Slashdot Mirror

If I need "product information", I will find it - ironically - on Google. The difference is that I'll be looking for it, instead of getting it shoved down my throat, willingly or otherwise.

Even from an advertiser perspective, Google's system sucks. On the forums for "search engine optimization", one discovers that ad clicks from Google search results tend to result in sales, while ad clicks from Google ads on non-Google sites (what Google euphemistically calls the "Google Content Network") don't. 50% of ad clicks come from 10% of the user base, and that 10% doesn't buy anything.

Google ads on non-search pages aren't that valuable to advertisers. So why are there so many of them? Because they're opt-out for the advertiser. Many Google advertisers have ads on the "content network" only because they haven't found the hidden button on Google's screens for opting out, as an unhappy Google advertiser reports: "I am running many Google ads and their CTR is around 10%-15% for search page impressions; However the CTR on the content network is 0.02%! I can exclude my ads appearing on certain sites however at the bottom of the URL list it states "Other Domains" which have a total CTR of 0.01% with well over 300,000 impressions in a month! This is driving my overall CTR down massively! If I can not view these sites and choose to exclude them...I need to opt out of all content based placements immediately. How can I do this?"

Also see "Good Reasons to Avoid Content Targeting: "The AdWords user interface misleads new advertisers. Industry consensus suggests that content targeting ought to be used selectively and one should bid lower on content than on search inventory. This is because ads on content inventory tend to convert at a lower rate than ads on search inventory. But when you walk through Google's campaign setup, you find that you've been automatically opted into the content network at the same high bid as your search campaigns."

Much of the "bottom feeder" problem on the Web comes from this one trick of Google's.

We measure some of this at SiteTruth, and some of the results are here.

Isn't a wiki and is this. Humm, viral marketing from a "web marketing today" site.

While others smarter than I have attempted to rename it, to somehow domesticate and tame it, I won't try. The term "viral marketing" has stuck.

The medium that carries your marketing message must be easy to transfer and replicate: e-mail, website, graphic, software download.

What proliferated "Netscape Now" buttons in the early days of the Web? The desire to be cool. Greed drives people. So does the hunger to be popular, loved, and understood.

Ewww & eek! Funny/scary reading this kind of stuff from a maketing ... person....

Here's a study about it http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt6/html-email-fonts.htm

That's not a study so much as a survey. He asked which people liked the look of better. And honestly, would you take design advice from a guy who run an ugly site and calls himself "Doctor" butwon't say what his degrees are in or where he got them from?

Here's a study about it http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt6/html-email-fonts.htm

That's not a study so much as a survey. He asked which people liked the look of better. And honestly, would you take design advice from a guy who run an ugly site and calls himself "Doctor" butwon't say what his degrees are in or where he got them from?

Here's a study about it http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt6/html-email-fonts.htm

That's not a study so much as a survey. He asked which people liked the look of better. And honestly, would you take design advice from a guy who run an ugly site and calls himself "Doctor" butwon't say what his degrees are in or where he got them from?

Here's a study about it http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt6/html-email-fonts.htm (Google is your friend).

*chuckles* Quite the contrary. Or maybe not.
It seems that people have a much harder time reading sans-serif fonts on paper than serif fonts. On the computer screen, however, the opposite applies.
Here's a study about it http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt6/html-email-fonts.htm (Google is your friend).
And this is a quote from the Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serif#Usage:
"The coarse resolution of computer screens has caused a reassessment of the role of serifs in readability, with a large percentage of web pages employing sans-serif type for body text. Fonts with hinting information, anti-aliased rendering and the ClearType rendering technology has partially mitigated these concerns, yet the basic problem of coarse resolution--typically 100 pixels per inch or less--continues to impose strict limitations on readability and legibility on-screen." And yes, in the end, it boils down to personal preferences.

The fact of the matter is that most studies (e.g. this one) find a large percentage of users find Georgia easier to read than Times. Certainly it fits the description of easily read fonts from the article better than Times does.

But I'll grant that, in the end, it *is* a matter of preference, and familiarity with a font does aid readability, I believe, so perhaps for many Times is better.

http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/feb99.asp

http://www.accordmarketing.com/tid/archive/websafe fonts.html

Why do you think books use serif fonts? Because they are faster and easier to read.

Yes, but print is different from screens because it has a much higher resolution. In a high resolution medium (print) serifs help readability; in a low resolution medium (most computer screens) the added complexity of serifs hinders readability.

See e.g. Use sans-serif face for all body copy or HTML E-Mail: Text Font Readability Study and form your own opinion.

JP

You definitely didn't make up the term "viral marketing". Typing it into the address bar of firefox took me to this page. And of course it is the right term to describe this phenomenon.


on a completely unrelated note, i just realized how much fun that keyword feature in firefox could be. *goes to type in own name*

The website and any related materials is most likely put together by a marketing agency. It's what they call "viral marketing:" http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-principles.htm and it has been done many times before. For example, http://www.beta-7.com/.

I can't believe people here are so easy to fool...

Ummm.. You ever hear of HTML email, without which we'd have whacky unstandard ways to send colored text? Ever heard of ~/.mailcap , which allows mailreaders to not have to be able to parse and display every willy-nilly format out there? (for the record, my personal favorite for viewing HTML email, if it wasn't clear from the above link, is mutt+w3m, except for the aforementioned bug).

Maybe this is an attempt at Viral Marketing

but it's going to be a little harder for other types of advertising where new products or companies are trying to convince you to buy their products or services. The "why should I buy" part.

One thing that advertisors are trying in order to cope with the unimaginable (to them) loss of advertising revenues because of the "infiltration" of a new "alien" DVR technology is something called "Viral Marketing".

See that pretty girl at the bar? She's smiling at you and asking you to light her cigarette. The conversation quickly turns to...cigarettes and how great the brand is that she's smoking. By now your ego is feeling pretty good and you feel the adrenaline rush of "being hit on". She's actually a sales woman simulating a social envirnoment in order to sell you the cigarette she's smoking!

Walking to your job in New York City and you bump into a handsome young couple who are "from the midwest" (so they claim). They ask you take a picture of them with their "hot new picture taking cell phone". You use it, think it's cool and a brief discussion ensues about how cool this new gadgetry is.

You go to Starbucks and there's a handsome (see a pattern here?) young fellow playing a video game on his laptop. He's really into it, making a bit of a show of what he's doing. He's using an amazing looking "cyber glove" to play the game. "Would you like to try it out?" says he. Next thing you know, you're playing the game with the glove and asking where you can buy the same thing. "I got mine at Best Buy" he says, but "you can get them just about anywhere electronics are sold".

Of course, I personally think that you'd have to be a bit of a twit to actually fall for this sort of thing. The reports I've seen on TV make the whole affair seem pretty darn artificial. But I also have no doubt that this sort of thing will work on a certain precentage amount of the population. It strikes me as more than a bit disgusting and shows just how low advertisers are willing to sink.

• http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/usability/textfontcss. html
• http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt6/html-email-fonts.htm
• http://www.hfe.org/resource/articles/fonts.htm

I'll start by saying that you don't want to minimize the number of unpaid for copies, you want to maximize the number of copies that make you money. Those aren't the same thing.

I'm a little unsure of how much income you'd make, by, for instance, putting it all up on a multipage web site with banner ads. If you could get enough page views it might be worth it (apparently you need around 30 page views to make a dollar - beats me if that's accurate.)

Personally, I prefer to read my books on paper, but I have been know to kill a few hours reading things on the internet. You might want to make the book available for download in multiple formats (pdf, plaintext, whatever) in addition to having the whole thing available online in html. That way, people could read the whole thing - and generate page views, or they could download it. I'd only put a few chapters online at a time, so that people would have to return - but I wouldn't make it so anyone had to wait more than a week to download the entire thing.

Of course, this would probably work better once your site develops some brand recognition, and you have multiple works availble. Possibly even works by other authors, and/or in various genres. Add in an online order form for getting the deadtree editions, and some Venture Capital, who knows?

That's the simplest answer I can give - be creative!

I can assure you that success didn't come to Slashdot overnight, or easily. There is no one way to do it. Think of all the bands out there who get a record deal, have a record company spend money on them, but never really get mcuh fame or fortune. Quite simply, you must have a product which when found, will cause people to return or to tell their friends about it.

Given that you probably believe in your own site, what else can you do apart from Search engine advertising?

Always have a link in your .sig for emails, newsgroups, email etc.

Find appropriate newsgroups and mention your site (the key here is *appropriate* - don't spam)

Have a "Mail this to a friend" button on your site.

A newsletter will ensure that people come back to your site - all my favourite sites have nwesletters which drag me back when there is new content of interest.

Think viral marketing! What can you make your site do that helps spread the message. For instance, Geocities had a message saying "Get free email at Geocities.com" at the bottom of every mail their users sent out. (More info here - http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/vi ral-principles.htm)

That's some starting pointers. The important thing is to be realistic. Is your site *really* something that people will want to return to? Otherwise you should be content with fairly low numbers of visitors.



"Give the anarchist a cigarette"