Recent Discussions

Some advise, folks?

13th May 1999      Bad Rajiv @hotmail.com

Hi all

I'm looking for some advise on building a web based business.

I make cotton bags. I've made a website and put it up www.badlani.com/bags/ 
with pictures, details and a price list. Now, I'd like some help with making 
this presence effective.

1. I've made meta tags as well as I could, but can't seem to get a good 
ranking on most search engines (except on Altavista where I ranked No.11). 
Any advise?

2. How do I find usenet (never used it, have no idea what it is) to find 
people who might be interested in importing cotton bags? Or newsgroups 
(don't know much about those either. I know where to get a list of 
newsgroups, but have no idea how to find the relevant ones).

3. If any of you can spare a few moments and look at my site and suggest how 
I might improve it, I would be very grateful.

4. All thoughts and suggestions are very welcome.

Thanks so much all.

My warmest regards,

Rajiv K. Badlani

14th May 1999      Subhendu Sen @indnet.net

Hello (Bad?) Rajiv,

Search engines are crazy....nobody knows their rules particularly, at the 
same time each of them has separate sets of rules. One of the rules is, 
paid placement... I really don't know, who takes how much. But, GoTo.Com 
displays how much they charge. It's something ranging from $0.02 to $0.1 
per display of keywords selected by you.

Please do not try to spam search engines (including Alta Vista), they may 
ban your url.

Though placements in search engines are very important, only 5% traffic is 
built through them. There are various other ways to successfully market 
your product/service on the internet. You should take advice of an 
experienced marketing person specialised in internet marketing. Pls 
remember, marketing on the internet is entirely different from marketing 
through other media.

Search the internet to learn about what are the different ways available to 
promote your website. You'll find useful suggestions and links free of 
cost. Try them one-by-one or all at a time.

You have to be sincere and devote enough time to popularise your website to 
sell products as you do for your 'real-life' business. Please know that, 
it's more tough to market on the internet though it costs a small price (or 
nothing) than that of a real-life business.

For submitting to usenets, you have to agree to accept mails from them too. 
Many of them do not allow commercial postings.

Hope this helps,

Regards

Subhendu Sen

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15th May 1999      Vani Murarka @manaskriti.com

Firstly, a few general points regarding web promotion.

If you have a site, give its URL in all your stationery.

Have a signature file - a free, effortless, and sometimes quite 
effective way of bringing relevant visits. A signature file is some 
predefined lines which gets automatically attached to the end of all 
email that you send. Most email clients/services have the facility to 
define one or more signature files - hotmail too.

> 
> 1. I've made meta tags as well as I could, but can't seem to get a good 
> ranking on most search engines (except on Altavista where I ranked No.11). 
> Any advise?
> 

Its a big world out there - the internet is huge - the popular search 
engines are huge. Plus, each search engine has its own idiosyncrasies 
and approach to indexing. So firstly, trying to get one's site ranked 
high is not always a practical thing to run after.

One thing - use different and relevant titles in each of your pages and 
submit each page to search engines that allow submission of multiple 
pages of a site (for eg. infoseek)

> 2. How do I find usenet (never used it, have no idea what it is) to find 
> people who might be interested in importing cotton bags? Or newsgroups 
> (don't know much about those either. I know where to get a list of 
> newsgroups, but have no idea how to find the relevant ones).
> 

The direct way to access usenet is via NNTP servers - but this is a 
roundabout way for VSNL subscribers for the lack of access to a stable 
NNTP server. You can access most of usenet via www.dejanews.com - one 
can search for relevant usenet newsgroups on the site and subscribe to 
them.

www.reference.com was also a very good resource - but I am not sure how 
uptodate they are.

HTH

Vani


_____________________________________________________________
 Vani Murarka                          
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