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deve |
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saintly |
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thanks for the links |
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A 2? A *2*? *sniff* |
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[08-08-2000] deve : Dear Experts:
I am looking for ways to promote my start-up company and its Free Stock Program without engagin in spamming. Please contact me with any resources you may know of to contact the general populace regarding this opportunity.
The web site is currently underdevelopment, but functional. You can reach me at ExpertCentral or at deve@deve.cc
Thank you,
Aaron de Oliveira
Deve Incorporated
http://www.deve.cc
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[08-08-2000] saintly : The most important thing you can do is to register yourself with
several search engines. Most people use one of the following to
find information on the net:
General search engines:
http://www.altavista.com/
http://www.lycos.com/
http://www.google.com/
Internet directories:
http://www.excite.com/
http://www.yahoo.com/
And advertising:
http://www.doubleclick.com/
My advice to you would be to create or pay for a well-crafted web page, with a broad array of services and products and submit it for review to yahoo & excite. Listings with them are difficult to obtain (you have to have a very well-written site), but can draw a lot of business. Since it is your main point of contact with the public, it shouldn't look amateurish or sloppy. Try to follow some of the style guides;
http://webdevelopersjournal.com/books/sizzling_web_site_design.html
Laura Lemay's guide to Sizzling web site design
http://iamzen.home.att.net/designc.html
Zen's web site design guides
Make sure your site is also registered with altavista, lycos and google to catch people who are specifically looking for services you offer.
If you have the money to pay for it, or can raise the venture capital, you could also advertise through Doubleclick. Doubleclick targets advertisements to people who are most likely to be interested and their banner ads span most major sites on the Internet.
I'm glad you've chosen not to spam. Spamming annoys 99.9% of the people you send it to, and generates only a tiny amount of business, very little of it from people with the money or desire to purchase your product. It usually is the best way to lose your internet account and have your web page pulled off the site.
It is much, much more beneficial in the long run (and establishes more respect for your business) if you don't try to contact the general public directly, but instead let them find you.
I know it is very difficult to resist the temptation when you're just starting your own business. You have an excellent new product that you know people will like, but you just need to get the word out to people.
Sites that provide extremely good services, like Amazon.COM and Ebay started out with NO advertising besides word-of-mouth (and registering with search engines & directories). You will probably have to have a second source of income for the meantime while your site grows. It's unfortunately a natural part of any business life cycle.
If you have enough money, you can try to jump-start the process through advertising. I'm sure you know all about that... it's expensive but the best way to get the word out during the agonizing growth period. If you have a good enough product, you can raise several million by presenting it to venture capitalists and banks who may agree to take a risk and provide the money for advertising, but it takes a very good salesman to accomplish that.
I'm sorry I don't have the answer you may be hoping for. There is just no quick, easy and cheap solution to getting the word out to people. If there was, every start-up company would certainly be taking it.
Please let me know if I can help with any of this or in another way.
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