Apologies for the lack of posts, I picked up a severe case of gastroenteritis on the weekend so I basically spend the whole of Easter out of commission. Just about recovered now but it’s been a little mad catching up with emails etc. I will definitely try and write something more interesting tomorrow when I catch up.
Archive for April, 2006
A change of direction for a mini-site
I’ve been working on a mini-site for a while for promoting an electronic book that I put together. The book itself lists a load of hidden extra features (Easter Eggs) on DVD’s. Originally I planned to sell the book through the website bust so far that strategy has been somewhat less than successful.
Today I decided to try and do something different with the book, I’m going to offer it absolutely free on the website for two reasons.
- It will hopefully be a good viral marketing tool for my main DVD website www.dvdlard.co.uk.
- I hope to capture the email address of all those that download it and at some point in the future I can try and sell them version 2 or other products.
I’ve no idea if this strategy will be any more successful, but you never know unless you try. One thing I’ve learned the hard way recently (something I’ll write about when I can face it) is that people are far happier to have something for free than for even a tiny token amount of money. Here’s a link to the mini-site if your interested:
One Man And His Grizzly
I watched a documentary film last night called Grizzly Man. It’s about a guy named Timothy Treadwell who spent every summer for years living out in Alaska with Grizzly Bears. He’d convinced himself that he was safe among them and that they wouldn’t harm him, right up until the point where one of them ate him. It’s a bit of an odd film, narrated and directed by director Werner Herzog, most of the film footage is real video that Treadwell took with the bears. There’s some amazing footage there with some real close up experiences with the bears and some particularly friendly wild foxes. The guy was clearly not playing with a full deck though as he seemed convinced that the bears had accepted him into their world. Watching the video it’s clear that the bears tolerated him at best with indifference and at worst just saw him as being a bit skinny for a good meal.
The saddest part of the film was the poor woman that he somehow convinced to come along with him and was also eaten and the people who cared deeply for him that he left behind.
An unusual film, but well worth a look just to see how strongly people can believe in their convictions when suicidal danger is staring them in the face. Here’s a link to the DVD if you’re interested: http://www.amazon.co.uk/
Update on the newsletter subscriptions
In my last post I spoke of changing my newsletter subscriptions to make them easier for people to subscribe. Well the result of the change has been far greater than I expected. On the old system I would get probably one signup every few days. Since I changed it I must have had around eighty signups in just three days. Also by adding some option boxes on the confirmation page, at least 30% of all subscribers are also signing up to at least one other newsletter.
It’s amazing just how much difference one or two little tweaks to a page can make.
Newsletters and Site Traffic
On one of my sites I have a selection of newsletters available but only to registered users. I’m sure that the process of registration puts some people off just signing up for the newsletters. So today I separated the newsletters out from the registration and put a simple ‘Enter Your Email Address’ type form on each of the content pages. Hopefully this should generate a few more newsletter subscriptions.
I think newsletters are a really important feature for a site despite all of the problems with spam blockers etc. Even with the fairly limited subscribers I have right now, I still see a spike in traffic whenever a newsletter is sent out.
Are Web Directories Worth It?
Every day I post my sites to one or two web directories. I don’t post to too many at a time as I don’t want too many links going to the search engines at once. I have to say though that I’m beginning to wonder if it’s worth all the work.
I’ve been doing this for a while now and looking at the results, I’m just not convinced that it’s making much of a difference. I’ve no doubt that I’ll keep plodding away at it just in case, but I do wonder if the likes of Google have started to give these sorts of inbound links lower priority.
By they way, if your looking for a list of SEO friendly directories, then look no further than http://info.vilesilencer.com/
My blog is mainly about programming in .Net 2, website promotion and affiliate marketing although I do have the odd ramble on about anything that comes to mind.
