October 2002

Hi,
October is full of information for Software Developers take a look at this month's Software Marketing News

AFFILIATE PROGRAMS
**************************
E-Sellerate has recently launched a new affiliate program for developers. From an affiliate perspective I found their database very easy to search through.
Details

Valuable internet discussions about affiliates, vendors, 3rd party tracking companies, who is good, and who isn't. Lots of valuable information about morpheus and "commission stealing".
more info

Forum from the Internet Affiliate Marketing Association - membership is free
more info

BUSINESS.COM
**************************
Does anyone really want to hear my business.com woahs, if so read on? Here is a summary of my experience. Having many sites we decided to list do a test run on business.com and see what kind of traffic it brought. I initially signed up for 3 sites ($ 99.00 for each listing). To simplify things I created a single account and listed all sites under one account. *None* of the sites were associated or even similar in content. Business.com changed the title of all the listings to NotePage (only 1 site related to NotePage).

I had 5 email exchanges and 2 phone calls requesting they fix it. All I wanted was the site title to be the same as the domain name -- sadly it *still* is not the way I had requested. I've given up, as I've already wasted far too much time on it already.

In addition my last logs did not reflect any referrals for business.com. I had intended to try their PPC optimization, but at this point I'm quite discouraged. Perhaps others have had better luck but at this point I'd have to give business.com a thumbs down.
more info

SEARCH ENGINE TIPS
**************************
HOTBOT & INKTOMI - both consider keywords found in your comment TAG: <!--//search engine tips//--!>. According to what I've read comment tags can improve your ranking. Inktomi is also still paying attention to the keyword meta tag, be sure to include common misspellings in your tags!

ALTAVISTA - AltaVista also appears to be giving big sites that have the keyword phrase on many of their subpages an advantage over sites that have similar link popularity, but don't contain the search phrase on many pages within their site. To rank highly with this new algorithm try to imagine that AltaVista is indexing the entire site into one big HTML file. Then, look at how the keyword density and distribution compares to other sites when you look at them as one big file as well. Alta Vista is also one of the only search engines that conducts "case sensitive" searches, meaning that matches may differ based on the capitalization of the search terms, keep this in mind when optimizing content, descriptions, and title tags.

FINDWHAT - Findwhat is allowing its customers to port over their PPC listings to Lycos' network. The PPC listings went into effect on September 24 and are similar to the box listings that appear on google at the right of the listings. Lycos will continue to serve its first 3 search listings from Overture (listed with regular search listings).

MORE ON WEB POSITION GOLD
**************************
As I mentioned in previous newsletters I upgraded to the latest version of WPG, well I failed to mention is how quick the submissions were running, with all of our sites I was really impressed with the incredible speed. This week I found out why the submissions were so quick - I had not defined keywords in WPG for many of the sites in our submission portfolio, thus the sites were all failing. They were not submitting any messages during each scheduled run. While I still think WPG v2 is great and worth the investment this is worth a mention. If you are runnung WPG, check your logs!!!!
more info

NEWSLETTER MANAGEMENT & DISTRIBUTION
****************************
An easy way to increase customer loyalty, make additional sales and to communicate with your customers is through occasional Newsletters. Here are some resources you may find helpful:

Some tips Writing Newsletters

Software to manage Newsletter distribution

@#$^%#$!* POPUPS
****************************
Are Popups driving you crazy, hampering your ability surf the web? A number of popup killers have become popular, take a look at some of our favorites.
more info

CONFERENCES
**************************
Columbus Schmooze 2002 - The Columbus, Ohio Schmooze is schedule for this the weekend of October 18 - 20, 2002! This Schmooze will be the last year, this event will be held in Ohio, I understand it will be moving to Texas next year. If you happen to be in the Ohio area or are looking for a weekend getaway consider attending.
more info

European Shareware Conference 2002 - The theme of this year's european conference is "Opening Doors Across Cyberspace" the ESWC 20002 will be held in Cologne, Germany on November 8-9, 2002. The conference combines the wit and experience of American companies and authors with a genuine European blend of people's minds. The EWSC is a forum for authors designed by authors. more info

REGISTRATION FORUM
**************************
Forum's specifically for registration service discussions.
more info

SITE OF THE WEEK
*****************************
Take a look at this week's site of the week! Spam Agent is a great way to eliminate spam! Make managing your email easier by having spam filtered based on your preferences.
more info

NEW SITES WORTH MENTIONING
*****************************
Instant Messaging Software - http://www.instant-messaging-software.com
Call Center Software - http://www.call-center-software.com
Hospital Software - http://www.hospital-software.com

OLD NEWS
****************************
Many developers have expressed an interest in reading previous newsletters since the link is a bit buried I thought I would include it in the newsletter. www.softwaremarketingresource.com/articledirectory.html scroll to the bottom for newsletters! Thank you for your continued interest in softwaremarketingresource.com
Sharon Housley
Software Marketing Resource - http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com
NotePage, Inc. - http://www.notepage.net
Trusted Messaging - http://www.trusted-messaging.com
Monitoring-Software - http://www.monitoring-software.net
Messaging-Software - http://www.messaging-software.com
Mobile Phone Software - http://www.mobile-phone-software.com