Contents

1. Sponsor's Message
2. First Word
3. Tips, Tools, News and Views

- Tracking: Follow That Link! 
- What The Heck Is That File Extension?
- Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics and Common Sense
- New Articles Added To WME Website
- Free Training Course of The Week: Sales and Selling
- E-Commerce Term Of The Week: CRM 

4. A Touch of Humor:  You'll Have To Go

5. Classified Ads
6. Free Training Courses
7. Feature Article: Review: Google Toolbar
8. Our Companion Ezine 
9. Administrivia

Visit our companion website at http://www.WebMarketingEzine.com

Want to read this online? For your convenience, the Current Issue 
of WME is posted each week at the WME website. Just visit 
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1. Sponsor's Message

2. First Word

Hi All!

Thanks to all the WME readers who responded to our question of which format you would like WME delivered in. The answer, to 2 decimal places, was "all of the above"! Every possibility had a champion, every possibility had an enemy. We'll get back to you!

We've added three great new articles this week, and another free training course, this time on Sales and Selling. We hope you enjoy these, and the rest of this issue.

Thought For the Week: "If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried."  ;o) 

Till next week, have a good one!

John

3. Tips, Tools, News and View

Tracking: Follow That Link! 

The more active you get in sales and promotion, the more important it is to be able to track your results. How many people went to the download page? How many visitors did you send to that website? How many visitors did they send to you? Which ad. pulled the best? How many people read your article? How well does the same ad pull when it's run in different positions in your ezine?

If you're serious about marketing, you'll want to know the answer to these, and many other related questions. All you need is a good way of tracking them. You'll notice that we are using them more and more in WME. They help tell us what our readers enjoy most, and that's important to us. So, which method of tracking did WME chose?

We basically looked at two approaches. Firstly, we looked at hosted services, where the links are hosted on the service provider's site. You pay a small fee each month. Of this approach, Roibot is perhaps the best. But that's not the way we chose to go. Why?

Well, one of the problems with a hosted service, is that the links are to their site, not yours. You're locked in, and when you stop using the service, the links die. All those links you've spread across cyberspace for years, are dead! So, instead, we took the path of choosing a pay-once and own-it-forever product that created links to our site. 

Imagine this situation. You've been an affiliate for a web hosting company for 3 years. You've got thousands of ads spread across cyberspace, and EternalHosting.com go belly up. All the ads carry your affiliate link to http://eternalhosting.com?1456, and now they're not worth a cracker! If you could go back and do it all over again, here would be a smart play...Buy a tracking program. Use it to produce the link that you use in the ads. It might be http://brightideas.com/cgi-bin/a/t.cgi?eh People clicking on the link are taken to your site, where the program redirects them to EternalHosting. When EternalHosting goes to meet its maker, you just change where the link points to. To your new webhosting affiliate link at http://www.HeavenlyHost.com, of course! Same link; different destination; continuing value. It makes sense!

And the program we chose (and, surprise!, whose affiliate program we joined)? It was no contest. AdTrackz came out tops in our comparison, and it's the one we use ourselves. You can learn about this powerful marketing tool for yourself, by following this AdTrackZ link! http://www.webmarketingezine.com/cgi-bin/a/t.cgi?atz This link takes you to the AdTrackZ site. If in the future, AdtrackZ fell off their perch, I could choose another worthy tracking program, and simply change the destination of that link. It could then send the traffic direct to the new site, or even to a page on my website that explained what was happening. It's a powerful concept, and AdTrackZ is a powerful tool.

(Disclosure: We are a member of the AdTrackZ Affiliate Program.)

What The Heck Is That File Extension?

For those who've led a sheltered life, file extensions are those one, two or three letter descriptors that follow the name of a file. Examples would be lifestory.doc , or bill_smith.jpg. In these cases the .doc tells us that the first document is a Microsoft Word document, and .jpg that it is a jpeg graphic file in the second.

The list of different file extensions is huge, and you'll often come across a strange file extension on the web, attached to an email, or amongst your computer's files. If you'd like to know what they are, do I have a site for you! 

FilExt.com has to be the best place on the Web to find out about file extensions. I wouldn't try to count how many there are, but there are 51 on the 'Z' page alone! They start at with .a and finish with .zzt with a lot in between. This is a site you'll want to bookmark, and you'll find it at http://www.filext.com

WME Supported By...

Being lucky is a skill, just like any other skill. As you learn it and you practice it, you get better. You get luckier. How do I know? Because I learned it myself - beginning from absolute zero. 

My name is Charles Burke, , and I wrote the book on luck - literally. With Command More Luck, you can start calling the shots. Take charge of your luck, your success, your love-life... Act Now! 

Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics and Common Sense

One of my regular reads is eMarketerDaily. It runs lots of good stories, and useful stats on the eBusiness field. Useful, that is, if you're prepared to think about what's being presented. Case in point...

This week, they ran an item entitled "Better Website, Better Chance of Selling Cars". My first response? "Well,...Duh!" You WOULD expect that, wouldn't you? 

The item starts, " Vividence Corporation surveyed 400 US consumers in March 2002 to find that among those who had begun shopping for a car, 94% went online and 82% visited the website of a specific automaker." Just a moment! 94% of "consumers" who began shopping for a car went online? I don't think so. I'm sure they meant to say that it was a survey of ONLINE consumers.

Given that, the statistics that were helpful, showed how the consumers' reactions varies depending on the type of online experience they had. Results of the survey showed that if the consumer had a high quality online experience at an automaker's site, 41% were likely to buy that brand. If the consumer had a poor quality experience, the percentage of those likely to buy that brand drops to 25%.

Given that the automakers are well-recognised brands, and that the consumers probably looked at brands they already knew and preferred, the survey results emphasise even more the importance of a good customer experience at your website.

New Articles Added To WME Website

The following articles have been added to the site this week...

Improve Your Search Engine Rankings by Improving Your Link Popularity by Michael Wong

12-Step Foolproof Sales Letter Template by David Frey.

Increase Your Click-Throughs With Killer Title Tags by Robyn Nobles

WME Supported By...

Professional Web Design Secrets the Pros Don't Want You to Know...

"Finally, a Web design course that makes total and complete sense! Web Design Mastery will quickly become the "Bible" for anyone who wants to build a website. Totally top shelf!"- Rick Beneteau

Nothing is left to the imagination...Web Design Mastery takes you step by step through the entire process. Don't miss out on the special, introductory price, or the bonuses, click here!

Free Training Course of the Week: Sales and Selling

Selling can be as complicated, or as simple as you want to make it. You can write volumes about it, or reduce it to its fundamentals. Stewart Hutton, founder of Practicalsales.com has done just that. His 5-part Sales Training Course reveals the 5 Key Selling Skills can make Your Customers HAPPY to Buy from YOU! 

To take this, and other free training courses, visit
http://www.webmarketingezine.com/freetrainingcourses.shtml

E-Commerce Term of the Week: CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

4. A Touch of Humor

You'll Have To Go
Productivity and Unemployment Both Going Up, So... 

Washington, D.C. (SatireWire.com) � With the latest reports showing U.S. business productivity growing at its strongest pace in 19 years, while the number of Americans filing for unemployment has also surged to its highest level in 19 years, economists today concluded that everyone should be fired. 

"The numbers clearly show businesses have been getting more and more out of fewer and fewer employees," said Harvard economist Neil Fischer. "So it doesn't take a genius to determine that employees are a drag on productivity, and that were the economy to reach total unemployment, it would therefore reach total productivity." 

Critics immediately assailed the theory, pointing out that a similar tactic by AT&T failed when the company cut 120 percent of its workforce to save more money than it earns, and subsequently ceased to exist. However, Stanford economist Rachel Horwith said the productivity postulate was different, and has already been proven in the market. 

"Just look at Enron," she said. "Some of their best-producing units, at least on paper, had no one in them working in them at all." 

Virginia-based efficiency consultant Harvey Watts, however, accused economists of twisting the facts. 

"It's absurd to say that no employees would create more, because there would be no one left to create anything," said Watts. "No, the truth is, we want to decrease productivity. The more people we have producing less, the more people we'll need to produce what we need. So as soon as production stops, boom, you have full employment." 

Watts conceded he frequently consults for the French government. 

Meanwhile, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan argued both interpretations could lead to disaster. "If people don't have jobs, they can't buy what's produced, and vice versa," he said. "So the bottom line is, if no one really wants what you're producing, then there's no point in making it." 

In response, ABC cancelled its entire fall lineup. 

- Copyright � 2002, SatireWire

5. Classified Ads

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FREE five lesson class shows you how to improve the your results 
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Improve Your Search Positions-Get your FREE WebPosition Software
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Earn Advertising Income From Your Website Or Mailing List! 
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