DAY # 231

UPDATE: Saturday, 04-Feb-2006 3:01 PM

Just a typical Saturday waiting on a programmer to log on and chat. I was looking over the items that I got done over the week and www.maxsimo.com got updated. Now I am ready to update the data collection pages on the site in the coming week.

Secondly, www.autoreferrals.com also got updated, and in the future I will add some real-time stats to the site and some testimonials. That's it. The site will be kept very simple, and from the ADMIN area I will focus on the AUTO*Referrals link to display "ADVERTISING NETWORK" such as FREE AD DEPOT that got added last week.

Most of the spear time that I have online, I spend looking for advertising tools that can spread the Maxsimo.NET message. Ironically, the more our network is used, the more it advertises itself, so, my number one objective is to improve the network, and then the products, services --collectively the applications take care of itself and generate the advertising necessary for success.

I think the word is familiarity. Online surfers will become familiar with the network and use the tools to achieve their objectives. And that is when our success will take off. I think that is soon enough. I'll just keep focusing on the tools that we need to have when that time comes.

POINT MADE: POINT EXCERCIED ... ANOTHER IMPROVEMENT

One of the points that I made last year, or at the very beginning of 2006 was that on a nearly daily basis I would improve this site. My idea was to make a positive change on a daily basis knowing that I would be hear with nearly 300 daily updates this year. That meant that IF I just made 200 very minor upgrades and 90 modest upgrades and just 10 major upgrades, where would the site be? Where would my ideas take me? In short this would be a "super site" that I would tell everyone about.

Even at this time, I keep seeing minor items here and there that I want to change and improve. Just yesterday I mentioned the ineffectiveness of p31.net, the FORUM site that I have setup.

Today I decided to make another change. One of the items that had bugged me time after time was the situation where I had to go back a day to change the link at the bottom from a "non-link" to one that linked to the next day. In the past when I publish a link, I have to go back and change the previous day's link and 'activate' the last days link to the next day. I got a better idea.

The new idea is to publish a template of the next blog day and keep that there IF someone clicks on the next day at the bottom. That way I don't have to come back to this page and update it. I can just go on to the next day (in this case day 232) and update that page. The actual date does not matter. It's whenever I get to it. It can be tomorrow (a Sunday, most likely) or it can be Monday or whatever day I get to it.

So, DAY 232 will have the DAY and some other text but it will have my full blog text only when I update it at a later time. Until then I don't have to bother with it, nor will I have to go back and tend to old pages.

Ok, that's solved.

Ok, still waiting. It helps to do something, as working with a global team at times takes up a lot more time than one can have. In my case I try to keep planning and timing accurate, but with the ego's and schedules that I have to keep with, that is not easy.

Anyway, on to more points:

One of the key marketing techniques I have been testing is the effectiveness of e-mail. I must say that from my initial mailings I have found out that the effectiveness is *non* existent when the mailing is via a service to a general list. For example, there are many services out there that allow mailings to their members, but select members. I have found out that these type of mailings are useless.

The only time an e-mail list is of any value is when you have a list that is built entirely on ones own effort over time and then mailed to on a weekly or even several times weekly.

Another technique I have seen webmasters attempt is to get a list that is said to be "double opt-in" and then use it to build a starting block of a mailing list. The problem with that is that often "double opt-in" lists are fed (or infused) with SPAM fighting email addresses. You may not have heard about his, but what has been done over and over is that the many SPAM fighting organizations have been 'feeding' entrapping email addresses into the so called lists for years. Then those lists get sold and sold and on and on.

The end result is that legitimate "opt-in" lists get mixed up with the so called "opt-in" lists and in the end no one can tell a good list from another, unless they build it by themselves or they used a reputable, and very expensive source to get the list.

In my case I have tried about two years ago to build a large list using several "opt-in" list from a seller, and I quickly got our main domain blacklisted quickly.

So, when building a list or mailing to pre-organized lists, there are TWO DON'T's and ONE YES.

The two "DO NOT" do items are:

Don't mail to lists that are generated by services that mail to their members on a daily or multiple daily times. These lists mail too often and the readers just 'tune out' the mass of email that they get.

The second DO NOT is to buy "opt in" type of lists from list brokers and then proceed to mail to them. You'll find out that often these lists are "infused" with SPAM entrapping addresses that go directly to SPAM fighting organizations. Before you can finish sending out the entire mailing, several of these organizations will put your domain on their blacklist and then proceed to distribute that list to their members who also automatically block your mailings.

Well, above is the bad news!

There is some good news. What you want to do is follow all the techniques of building your own list. I can assure you that building your own list and mailing to that email list on a weekly basis works.

I will talk about some of the best list building techniques during the month. Hope you're having a good weekend. Carpe Diem, Sam.

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