image generator
* Frames code generator
* Simple CSS template
* 216 Web color palette and codes
* HTML Special character codes
* Useful cut & paste Javascript, and more
Free Business Consulting: Click Here
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"TOP SEARCH ENGINE POSITIONING SECRETS!"
Step-by-step, Michael Campbell shows how to get to the top of
search engines AND hold your position once you're there.
Click to Learn from a master of today's ever-changing algorithms!
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"The Year-2000 Net Winners and Losers"
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By Rob Spiegel
If 1999 was the year American business went giddy and bubbly with
the Internet, 2000 was the morning-after year, a time of mammoth
headaches and out-of-whack backs. Yet the Internet flame-outs
were not distributed equally. Here's a round-up of the winners
and losers of year-2000. Read the trends in the shakeout dust.
Winner: PetsMart.com. Loser: Pets.com
The brick and mortar company, PetsMart.com, wins the battle for
pet action on the Internet. Whether it's because of trust or
simply a high-functioning site, consumers chose the brick over
the Pets.com click, which failed last fall. Other examples of
this trend include Barnes & Noble, the brick and click bookseller
that is making inroads against Amazon.com, and Toys 'R' Us, which
broke eToys this past during the holidays even though eToys was
the 1999 online winner. eToys laid off 700 employees, more than
half its workforce, during the first week of January 2001 after a
dismal holiday sales season.
Winner: MP3. Loser: CDNow
CDNow was created to give music shoppers better information about
their recorded choices. Instead, music consumers wanted new
technology to receive their music. Music downloads won the day,
not mail-order CDs.
Winner: America Online. Loser: Every other stock bubble
When I first heard the news of an America Online/Time Warner
merger, I assumed Time Warner was buying AOL. Surprise,
surprise, David bought Goliath in a brilliant move. With all of
the pre-April stock bubbles, it's surprising more of the dot coms
didn't buy up their offline equivalents in the AOL manner. Many
of the dot coms that were trading at $240 per share in March
ended the year trading at $2. A good number of these will vanish
completely in 2001. This makes AOL's move look that much
smarter.
Winner: Traditional big business and tiny start-ups. Loser:
VC-backed start-ups
There are two clear winners when it comes to e-business. First,
large traditional companies take huge savings as they move
procurement and sales to the highly efficient Internet world.
DaimlerChrysler claimed a 17 percent savings during 2000 due to
online procurement. Companies such as GM, GE and Boeing have
also trimmed costs via the Web. A few percentage points here and
there adds up to billions in savings at these corporate giants.
The other big winner is the small niche retailer who can now
reach a larger audience through the Internet. These companies
sell products such as hot sauces or fly fishing equipment to
enthusiasts who can't find a wide selection of their hobby
products locally.
The losers are the high-priced Net companies that attempted to
reach a wide, undifferentiated market or those whose steps to
profitability were unclear. The tiny niche sites were typically
pay-as-you-go, funded from the entrepreneur's pocket, while the
large, unfocused dot coms were living on other people's money.
Winner: Plumbers. Loser: Sites with leaky pipes
As more and more traditional companies move to e-business,
infrastructure builders are the big winners. Hosting companies
such as Akamai, Conxion and Digital Island, or procurement
software specialists such as Ariba and Commerce One will most
likely be winners no matter how the game shakes out. These
companies specialize in helping Ford buy from U.S. Steel. The
"leaky pipe" companies are those who depend on consumers to warm
up to the Net. When it comes right down to it, the value
proposition for a consumer to buy from Amazon.com (where a 20
percent savings is gobbled up by shipping charges) can't touch
the value proposition that Ford gets by saving billions in steel
purchasing costs.
The winners and losers of 2000 can be summed up in two points.
Ecommerce wins if:
1. You can make existing trading partners more efficient (U.S.
Steel selling to Ford or Toys 'R' Us selling to everybody).
2. You can give a enthusiast a selection that can't be found
locally (hot sauces and fly fishing equipment).
Rob Spiegel is the author of Net Strategy (Dearborn) and The
Shoestring Entrepreneur's Guide to the Best Home-Based Businesses
(St. Martin's Press). You can reach Rob at spiegelrob-aol.com.
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