by Michael Finley
Copyright © 1997 by Michael Finley

But few of us are getting famous. In the last two years, Americans created over 20 million new websites for their businesses and their personal interests. The common experience is a strange mix of jubilation and sobriety: delight to be on display for the world to see, and chagrin that the world is not beating a path to our door.

I polled five acquaintances who have websites up. Three are outright commercial sites, one is a combination business/personal site, and the fifth is an ambitious hobby site that looks for all the world like a business site. All put in a lot of time on their sites, making changes almost daily. All five are dying for more visitors. The most any was getting was 80 a day; the lowest average was about 15. All were doing something to attract new eyes. Three used banners or exchange promotions. One advertised her site in her professional journal. The fourth hired a PR professional to send news releases about his site to print media. None could report significant success.

All five say they are so close to having an audience they can taste it.

What can they do? According to Steve O'Keefe, book promoter and author of Publicity on the Internet (Wiley Computer Publishing, $24.95), a whole lot. You can tell people about your ideas via e-mail, chat rooms, Usenet and other avenues. You can mount stunts, swap links, hold contests.

But it is a tricky business. The Internet audience may be free but it is(perhaps for that very reason) a very tough crowd. Inadvertently cross any of a dozen invisible lines of net etiquette -- spamming, sending duplicate messages, forging signatures -- and they will treat you as if you kidnapped babies.

Say the wrong thing to the wrong person on the Net and you can end up labeled a spammer, visited by Net vigilantes (a truly frightening group), and kicked off your Internet provider without benefit of trial. But not before you are inundated by thousands of abusive e-mail bombs from people you wished had a better sense of your inner humanity.

All in all, it's a different bonanza than the get-rich-quick crowd prepared you for.

O'Keefe draws a fine line between spam, the indiscriminate proliferation of unsolicited e-mail, and proper promotion, which he defines as targeted and discerning -- selling only to people who are likely to be interested. He breaks Internet promotion down into manageable tasks. The key in each case is making contact with people without unduly antagonizing them:

Getting other sites to link with yours; the trick is offering something valuable and free.

The right and wrong ways to conduct an online press conference;

How to get in a self-serving word on Usenet without arousing angry cybervillagers;

How to use listservers (automatic mailing lists); show r-e-s-p-e-c-t.

The pros and cons of buying paid advertising; will that purchased banner really attract traffic?

How to create and use a mailing list that doesn't get you barbecued.

The last is probably the surest vehicle for Internet promotion. Beginners invariably get scorched by their own inexperience, sending out materials that are misspelled, or untested, or that print the entire mailing list on the "To:" line of the e-mail form -- a mortal sin of net communications.

O'Keefe knows the virtual waterfront backward and forward, promoting books. If your Internet provider offers only a few Usenet newsgroups, he points you to Zippo, a commercial Web-based provider (http://www.zippo.com) that will give you the full Usenet list. But watch out for the Zippo Hippo, the animated robot that detects multiple messages and sits on them, squelching your efforts.

He knows that most "free promotion" gimmicks on the Web are really just mail-list creation schemes -- getting listed is much more likely to get you targeted as somebody else's customer than to attract new to your site.

I see an awful lot of Internet books, and they tend to follow the same turgid pattern, starting at ground zero and educating readers about Internet basics. The basics wind up filling half the book, and you get only a slight sense of what the writer really knows. This book is different. It's intelligent, and it doesn't hold back. Without soaring over your head it gives you the straight scoop starting on page one.

If everyone trying to hawk their "warez" on the Net followed O'Keefe's guidelines, the cyber regions would be a nicer place, and legitimate sites, commercial and personal, would have an even chance to draw a crowd.

TRANSCOMPETITION

A Business Week Book

Transcompetition: Moving Beyond Competition and Collaboration
by Harvey Robbins, Michael Finley
List: $24.95
Our Price: $17.47
You Save: $7.48 (30%)

Hardcover, 240 pages
Published by McGraw-Hill
Publication date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0070530823

Michael Finley is co-author with Harvey Robbins of THE NEW WHY TEAMS DON'T WORK.Visit Michael Finley at his home page, or e-mail him at mfinley@mfinley.com

"A masterpiece of explanatory journalism!" - New Orleans Picayune "Fast, funny, and highly stimulating!" -Business Book Review Get your signed copy of The NEW Why Teams Don't Work by Mike & Harvey Robbins from Berrett-Koehler Publishers Just click on the book cover!

Stimulate the economy, give a poet a dollar.