I tend to agree with Dick about the value of posting to FFAs. I hate to say it, but you probably did waste your money BUT - it was not a total waste if you learn from it.
Dick has hit on one of the best ways to promote your site (in my opinion).
Joint ventures (team up with somebody else), Search engine positioning (come near the top of the results in Altavista or wherever), and pay-per-click search engine promotion (Goto) are the other 3 best ways in my opinion.
I once ran 64 FFAs on a spare server, with a time delayed thank you message. I got a lot of posts, used a lot of bandwidth but only generated a few sales, so I killed it when switch leased line provider. Of course this might be that I made some mistake in my messages etc.
Do you have any stats on your FFA results in terms of traffic or sales?
Owning an FFA page is the key, it only takes one or two if you do it right, I set up an FFA page test site and started with 10 pages, had to shut down 8 of them, the host were very concerned about the server load not the band width. the key to a successful FFA page is not to have any graphics on them at all and as little text as possible, also to have an auto rebuild panel to rebuild the pages on the fly because people try and use code when submitting and destroy the pages after a day or so and it is a pain to rebuild them. My average run of send mails was over 4000 a day and sometimes over 6000 a day, that is with only one submit engine sending mail to it. (worldsubmitter.com) I placed ClickBank hop links on of different kinds of content during the testing phase, and some did not sell at all, and others did fairly well. My conclusion is that in most instances, you will be selling to same croud, (not always) but for the most part it will be business seakers that will open your mail. I also found that using honest subject headings in the outgoing mail was far more effective and also do not under any circumstances set up multiple pages running the same message, that stacks messages in the users E-Mail box all the same and will only get it deleted. Dan
With any business, it is up to the individual owner of said business to ensure the success of the business. You may make more or less than any sample figures or results that might be quoted on our web sites or other publications. All business involves risk, and many businesses do not succeed. Further, Answers 2000 Limited does NOT represent that any particular individual or business is typical, or that any results or experiences achieved by any particular individual/business is necessarily typical.
