[thelist] re: spam?

M. Seyon evoltlist at delime.com
Tue Oct 12 11:38:16 CDT 2004


Message from Robert Hanson (10/12/2004 10:57 AM)

>Clean this up a little, make it more friendly, etc; and use accurate
>numbers.  Then you'll have a good chance of getting linked.
>
>If you decide not to, I'll be forced to remove the link.  Please let me 
>know the url of the page with my link by Friday.

That's friendly? Sounds rather obnoxious and presumptuous to me and as a 
site owner I'd probably tell you of a nice, fairly dark space where you can 
house those 6000 visitors.

But then that's probably just an example you threw together in 30 seconds.

To the original poster, Alex, seems like you're still pushing for a quick 
and dirty solution to generating traffic. You got a lot of good feedback in 
your last thread titled "sending mail to someone youve never met before"[0] 
that essentially underlines the importance of individual relationships.

I met a former acquaintance yesterday and had a real quick talk about a 
website for his business. Last night I crafted an email to him as a quick 
follow-up. Took me about half an hour. I could have copy/pasted it from 
some cheesy email writing template. I'd rather take the time to tell the 
guy something useful.

I took a look at your site - deltatraffic. The name itself was a bit of a 
clue and I wasn't surprised to see:
"We can also help you:
Increase your visitor traffic
Extend your customer base
Sell products or improve your sales"

Funny what your number one priority is - "increase visitor traffic". In my 
opinion visitor traffic is not an objective. It's a means to an objective, 
but it seems you're treating it as such. I've got an image of a Jim Henson 
muppet running around, head waggling, exclaiming "Must increase traffic! 
Must increase traffic!" (use a Telly tone of voice for appropriate effect, 
wring hands periodically).

If traffic to a client's site is increased without some tangible reward, 
such as improving sales or increasing the customer base (note, not 
*potential* customer base), that's actually counterproductive to the client 
cause it means their site is consuming more bandwidth, more server power, 
etc, all of which cost money to maintain, with no returns.

The other two points listed are certainly valid. They should be 1 and 2 on 
that list. And, there are many ways to achieve increased sales and customer 
base. Yes, one is by pushing more people (increase traffic) at the store, 
but that's the brute force method and not always the best choice. Rather, 
I'm sure the client would be happier if rather than increasing traffic, you 
increased conversion rates of current traffic into paying customers.

Which brings me to a second point. Again, off your website,
"[We] concentrates on important areas of web design:
Usability
Web Standards
Keyword Focused Web pages"

I looked for the most important area of web design but I didn't see it 
mentioned. Know what I'm referring to? Rich, relevant, current CONTENT.

Does that mean you don't concentrate on it? Maybe cause you're too busy 
trying to find easy solutions to the traffic problem?

Or creating "keyword focuses web pages". Search engines don't buy products. 
People buy products. It is possible to go to far in optimising for search 
engines, to the point where your human users experience varying degrees of 
disutility.

Billboard marketers don't go to some obscure corner of the country and 
erect a billboard then hire traffic cops to funnel people toward their 
billboard. They find the high traffic areas and erect their signs there. 
And the reason those areas are high traffic is because they're places 
people need to, and want to be - they're important.

The analogy being, don't make your website obscure and irrelevant and then 
try to drive traffic to it. Make the site someplace people want or need to 
be. By producing valuable content.

And to answer your original question, is the "we liked your site" approach 
any good? No. It's a nuisance and a distraction and will only be paid any 
heed by site developers who are similarly desperate for traffic.

If, however, your site is the valuable and important one, people will be 
lining up to link TO YOU. Produce the content. The traffic will come. Really.

Oh and if you're still sold on the trawling around and harassing innocent 
web developers approach, you need to be more meticulous in your approach. 
Re-read the post by Christopher Mahan. [1]

[0] http://lists.evolt.org/archive/Week-of-Mon-20040927/thread.html#164791
[1] http://lists.evolt.org/archive/Week-of-Mon-20040927/164824.html

regards.
-marc

--
Trinidad Carnival in all its photographic glory. Playyuhself.com
http://www.playyuhself.com/


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