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Articles --
Banner ads are dead, long live online advertising
How businesses can capitalize on Java Puzzle Cards
Misconceptions about "search engine optimization"
New electronic texts -- from Gutenberg
The concept of banner ads was a natural follow-on to television advertising -- put your message in front of many people, who never asked to see it, and maybe enough of them will pay attention to give a boost to your business.
Like television advertising, banner ads are an unavoidable nuisance. Yes, the advertiser can target particular messages to particular audiences -- by Web site, by particular Web page, or even based on the visitor's actions (like what they looked for at a search engine). But the banner ad takes up screen space -- that otherwise could contain useful information -- slows the loading of pages, and seeks to divert the visitor's attention from the main purpose of the page.
Unlike television advertising, banner ads invite you to go away. The Web site displaying the ad has gone to considerable trouble to attract this audience, and now the banner ad tries to get them to go somewhere else. (This would be analogous to ads on television prompting you to change channels now.) Some sites are set up so clicking on a banner ad opens a separate Web browser window or a little java window. But in any case, it is a diversion, intended to lead the visitor down a new path to additional information and different experiences.
Users eventually learn to tune out banner ads, as evidenced by the fact that despite ever more flashy, high tech, dancing and prancing versions, they generate fewer and fewer click throughs.
Web site owners lose traffic when people do click through, and lose advertising revenue when they don't. In any case, they need to invest in more powerful technology and faster Internet connections in order to effectively display ever fancier banner ads and still provide the user with reasonable response time.
And advertisers are disappointed by the results -- too few people are paying attention to the messages.
So it's no wonder that banner ads are dying. The miracle is that they have persisted so long.
But the underlying capability of the Internet to inform and entertain and link people to people continues to be strong, opening myriad creative ways to present useful information and marketing messages.
One might say that the worst problem with banner ads was the fact that they worked too well to begin with -- diverting creative marketing and advertising people down that deadend path, when they could and should have been coming up new approaches that consumers would welcome and enjoy.
What, for example? Try javapuzzlecards. They recently launced their beta site at www.javapuzzlecards.com Advertising isn't its main purpose, but it could easily be used that way by creative marketers.
At this site, you can turn any digital image into an online jigsaw puzzle. You can easily add text to the image, so you have to put the pieces together (by clicking and dragging) to read the message.
People can create puzzles based on photos they've taken and send email to friends -- like with e-cards. The email has the URL where you see the puzzle pieces and assemble them. You could also make links to the URLs for particular puzzles from any Web page. For instance, a family page with photos could have links to puzzles based on some of those photos.
And companies can "rent" their own branded space on the javapuzzlecard site. Then they could brand their puzzle creation area and include advertising messages, if they like. And when people create their own puzzles there, the email messages they send could be branded and include messages. And the puzzle asembly area could be branded and include messages and links. These companies also could create their own puzzles with their own images and include associated links in messages they send out over their opt-in email lists. Assembling such puzzles is fun, and as you do so you naturally pay attention to the associated words, as clues to how to put them together, and the more pieces you put together the clearer the message becomes -- perhaps including a surprise twist of language or a joke. In this context, you are far more likely to remember the message, than if you just saw it in a banner ad.
For instance, you could promote sales of books with puzzles based on book covers, promote movies with puzzles based on posters, promote music CDs with puzzles based on the packaging, promote children's cartoons with puzzles based on cartoon characters and scenes, and promote video games with puzzles based on characters and screen shots.
Give it a try. Go to www.javapuzzlecards.com. Create puzzles using images and messages from your best print ads, email them to your colleagues, and get their ideas on how you might use this approach. Let your imagination run wild. Start taking advantage of the true power of the Internet.
Test and learn and imagine at the beta site
For free, anyone can create and send puzzle cards, using the beta site at www.javapuzzlecards.com This gives you an opportunity to try and enjoy the creation and solving of these puzzles yourself, to experiment creatively with this new app, and to share your creations with colleagues and customers to get their reactions,
Please keep in mind that this is "beta" software. It works great from a PC, but not yet from a Macintosh; and it also will not work behind a firewall. Those limitations should be fixed soon.
Basic features
You can turn any digital image into an online jigsaw puzzle.
You can easily add text to the image, so you have to put the pieces together (by clicking and dragging -- very slick) to read the message.
You just drag the pieces to assemble then. You don't need to flip or reorient any pieces, hence the puzzles are doable in a reasonable period of time.
When two pieces are once joined, they remain joined and move together when dragged (for smooth and pleasurable solving).
Business opportunities
Companies can "rent" their own branded space on the javapuzzlecard site. Then they can brand their puzzle creation area and include advertising messages, if they like. When people create their own puzzles there, the email messages they send could be branded and include messages. And the puzzle asembly area could be branded and include messages and links.
These companies also could create their own puzzles with their own images and include associated links in messages they send out over their opt-in email lists. Assembling such puzzles is fun, and as you do so you naturally pay attention to the associated words, as clues to how to put them together, and the more pieces you put together the clearer the message becomes -- perhaps including a surprise twist of language or a joke. In this context, you are far more likely to remember the message, than if you just saw it in a banner ad.
For instance, you can promote sales of books with puzzles based on book covers, promote movies with puzzles based on posters and promo graphics, promote music CDs with puzzles based on the packaging, promote children's cartoons with puzzles based on cartoon characters and scenes, and promote video games with puzzles based on characters and screen shots.
Possible extensions
Also, note that the site is now set up so puzzles must be emailed. Depending on demand, that could easily be modified so you could solve the puzzles you create immediately at the Web site, without the email step, as well.
Likewise, a timer could be added a timer, so users see how fast they assemble puzzles. Such capability would make it possible to hold contests, keeping records and offering rewards.
Today, puzzles are stored temporarily (for a few weeks). The site could be set up with the optional ability for users to store puzzles longer term.
Today's capability
The beta site runs on a multi-CPU Pentium. In that configuration, over a thousand users could send puzzle cards at the same instant.
Licensing opportunities
At this point, javapuzzlecards is offered only as a hosted/branded solution. If there is sufficient demand, it could also be offered on a licensed basis to companies that wish to integrate it with their existing Web site. This offering could include the availability of a technical team to help with the integration.
Target companies:
Ecard companies -- an add-on to their existing email-based greeting card business
Photos storage sites -- something fun to do with the photos people are storing)
Online stores that sell gifts -- e.g., someone who buys a book as a gift could have the option to email the recipient a puzzle-card based on the cover image of the book plus text written by the gift-giver, as a fun alert that the gift is coming. Such a mechanism could help turn gift recipients into future customers.
Jigsaw puzzle companies (an online extension of their real-world business)
Educational sites and sites that sell educational products, such as toys and books -- puzzle cards could become part of an educational and addictive children's play space, with a variety of puzzles to choose from, for instance with images of animals or cartoon characters with related text; and also with sequences of puzzles tied to lessons to be learned. The images could be based on packaging, covers, and illustrations of related products.
Companies that offer opt-in email services or that regularly use opt-in e-mail -- in additon to or instead of plain text and banner ads could send puzzles made from photos from movies or of products or celebrities, with marketing text and emailed over opt-in email lists.
Web sites dedicated to people who enjoy games and puzzles could hold puzzle card contests (with the puzzles related to the products they sell or advertise), or instead of banner ads could ask their visitors to solve puzzles (with marketing messages) as a condition for getting to free and useful content (such as game guides and cheat codes).
Sites providing services for auction sellers could incorporate this capability in their offerings so their members could easily add puzzles to their auction descriptions.
For further information and to discuss possible partnerships and pricing please contact Scott Cramer, cramer@crouton.com Remember, this business is just starting. Creative ideas are welcome.
Over the last couple weeks, I've been having an email conversation with a freelance writer in France. We first met when he opened a HumanClick chat session at my marketing page, and we've been exchanging messages by email ever since.
He's been paying a high price to have his Web site designed and maintained by a firm in England, and has not been getting much traffic. Typically, he asks me for advice, then forwards my answers to the design firm, which then replies, and I react to the reactions.
This three-way dialogue (paraphrased below) illustrates common misconceptions not only of Internet newcomers, but also of the design firms that serve them.
FREELANCE WRITER : My site isn't quite finished yet. I still have to add some of the articles that I have written, and I am waiting for the design firm to register my site with the relevant search engines.
ME: Search-engine registration something you should do yourself -- it is very simple (it's silly to pay someone to do it). And it's something you should keep on top of all time (e.g., submitting each and every one of your pages separately to AltaVista, and entering new and altered pages whenever you make changes).
Since your content is primarily text, you should design your pages yourself, as well. See my article on how to do that at www.samizdat.com/lowtech.html
Your current pages are pretty, but are virtually useless in terms of search engines -- so complex as to be search engine unfriendly. See my tutorial on search engines at www.samizdat.com/script/title.htm
You also should add much, much more content. Search engines only see text -- the more the merrier (I have over 1200 documents at my site, some of which are entire books). See my articles are content-based Internet marketing at www.samizdat.com/report.html and www.samizdat.com/advice.html
FREELANCE WRITER: My long-standing, but still to be realized, aim in life is to direct people towards my site -- and to pick up work accordingly.
ME: That's basically what I do. In October, I had over 100,000 page views. I'm averaging 1200-1500 unique visitors a day -- all because of my content. (No advertising).
In addition, there are the benefits of building a reputation, establishing and cementing contacts that could prove valuable later, etc.
About once every two weeks, I'm contacted by one reporter/writer or another who wants to interview me as part of an article because they found related material at my site. (Yesterday, one from a newspaper in Modesto, California, about online shopping.)
Also, not all the "wins" are represented in cash. E.g., I translated two books by a Russian officer (Alexander Bulatovich) about his experiences in Ethiopia around 1900 (from the Russian). I was unable to sell the translation to a book publishers. (The publishers all said that there was no market for anything about Ethiopia, regardless of its merit). I then posted the full text of both books at my Web site. I got interesting email from people all over the world (including a grad student in Poland, who then based her doctoral dissertation on my texts). Then I got a snailmail letter from an elderly professor in Addis Ababa (Professor Pankhurst), who is known as the number one guru on that period of Ethiopian history. Someone had found my translation on the Web and printed the whole thing out and given it to him. He said that this really "must" be published. Shortly thereafter I got email from a professor in Bremen, Germany, who happened to be the great-grandson of the Emperor Menelik II (mentioned in the books), who was adamant that they must be published, and even offered to help the wouldbe publisher financially. With those two messages as ammunition, I went back to an editor who had previously rejected the manuscript, and he almost immediately accepted it. It was finally published last summer. As this is an "academic" book, I'm paid in copies and reputation.
Also, a play that I wrote just after college, back in 1970, and that has never been performed (Without a Myth), I posted at my Web site. I was contacted by an independent theater group in Spokane, Washington, who wants to put it on. They've scheduled it for this December, in the main public theater in that city.
See my article about "flypaper" at www.samizdat.com/fly.html for more such anecdotes.
FREELANCE WRITER: This seems to be beyond my own skills - which was why I asked this firm to create a site for me. As far as I understand matters, there is nothing worse than simply have it out there - and not properly registered at search engines and working for you. Otherwise its kind of like a brochure or pamphlet, however beautifully produced, sitting out there in your draw. With no one ever seeing it.
ME: Yes, but you should and can do all that for yourself -- and you'd do a far better job of it. See, too, my article about how to publicize a Web site online at www.samizdat.com/public.html
DESIGN FIRM: Your site is search-engine friendly (as indeed is the database).
ME: Yes, your design firm has set up a very slick and attractive site for you, with .asp pages assembled from elements in databases, based on javascript. But the only text on these pages that search engines can "see" is the brief metatags. Everything else is buried in the database. This approach is totally search-engine unfriendly.
DESIGN FIRM: Your site does not necessarily need to "contain much much more content". Search engines work on a density method. The number of times words appear on a page determines the relevance and how it scores on an engine. Too high and the page will not be listed, too low and it may not be found.
ME: That is absolutely untrue. Search engines, like AltaVista, assign little or no value for repetition of words. Plus, keep in mind that only the text in the metatags of your pages is visible -- very very little text. AltaVista, in particular, gives more weight to pages that are rich is useful text.
DESIGN FIRM: Just adding content does not increase the relevance.
ME: I'm not talking about single-word or single-phrase relevance. Search engines only "see" text. The more text you have, the more likely that people searching for the kinds of content you have will see one of your pages in the list of matches. Most people type phrases and series of words -- not just a single word.
Factors affecting relevance/ranking include: do the query words appear in the HTML title or the first couple lines of text? how large is the page? (the larger the better). etc. You can read all about it in my tutorial at www.samizdat.com/script/title.htm
DESIGN FIRM: I have prepared pages before that have had less than 50 words and scored 99.5% on Infoseek!
ME: That's useless information. It doesn't matter what kind of score you get at one particular search engine for a particular single-word or single-phrase query. What matters is how much traffic you get.
DESIGN FIRM: Were you to publish every article in full, you risk people poaching it and claiming it as their own. This does happen, so is one reason why I suggested going down the route of giving short descriptions in the database and then giving the article in full on payment.
ME: If you are paranoid, you can do periodic searches of the Web for sentences from particular texts -- if someone steals your property, you can sue. But don't be naive. Anyone can take printed text and scan it or type it in and post that. (Material on the Web is no more vulnerable to stealing that any other published material.) And, of course, anyone anytime anywhere can simply paraphrase what you have written and thereby legally appropriate it. Those risks have been around a long time. What the Web does is open opportunities for you to reach a wider audience, to become better known, and especially to become better known by people who might want to hire you to write new material.
DESIGN FIRM: True Internet marketing is a long and expensive process. The page I mentioned earlier took 9 weeks to score with that relevance and about 10-20 hours of development (one page, one search keyword). So, to do the job really thoroughly costs a lot of money.
ME: That is wasted time and effort, and money thrown away.
DESIGN FIRM: You an go to firms that do it on the cheap through economies of scale, but even then you would look to pay £500 - £1000 just for one or two search words. Essentially, the whole process is more than just search engine relevance, though. It really depends on your target market. In your case, this is editors who I would doubt will go around search engines too often looking for writers. More so, writers will come to them. If you can contact an editor with a link to your professionally finished site, you stand a much higher chance than with a wordy or poorly designed site. The principle is the same as a CV - short, concise, factual, and relevant.
ME: Even the advice about the CV (resume) is wrong. On the Web, long resumes are much better, get many more search engine hits and hence get you much more visibility (if they are properly constructed.)
FREELANCE WRITER: I just went to Google and looked for "Freelance writer and journalist" and my site came up quite high on the list. This is what I was after, in the first instance.
ME:The likelihood that someone would search for that exact phrase "freelance writer and journalist" is very slim. The best metric is how much traffic you get and how much business you get from that. The best leads are the ones that come from people doing unexpected searches that match with your content, and you get more of that if you have lots of content available at your site.
DESIGN FIRM: I have designed your site to be search engine friendly, with a density to focus relevance as much as possible within the budget you had available, and have listed to a large number of search enginesm particularly the big eight which most people use (Yahoo, AltaVista, Infoseek, Google, etc). Unfortunately, this process does take time so the results may not be apparent very quickly. I am continuing to monitor them, though.
ME: He's playing on your ignorance of the Internet and bleeding you.
DESIGN FIRM: As I mentioned to you before though, I think the majority of your business is still going to come from sending short marketing e-mails to editors with a link back to your site.
ME: As I detailed for you, I get significant business from editors finding my articles at my site -- people and publications that I had never heard of.
DESIGN FIRM: Lastly, there is more than one way to skin a cat as they say. So his approach is one approach. However, there are others. The way search engines score changes almost monthly and it is a dynamic process, so paying money to score highly one month, does not mean you will still be there the next month. I subscribe to a group of researchers who look into this and how search engines change every month, then give recommendations on page design, marketing techniques, etc. It really is an industry that doesn't stand still by any means!
ME: Sure there's more than one way to approach a problem, but his way costs a lot and doesn't generate traffic. You're much better off doing this stuff yourself. (His score-keeping method is irrelevant to your needs.)
I presume that you want to leave your existing pages in place and that what we will be doing will be adding new content or mirrors of some of your current content in more search-engine-friendly form. That would be my preference. These new pages would be simple and unadorned.
FREELANCE WRITER: So what does a cyber-goon such as myself make of all of this? All I know is that I now have a web site and I want it to work for me - as yours does for you. That is why I thought that it would be a good idea to be personally tutored by you - so that I could learn the ropes first hand.
I also take your point about the knock-on, or secondary advantages, of the web site. As Mrs. Thatcher once memorably remarked, it's a funny old world. (That was just after she got thrown out as leader of the Conservative Party, having won three consecutive general elections...) You never know where a web page can lead you. Or what opportunities can crop up. As you explained very clearly in your last note.
Maybe you and my web design man are in fact saying the same thing in different ways. I really don't know.
ME: No. We are diametrically opposed. The design techniques he is using produce pages that are "pretty", but do not generate traffic. Search engines love text.
To get started, first, you need to be able to connect to your site by ftp (file transfer protocol). (If you don't have it already, there's free software called ws_ftp that you can pick up from just about any large shareware site, like www.download.com and www.tucows.com). The automated database-driven system that your design firm has set up makes it impossible for you to do the kinds of things I recommend.You want a Web hosting service that allows you to simply upload your pages -- without a preset structure. What the design firm has set up for you takes control out of your hands, makes you dependent on them for running the site.
FREELANCE WRITER: I more or less told the chap what I wanted from the outset -- colours etc. -- and he put it together.
ME: I'm sure he gave you exactly what you asked for. The problems are: 1) you didn't know what to ask for, and 2) the techniques he used to produce the pages
If it were possible to upload new pages to your site using ftp, and if it were possible for you to directly edit the pages that are already there, then we could do good things.
In that case, I would recommend:
ME: You simply want to take charge of your own site.
Adding dozens of new titles every month, Gutenberg has over 3000 etexts available for free over the Internet. These include classic works of literature and history, as well as out-of-print and little-known works by great authors. If you can, connect by ftp, rather than the Web, to get the most recent ones. Here's a list of those recently added, alphabetized by author. The file name is useful for fetching the text from the ftp site. Unless otherwise noted, the directory is the one for 2001. Text for earlier years are corrected editions. Many of these texts are available now or will be soon on diskette from PLEASE COPY THIS DISK for those who cannot get them themselves. For the current catalog, check http://www.samizdat.com/catalog.html.
Victor Appleton -- Tom Swift and His Airship (03tom10.txt)
Aristophanes --
Richard Harding Davis --
Max Farrand -- The Fathers of the Constitution (fathc10.txt)
Sydney Fisher -- The Quaker Colonies (quake10.txt)
James Elroy Flecker -- Forty-Two Poems (42pom10.txt)
Henry Jones Ford -- The Cleveland Era (cleve10.txt)
Robert Frost --
Anna Katharine Green -- The Golden Slipper (gslpr10.txt)
Lucretia Hale -- The Peterkin Papers (petpa10.txt)
William Harben -- The Land of the Changing Sun (lcsun10.txt)
Thomas Hardy --
Burton Hendrick -- The Age of Big Business (agebb10.txt)
Homer -- The Iliad (trans. Andrew Lang) (iliab10.txt)
Emerson Hough -- The Passing of the Frontier (passf10.txt)
William Dean Howells -- An Open-Eyed Conspiracy (opney10.txt)
Ellsworth Huntington -- The Red Man's Continent (redma10.txt)
Rudyard Kipling -- Stalky & Co. (stlky10.txt)
Allen Johnson -- Jefferson and his Colleagues (jandc10.txt)
Andrew Lang -- The Orange Fairy Book (orang10.txt)
Jesse Macy -- The Anti-Slavery Crusade (ascru10.txt)
Theodor Momsen (in German) -- Roemische Geschichte (1momm10.txt)
John Moody -- The Railroad Builders (rroad10.txt)
William Morris --
Frederic Austin Ogg -- The Old Northwest, a Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond (oldno10.txt)
Samuel Orth --
Charles Reade -- Hard Cash (hardc10.txt)
Rafael Sabatini -- The Tavern Knight (tavrn10.txt)
Sir Walter Scott -- The Lady of the Lake (llake10.txt)
E.T. Seton -- Wild Animals I Have Known (wldam10.txt)
William Shepherd -- Hispanic Nations of the New World (hispn10.txt)
Nathaniel Stephenson -- The Day of the Confederacy (dayco10.txt)
Anthony Trollope -- Last Chronicle of Barset (lacob10.txt)
Charlotte Yonge -- (ltduk10.txt)
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