Internet Resources for Chapter 22

I have included a few resources for you to check out regarding e-zines.
For additional resources on a variety of topics, visit the Resources section
of my Web site at http://www.susansweeney.com/resources.html.
There you will find additional tips, tools, and techniques.
BestEzines
http://www.bestezines.com/ezines/master.shtml
Directory of e-zines organized by category. A great site to find e-zines to
reach your target market.
The Book of Zines
http://www.zinebook.com
Dynamite site with tons of links to e-zines, advice on developing your
e-zine, reviews, interviews, how-to section, newly noted, and zine tips.
TEAM LinG - Live, Informative, Non-cost and Genuine!
362 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
Ecola Newsstand
http://www.ecola.com
Ecola Newsstand has more than 8,400 magazines, newspapers, and
publications. There are more than 100 categories of magazines from
which to choose.
Ezine-Universe
http://ezine-universe.com
Ezine-Universe is a great directory of e-mail-based e-zines.
InfoJump
http://www.infojump.com
Browse a huge directory of e-zines by category.
List City’s Book of E-zines
http://www.list-city.com/ezines.htm
A list of e-zines organized by category that accept paid advertising as
well as all the details and contact information for each e-zine.
MediaFinder
http://www.mediafinder.com
A national directory of magazines with details on target audience, publisher,
contact, telephone numbers, Web addresses, e-mail addresses,
editorial descriptions, issue frequency, and subscription price. In many
cases, an information request form is attached should you want further
details. Great resource!
Ezine Directory
http://www.ezine-dir.com
The Ezine Directory lists over 2,400 of the best e-mail newsletters available
on the Internet today. Search, browse, or add your e-zine for free!
TEAM LinG - Live, Informative, Non-cost and Genuine!
Web Rings as a Promotion Tool 363
363
23
Web Rings as a Promotion Tool
Web rings provide a different way to organize sites. They are a free
service offered to the Internet community. Web rings arrange sites with
similar content by linking them together in a circle, or a ring. Each link
in the ring is directed to a CGI script on the Web ring’s server that sends
the viewer on to the next site in the ring. There are literally thousands of
rings with subjects such as communications, games, art, real estate, and
so on. If there isn’t a ring suitable for your site, you can create your
own. The types of visitors you receive from participating in the Web
ring will be potential customers who are responsive to the content of
your site and curious about your products or services. In this chapter,
we cover:
• What are Web rings and how do they work?
• What promotion possibilities are available with Web rings?
• How do I participate and what will it cost?
• Where will I find Web rings that work for my company?
• What Web ring resources are available on the Net?
TEAM LinG - Live, Informative, Non-cost and Genuine!
364 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
An Effective Alternative to Search
Engines and Directories
Web rings are a fast-growing service on the Internet, providing one of
the easiest ways for visitors to navigate the Internet. In each of its tens
of thousands of topic-specific rings, member Web sites have linked their
sites together, thus permitting more targeted visitors to reach the joined
sites quickly and easily.
People increasingly are becoming dissatisfied with search engines
and directories as tools to identify specific topic-related sites. Searches
on a specific keyword sometimes yield results that include totally unrelated
sites. For instance, if you were planning a vacation to Mexico and
you wanted to search for resorts in Mexico, the search engine results
would likely include sites only vaguely related to what you were looking
for. The results might include book titles at Amazon.com related to
Mexican travel, personal pages with other people’s experiences traveling
in Mexico complete with pictures from their family vacation, travel
agencies, and tour company sites. The Web ring provides an alternative
to these tools.
Site owners typically trade links with other Web sites to help promote
each other’s sites. The Web ring was developed to enlarge the scope of
link trading. A Web ring joins together many sites with a common topic.
Two of the major Web ring sites are:
• WebRing (http://dir.webring.com/rw)
• RingSurf (http://www.ringsurf.com)
What Are Web Rings?
A Web ring is made up of a number of topic-specific sites that are grouped
together. There are country inn Web rings, Star Trek Web rings, prenatal
care Web rings, BMW Web rings, and remote-sensing Web rings in
the huge list of Web rings that exists today. At WebRing there are several
major categories:
• Business and Finance
TEAM LinG - Live, Informative, Non-cost and Genuine!
Web Rings as a Promotion Tool 365
• Computers and Internet
• Cultures and Community
• Entertainment and Arts
• Family and Home
• Games
• Government and Politics
• Health and Wellness
• Hobbies and Crafts
• Music
• Recreation and Sports
• Regional
• Religion and Beliefs
• Relationships and Romance
• Schools and Education
• Science
RingSurf also has many categories:
• Arts
• Automotive
• Business
• Computers
TEAM LinG - Live, Informative, Non-cost and Genuine!
366 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
• Dating
• Food
• Games
• Health
• Home
• Home Pages
• Kids and Teens
• Miscellaneous
• News
• Pets
• Recreation
• Reference
• Regional
• Religion
• Science
• Shopping
• Society
• Sports
• Travel
• United States.
TEAM LinG - Live, Informative, Non-cost and Genuine!
Web Rings as a Promotion Tool 367
Each of these major categories has a number of subcategories, and
each of the subcategories has a number of individual rings.
Rings can contain any number of sites. There must be at least three
before the ring is listed in the directories. Generally, the rings contain
between 20 and 200 sites. Some rings are smaller and some are substantially
higher, with close to a thousand sites included.
Each ring was started and is maintained by an individual Web site
owner. Through navigation links found most often at the bottom of member
pages, visitors can travel to all or any of the sites in a ring. They can
move through a ring in either direction, going to the next or previous site,
or listing the next five sites in the ring. Visitors can also jump to a random
site in the ring or survey all the sites that make up the ring.
An extraordinary system, Web rings are entirely open and free of
charge to both visitors and members. As more and more people discover
Web rings, we will see phenomenal growth in this as a preferred
method to surf the net. At the time this edition was written, RingSurf
had 36,964 Web rings with 312,246 member sites.
How Do Web Rings Work?
To surf a ring, all you have to do is use the links at the bottom of the
page in the Web ring block. At the bottom of a Web ring participant’s
pages, you find the Web ring navigation aid. A common Web ring graphic
includes links to the “Next” site in the ring, the “Previous” site in the
ring, or a “Random” site in the ring. You also have the option, in many
cases, to see a list of the “Next 5” sites in the ring or to view the entire
“Index” of the ring’s sites. Once you begin surfing a ring, there is no
clear beginning or end, just a circle of related material. The Web ring
program compensates for sites that are unreachable because they no
longer exist or have server problems. You will always be able to navigate
the ring.
When using a search engine, you are provided with a list of sites,
only some of which are relevant. You visit the sites listed and then,
depending on which browser you are using, you may use your “Back”
button to return to the Results page to make another selection. With a
Web ring this backing out is unnecessary. Once you’ve finished reviewing
a site in the ring, you proceed to the next site that is of interest or
simply surf through the connected sites one by one.
TEAM LinG - Live, Informative, Non-cost and Genuine!
368 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
How to Participate in Web Rings
The first thing to do is find Web rings that are right for your product or
service—those that cater to your target market. You can review the directories
at the WebRing site http://dir.webring.com/rw and also at the
RingSurf site http://www.ringsurf.com.
Once you have found a promising Web ring, you contact the owner
to ask permission to join. See Figure 23.1 for an example of this. The
owner reviews your site to determine your “fit” with the theme. Once
you are accepted, the owner provides you with the required code and
accompanying graphics, which you insert on your page. The ring owner
provides all the required material; you slip it into your HTML file, and
that’s that.
Once the code is on your site, WebRing or RingSurf monitors the
traffic and collects the statistics for your site, as they do for all Web ring
sites. This is beneficial to you because you can see how much traffic you
are getting through the Web ring.
Any Web site owner who feels no existing ring is suitable can apply
to create a new ring. If the application is approved, WebRing or RingSurf
Figure 23.1. This inclusion request was taken from the Foreign Travel Web
Ring to show how easy it is to join a Web ring.
TEAM LinG - Live, Informative, Non-cost and Genuine!
Web Rings as a Promotion Tool 369
will provide all the necessary code and instructions. New Web rings are
listed in the directory once they contain at least five sites.
Web Ring Participation Costs
The cost to participate in these Web rings is absolutely nil. No application
fees, no charge for the approval, no charge for the code to be inserted
on your pages, no charge for the increased traffic a Web ring brings.
The Benefits of Web Rings
There are many benefits to both the users of Web rings and the participating
Web sites. Benefits to the user include:
• Web rings provide a great navigation tool when looking for more
information on a specific topic.
• Web rings are easy to use. They provide one of the most efficient
ways to find specific content on the Internet.
• Web rings avoid the duplication found in search engines, where
a site may appear several times in one search. Each site is linked
only once in each Web ring.
• Web rings speed up search time.
• Web rings eliminate sifting through mounds of search engine
results for appropriate sites.
Benefits to participating Web sites include:
• Web ring participation increases the number of targeted visitors
to your Web site.
• The organizers of the Web rings make it easy to monitor how
successful your ring is. Traffic reports and “top rings” statistics
are made available to participants.
TEAM LinG - Live, Informative, Non-cost and Genuine!
370 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
• Web rings drive traffic to your site.
Business Reluctance to Participate in Web Rings
One of the biggest hurdles Web rings face in being adopted by the business
sector is that when you join a ring, you are linking to the competition.
It is likely that this mentality explains why Web rings have been so
popular for personal sites and special-interest groups, but have failed to
catch on in today’s business community. But, again, small businesses
and retail-oriented sites have not shied away from rings. For example,
rings and banner programs are hot marketing strategies for stores that
sell collectibles. This is particularly true for hard-to-find collectibles.
Take the Pez phenomenon: Not being on a Pez Web ring could be a
crucial mistake for vendors. After all, if a customer hits a site and it
doesn’t have a specific Pez, the quest isn’t over—it’s on to the next site.
What better way to get there than via a ring? Your site might just be the
next one.
Lately we have seen growth in the commercial application of Web
rings. There are a few reasons for this:
• A number of articles have appeared in Internet marketing magazines
related to the high volume of traffic through these Web
rings. Businesses have sometimes found that the bulk of the traffic
to their site is coming through the Web ring.
• Other articles talk about the benefits of being conveniently located
near your competition, bringing more traffic for everyone.
Several have likened it to what happens in the real world in
the fast-food industry. When a McDonald’s opens, you quickly
see a Burger King, Wendy’s, Pizza Hut, KFC, and Taco Bell all
open up close by. This means more business for everyone.