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Free Services on the Internet:
The Profit-Draining Shuttle Service YOU! Provide
by: Patrick Wagner
The world of the Internet is a friendly, altruistic place.
There are many companies out there that want to help you,
the Internet business person, make your site more accessible
to the masses of people who surf the web every day.
These friendly, selfless companies offer you a world of
free, yes free! services for the taking. They offer free!
postcard greeting systems, free! classified ad systems and
so forth, just so you can catch a break. Your benefit and
the health of your sales is what they exist for. All you
have to do is go to the URL of any one
of these many, generous companies and paste the code for
each free! system onto your web site.
It’s that simple.
Neat, eh?
Then you kick back and await the hordes of traffic that
will be generated from these generous, free! systems.
And they will come.
They will see your new free! classified ad system. They
will meet a friendly, flashy doorman at the entrance to
your site who will offer to chauffeur them away (they
will see a large banner at the top promoting a site you’ve
never heard of which provides a link to THAT site).
All that will happen in a matter of seconds, before the
newly arrived visitor even has a chance to get to a place
where your information begins. (If your eyes are
beginning to narrow, and you’re smelling something
fishy, read on.)
There will also be a link high on that page to the generous,
friendly folks who provided you with this great, free! stuff.
After all, all the visitors who come to your site via this
free! ride should have the same opportunities in life that
you had, shouldn’t they? It’s only fair. And look
how well it’s working for you!
Yes, these friendly companies do, in fact, deliver to you
what they promised. And in so doing, they do tend to make
a small fortune in banner sales and such. And yes, they
do this by essentially hijacking traffic from your site
via their links that they have so generously provided. Hordes
of visitors do indeed arrive at your site, as promised,
but one quick link and click! they forgot what they came
for, and are off to investigate all this free! stuff. As
you did.
Hello!?
Good morning!
If you have been waiting for the other shoe to
drop, the thud has come.
The sky is very blue where these companies reside. Let’s
be sure the same is true on your planet, shall we?
Companies that offer all this free stuff love ignorant
web site owners -- and there is no shortage of them
out there -- who believe this philosophy: Let me
help you. I live to help you. Your growing sales figures
provide me with purpose in my life.
Far too many naive web site owners get roped into such
thinking without questioning it. There is no fraud here:
the free stuff is delivered as promised. So there is really
no cause for complaint. Right?
Slightly (though not much) more elevated
thinking recognizes the fact that an owner’s web site
becomes cluttered with such "junk" advertising,
but someone who hasn’t thought this through may figure
it’s a bit unfortunate, but doesn’t really do
any harm. Right?
Duh.
Nothing could be further from the truth. If the benefits
to such a relationship were symbiotic and mutual -- you
get this for free, but provide a link to that site in return
-- then there may be an argument to be made that taking
advantage of the free offers is a good idea.
This isn’t so. You get something -- for free
-- which actually COSTS you sales and traffic!
That’s right. Essentially YOU are
providing the service for which YOU should
be charging. You have basically allowed them to place a
friendly, attractive host at the entrance to your store
who will greet them upon arrival to YOUR
store and offer to drive them -- immediately --
to a location of someone else’s choosing. Your doorman
is someone else’s chauffeur, on someone else’s
payroll.
So anyone who is intelligent enough to be mildly irritated
by the junk on his site generated from taking advantage
of free! offers is a fool if he doesn’t recognize
that this isn’t simply annoying, it’s self-defeating.
So...
You need to be on the intelligent, educated end of this
dynamic. You need to be the one who offers such systems
at your own site, not one who is allowing someone else to
escort your traffic away -- for free. You
need to ensure that your site is the destination, not the
5-7 second layover between sites.
Good systems actually turn your site into the surfer’s
destination. Good systems actually enhance your business.
Good systems provide legitimate increases in traffic. Good
systems allow you to sell banners to your site, while selling
or promoting your products or services at the system site.
Good systems provide the ride to your site and the incentive
for the rider to stay there. Good systems put the surfer’s
chauffeur on YOUR payroll.
Good systems are not free!
In this case, free! has been shown to be very costly,
indeed.
If you would like information on how to use these systems
FOR you, instead of against you, contact
webmaster@ezinelisting.com
No, it’s not free. We actually want to provide you
with services that will increase your profits, not simply
increase our own.
Imagine that.
Sincerely,
Patrick Wagner
Webmaster - http://www.ezinelisting.com
mailto:webmaster@ezinelisting.com
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