Send your comments, letters to the editor, and related articles to seltzer@samizdat.com For information on who we are check www.samizdat.com/who.html
To access other issues, go to www.samizdat.com/ioad.html. The full text of all issues is available for free, with hypertext links to the sites referenced. (Please keep in mind that URLs frequently change. We will attempt to update the information in this on-line edition, but don't expect perfection.)
For plain-text books on CD ROM, a library for the price of a book, visit our online store at http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat
You can now receive Internet-on-a-Disk by email, by signing up at Yahoo Groups. Either send email to subscribe-ioad@yahoogroups.com , or register at the Web site http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ioad. You can also use that group to discuss related matters and share insights with other readers and with me (Richard Seltzer seltzer@samizdat.com).
Most people associate DVDs with video. But they are just another, very efficient way to store information. These book DVDs do not work in the kind of video DVD players that you hook up to a television set. Rather they work in the DVD drive in a Windows PC -- and the vast majority of new PCs sold today come with a DVD/CD drive as standard equipment. (Similarly, our book CDs don't work in music CD players, but rather in the CD drive of a Windows PC.)
Because the complete text of so many books can fit on a single DVD, we are able to keep the price very low. Our Complete Book CD includes over 7000 books and sells for just $99. That amounts to about a penny and a half a book -- less than books sold for in the days of Dickens. Designed for ease of use without any need for computer knowledge, this is, by far, our best bargain.
The Complete Book DVD includes all the books of the Classic Collection (American Literature, British Literature, World Literature, Children's Books, Non-Fiction, REligion, and Books about Classical Music [just the text files, not the Finale .mus files]), plus Cook Books, plus Victoriana, plus Australian Literature, plus Canadian Literature. The DVD is organized the same way the CDs are -- with an overall index and a separate directory for each CD, and each of those folders has the same folders as the CD does, as well as the same index as the CD. Whenever we update any of those CDs, we'll immediately update the Complete Book DVD. And if you buy the Complete Book DVD from us, you can buy updates to it -- with all the books -- for just $30. (Institutions can buy an update subscriptions -- four updates over the course of a year for $100.)
You can buy the Complete Book DVD here using PayPal. To encourage you to do this way, there will be no charge for shipping (even for air mail outside the US).
Or you can do so at our online store http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat/dvdcomplete.htmlOur Period Book DVD includes 1681 books for just $69. This DVD includes all the plain-text books from our Period Collection CDs (Ancient World, Medieval/Renaissance, 16th Century, 17th Century, and 18th Century.)
You can buy the Period Book DVD here using PayPal.
Or you can do so at our online store http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat/perioddvd.htmlPlease keep in mind that it includes all the text, but only the text -- no ReadPlease software, no .mus files, and no AbookReader files.)
Our CDs and DVDs are all "hand-crafted". The selection and organization is based on my decisions, not on any automated computer program. I do my best to provide what you want and need in a form that's convenient, easy to use, and inexpensive.
The books on the DVD are in plain text (ASCII) form, with no encryption and no compression. The file names are the same as the book titles (no bizarre abbreviations). The books organized into logical folders/directories (by author or topic), and an html index with links to all the books makes it easy to quickly open the book you want.. The DVD includes the text and only the text (no special formats like .pdf or .mus and no software like ReadPlease).
Keep in mind that with the DVD and with our CDs, there is nothing to
prevent you from copying some of all of the files to your hard drive. Then
you should be able to use readit.exe or other DOS
programs as you normally would. And yes, once you have done that (whether
through Windows Explorer or wordpad or your browser or whatever), you can
make and save edits/notations etc. (NB -- in some cases, the program that
does the copying will automatically mark the copied file as "read-only".
If you run into that, just go to the Properties for that file and remove
the "Read-Only" indication.
I also plan to offer DVDs based on our other CD collections -- e.g., Period, Genre, and Theme. The books on those would also appear on the Complete Book DVD; but the unique organization would make them useful.
If you don't have a DVD drive in your current PC, you might want to consider buying an add-on external drive (for around $100).
The first, with 93 books, focuses on Evolution, including Forerunners of Evolution, Creationism (Opponents of Evolution), and Broad Applications of Evolution (including Social Darwinism and Eugenics). http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat/1evolution.html
The second will be "Great Escapes," including such works as Dickens' Tale of 2 Cities, Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo, Hugo's Les Miserables, Anthony Hope's Prisoner of Zenda, Dumas' Iron Mask (both his historical essay and the novel which is part of the Three Musketeers saga), the excerpt from Casanova's memoirs dealing with his escape from prison, and the Velveteen Rabbit.
Other possible topics include: Ireland, Scotland, Philippines, regions of the US, particular wars, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. Suggestions welcome.
Here's a list of the free books we've sent out recently:
9/7/2004 -- This week's book is MEMOIRS OF JACQUES CASANOVA de SEINGALT 1725-1798 TO PARIS AND PRISON, Volume 2e--UNDER THE LEADS, which recounts Casanova's imprisonment in Venice and his escape. It's probably the most entertaining part of his voluminous memoirs (all of which appear on our World Literature CD). Keep in mind that Casanova is a storyteller, not an historian. Presume that this tale was told and retold hundreds of times over many years before, as an old man, he put it on paper. But as with the rest of his Memoirs, expect, too, interesting insights into the everyday life of a professional gambler, con artist, and man of leisure in 18th century Europe.
8/31/2004 -- "Is Mars Habitable? a Critical Examination of Professor Percival Lowell's Book 'Mars and Its Canals', with an Alternative Explanation" by Alfred Russel Wallace. Published in 1907, this book refuted the contention that the "canals" of Mars were constructed by intelligent beings. Wallace as a rival of Darwin's, who developed a theory of evolution in parallel with Darwin and before Darwin made his conclusions public. This book appears on our Non-Fiction CD set.
8/24/2004 -- Prompted by another request from Bill Gaughan, I checked for books that describe the ancient Olympic Games. The closest I could come was Athens by Bulwer-Lytton (who also wrote the historical novel The Last Days of Pompeii). It appears on our Non-Fiction and Ancient World CDs.
8/17/2004 -- This week's (actually last week's) book, Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone was suggested by Bill Gaughan. He explains: "In this modern age of cell phones and digital cameras and scanners, and even cell phones that can now send images to another cell phone, Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone is a look into the future of today from back in the 19 teens; science fiction of yesteryear becoming today's electronic gadgets." You can find that book and dozens of other Tom Swift books (by Victor Appleton) on our Children's Book CD.
8/10/2004 -- This week's free ebook is THE SOTWEED FACTOR or A VOYAGE TO MARYLAND), A SATYR By Ebenezer Cook, originally published in 1707. A "sotweed factor" is a merchant who deals in tobacco. This poem was the basis for John Barth's novel of the same name. It appears on our British Literature CD set.
8/3/2004 -- This week's ebook is a poem about biology, originally published in 1788 -- The Botanic Garden by Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles Darwin) (1731-1802). Based on intuition, it seems to foreshadow some of the principles that Charles later supported with scientific evidence. You can find this book in our 2-CD Non-Fiction set (in the Biology section)
7/27/2004 -- This week's ebook, The Malay Archipelago (in two volumes) was written by Alfred Wallace, rival to Darwin for credit for the theory of evolution. For details on their rivalry, along with fascinating insights into evolution on islands and related matters, see The Song of the Dodo by David Quammen (a recent printed book).
The Malay Archipelago appears on our Non-Fiction 2-CD set, as well as Victorian Science and also Richard Burton's Arabian Nights and Victorian Books of Exploration and Travel.
7/14/2004 -- This week's ebook, The Voyage of the Beagle, is Darwin's autobiographical account of the voyage around the world (starting in 1832) on which he got his inspiration for and gathered his evidence for the theory of evolution. (Cf. the recent movie Master and Commander with Russell Crowe, which covered much of the same territory 30 years earlier, with a ship's surgeon interested in the same kind of natural phenomena as Darwin (especially in the Galapogos Islands).
7/7/2004 -- Ozma of Oz by Frank Baum, one of about a dozen sequels to The Wizard of Oz. In this one the main character, a young boy discovers that he is really a girl/princess under the spell of a wicked witch.
6/29/2004 -- This week's ebook, Persuasion, was first published after the death of the author, Jane Austen. I recently read "The Jane Austen Book Club" by Karen Joy Fowler, a current best seller, and an excellent novel about novels, in which you enjoy a good story and at the same time get reintroduced to the works of a great novelist from the past. You can also view the entire text of Persuasion in AbookReader format at http://www.samizdat.com/persuasion.htm This book appears in plain text form on our Jane Austen CD http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat/austen.html and also on our British Literature and Women CDs.
6/22/2004 -- This week's ebook of the week is Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I was prompted to choose this well-known but little-read classic because I recently read two of Jasper Fforde's intriguing and amusing scifi/alternate-world spoofs -- "The Eyre Affair" and "Lost in a Good Book", in which human beings can become characters is novels and characters in novels can move into the "real" world and pretend to be human beings. You can also view it in AbookReader format at http://www.samizdat.com/janeeyre.htm (NB -- we have a Bronte Sisters CD with this book and other works by and about Charlotte and her sisters Emily and Anne, with all the books in both plain text and AbookReader format).
6/15/2004 -- This week's ebook, The Guns of Bull Run, is the first book of Joseph Altsheler's Civil War series of historical novels. Before I began making CDs, I had never heard of Altsheler. But I got numerous requests for his works, and our CD, with 12 of his novels, is now one of our most popular. I just added our new AbookReader format to all those novels (in addition to the usual plain text, as in the attachment). You can also view this entire book in AbookReader format at http://www.samizdat.com/gunsofbullrun.htm
6/8/2004 -- In his best-known work, The Prince, Machiavelli presumes that the ends justify the means, and provides a handbook for would-be dictators, in the hope some unscrupulous leader in the mold of Cesare Borgia (the Pope's son) would conquer all of Italy, finally uniting it. In the Discourses, this week's free ebook selection, we see another side of Machiavelli. Here through detailed anecdotal commentaries on the first 10 books of Livy's History of Rome, with frequent comparisons to what was contemporary history in about 1500, Machiavelli derives principles of human behavior that could help guide the decisions of a wise and just ruler or military leader. This book appears on our Non-Fiction 2-CD set and also on Italian.
6/1/2004 -- Trips to the Moon by Lucian, written in the second century AD, consists of selections from several of Lucian's satirical works (such as "The True History"). The introduction indicates that this "account of a trip to the moon...must have been enjoyed by Rabelais, which suggested to Cyrano de Bergerac his Voyages to the Moon and to the Sun, and insensibly contributed, perhaps, directly or through Bergerac, to the conception of Gulliver's Travels." (Yes, Cyrano de Bergerac, whose nose was made famous by Rostand's play about him, was also an author.)
5/25/2004 -- Atlantis: The Antediluvian World by Ignatius Donnelly purports to solve the mystery of Atlantis by creatively tying together myths and legends from around the world. At times it is very convincing (like The Da Vinci Code) -- enough so that it's likely to motivate you to read many other books to try to distinguish between gossip that's thousands of years old and credible science. In any case it's a fun and provocative read. (FYI -- the author ran for vice president on the Green Back ticket back in the 1880s.) If you read nothing else, check the beginning of the first chapter where the author lays out the 11 propositions that he intends to demonstrate. This book appears on our 2-CD Non-Fiction set (under Anthropology and Myths).
5/18/2004 -- From Ritual to Romance by Jessie Weston might interest you in a variety of ways. I first came across it in the footnotes to T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland." It pieces together legend, myth, religion, esoteric knowledge, and history in interesting ways, providing insights into the stories of the Holy Grail (cf. Indiana Jones and the Crusade for the Holy Grail), medieval heresies (cf. Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code). And its main thrust is explaining the origins of our concept of romantic love.
5/11/2004 -- "Martin Guerre", like the last two ebooks of the week, is an extract from Alexandre Dumas' multi-volume Celebrated Crimes. This is the "true" story that served as the basis for two great movies: Le Retour de Martin Guerre starring Gerard Depardieu, and Sommersby starring Jody Foster and Richard Gere.
5/4/2004 -- "The Man in the Iron Mask", extracted from Alexandre Dumas' multi-volume history "Celebrated Crimes". This is an "historical essay", a different work from his novel of the same name, which is part of his Three Musketeers Saga. A delightful blend of rumor and history.
4/27/2004 -- Extracted from Alexandre Dumas' multi-volume history "Celebrated Crimes" (which appears on our World Literature CD, as well as French, and Dumas), "The Borgias" provides lots of nasty and fascinating details about Cesare Borgia (the model for Machiavelli's model ruthless dictator in The Prince), his father Pope Alexander VI, and his beloved sister Lucrezia (world champion poisoner); if you enjoy Dumas, you'd also enjoy Club Dumas, a recent novel by Arturo Perez-Reverte.
4/20/2004 -- "Taras Bulba and Other Tales" by Nikolai Gogol. This choice was prompted by my reading the current best seller "The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, in which a boy born to Indian parents is given the name Gogol, because of his father's obsession with the Russian author and other special circumstances. The story "The Cloak" which is frequently mentioned in "The Namesake" is included in this story collection. This book and other works of Gogol appear on our Gogol CD, a "books in context" CD which is built around the contemporary work of literary criticism, "Gogol's Art: a Search for Identity" by Laszlo Tikos.
4/13/2004 -- The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes (a character in Matthew Pearl's The Dante Club)
4/6/2004 Longfellow's translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. This translation project of Longfellow's is at the heart of the best-selling literary mystery "The Dante Club" by Matthew Pearl, a book which I highly recommend.
3/31/2004 -- The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, from the Meditations of Anne Catherine Emmerich, an obscure 19th century book that reportedly was a major inspiration for Mel Gibson's controversial movie. The following week, (because I'm now reading and greatly enjoying the literary mystery "The Dante Club" by Matthew Pearl.
3/24/2004 -- The Whole History of Grandfather's Chair or True Stories from New England History, 1620-1808 by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
3/17/2004 -- The Awakening and Other Stories by Kate Chopin.
3/10/2004 -- Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne.
3/3/2004 -- The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Stories by Bret Harte
You can use eBay as a sales channel, an additional way to reach a global marketplace with tens of millions of buyers. At the same time, you can use eBay to quickly conduct market research, to experiment, and to learn. Think of eBay as a vast laboratory where you can research the competition and quickly test the effort of your products, your pricing, and your marketing ideas either at low cost or while making a profit. Elicit customer reactions and suggestions to your pitch and your products. Get experience interacting with customers online, learning their expectations, and figuring out how to delight them.
To succeed as a serious long-term, eBay seller, you need:
You can sell
To make your life easier, you should focus on things that are easy to package and ship, with predictable/repeatable weight and size. And you should stick to products that you use and appreciate yourself, that you understand well and care about. And instead of selling one of this kind of thing and one of that, you should focus on just one or just a few similar kinds of products, so you can build a reputation in that sub-community at eBay and encourage repeat business.
eBay offers several different ways to sell.
You can set up standard auctions where you indicate the "starting price," and the final price is determined by competitive bidding. That approach works well for collectibles, one of a kind items, and old or limited supply items -- whenever the enthusiasm of potential bidders might drive the price to illogical levels. In this case, you decide how long the auction will last (e.g., 5, 7, or 10 days), and there is no way for anyone to buy your items before that time has expired. You pay eBay a fee (which varies by the starting price that you set) to list each item. And if it sells, you pay a final value fee which is a percent of of what you get from the customer. And you have to pay whenever you relist an item.
You can also sell in "Buy It Now" mode, where you establish a fixed price, and the "auction" ends as soon as someone agrees to pay that price. The fees are he same as with standard auctions, but you could sell multiple copies of the same item in the time it would have taken you to run a single "standard" auction. This approach works well when you have a large renewable supply of the same goods, or you make the goods yourself. It's also good when you don't want the delays of standard auctions or the uncertainties of a variable auction price.
With both those ways of selling, you potentially make your pitch to all the tens of millions of people who use eBay regularly and who might chance upon your listings by conducting searches or by browsing through the categories of goods at eBay.
With the third way of selling -- eBay store -- you don't have access to that massive eBay traffic; rather you have to generate your own traffic.
They offer three different kinds of eBay stores.
For $9.95/month (currently), you get to set up a simple online store to which you can try to drive traffic by email, advertising, links, etc.
For $49.95/month (currently), you also get automated "cross-selling." In other words, potential customers who are looking at one of your items see prompts/links to other related products of yours, making it far more likely that a customer will buy more than one item. (I find this a good deal. I run such a store at eBay in addition to the online store I have at Yahoo for $49/month. Each store reaches a different audience.
eBay also offers "Anchor" stores for $499.95/month (currently). With an anchor store, banner ads for your store appear perhaps millions of times on pages that eBay visitors see. That sounds great, but I found it useless -- the extra money generated no additional sales.
The posting fees for items you add to your eBay store are very low (a penny or two), and you can set these auctions up with multiple copies of the same item at no extra cost and set the time frame at "good until canceled" so you don't incur relisting fees and don't have to go to all the time-consuming hassle of relisting items that have sold. Final value fees are comparable to those for regular and Buy It Now auctions; but, of course, you only have to pay those fees when your goods have sold.
An eBay store makes sense when supply is not an issue, and you have many copies of a variety of different related items and are in business for the long run. The store setup lets you organize and categorize your items as you please, rather than strictly adhering to eBay's cumbersome category system. Hence a store minimizes the cost and effort of keeping lots of items available for sale online. If you are in touch with your own online customer base and can point them to your eBay store -- great. BUt your store items won't be included in eBay searches and will appear low on the lists of items that customers see when they browse by categories.
I find it pays to list all my items in my eBay ;store and to also list my bestselling items as Buy It Now auctions, so people searching at eBay can find those best-selling items, and my cross-selling links can lead them to my eBay store.
I also pay for text ads at eBay that are tied to "keywords. Check https://ebay.admarketplace.net for details.
When people buy from you or sell to you at eBay, be sure to give them "feedback." In theory, feedback is either positive or negative. In practice, with few exceptions, feedback is positive, and the value to the recipient comes not from the creative friendly words entered, but rather from the quantity of positive feedback. That number indicates who is a newbie and who a pro -- it's a primary indicator of credibility (for both sellers and buyers). People appreciate receiving feedback; so give it promptly and regularly -- that's a friendly stroke that helps build good relations with customers, at no cost to you.
While you should not believe the specifics of feedback comments, the feedback system is an important element of the eBay business model. Fear of negative feedback serves as an important motivator encouraging buyers and sellers to treat one another fairly, and helping to keep the community together.
Because buyers will look skeptically at the offerings of newbie sellers, you should not begin to sell seriously until you have at least a ten positive feedbacks. You can get those feedbacks by buying things you want and need at eBay and asking the seller to give you feedback. Your experience as a buyer will also help you when you switch roles and sell.
As a seller, keep in mind that the beset way to build trust is by trusting. (e.g., I don't wait for payment before shipping. I ship as soon as the sale is completed; and by doing so, I get burnt very rarely, and I very frequently turn ordinary customers into delighted customers, likely to come back for repeat sales.
Other simple ways to delight online customers include:
Likewise, when selling old comic books, with little feedback, the average sale price was about $2 to $3. But once my feedback got up over two dozen, the average sale price went up to over $10.
In addition to standard feedback procedures, communications with customers are very important. Friendly, prompt, and informative email messages build relationships and relationships lead to return customers. For example, messages thanking customers for buying and telling them you'll put their items in the mail the very next day might include short and friendly questions and comments that could prompt them to let you know why they are buying what they are buying and why they value such things and what other similar things they are interested in. Based on such information, you might decide to change what you sell or how you sell it. Every communication is an opportunity -- so avoid sending automated or canned messages. If you know your products and love them, you probably have something interesting to say about them, and probably would enjoy sharing related information and opinions with customers.
It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of selling and to focus on the money coming in, losing track of your costs. Keep careful records -- not just for tax purposes, but also to make sure that your pricing and your practices are leading to a significant profit.
Take into account:
Also, don't underestimate the time required to seriously sell at eBay
If someone wants to pay immediately online, eBay makes it easy for them to do so with PayPal. If they don't decide right away how they want to pay, eBay makes it easy for you to send an electronic invoice, as a reminder.
My eBay keeps track of everything for you and even reminds you to relist and to leave feedback, and makes the leaving of feedback easy.
If you have questions, you can ask for online help -- chat-style -- from the eBay home page, and within a few minutes you should be in touch with a knowledgeable live person.
If you regularly sell about $1000 or more per month through eBay, you'll automatically become a "PowerSeller." The most tangible benefit of that status is a detailed monthly report of your sales, sent to you by email.
You should, of course, promote your individual auctions and your eBay store by all means at your disposal: your own Web site, your won email list, your own newsletter site, text and links in your standard email signature, etc.
You can help stimulate additional business by offering discounts on shipping costs for those who buy multiple items (eBay makes that easy). You can also offer special discounts to repeat customers, telling people about that offer by email when you are getting ready to ship their merchandise.
And, if you have an eBay store, in addition to buying keyword advertising at eBay, you should consider buying keword-based text advertising at Google Adwords as well. (Check http://adwords.google.com for details on how to do that.)
Resources:
My eBay store
http://stores.ebay.com/bandrsamizdatbooksoncd
My Yahoo store http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat
My eBay bio page http://members.ebay.com/ws2/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=richardseltzer
Other articles about selling at eBay http://www.samizdat.com/auc.html
Over the last ten years, the Web has evolved from a promising innovation to an essential part of life and business. Today, hundreds of millions of users can instantaneously access billions of pages. Much has changed in that short time. Many businesses rose from nothing to become important forces on a global scale, and just as quickly vanished, to be replaced by new companies with new business models. In just one decade, we we experienced a tidal wave of change -- the equivalent of what previously might have transpired over the course of two to three generations. And just as that wave of change took us by surprise, we are now likely to be surprised by the absence of such a wave, or the contrast between the after waves and ebb tide and the momentous rate of change we just experienced. Many were mesmerized by rising stock prices of Internet stock prices and imagined that they would rise forever, and many came to expect that the overall rate of change in the world of business would continue to accelerate. But, no, unpredictability remains unpredictable. In the midst of change, stable patterns appear and persist. And in the midst of stability, change slowly swells, perhaps to fall again or perhaps to form another tidal wave.
In the days when the Internet wave was at its peak, AltaVista ruled as the premier search engine -- the best, the simplest, the most powerful way to find whatever you anted on the Web, whenever you wanted to -- helping many to find useful information and resources on the Web, when the Web was growing faster than it has ever grown and when it was at its most volatile and unpredictable.
Due to many mistakes, AltaVista, despite its technological excellence, failed as a business, as did its parent company, Digital Equipment. Digital was swallowed by Compaq, which was swallowed by Hewlett-Packard. AltaVista was spun off as an independent company, then swallowed by Overture, which was swallowed by Yahoo.
Today, Google reigns supreme as the simple, complete, powerful way to find anything on the Internet. And "to google" has become a common English verb.
But despite the vast changes in the business of Internet search, the basic principles of how search engines work and how to design Web pages so users will be likely to find them remain the same as they were in the days of AltaVista.
If you ;work for a large well-known, well-funded business, don't bother to read article. Such companies get lots of Web traffic from their existing customers, and due to their name recognition and advertising. They are big and important enough to negotiate their own terms with search engines. Small companies should not try to imitate the Web designs and Web business plans of their large competitors. To do so is to commit business suicide. RAther, they should seek low-cost and no-cost ways to build Web traffic, including using simple search-engine-friendly Web page design.
Web-Search Basics -- How to Be Found and What Gets in the Way
A search engine does not instantaneously check the entire Web whenever it gets a query. Rather it periodically sends out robot programs (crawlers) to gather content from the Web and stores that content in an "index". It then matches query words with words stored in the index. The freshness and the completeness of the information of the index differ from search engine to search engine and over time. In other words, the index is assembled mechanically and automatically, following programmed rules, not based on case-by-case human judgment. The credibility of search engines and the loyalty of their users depend on their reputation as fair information brokers -- that the same rules apply to all, regardless of the size of the company that provides information on the Web, and without taking money as payment for inclusion in the index. Search engine companies that appear to breech that trust, like magazines that appear to sell their editorial content, put their user base and hence their business survival at risk.
Some, including Google, successfully perform the high-wire balancing act of accepting paid text advertising that is displayed when queries include "keywords" that advertisers have paid for. They are careful to display these ads in such a way as to distinguish them from regular search results, and they are careful to keep the underlying index free, complete, and without taint of paid inclusion. In fact, the text ads at Google are often closely targeted to the query words and often prove useful to users. And small companies can and should use Google's Adwords (http://adwords.google.com) as an inexpensive way to attract potential customers, and should also consider becoming an "adsense" partner of Google (http://www.google.com/adsense) placing code on their pages, by which google-generated text ads targeted to the content of their pages appear unobtrusively on their Web and pages and they get paid when visitors click on those ads. That's a quick and simple way for a small business to generate a little ad revenue from its Web pages, without having to spend any time trying to sell ad space.
In any case, rules are at the heart of the search engine business -- rules for inclusion in search engine indexes and rules for matching queries with information in those indexes and rules for determining the order in which results will appear. If you understand the basic rules and play by them, search engine users may come to your content pages in large numbers. If you don't play by the rules, you may be poorly represented or not represented at all.
Web-Search Basics: What's Strange About Search Engines
Yes, search engines, like Google, have separate indices for graphics. But basic Web search deals with text only --= no graphics at all. THey could care less about your logo or photos of your products or how slick the graphic design of your pages is. Text is all that matters.
Yes, search engines will present information from your Web site in lists of matches to queries related to your text content. But they present that information in their format, not yours -- ignoring your branding rules. And if your page design includes tables or frames or java script, chances are good that the information may appear jumbled (in the wrong order) or truncated and incomplete.
Also, the search engines will match queries with specific individual pages at your site, rather than your home page. The user is their customer, not you the small business with information displayed on the WEb. Search engines will do their best to send their users straight to the information they want, rather than to the carefully constructed context that you built at your Web site by the way you organized your pages and links.
Also, search engines place value on and index best Web pages with lots of text information. Large text-heavy pages get more weight than small pages with pleasing graphic design. If search engine traffic matters to you (and it certainly should if you have a small business):
Low-Cost Ways to Get Search-Engine Traffic
If you value search engine traffic, you should make your Web pages as simple and informative as possible.
Practical Fixes -- Instead of Redesigning Your Whole Site
Perhaps the principles mentioned here make sense to you, but you are in no position to completely redesign your site. In that case, you might want to create mirror pages -- static html pages with the same text content as your present graphically designed search-engine-unfriendly pages. These mirror pages will also be "printer-friendly" and accessible by the blind, who use computer-based devices that convert text to voice and can "read" Web page text out loud.
My
Internet: a Personal View of Internet Business Opportunities
by Richard Seltzer, on CD, includes four books, 162 articles, and 49 newsletter
issues that will inspire you and provide the practical information you
need to build your own personal Web site or Internet-based business, helping
you to become a player in this new business environment.
Web
Business Boot Camp: Hands-on Internet lessons for manager, entrepreneurs,
and professionals by Richard Seltzer (Wiley, 2002).
No-nonsense guide targets activities that anyone can perform to achieve
online business
success.
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library for the price of a book.
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