"We share what we know, so that others may grow".

THE FIRST STEPS TO GETTING NOTICED IN "THE VAST AND UNCHARTERED WORLD OF CYBERSPACE"

by Craig Lock

"To win, you first have to be noticed"

Thought I'd share a few hints, based on our experiences over past five years...

In listing our various web sites, we only concentrate on major (12 or so search engines) and directories, like Open Directory, who supply their database to many of big search engines. We've found that we check our listings in search engines every two months or so and do resubmit - just to MAJOR search engines. Though I don't try it with Alta Vista and especially Yahoo (as we are already high up there with our creative writing courses). I don't dare risk them chucking us out, though I don't think they will! We've had some difficulty with HotBot and Lycos (especially) and Open Directory in getting listed, so I do re-submit from time to time and they then seem to get listed. Alta Vista seems to take a while - about 6 weeks. Believe Lycos is "winding down" in listing sites incidentally.

So suggest checking your listings occasionally and resubmit- ting (INDIVIDUALLY). I don't think any of major search engines see that as spam.

We also submit to regional Yahoo (Australia and New Zealand) and find we get listed quite speedily. I bid on key words with Go To for 'writing courses', but we've found traffic from them to be minimal.

A thought, sorry question, on which to end...

The number one difference between people making money on net from those who do not is webmaster mistake number one.

Those people who do not make any money online spend too much time and effort doing totally low-yield or no-yield activities while wishing and hoping for better results.   The internet allows you to know within days, at worst, just a very few weeks, that an activity will or will not produce a specific result. 

After a reasonable trial period doing whatever you have elected to do, you can surmise that maybe your headers aren't strong enough. Maybe. You can play with these for a while. But, only for a while.

However, still, within just a few days, of playing and tweaking, result or non-result will be clear. 

Continuing to do that activity, however good you get at doing it, even if you automate it, if it doesn't produce Results you need to earn a living from that source, stop doing it.  It will not get any better.   If systems you use within your traffic generating processes are low yield, you may try improving your systems to better software.

However, before you do, there still has to be a current yield of some measurable, definable, positive result from current software.

Remember: one hundred percent improvement on nothing is still nothing. ... and, worse if you spent money on software.    Using an all-too-common example, if your efforts over, say, a three months period have generated $100 total income and you need $100 of income per day, you know simply that your success rate on volume you are generating is just 1%. 

In other words, you need 100 times your current daily volume to achieve what you need. 

If you have been doing what you are currently doing over that three months or more, clearly something has to change dramatically for better.   The one really positive, overriding consideration between where you are as a mathematical factor of where you have to be to achieve your dream goals is this: whatever that factor is, it's completely achievable. 

If you are at 1% of your goals needing one hundred times growth, or at 10% needing ten times growth, right tools and resources exist to do it. The operative word there is 'right'. 

When it finally sinks in and you fully understand that equation and that it is entirely doable and within your reach and your control, then your success path will become clearer.