It is normal for virtually every site on web to maintain a list of links to "favorite", "featured" or "special" places to visit. This is almost never done with permission, nor does it need to be.

Remember that we are discussing linking to pages on other web sites, not graphics, zip files, sound files or anything else. Only HTML-style pages are acceptable for cross-linking. Linking to other types of media files is called bandwidth stealing and is highly unethical. Also remember, do not link to other people's CGI routines without permission.

There is some concern over acceptableness of this linking behavior. Some commercial sites are not happy with linking because it bypasses their "home page" or sidesteps their advertising. There is even some discussion that linking is a trademark infringement or violates some other sacred rights.

This is all silly talk by people and organizations who completely misunderstand nature of world wide web. The best practice of everyone creating a site is to complete ignore this asinine discussion totally and to link vigorously and constantly.

In my opinion best way to think of linking is to associate it with "fair use" laws. These are laws which allow people to include short quotes from published and copyrighted works in their own materials. This is not illegal or unethical - in fact it is absolutely necessary. Imagine how difficult it would be for a college student to write a term paper if he could not quote authors, or how impossible it would be for a critic to do his job if he could not include a few lines from work he was writing about.

That idea worked great in movie but it is a whole different ballpark when it comes to a web site or an email campaign.

The only way to attract traffic on Internet is to PROMOTE. And key to successful online promotion is to know HOW your traffic found you.

Why?

Because when you know HOW your traffic found you then you will know what is working for you so that you can not only maintain it, but also increase it.

With an email campaign, it is absolutely essential to code your mailings in order to discover which one is bringing you results.

The easiest way to do that is by use of Auto-Responders.

There are a host of FREE Auto-Responder services that will allow you to acquire as many FREE responders as you need.

For a "List of FREE Auto-Responder Services", send a blank email to our Auto-Responder at: mailto:freeautoresp@emailexchange.org

For example, you are promoting an ad service that pays you 50% commission. You run one ad in a newsletter, another is done via your signature in posting to a business list and still another ad is exposed via FFA Link submissions.

You can code your ads simply by calling them ad001, ad002, ad003.

When you receive a reply to ad001, you will know it came from newsletter, ad002 will be a response to your signature and ad003 will be from your FFA Link submission.

Use whatever code is appropriate for you but important thing to remember to code it and know to what it pertains.

If you have your own web site, your hosting provider might already provide you with tools you need to track your traffic.

All you would need to do is access your log info and review which web pages are getting traffic and study where traffic is coming from to visit you.