PORTAL PARTNER PRESS July 2000

========July 12, 2000========

IN THIS ISSUE:

Weekly Portal Owner's Diary

I Need Your Sites!!

$100 Contest

Thank you, thank you Google

WEEKLY PORTAL OWNER'S DIARY
Well Chicago was a trip! I had several misgivings about going when I did because there was so much happening with SK and the EZ Builder. I was naturally concerned with whether or not the world could actually keep spinning with me not sitting at my computer, but I had a couple of little consulting jobs that I had already been putting off for a while, PLUS the fact that I lived in Chicago for about 6 years and loved every minute of it and missed it a lot. So I went. To my surprise I discovered that yes, the world would keep spinning with or without me running it and I really did have a competent staff that knew their jobs and I could trust my business to. With the exception of only a couple of minor disasters, everything was fine when I returned.
In fact, everything was more than fine. By the time I got back, Searchking was up and running! After almost three years of frustration and heartbreak, the new database was actually built and I could see it working. Not just working, but working the way I dreamed it would work back in November of '97. It went online Sunday evening July the 8th and accepted the first submissions, added the relevancy points to place those submissions in the top of the results under the keywords that were CHOSEN and then added or subtracted the points according to nothing but the users' votes! OH MY GOODNESS! An honest, open and fair search engine that really does give everyone a fair shot regardless of how much money they have or whether or not the webmasters knew all the "secrets" of the search engines.
I realize that we have all come to pretty much take for granted what search engines do and my little gizmo may not sound like much, but I assure you that getting this thing built the way I wanted it, has been just about the hardest thing I have ever done in my life, (not to mention the most expensive). There is a lot more involved than you might think when it comes to custom features. It's clean on the other side of html!
I know it's a little ironic that I own a company who's income is generated by placing clients in the top of the search engines. In fact, Searchking was built with the money that was made by the other search services being so difficult to understand. On the surface it would appear that if I am successful at my goal of making some of the other major services use some of the features and philosophies that Searchking has developed, ultimately, it would put Magic-city and other placement services like mine out of business. So, in effect, I've taken a successful company that has provided me and mine with a pretty decent living for almost 5 years and invested a large portion of that to build something that could eliminate the market by allowing anyone to come up in the top by simply choosing their keywords. I mean if you can do that, why would you need to pay for a top search engine placement service?
For one thing, Magic-city will continue to do just fine. In fact, I'm expecting nothing but increases in revenues over the next few years, for the simple fact that I have never taken the approach that top search engine placement is the "answer" to web site success. All top placement does is get you traffic and if you're smart, you don't care nearly as much about traffic as you do about sales. Sales is what drives any kind of commerce, especially e-commerce. A million hits and no sales and you're going broke, (especially if your paying someone like me what I charge to get you that million hits), BUT, 100 hits and 25 sales and now you have a shot at success. So, because of my unique philosophy in this industry, Magic-city has become pretty good at helping our clients get targeted traffic and more importantly SALES and that is what will keep Magic-city as a leader in the placement industry.
The bottom line is that I just felt there was a need for someone, somewhere to be more concerned with not letting the spammers, con artists and the deep-pocketed corporations dominate the net and determine the direction it would take, than just concerned about how much money they could make how fast. Don't get me wrong, I fully intend to make money from this venture, it's just that that is not the first priority. I believe that far too many of the major services have been so focused on fighting spam that they have forgotten that the vast majority of people out there are not trying to cheat anyone, they are just people who would be more than happy to be up front and honest about their sites if they were simply given the chance to do so and be treated fairly. My first priority was to provide a tool for people that would allow them to market their websites in such a way that we could all prove to the world that you really can be honest, not compromise your own principles and still succeed. The difference between Searchking and most of my competitors is that they assume everyone is going to try to spam them and set up systems to stop you. Searchking assumes that you are going to honest and set up tools to allow you to do so. We then leave it to the public to decide if you are spamming or not. Searchking does not judge anyone or anyone's sites. We let the public do that.
I've often been questioned about whether my system will actually do anything to improve the current situation, in fact I've questioned it myself on many occasions, and all I can tell you is that finally, at last, I can find out. I believe Searchking will do a lot to change the face of the internet and actually make things better for everyone and soon I will know for sure.
I NEED YOUR SITES
Along the lines of talking about Searchking, I do have a little problem that I could sure use your help with.
For a long time now, I knew that the main problem with SK not working was due to the fact that the tables in the database were not set up correctly from day one. After almost three years of problems and the solutions always being to just apply cyber band-aids to the problem as opposed to taking the time to just re-build all the tables right in the first place, I ended up with one big jumbled up mess! A mess that on some days can generate several gigs, (yes gigs - not megs), of error logs which if undetected of course can crash the server or at the very least slow down the server to the point that it is virtually useless as a search tool. This is what I have been dealing with on a daily basis now for a long, long time.
Once we got started building the new database right from the ground up it became apparent that the old database was not going to be able to be converted to the new. In order to make it provide the features that I wanted and insisted on, the information needed was not available from the tables in the old database. This left me in a position of having to make a very hard decision. It was kind of like having to choose to have your arm cut off or your eye put out. Not a good option either way.
The old database, in spite of the fact that it never worked right, still had accumulated over 750,000 urls, quite a little database. Now, with the new database, it's new, it's beautiful and it is completely and totally empty. What this means is that if I put up the new database, I get rid of the old and all the errors it is causing, BUT, now if anyone does a search even for the most common keyword, no results. Well, a search engine that can't give you any results is not going to impress anyone with the quality of the results so what can I do?
The best answer I could come up with was to use the new and then continue using the old as a default engine until I could get the new database built up to at least the 30,000 to 50,000 url range. Well, we have come up with a way to do this even though it looks a little weird and of course every time someone hits the old database, we start accumulating errors.
The bottom line is that I want that old database deleted so that we can stop all the errors, the server returns 5 second results and the quality of our results is superior to what you would expect from other engines. I can't do that until I get some more sites into the database.
I NEED YOUR SITES !!
The reason I'm telling you all of this is that I want the portal partners to be able to take the most advantage from a unique system like Searchking offers. If you submit your site now, any submission you make will come up at the very top of the results if for no other reason than the fact there is no one who can come up above you. If you will pick your keywords carefully and honestly, you will start getting yes votes which add points to your website across the board and that means that as we grow, the new submissions will always have to come below your listing and then try to get the votes they need to get above you. As we start to grow and the traffic starts increasing, this could end up being a real cyber feather in your web cap.
The submission form is simple. It's fast, easy and it adds your site and/or edits instantly. Please take just a couple of minutes to add all the pages you like, just remember that each page you submit should represent it's own set of specific keywords that relate to that particular page. Keep in mind that if you pick keywords with the intent of just trying to "catch" more traffic, you will get "no" votes and that will start pulling you down in the rankings under all your keywords. Pick very relevant keywords and phrases and your yes votes will start bringing you to the top of the results under all the keywords/phrases you picked.
Just go to http://www.searchking.com and click the link at the top of the page that says "add your site".
$100 CONTEST
Two weeks ago, I announced an affiliate contest paying $100 to the affiliate that had the most sign ups under their affiliate number within the month of July. Well the month is almost half over and I wanted to let you guys all know where it stands. So far, in the lead is affiliate Vince Doherty with 1.
I realize that those kind of numbers may scare the heck out of some people. "My gosh, how can I catch up when I'm already behind by 1"?, but I'm the kind of person that believes if I'm one behind and I really focus, there is always that chance that I might could catch up. I'm hoping some of you reading this feel the same as I do.
Vince is going to get the $100 even if he only gets the one as long as no one else beats him. That's the deal I made and I'll keep it. I just think that for a hundred bucks it would be worth the effort to try to get maybe --- 2. I'll reprint the article from June the 28th explaining the deal again in case anybody wants to try to use the rest of July to rip the lead from the grasp of ole Vince and get 2 sign ups. : )

(reprinted from June 28th)
$100 CONTEST
Searchking will pay $100 to the affiliate who brings in the most sign ups in the month of July. No big complex deal, no hold-backs, no restrictions. Which ever affiliate has the most wins the money!
We don't care if you get those sign ups by calling friends, posting in forums, taking the order form to shopping malls and signing up people as they walk by! Short of spamming people, we encourage you to be creative and get those affiliate trackers rolling.
Run some free ads.
Put something on your website about it.
Write and submit articles about the portals to some of your favorite e-zines.
If you publish an e-zine write an article about it.
In fact, I'll pay $50 to anyone who writes an article and it gets it ran in e-zines that reaches at least 10,000 readers. I don't care if that's one e-zine or 20 as long as you can show me that it went out to at least 10,000 -- 50 bucks! (If you go for the $50 I would encourage you to use your affiliate link).
If you haven't signed up as an affiliate yet, DO IT! Go to www.searchkingportal4u.com/affiliate.htm and sign up before July 1st.
The $100 will be paid in addition to your regular commission, so here's your chance to make a buck just by doing what I love, (was that a typo?) getting new portal partners! Hurry and don't miss out on your opportunity to become a hundredaire!

THANK YOU, THANK YOU GOOGLE
As many of you know by now, a little over a week ago Yahoo announced they were going to be dropping Inktomi for their web pages results and using Google. Google is a search engine that uses link popularity for a large part of it's algorithm in determining which site to rank first for keyword searches.
About a year-an-a-half ago, I saw link popularity being used by some services such as Direct Hit. I really didn't think it would end up being a big deal because I still say that links going to a site does not necessarily indicate a level of relevance or quality for that site. However, since I was in a position of controlling a few hundred domains, I decided to have the staff set up a system of links where we basically recommended our clients sites from all of our other clients sites thus producing a considerable amount of links to every domain we controlled.
Over the next several months, we all saw link popularity becoming more and more of an issue. Now along comes the Google deal and WHAP, all of those people who had been focusing on link popularity all of a sudden see their traffic skyrocket simply because they had good placement on Google and now they had good placement on the Yahoo web pages. As far as I was concerned I couldn't have done better if they had let me place my own sites where I wanted them. Almost every client we have now is getting anywhere from 25% to 200% more traffic this week than they were last week. After talking with a few of my placement industry peers, it seems the same thing has happened to just about all of them that had their link popularity issue addressed.
Now I hate to say I told you so, but almost two months ago I tried my best to encourage all portal partners to learn to work together a little and develop a system of linking portals to other portals. I got a few people who could see the value in this but for the most part, the project didn't take off like I had hoped it would. A couple of partners went to the trouble to set up specific pages and scripts to make it easy for other partners to join in and then made some posts in the forums about it, but it just didn't get a very good response.
I'm not chastising anyone. Those portals are yours to do with what you will and there is nothing in the rules that you have to listen to me or take my advice or the advice of anyone for that matter, BUT, had you listened and got involved when we were encouraging you to do so, you would have had at least a few links going to your site and under some keywords at least, a few can make a lot of difference. Had you had those links, you would be saying the same thing that me and most of my clients are saying now "THANK YOU - THANK YOU GOOGLE!"
CLOSING
Ok, one final thing. The EZ Builder is being tested by a few dedicated souls as we speak and getting rave reviews. It's going to work kids! I still think I'll be able to offer it to everyone by next week. Oh what a difference it is going to make.
Well, that's it for another week.
Love y'all
Bob

Publisher -- Bob Massa

========July 20, 2000========

IN THIS ISSUE:

Weekly Portal Owner's Diary

EZ Builder

Searchking

WEEKLY PORTAL OWNER'S DIARY
Well, the biggee this week was in upgrading the portal server. We were sitting on a 550 mhz machine with 512 meg of ram memory, not a bad little machine. Then early last week one of my partners informed me that she was getting a lot of error messages when trying to access most of the portals. She also informed me that when they did come up, they were often very slow.
My first reaction was to blame her browser, her connection, her computer, anything that would give me an excuse not to have to deal with this. Remember it's been less than 6 weeks since we just went through Internic hell getting all those portals moved and that new raid server isn't even two months old yet.
Since this is a long trusted friend, I gave her the benefit of the doubt and though I didn't want bad news, I started doing a little checking myself. I first asked a few select people to verify that there was a problem and of course the response was, "I hate to tell you this Bob, but yes, there is a problem." I then started pulling up portals myself and sure enough, a lot of errors and taking as much as 2 minutes to load, (remember I live out in the middle of nowhere and can't get all those fancy DSL deals that normal people do so I'm stuck with a dinosaur of a 56k modem). This, I was forced to admit was unacceptable.
At this point it still didn't enter my mind that the server was maxed. I just figured my host was doing something wrong. So I called Rackspace, (whom I strongly recommend if you're looking for the best and not the cheapest). We checked the logs and found that Apache, (the name of the server), was running at almost 90% capacity at about 1 pm central. I've been told by many people that your server should never exceed 60% or it will start slowing down. "Well, there's the problem", he said. I replied, "so what's my answer"? "More server, more money", he told me. "BUMMER!", I said to myself.
After several minutes of discussing my options, he talked me into upgrading to a dual Pentium 750 with 768 meg of memory. He assured me that this is the kind of server I need if I'm going to be using it for this type of hosting. Those search engines and especially all that cgi stuff, uses a lot of resources. A lot more money, BUT a LOT more server. Since I trust the people at Rackspace, I bit the bullet and went for it.
They sent me a proposal and guaranteed a down time of no more than two hours and allowed me to pick the time. I chose 3 am until 5 am central, knowing that that is about our slowest time and likely to cause the least problems for the least people. Well as with all things bobking, MY server didn't take two hours, it took 15! OUCH. Of course by 9 am the e-mails and phone calls started flowing in. Being down SUCKS.
Rackspace has some very talented people working for them and ended up having three of them working on my server and of course finally got the problems figured out and got me running. Their problem is the same as the ones we all keep running into. They are not doing server hosting for anyone trying to do what we are doing. It's just as new to them as it is to us. There are no instruction manuals for how to run a portal partner program. Of course with us blazing the trail, there will be soon, but WE will have written it. Had it not been for the talent and the dedication to customer service that Rackspace has, I would have been in real trouble.
Well, it's been up for just about a week now so I called them yesterday to check on the new server. It was about 10 am central. Not a peak time but pretty darn close. We checked the logs and at that time we were running at less than 1% of resources! I'm convinced.
So now I'm in the process of trying to figure out where to get the money to move and upgrade the Searchking server too. I'm hosted with a company here in OKC and they are a really nice bunch of guys. They just don't know what they are doing. I'm having all kinds of little problems with SK and they just don't know how to help me. They can't even identify the problems.
Now with Searchking's features all working at last, the traffic is starting to climb BUT, it won't ever climb the way it should if people can't pull up the site fast and they keep getting errors, so, I've got no choice but to give up or move. Well, I'm moving!
I'm already negotiating with Rackspace to lease me a Sun server with the dual 750 and a full gig of memory. In addition, I will have them install and support, Linux Redhat 6.2, apache, mysql, java, sendmail and a variety of other little goodies so that I know they'll be installed right from the beginning and I know that if I have any problems, they will be able to help. It's a lot of money but I know that for me to ever reach my goals, the servers have to come first. I should have taken care of this kind of stuff first and maybe I wouldn't have had to deal with all that I've had to deal with up to this point. I look at it as the "Field of Dreams" factor. If you build it -- they will come. It's just that if you build an infrastructure to handle 1000 hits, then that's all you can expect to get. If you build an infrastructure that can handle a million hits, that doesn't mean that they WILL come, but it sure means that they CAN!
EZ BUILDER
I'm a little nervous about announcing this right now. Dave Donlinger has done an absolutely incredible job of building the EZ Builder and it is up and running, but Dave's on vacation until the first of next week and if anyone needs some support with it, it ain't gonna be there 'til he gets home.
I will tell you all where it's located because Dave has built the thing so that you can switch back and forth from the EZ to the one we all have now without any problems. So, I think it might be a good idea to turn you all loose on the thing now so that when Dave gets back, some of you will have had some time to pick it apart and then he can answer any questions or identify any problems with it. Just keep in mind that if something looks like it may be a problem, don't take a chance right now, wait until Dave can help us in the forums the first of next week.
Just go to the admin panel like you always have. Your portal url then /bin/admin2/admin.cgi
You will be the very first human beings on the face of the earth to experience the world's first EZ Portal Builder! This is trailblazing stuff.
SEARCHKING
I want to remind you all of the advantage of getting all your sites submitted to Searchking. In case you don't already know, we are completely re-building the database and will soon be deleting the old one. The old one is so corrupted that there was virtually no chance of being able to put it back together and be able to offer the features that we needed, so it's out with the old dog and in with the new.
Being a brand new database relying solely on the public's votes to determine rank, there is an advantage in getting in early. If you choose your keywords carefully and honestly, you have the chance to accumulate relevancy points from user's votes first, which of course means that the more points you have, the closer you will come to the top of the results for any given keyword or phrase.
A couple of hints on how to best use the unique features of SK. First, choose your keyword/phrases carefully because you will be having the public vote on whether your site is relevant to the keywords you pick. Enter the word or phrase exactly as you expect it to be typed in and separate each word or phrase by a comma. Don't use spaces as you are limited to 250 characters. If you type in shoes, footwear, women, it will not come up under women's shoes! Your site will display ONLY if they type in the exact phrase. If you want to come up under women's shoes AND shoes, type in: shoes, womens shoes, women's shoes.
Don't worry about caps. It will pull up Shoes, SHOES or shoes.
Limit your keyword/phrase selection to about 10 to 15 phrases and words. More than that and you run the risk of getting no votes on the least relevant words you pick. Remember that all votes are calculated across the board for ALL the words/phrases you pick for that page. So, let's say your shoe site doesn't really have much content about women's shoes but is VERY relevant to tennis shoes for example. You will get yes votes for the keyword phrase tennis shoes and shoes, but because you were trying to get a few more hits by also using women's shoes, people vote no on that specific keyword phrase and since the no votes subtract more points than the yes votes add, your site starts coming down in the ranking under shoes and tennis shoes because the women's shoes keyword phrase is lowering your total points, which means that your other keywords/phrases are all dropping too.
Submit as many pages as you like. Just make sure that each set of keywords and phrases you pick for each page actually reflect the content of that page. That is how you come up on top and stay on top of many keywords. Not by trying to get one page to "catch" everyone, but by supplying highly relevant quality content to a highly targeted audience. (A new concept, I know).
Use the edit feature to watch the votes on your submissions and if you see one keyword phrase getting no votes, edit that keyword to something that is more relevant so that you continue to get mostly yes votes. That is the only thing that will keep you in the top.
Click throughs to your site add some relevancy points as well, so your title and description are extremely important too. Write your titles and descriptions to reflect your site as honestly as you can. Trying to "trick" people into coming into your site will be disastrous. Remember, we're not like Yahoo or Alta Vista. If you get a page that is just spam or low-quality and obviously doesn't belong where it is listed, there is something people can do about it other than just send an e-mail to customer support and never get a response. We make it VERY easy for people to take action right then and it does make a difference.
Finally, remember that with SK, we give every submission enough relevancy points to make sure that every site has a very good chance of coming up in the top of at least some of the keywords you pick. So, if you pick your keywords and phrases honestly, your site will start moving up even under the most competitive keywords.
So, you need targeted traffic and I need your sites, let's both do what we can to help each other.
CLOSING
Well, that's it for another week portal kids. You guys have fun with the EZ Builder and I'll be back atcha next week.
Love y'all
Bob

Publisher -- Bob Massa

========July 28, 2000========

IN THIS ISSUE:

Weekly Portal Owner's Diary

Affiliate Contest Update

Anyone Interested in Working With Me to Make a Buck?

Bob's Sales Tip of the Week

WEEKLY PORTAL OWNER'S DIARY
Something happened this past week to make me realize a mistake I've been making. A good friend pointed out to me that the PPP could be of more service to my partners as more of a motivational tool than a forum for me to whine about tech problems. Well, in my defense, I try to let all of you know what I deal with in regards to tech issues because I felt I was doing you all a service by letting you know the challenges I face in the hope that you would be able to avoid some of those challenges yourself. After being honest with myself I realized my friend had a very good point and as hard as it was to admit, he was right.
The PPP isn't for me to complain and whine about my problems. Many, (in fact most), of you are much more capable of dealing with tech issues than I am and I'm likely doing nothing more than boring you to tears and making a bigger ass of myself than usual. I slipped into the me - me - me trap and forgot one of my most valuable business philosophies. That is - What I do is not important. What YOU do is. I can provide tools, BUT, if you don't use them I fail. I can build a website, BUT, if you don't use it, I fail. I can sell a product, BUT if you don't buy it, I fail. See what I mean? What I do is not important, what YOU do is. So, I'm going to refocus myself to dedicating this PPP on helping you, motivating you, sharing secrets of success with you and helping you realize the value of this program with YOU running it.
Some of you old-timers may remember some months back when I was sharing e-mails I would get asking my opinion of different ideas and business models and how the portals would help with those ideas. I enjoyed that and enjoyed the response I would get from other partners giving their opinions and feedback. I want to encourage that again. If some of you have some ideas that you would like to have "market tested", the PPP can do that for you. Send them to me, (I'll not use your name unless you want me to), and I'll publish them for our almost 2,000 readers to think about and respond to. It was fun. Don't be afraid to look foolish by asking anything. Remember, even a blind hog finds an occasional acorn and who knows what the right person with the right idea could do?
Also, I WANT testimonials! I WANT success stories. I WANT you to share good news about you and the portal you run. Did you get an e-mail thanking you for a wonderful site? I want to put that in the PPP. Did you make a great sale from your site? Have a great day? Find something really cool? Get your name in the paper? Your kid win an award? I WANT our partners to know that. I also want them to know that this thing is not just a job, it's changing the world for the better. I want to focus on the fact that what we are all doing here is a GOOD thing and it can have great rewards for all who care enough to be willing to build an honest, quality site.
I promise from now on to focus on the good things about running Searchking and stop whining. Since I don't have any of those great portal partner stories for this week, I'll tell you mine.
Searchking sold more advertising this last 4 days than it's sold in the last three years AND all from the website. You can sell from a website!
The two factors that played the biggest part in this was:
1. Keyword Text Banner Ads
In my opinion, the biggest reason that most generic graphical banners get such a dismal click thru rate is because the vast majority of them are being run in places where the potential customer is not looking. The second biggest thing is that the graphical banners are far too often too cluttered an/or busy. Often it is much easier to impress someone with simply saying what you want instead of trying to impress them with flashy colors and dancing monkeys.
2. Try it Before You Buy it.
Once I was able to accept the fact that inventory I had and customers I didn't, it was also easy to realize that it cost me just as much to simply keep the site running with no paying customers as it did with paying customers, and once I realized that I could live 30 days without getting paid and I didn't HAVE to have the money today, and realized that if it was really worth what I was charging then why was I worried about not getting paid and realized there really wasn't much of a better way to be more up-front and honest about a sale, it was easy writing the text and building the order from. That's what I did and it worked! No point in missing a chance to make a few sales here so, to have a look at this miracle of marketing go to www.searchking.com/advertise1.htm
The old Searchking office has been a busy place this last week but a happy one too.
AFFILIATE CONTEST UPDATE
Well, the clock is ticking away on this month's affiliate contest but there is still time to come from behind and capture that $100 prize for yourself. the contest runs through the end of this month.
As it stands, things have improved pretty drastically since last week when the leader was sitting in first position with a whole ---- 1.
This past week we've had one affiliate zoom ahead with 5 for the week. Fortunately for you guys that affiliate is Kathi Chesnut who has matrimonial ties to the head of the company and therefore, (much to the dismay of the aforementioned affiliate), has been disqualified. I do get a kick out of the visual image I get of the look on all your faces if I announced next week, Congratulations to the winner --- MY WIFE!
So that brings us to the second runner up who is actually now in first place to get the hunk of cash. (I'll probably get a few raised eyebrows from this one too). Mike Rotter has now had 3 sign ups this past week. He is not disqualified because he has been given no edge whatsoever other than the fact that he has been behind me and the Searchking concept from almost day one. He likes what he does, he's proud of what he does and he does what he says he will do.
In a close second is Karen Weber with two sign ups.
We've had a total of 18 affiliate sign ups this month so that leaves 8 other people with one each, so my advice to you guys is to see that you only need two more to at least tie. By the way, in the event of a tie, I will pay everybody that has the highest numbers. So why not buy some TV spots this last two days? Maybe take out a full page ad in Sunday's paper? Or maybe just call a couple of relatives, friends or clients and let them know what a good time it is to get in on this deal now.
ANYONE INTERESTED IN WORKING WITH ME TO MAKE A BUCK?
We all get offers all the time like, "after reviewing your site, we would like to partner with you". Then of course, at the bottom it says something like, "this is a one time mailing", but you notice 5 more in your inbox from the same address. Well, I get them too, however with being the owner of a portal like Searchking, I do tend to get a little higher number of "legit" offers, or at least there aren't 5 more just like it in my mailbox.
I usually don't pay a lot of attention to the majority of these offers. Recently though I've been thinking I may be being a little hasty in dismissing them all. For example, I was recently contacted, (by phone no less), by TravelNow.com, one of the biggest travel sites on the net, making me some type of referral offer. He seemed quite impressed when I told him that we hosted some 500 portals.
Then just today I got mailed from the vice-president of a company that claims to be offering instant online credit cards and they pay $15 for each application. Not approval, application. It sounds to me like there may be a market for a product like this. Anyway, I get these kinds of deals coming to me quite frequently.
I also know how hard it is to make a buck off a website and since I want very much to see my partners make money, I thought it may be a good idea to ask all of you if you would be interested in setting up some type of system where I could try to finagle some kind of a deal for us as a community of portals as opposed to me just blowing them all off?
If anyone has some opinions on this, why not send me an email. If I get a few and it makes me think there is an opportunity here, I'll start running this "make a buck" thing as a weekly column and we could all discuss it, figure it out and implement it.
What do you kids think?
BOB'S "HOW TO SELL ANYTHING" TIP OF THE WEEK
This is going to be another weekly feature of the Portal Partner Press. I've been in sales and marketing for many, many years. I'm 46 years old and I started out selling lawn mowing and bags of fruit door to door when I was about 8. I've been in some type of sales position just about ever since, usually in the capacity of running my own business. That gives me close to 40 years experience in sales and marketing. I don't claim to be any expert or the world's greatest salesman or any thing like that, but I do know a little about selling and specifically selling on the web.
I will start this weekly column by giving you the undisputable "secret" of how to make sales. TELL THE TRUTH! Don't try to mislead, lie, cheat or oversell. Define your customer's needs and desires and then try to meet those needs and desires the best you can. You are not going to sell everyone, but you can sell everything as long as your concerned more about the customer than you are about making a fast buck. Of course it's true that you can lie to people and sell them things, but it is also true that we have prisons and even without them, to take a dishonest approach to sales means that you are always looking for another sucker and not building a life for you and your family. Ok, now that the secret is out of the way, I will focus each week on one piece of the sales from a website puzzle.
This weeks' tip is:
FEATURE
BENEFIT
ACTION
Keep in mind that as portal owners, every page is not for sales. The front page of your portal for example should not be used for sales. It should be used to offer topic specific information. Only after a visitor clicks on a link or banner or does a search should the sales process begin. Once it does begin though, that is where effective web selling should take over. The first step in effective web sales is:
FEATURE - what we offer, what it does
BENEFIT - how what we offer will benefit YOU
ACTION - what to do to learn more, see something, or order
When someone clicks on a banner for example, that says, get out of debt now, right off the bat, he isn't interested in what ELSE you have. Don't take him to a page that has dozens of other offers on it. Take him to a page that tells him in 2 seconds, You found what you're looking for!
WE CAN LOWER YOU'RE MONTHLY BILLS NOW! (feature)
Free up your monthly income fast and easy so that you can spend more on the things that you and your family really need. (benefit)
Click here to see how we can save you money NOW! (action)
Now I've made this overly simplistic and there should be things taken into consideration like the look and "feel" of the page, but I can just about guarantee you that this page I just wrote above will get more sales than a page with 15 banners on it and 20 paragraphs of text.
CLOSING
Well, that's it for this week kids. Now get out there and get to work and send them success stories!
This Bob's for you !

Publisher -- Bob Massa

PORTAL PARTNER PRESS June 2000

========June 7, 2000========

IN THIS ISSUE:

Weekly Portal Owner's Diary

Moving the Portal Pluses

New Yahoo Service

Link Popularity and why we're all crazy for not taking advantage of it

Investment Strategy

MY WEEKLY PORTAL OWNER'S DIARY
In the course of a portal owner's human endeavors, there comes a time to reap the fruits of ones labor. This has been such a week. The things that I have accomplished this past week are probably not that big of a deal for a smart person, but for me, it's been a real challenge and it feels pretty darn good to see some of those efforts paying off.
First, the new raid server is up and running like a one-eyed dog in a sausage factory, it's just goin' nuts! We've been in the process of moving portal pluses and pros and testing them all this week and they're all running fine as frog hair.
We have the chat program installed and the e-mail working. The EZ builder is almost ready and it looks FANTASTIC! Pretty as a speckled hen in a wagon rut and slicker than a greased hog, (hope I'm not using too much tech jargon for anyone).
I will probably never forget the gut wrenching I went through back in January when the hard drive crashed, but today I am so grateful that I was somehow able to find the intestinal fortitude to not give up. I feel wonderful! Strong, powerful and today I know that there is nowhere for any of us to go but up from here on out! I could not have done any of this stuff without the incredible support I have gotten from all of you. My triumph is more to your credit than it is to mine and I believe that as each of you reach your own goals with your own portals, when you look back at the road to success you had to travel, you will find just as I did, that you didn't make the trip by yourself. You are only as good as the people that are with you and I'm pretty great!
EXTREMELY IMPORTANT FOR ALL PORTAL PLUS OWNERS!
I've got good news and I've got bad news. Well, actually, I've got great news and bad news.
The great news is that we are moving all the portal pluses starting tomorrow to the raid server. This will give us all more stability, increased speed and more features.
The bad news is that your portals may be down for 2 to 6 hours. I know OUCH, but it's got to be done.
When we move the portal pros it's seamless. No one even knows it ever happened, (we've already moved a few), because we have to move the IP numbers. So the site is up on one server and we don't pull it down until after it comes up on another. However, with the pluses we have to modify the dns numbers and that's a horse of a different color. Now Internic has to propagate the dns numbers and that's a global affair and it takes a little bit of time.
Also, we have to ask you all not to make any changes to your site for about 48 hours to be on the safe side. Any changes you make you run the risk of having to make them again once the site is up on the new server. We have everything loaded into a .tar file so everything including your database all gets moved at once, but if you try to ftp anything while the move is in progress, you are taking the chance of running into problems. We can't just hit a button and poof! they're all there. We have to go in and set up the username and passwords again. So this takes Shane doing back end stuff while Kathi is doing passwords and of course we have no idea in which order they will come in, soooo, we have to ask that everyone just be a little patient with us and give us from 9 am central time on Thursday until 9 am central time on Saturday.
Thank you.
YAHOO!
Yahoo is a lot like doctors. Some of us love them and some of us hate them but we all know that we need them. So many people have tried so hard for so long to get a listing in Yahoo with no luck. No response for that matter. It is by far the most difficult and the most frustrating for the most people. It is also by far the best traffic generator.
The value of Yahoo to someone like myself, who owns a top placement service, is extreme to say the least. I've known from the beginning that Yahoo is the big kahuna in terms of what a client is willing to pay and that of course relates to how much profit the company can expect to make. For the last four years we have never been able to get better than a 65% success ratio with getting our clients a first page listing in Yahoo under their selected keywords. Not bad, in fact good enough to keep me making a living for several years, but not good enough to make any kind of guarantee. Well, that's all changed now.
I've spent the last few months focused on Yahoo, and like all the other engines, once I focus on it and commit myself to it, it's just a matter of time. You see, the secret to being successful at guaranteed top search service placement does not lie in finding some new script to cloak something or a new trick to hide text. The secret lies in doing the work it takes and the time it takes to understand each specific service and then learn how to supply that service with what they want and how they want it. Yahoo is no different, just a little harder. The fact that it is so hard is why I only recently decided to devote the time to it.
I know we've all heard stories from people like "I got in in just two hours". Well, that is true in some cases, I mean even a blind hog finds an occasional acorn. The fact is that those people were very lucky. The vast majority of people never get in and never know why. Well now I know why and now I can guarantee placement with confidence. This is going to put Magic-city through the roof!
The work involved in building a site that I can guarantee a first page listing in Y is very labor intensive. Also, the value of that placement may very well mean the difference between success and failure of some sites. Due to the labor costs and the value of the placement, the price will go up accordingly. I realize that this service is not for everyone but I also realize that there is a segment of the market out there that understands the low cost of my fees when compared to traditional advertising mediums such as TV, radio and magazines. Being in the placement business for as long as I have, I know that there are some people who will pay virtually any amount I ask as long as I can actually produce results --- and I can.
I am going to start an affiliate program for this service. I will only offer it to a few people because due to the labor and the problems associated with training new employees, we will not be able to handle more than about 10 new clients a week. I only want people who know the net, know how to place their banners for optimum results with minimum effort and that I can trust not to lie, oversell or mislead the customer. My reputation is everything to me and I will not gamble that reputation on somebody that I can't trust.
I will put up a new page and order form. I will approve banners and text links for the affiliates and I will pay a commission of about $200 for each order that comes through the affiliate site on a set up fee of about $1500. For no more effort than it takes to spread the word and do it honestly, you could be making a very tidy sum of money.
There will be an agreement that you would be required to sign but if you're interested in doing this, just send me an e-mail to bobking@searchking.com and tell me basically why I should choose you. I will only accept about 10 people for this so if you're serious I wouldn't wait too long. It will take me about a month or so to get everything set up so there is no big rush, but I do want to have the affiliates in place pretty soon.
LINK POPULARITY
As portal partners, we are all sitting on a placement gold mine. Link popularity.
Virtually every major search service is using some form of link popularity to determine relevancy. It's a confusing issue to many people because there are so many variables involved. Also it's confusing because using most recognized procedures for figuring out a particular engines' algorithms don't really apply the same as they do to just figuring out things like keyword density. I'm going to very basically explain the concept here.
Link popularity simply means that the links coming into your site boost your relevancy for a particular keyword or phrase based on the relevancy and the quality, (as determined by that specific services' criteria), of the site that is linking to you. The basics are still very important. So, that means that just because you get a bunch of sites to link to you, it does not mean you go to the top. You still need your keywords in the title tag, the meta description, the meta keyword tag, (this is becoming much over-rated), a keyword density of about 4% to 7%, keywords in the text title of your links to interior pages, keywords in your alt tags and keywords in your H1 tags. What it does mean though is that assuming you and I both had all the T's crossed and the I's dotted but you had link popularity and I didn't, you would come up on top of me.
Now the next big misconception is over the "quality" thing. Links are hard to get so many people started submitting their site to all these FFA pages and then not understanding why they weren't on top. The only thing that is going to happen if you submit to a bunch of those FFA pages is you are going to get spammed to death! I'm sure someone reading this will say, "hey - I run an honest FFA page and I don't spam!" Well, maybe that's true but even you would have to agree with me that anyone that submits their site to 100 FFA, (oh by the way, FFA stands for Free For All), pages will most likely get 98 pieces of spam for months and months to come with no hope of getting good placements. Why? Because the search services are smart enough to figure this little trick out and they are able to use several techniques to determine that is a low quality link.
Let's look at it in terms of numbers. Let's say that any relevancy rating system is based on 100 points. You get 5 points for the keyword in the title, 5 for hitting the keyword density, 5 for the H1 tags etc., (remember I'm not saying these are the actual points they use, I'm just giving examples). Keep in mind too that most services can also deduct points for a variety of spam reasons. Hidden text, re-directs, keywords stuffed into your meta tags, things like that. Ok, now we'll add in the fact that links to you gain points too. The more quality a site has that links to you, the more points.
Quality is determined by things like how much traffic a site that links to you gets. How long the user stays on the site linking to you on average and how many pages a user accesses on average from the site linking to you. Naturally, this kind of filtering procedure is going to place a great deal of emphasis on sites like Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft, a lot of .edus and sites like that. So using our point system, a link form bob.com may be worth 1 point while a link from Yahoo is worth 50 points. That's why getting listed in Yahoo is so important. This explains why many people are stumped when they check their link popularity, (which you can do very easily by going to www.linkpopularity.com), and see that they are #45 with 120 links but the guy at #1 only has two links. It's because those two links are probably coming in from Yahoo and AOL! Quality sites according to the search service.
All right, now lets move on to themes. The service is going to determine relevancy for the site linking to you just like they will for your site. This explains why many of us are starting to see our sites pop up in good positions under strange keywords. If a site that links to you is highly relevant to shoes for example, then your sock site may very well start popping up under shoe related keywords as opposed to sock keywords. This is a basic flaw in this whole system and I'm pretty sure it will change soon but for now this is the game we're playing. So the idea of this whole little process from the point of view of the search service, is that the only way you come up in the top is if your site is good enough to justify my site linking to you. This of course is going to take a great deal of effort on your part and a great deal of time. They know that and that is exactly why it's becoming so popular with the search services. This is their way of dealing with spam.
We also have the confusion over the question of sites like Direct Hit and Google who, once your site is indexed, starts tracking the hits and the time people spend on your site to determine your placement. This of course brings up the question of how does a new site ever get popular if only popular sites get on top? Well the programs these services are running are extremely sophisticated and each service has it's own little way of dealing with it. Like rotating the results for a period of time by putting new sites in a good position and then if it starts getting traffic it stays and if it doesn't it doesn't. This is really not too big of a problem though because the search services that use the results from Direct Hit and Google usually require that you have to select a specific link to bring up those results. At this time only Hot Bot, that I'm aware of, actually just places Direct Hit at the top of their results. Most of the others, like MSN for example, has a link that says something like, "for the 10 most popular sites about this keyword click here" or something like that. As far as the regular search results though, the specific service has their own way of using link popularity, (even Hot Bot).
Ok, I hope you all pretty much get the concept. But Bob, you said you would help us portal partners with this. Actually, that's not what I said. I said we're all crazy for not taking advantage of it. You see, as portal partners we have the unique opportunity of being able to secure quality links by using the power of our numbers.
First of all, you only get credit for links coming into you that are already indexed in that specific engine or directory. Well just about all of us realize the importance of being in the engines, so most of us have submitted our sites to all the majors. In other words, getting those links to us indexed is not a problem, we're already there.
Secondly, we're not running another affiliate banner site or FFA page, we're all running portal sites. Sites that on average attract more traffic, more time spent on our sites and more page views per visitor. The stats are already bearing this out. So as far as the quality of the links, a link from a portal partner is much better than most of our competitors could expect to get. Starting to see what I'm getting at here?
I'm sure that some of you are thinking well just by listing in each other's directory doesn't that get us in? It depends on whether you are all using static pages or not. My guess is most of you aren't because it takes more work and more time to set them up this way. Setting them up with static pages does work and it helps with the theme thing because the keyword is in the url of that category page and the search results page. In other words, if your shoe portal is in my directory in the category business/shopping/clothing/shoes, bingo! The problem here is you almost have to submit every page of your directory because you can't trust all the services to actually spider every page in your site regardless of what they say on their submission page. Just ask Shane. He's got close to 3,000 pages in Searchynx but only 156 pages indexed in Alta Vista.
"So what are we going to do Bob? I want to be in the top under my keywords".
Just settle down there cowkids. I know you want to be in the top and I want you there too. That's why I'm revealing my secrets to you here. You know, I don't even mention it on the portal sign up site but one of the benefits of being a portal partner is you get me telling you all this stuff. I've been in the placement business for going on 5 years now and I'm pretty damn good at it. I've spent a lot of time and a lot of very hard work figuring all this crap out and believe me, I charge a pretty stiff nickel for this stuff and I'm underpaid.
So the answer is this -- Portal Friends. The trick is to set up a master page that every portal is listed on by category, (to save time it would have to be broad categories). Let's say we use shoes.com for the master list. There would be a link from the front page that said "Visit some of Shoes.com's Portal Friends". This link would go to shoes.com/friends. At the top of the friend's page it would have the company logo and an H1 that said something like, here is list of other great portal sites that we highly recommend. Then there would be the 10 or so categories and then each link would be a text link to your site with the keyword in the link. In other words, the link wouldn't say http://www.bob.com, it would say "all about socks" and then the link would go to bob.com. As each new portal came in, it gets put at the top of the list .
Now each portal partner goes and copies the same list and repeats the process on their portal just replacing the shoes.com info with their own. Every 30 days the list gets updated and resubmitted. It takes on average about 2 to 6 weeks for most of the services to index so within about 6 weeks, everyone that is doing their part all start to benefit from the process. If you don't benefit, then you have not done something right and it's usually that you didn't follow the little process I talked about earlier called the "basics". Or you put the Friends page in a frame or table or something. As long as everyone involved follows the simple little process and spends the 10 minutes or so that it takes to update the page each month, we could all be stepping in high cotton.
Here's the rub. I'm not going to do it for you. It's your portal, your business and my philosophy has always been that I will help anyone who cares about their site. If you don't care enough about your site to do this then I can't help you. Also, this is a golden opportunity for me to start making it worth your while to get involved with the other partners and to show you the power we all possess but only if we all learn to take advantage of the power together. What is good for one of us is good for all of us or it is not going to turn out the way I have always dreamed it could.
So, there ya go. Now what are you going to do? I suggest you guys get into the forums and figure out how to put this thing together. If you don't, I understand. It's a challenge I know but remember I never promised you a rose garden. I can provide the tools but you have to build your house.

INVESTMENT STRATEGY
I want to become an investor! The problem is I know very little about the stock market and understand even less. I just don't get it. So, I don't want to invest in the stock market. I want to invest in people. I want to invest in the internet. I want to invest in internet people. That's something I do understand and believe in.
In just over four years, I've made a lot of money on the net. I don't have much now because I keep putting it all back into the next thing I want to do. A friend of mine made me laugh the other night in chat when she pointed out that I've made a small fortune from Searchking. Of course I made it by investing a much larger fortune.
I've also been able to accumulate some considerable assets. Of course these are internet assets and that means that I could use them as collateral to borrow money from the bank as long as I put up $40,000 cash for every $20,000 I wanted to borrow.
I own over 200 domains that are all generating considerable traffic. I've got Searchking doing over 30,000 page views a day. I've got Magic-city doing twice that. I've got over 2,000 portal partners. I've got a newsletter with over 1500 readers and I write weekly columns for a few of the highest regarded e-zines on the net with a weekly readership in the hundreds of thousands.
Now, to start this little empire from recovering from multiple heart attacks and so far in debt I couldn't afford to file bankruptcy, I think is pretty impressive. I'm not an easy guy to impress and I'm impressed. I'm wanting to invest these assets in some internet people.
For example, in the Searchking strategy forum we've been discussing a way to promote Searchking and the portal program by using humor. I think there is a tremendous market for technology jokes and specifically internet jokes. I want to start a bob joke site. Much the same as blonde jokes or Jewish jokes or any other of the dozens of ethnic jokes. I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about.
I've mentioned this to a few friends and I got an e-mail the other day from one of them regarding Bob jokes.
What is the difference between Bob and a monkey with a computer?
The monkey is better looking
the monkey doesn't take as long to train
the monkey is a better typist
(and my personal favorite)
the monkey can get credit
Then yesterday another friend sent this one too. The monkey has a vocabulary of 200 words.
I hope you get the idea. Well, the site would use the portal program and do things like let people add their own jokes and then award prizes for the most popular ones. Allow people to post their joke or cartoon and use their url as a sig and then set it up so that anyone could easily send the joke to a friend and that way promote the artist. I believe that it would provide a real hot spot for everybody to jump on the Bob joke wagon. I see no reason that this couldn't become as popular as blonde jokes and people using this almost as much as people use those free e-greeting card sites. There is a Bob with a computer in virtually every office in the world. We all know a Bob somewhere.
This site would generate income by promoting anything it wants to sell. Like a Yahoo top placement affiliate banner, a portal affiliate banner, outside advertising, as well as possibly selling our jokes to e-zines, newsletters, search engines, and other sites. There are probably a few income producing streams that I haven't even thought of yet.
Also, I'm looking for someone to start an ad agency using Searchking as it's main client. Anyone just dying to get into the ad game?
That's just a couple of deals that I want. I have more and I would love to discuss yours. I got to thinking about this back when we were talking in the PPP about some of the ideas that other partners had sent me. Remember the lady who wanted to do the fast food delivery portal? I wish I had talked with her more because I loved the idea and she never signed up so I guess she just wasn't sure if she could do it or not. I think I could have helped had I been willing to invest some of my assets and gotten behind her.
Don't get the idea that I'm going to help set up the business plan, devise the objectives and strategies, develop the procedures and policies, provide the server space, the marketing and the advertising all for nothing. If you have an idea that you're serious about, then I would like the chance to become a new kind of venture capitalist. I will tell you right up front I'm going to expect an investment from you too. How much? I have no idea. It's all going to depend on what we're going to do, the person I'm going to do it with, what we think we can make and what we think it will cost. I just know that I've got a lot better chance of getting results from you if you're serious enough to put your money where your mouth is.
So any takers?
AND FINALLY
Sorry about this one being so long, but there is so much stuff I thought you should know about this week. I'm still trying to raise money. I've got domains for sale and last week I forgot to put the url where you all could see them, (that's how good at this stuff I am). So it's www.searchking.com/domains4sale.htm.
I'm still looking for takers on the 10 keywords for two years for $1000 too. So far we've been running those text banner ads for almost three months now and not one person has cancelled! That should say something about the value AND they ain't seen nothin' yet! The traffic is going nowhere but up.
Last but not least. I want to invite everyone to try out the new chat Thursday night. It's got a new address, (of course we'll provide a link to the new at the old), www.searchkingportal.com/chat. Thursday, 7 pm central time.
Whew!
YOU KIDS TURN OUT THEM LIGHTS NOW AND GET TO BED!
Love Y'all
Bob

Publisher -- Bob Massa

========June 15, 2000========

IN THIS ISSUE:

Weekly Portal Owner's Diary

What About Searchking

Link Popularity Continued

Looking For Ads In All The Wrong Places

WEEKLY PORTAL OWNER'S DIARY
I'm actually pretty proud of everyone at Searchking this week. I think we've pulled off a pretty good little trick and I think it just shows that all of the staff is growing and getting much better at this portal hosting thing.
I'm talking about the fact that we got all the portal pluses moved to the new raid server. Moving about 600 portal sites was a little tricky and to be honest I was expecting a lot more problems than we actually had. The credit for this one should go to Shane because while I was continually pressuring him to DO IT NOW, he stood his ground and insisted we do the testing necessary to make sure it was going to work right before we moved 600 sites. He was right and I'm glad now that he forced me to do it this way.
You see, the tricky part was that to put all those portals on another server meant we also had to put them all on another domain. This means that we would have to change all the plus's url's. Not a good option in my opinion. It would have meant that all the .searchking.com's would have to now be searchkingportal.com. With a little help from our friends, we were able to set it up so that all the pluses still show the url searchking.com yet they are all sitting on searchkingportal.com without losing any speed.
I now know how those re-directing services do it. Always wondered about that because I always assumed if the url in the location bar said one domain, that's the domain it had to be on. Not so. It just goes to show that this internet thing is pretty darn versatile.
Anyway, we got it done and nobody died. I do want to thank everyone for their patience.
WHAT ABOUT SEARCHKING?
As you all know, for the last several weeks, I've been begging for money trying to raise $20,000 to pay to Oracle and their software development people to get all the unique features of SK working again. I hated spending that kind of money and the sad fact is that I was pushing very hard for the money and the time I was spending on it was causing several other important projects to suffer. After more than a month, I was only half way to my goal and Oracle didn't seem to appreciate how hard I was trying.
Actually, I didn't really see the advantage in just having Oracle as the database. Thanks to some of our more tech savvy portal partners e-mailing and calling me, I learned that mysql would do everything I wanted it to do. The only reason I wanted Oracle was because that was the only way they would allow their software people to work on getting all the features restored and that was really all I wanted.
As with most things in life, cyber and real, if you focus on looking for what you want, you always seem to find it. Well, I think I have found what I was looking for too and that is someone who is able to do what Oracle was promising to do without me having to come up with so much money I simply didn't have. In the course of our discussions as to what exactly I wanted, the programmer asked me to explain, (briefly), the "Searchking dream". I wrote him and e-mail trying to do just that and I felt that if I'm asking all of you partners to link to Searchking that you deserved to know what that dream was as much as he did.
I'm going to post a copy of that mail here so that you may read it too. It doesn't go into great detail but what I hope to accomplish is to give you all an insight into what I feel makes Searchking different. You can't share my dream if you don't know what it is.

Through my experience as a placement specialist, I am appalled at all the hoops a webmaster has to jump through to be able to expect even a glimmer of a hope of getting decent placement in a major search service without either spending a lot of time learning the process for each specific service or by hiring someone like me. I also know that the majority of people submitting aren't trying to "trick" anyone they are simply more focused on running their business than web site design and search service placement. Most are honest and simply wanting a fair shot and are more than willing to accept the results their site gets based on content. They also don't have a problem with making changes to their content if they only knew what changes to make.
Sk believes that the major services have their focus on stopping spam to the point of making it so that the only people who can place well are the spammers. This is a basic flaw in the entire search service process. They are assuming that most people are going to try to spam them which causes mistrust and fear between the service and the submitter.
The dream of Searchking is to become known as the most honest and fair service available. SK believes that if you assume people are dishonest, they will act dishonestly. On the other hand, if you assume people are honest, the majority will act honestly. SK also believes that it is unfair to penalize the majority of honest people for the actions of a few dishonest people. The purpose of SK is to educate people on how to be successful on the net by simply being honest. We set up all of our features to make it easy for webmasters to represent their sites honestly and then provide features to educate those webmasters on how to be more effective in their marketing attempts by caring enough about their site and their business to want to honestly represent their content.
To this end, SK wants to provide a series of features to make it easy for people who care enough about their site to very simply get represented well. Here is a list of those features.
Instant indexing.
I had been told that this was one of the main things causing serious problems in terms of speed. If that is in fact true, I don't have a problem with doing an update on a timely basis. At one point right after the crash, Sarge had all submissions going to a page that all I had to do was open it and the database was updated with new submissions. www.searchking.com/admin/updatedbs.htm However, it doesn't work! Nothing I've ever updated using that has ever been added to the database. Also, this did not address the issues of updating votes and or edits.
I don't mind having to manually update the database on a regular basis if it does help with the speed. I just need to know how long, (hopefully no more than 24 - 48 hours), to be able to announce the policy to the people submitting. I would much prefer instant if at all possible. Whether it's instant or done manually on a schedule, it should include submissions, edits, and votes.
Becoming a member.
We need to offer each submission the choice of becoming a member. Becoming a member allows us to place a cookie on them to provide security and let them edit their submission at any time. This is the only way they can alter their title, description and keyword/phrases.
If they choose not to become a member, then we can not offer this feature to them because without membership, we would have to allow anyone to access their submission and make changes. Of course, that can't happen. The choice they have is to become a member and then be able to edit their submissions or not become a member and then still be able to get listed BUT, they would not have access to the editing feature.
This is probably a good time to mention that we DO NOT WANT auto submissions. SK is only there for the people who care enough about their site to take the time to submit it properly.
Submissions.
We provide a form used to make submissions that ask for title, description, area code, and keyword/phrases. Once indexed the only thing that pulls up their listing is an exact match for the keyword/phrases they CHOOSE. Keyword/phrases need to by separated by commas. Therefore, if you choose shoes, womens shoes, black shoes: your site would come up if anyone typed in any of those three terms. However, if someone typed in black womens shoes, it would not come up.
Voting.
Once submitted, we automatically add enough relevancy points to every submission, (XXXX points that number may need to be increased by increments of 10 for example, periodically as our database gets larger), that we can be reasonably sure that their site will come up in the top 20 of the results for at least some of their keyword/phrases. Once indexed, the only thing that will move the listing up or down is the click thrus on the title and description and the yes or no votes the listing gets from the public based on how relevant the listing was according to them based on the keyword they used to find them.
Once a listing gets a click thru or a vote based on any one keyword/phrase, it adds or subtracts relevancy points to the site across the board. The idea is simply to get the webmaster to select nothing but relevant keyword/phrases for their site. This eliminates a webmaster trying to get placed highly on keywords that don't apply to their site. For example a shoe site trying to come up under the keyword business. In theory, the site may be highly relevant to shoes, but because they tried to spam us with the keyword business, the public will quickly know that the site is NOT relevant to that keyword and vote no. Since the no votes carry more weight than the yes votes, he gets yes votes moving his site up under shoes, but the no votes for business start pulling his site down. His only choice would be to either accept the lower listings until he moved down into oblivion, or edit the offending keyword out of his listing.
In order to make it easy for the public to vote, we bring the site to them. Most services give you a series of links for a keyword search and when you click a link it sends you to that site. With Searchking, when you click a link, SK will get the site and bring it to you. This allows us to place a small window at the bottom of each page with the voting button always present. This is to encourage our surfers to use the power that SK puts in their hands, because only they are able to determine the placement of the sites in our database.
Notification of votes to webmasters.
This was an extremely important feature to me but for some reason didn't work for very long. It did however work at one time.
Each time someone votes on any site, the webmaster gets an e-mail notification. It lets him know which site got voted good or bad, how many points it added or subtracted and the keyword/phrase used. It also tells them how to fix the bad vote problem and reminds them where the edit page is and how to use it. This is what helps to educate the webmaster on how to pick effective keywords/phrases that keeps his site in the top.
Awards.
We also offer webmasters the ability to apply for our King of the Web award. If the site submitted gets the award, we place an icon next to the listing assuming the site has been submitted and indexed. This does not add points to the listing BUT, it does help the listing in the respect that visitors can see the icon and they know that someone from the SK staff reviewed the site and found it to be of high enough quality to justify the award. This should help in click thrus which do add points.
Admin Panel.
Everything on the admin panel should be fine if we can just get it working. My main concern is of course the banner administration and the ability to edit and delete sites from the index.
I would like to pay attention to the add an award feature. This is not working and it needs to be because the awards is an important part of our marketing efforts and also, if we can't add that little icon, we can't say we will. The icon goes a long way in helping our reviewed sites to get click thrus which of course moves their site up.
Wish List.
These are a couple of things that aren't there now but I really would like to have and if it's possible, I'd love to see them added.
Keyword tracking.
Since we've started using Curt's java text banners, we have no way of knowing how many times a specific keyword gets searched or how many click thrus a text banner gets. I would like to be able to track the keywords and the click thrus.
Time sensitive ads.
In the banner admin it would be nice if we could have the option of setting those rotating banners by number of impressions OR by date. Since we started doing the try it before you buy it program with ads, we have to check manually to see if the ads have run out and it would be nice to set it up so that we could run the banner from say the 15th of June until the 19th of July and it would maybe notify the webmaster when the ad hit the 15th.
These two things are no biggee but I will have to deal with at least the keyword tracking issue at some point.
That should do it I think. There really never were a whole lot of features to it. I like the idea of being able to do what we need to do with as few features as possible. The fewer features, the fewer things we have to go down.
I'm sure I've forgotten some things and I'm also pretty sure that I have probably not answered all the questions. Just send me anything that comes up and we'll deal with it, however, this should take care of just about everything.
Bob

Well, that's it. Pretty simple stuff huh? I have never wanted to be high tech as much as I want to be hi-touch. Technology is great but I believe the technology is only a tool and the real value is in the people and not the tools they use. While this stuff may sound pretty simple, the fact is that I spent many, many hours struggling with how to set up a search service that was more fair to webmasters and gave the searcher decent results. Then the time, (and money), involved in putting together all the people needed to build these custom features.
I'm not saying that SK is any better than anyone else and I'm the first to admit that I don't have the "perfect" way of determining relevant results anymore than Yahoo or Alta Vista. I am saying that I think allowing webmasters to CHOOSE their keywords and then letting the public decide if it's relevant is just as good an approach as having someone who doesn't know you from Adam decide for you what your site is about or using something as silly as who links to you to determine if your site is good or not.
If you're interested in knowing more about my approach to offering a more honest and fair search service, you can read "The Searchking Story" at www.searchkingportal4u.com/story.htm
LINK POPULARITY CONTINUED
Last week's little article about link popularity definitely set off a spark. Some of you can certainly see some of the power that we all have as portal partners and by learning to work together. There has been a really great thread going on in the SK forums about this issue and I encourage all of you to "get involved". If you guys can get together and pull this off, many of you are going to be VERY happy with the results.
LOOKING FOR ADS IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES
I am still looking for someone to take on the job of Searchking advertising manager. I'm not looking for someone who knows the ad game inside and out. I'm not even looking for someone who knows anything about selling. I am looking for a person that cares about the job they do and that can see the potential in managing a site that has unique opportunities such as SK has. There aren't very many other sites anywhere that could place an ad on hundreds of portals!
This person would be responsible for all aspects of the advertising department. Developing strategies, designing the ad site, negotiating the deals, contacting new leads and dealing with the clients. Basically making it happen.
Anyone interested, send me an e-mail to bobking@searchking.com
CLOSING
Well, that's it for another week portal kids.
C Ya Later
Love Y'all
Bob

Publisher -- Bob Massa

========June 21, 2000========

IN THIS ISSUE:

Weekly Portal Owner's Diary

A Different Point of View

Private Strategy Forum

Free Banners For Everybody!

WEEKLY PORTAL OWNER'S DIARY
This week has been fairly uneventful. We did get the chat program up and running. The only real complaint we had was that the text was too small making it hard to read. Well, Mike Rotter fixed it for us. He resized the graphic and now the text is about 30% bigger making it much easier to read. I think we're ready now to start setting up individual rooms for the portal partners.
When I started this program I thought chat was going to be too easy. Boy, was I wrong! I've bought a total of 4 different chat programs and spent hours upon hours trying to get them installed and working. It was much harder than I expected finding one that would serve our needs and do what it was claiming to be able to do. I'm glad we were finally able to get this one working because I'm ready to move on. Voice chat is the next step I'd like to see SK take but I've been so frustrated with getting just a regular web chat up and going, I'm scared to death of starting out trying to find another one even more technically challenging.
Like most things I've found out about the web, it ain't as easy as it looks and it is very rarely really "free".
I am still waiting with baited breath, (I never did understand what baited breath means. I just hope that it refers to the fact that "I WANT IT NOW!!"), for the ez builder script and to have SK features operational again. Those are the two big things that are holding up our growth. There are several things I want to do but feel my hands are pretty much tied until I am able to get these two things done.
I would very much like to be able to start offering the portal pluses free again. Does anybody remember the day that we had a small ezine of about 5,000 readers run a short little story about SK's portal program and we had over 125 sign ups in two days? The problem was that within 90 days we had over 700 portal pluses sign up, BUT, we only had about 150 of them actually put up their sites. I'm not saying that the only reason for more people not building a portal is because it's too hard, but I am convinced that had I been able to offer the EZ builder, a much higher percentage would have went in and actually got started. According to my research, 150 out of 700 is actually not too far off from what other free hosts expect. Like Geocities for example. They rely on those free sites going up so they have a place to display their ads. They can be profitable at a rate of about 25%. However, because of their system being able to allow you to very easily build a site, their percentage is much higher. I believe with all my heart, the EZ builder will do the same for us.
Of course giving up the $29 set up fee for the pluses presents a concern from the affiliates. Naturally, I can't pay out commissions on a free service. I plan on addressing this by eliminating some of the features for the free one and then selling upgrades. We have found that so many of the features we offer with the plus are just going to waste. They simply aren't being used. We have also found that many people need software that we don't offer. With this program being so versatile, we want to be able to offer anything a person could need to be able to accomplish their own goals.
With the affiliate program we bought, (maybe the only thing I've done right since I started this thing), we are already tracking new sign ups so that if they upgrade to a pro we can identify the affiliate and make sure they get credit for the sale. We will simply continue doing this and that way if a free plus decides they want vanity e-mail, the affiliate would be paid on that upgrade. We hope that over a short period of time we would be able to offer much more than just the standard stuff like more megs and more transfer. Things like auction software. State of the art classifieds. Voice recognition. Digital signature software. Shopping carts. Streaming audio and video, etc.
This gives us a way to provide custom software only to the people who need it and can use it. A way for the portal partner to only have to pay for what they want and generate income for the affiliates and SK as well.
I'm hoping that we will have a working version of the EZ builder in the next week or two.
As far as the SK features, I've had an advertising campaign planned for months now with the objective being to increase traffic to SK and to the portal directory specifically. I don't see any point in advertising something that doesn't work. While it can be very hard and expensive to attract new visitors to any site, it is much, much more difficult to ever get them back once they come and have a bad experience. For that brief moment in time and space when SK was working, we were growing at a phenominal pace. People loved the prospect of being able to simply CHOOSE their keyword and in the time it took to hit the back button, there they were in the top of the results for their keywords. Even I don't mind bragging a little on this one. It was pretty impressive and could definitely make your day. You walked away thinking, "Searchking's pretty cool". I want people thinking that again!
I'm hoping that we will have a working engine again within the next week or two. : )
Speaking of SK, brings me to an e-mail I got from a partner last week. If you remember I published a letter I sent to the programmer called "the dream". In that letter I basically outlined the way Searchking was supposed to work. In order to show you all as portal owners that not everyone sees the same dream as you, I want to post that e-mail from the partner and then provide a response.

A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW
Letter received on 6-16-00 in response to the 6-16 issue of the PPP

Hi Bob,
I usually agree with most of what you write, but I do disagree 100% with this:

This is probably a good time to mention that we DO NOT WANT auto submissions. SK is only there for the people who care enough about their site to take the time to submit it properly.

There are a substantial number, if not the majority, of quality web sites that are SOHO operations with a very limited operating budget. We're the little guys trying to compete in cyberspace with the big budget businesses. For many of us, it's our first venture into business for ourselves. For us, TIME is often the most valuable asset we have because we are working full-time day jobs as we try to grow our home business.
We can't afford search engine placement specialists or staff that simply surf for new places to obtain listings and links like big business can, and we can't afford the time it takes to go to the hundreds of search engines and directories ourselves - especially on slow dial up connections. Our limited time is needed for things like responding timely to email, processing orders, and developing content. I know you'd like to think SearchKing is special enough that everyone should submit manually, but if everyone thought like that the little guys don't have a chance at getting 10% of the listings they can obtain using automated tools.
Investing $200 dollars from a small budget, to me, indicates someone who DOES indeed care about their site and dream. It often means taking money from the household budget to invest in our dream of a full-time home business. That money might have meant sacrificing in some other area of our lives, such as postponing a needed car repair or skipping a few meals.
I think your idea of blocking automated submissions hurts the very people you're trying to help, and only the people you're trying to help - the little guy. The big guys don't care about such things, they can afford to "pay someone to care about their site for them" - us little guys don't have that luxury. I think that's wrong and antithetical to the "Bob" I've came to know and respect via the Portal Partner Press. There's my 2 cents.

First, I want to tell you just how much I appreciate your honesty and candor. Whether I agree with you or not is not important. What is important is that I am aware of how you feel. Once I understand how you feel, we can come to some kind of compromise but without knowing, I'm lost.
Ok, I could not agree more that the majority of quality websites on the net are operated by people who have a limited budget, but that does not change the fact that auto submissions are still the source of the VAST majority of spam that SK got. Once again, the sad fact is that the few have ruined a good thing for the many.
If it were up to me I would offer that perfect solution, I just don't think there is any such thing. The problem of course is that there is no software that I'm aware of that will allow me to pick and choose who can use auto submit software to submit their site to SK and who can't. How do I tell the program, "only let the honest people use it"? I can't . So that forces me to have to make a decision and history has proven that if I let you submit your 10 or 20 good pages, then I have to find the resources to delete the other 6,000 pages that are not good. Now that's just from a strictly portal owner point of view.
From a personal point of view, I still feel strongly that the people with the smallest budgets are the ones who need to avoid those auto submit programs the most. The whole idea of auto submission is to get as many pages as possible submitted to as many engines as possible as fast as possible. Right there, this is a contradiction. In fact, the very statement, submitting 100's of quality pages to 1,000's of quality search engines is an oxy-moron. Even you have to accept that there is no auto submit program that will secure Yahoo or DMOZ for you. Those two services have the potential of sending much more traffic to your quality site than hundreds of others combined.
I'm not comparing SK to those services. I realize that SK does not offer the value of hand submitting that those services do, but that's not the point. The point is that SK is not better than anyone else, it's just different. We require information to index you properly that is not provided for on those auto submit programs. So, the bottom line is that even if I do allow them, it won't work. What does work is getting thousands and thousands of submissions on a daily basis that I can't use. That takes up my valuable resources which wastes my time and the person's submitting it.
The reason I have developed the policy that I have is that I can offer you something of value. If you take the time to hand submit your site to Yahoo or Dmoz, (or just about any other service out there), you have no idea if you were accepted or not, let alone placed in the top. With Searchking, when you hand submit and CHOOSE the keywords/phrases you want, by the time you hit the back button, you will find your site in the top under at least some of those keywords. The feeling that gives you is worth something. In my opinion, it's worth the 3 minutes it takes to hand submit.
So, while I can see where my policy makes you think it is anti-ethical to the "Bob" you've come to know, in fact, I am trying my best to help those little guys become bigger guys. My philosophy is derived from several years of being very familiar with auto submit programs and being one of those professionals the "big guys" hire to take care of their sites. Believe me, I want the easiest fastest way of doing it more than anybody. The faster and easier I can get my clients placed, the more profit I make. The fact is I know from my own experience that the only way to generate consistent traffic from the major search services is to take the time to do it the way they want it done and they don't want it done with auto submit programs due to the same exact problems I mentioned above. I do what I do the way I do it because I am totally convinced that the little guy has a much better chance of becoming a big guy if he will take the time to build a quality site, (not short, keyword stuffed doorway pages), and then hand submit them to the major services. It only takes a few minutes to submit and if a guy working a full time "real" job would just submit to one a night, within a few weeks, he will see much better results than spending his time submitting a lot of pages to a lot of engines.
As soon as I can get all the features working again, I am hoping that I can win you over. Am I doing the right thing? Only time will tell, but I believe I am.
PRIVATE STRATEGY FORUM
For all you members of the strategy forum, we have a private room set up at SK forums. I sent an e-mail to you all with the password, but it appears that it didn't get delivered for some reason. I'll send you all another e-mail today. Sorry the intranets thing didn't work out but I just couldn't get the hang of reading the previous posts which made it hard for a guy with extreme mental limitations like me, to follow the discussions. I think having it at the SK forum will make it a little easier for us all to feel comfortable enough to start making things happen. I have a lot of things I'd like to talk about in there.
Also, since we were able to do this fairly easily, I thought I would open discussion about also having a private moderators forum. Like the staff lounge at Virtual Promote. It would give moderators a way to discuss issues privately that pertain to doing a better job of helping our partners through the forums. If you moderators think this is something of value, send me an e-mail.
FREE BANNERS FOR EVERYBODY!
We have spent quite a bit of time this past week trying to tighten up our banner rotations throughout all the SK properties. The thing that hits me the most is it is glaringly obvious that inventory I got, banners I need!
Since I have all of this available space and no one beating down my door to buy it, I would like to offer it to my portal partners. My reasons for this is simply that if I'm willing to give away banner space I want to give it to my partners. Also, I would expect you guys to be a little more open and honest with me in terms of effectiveness. I will give you the banners but I want some feedback.
So here's the deal. I will run a 468x60 banner for any portal partner reading this. These will be generic rotating banners which will be displayed throughout SK and all the power portals and portal pluses, (so no dirty stuff). This offer is good from now until the 15th of July and will run for at least 60 days or longer depending on how quickly we start selling ads. Of course my hope is that these banners will increase your income enough to justify the expense of continuing running them but we'll discuss that later after we have a chance to check the stats for a while.

Now for the "let's make a deal" section. I will run four banners for a year for $100. I'll run 10 banners for a year for $200. That's like $1.60 per banner per month! Sound good?
Send me the banners you would like me to run to bobking@searchking.com, Make sure to give me the url of where to go and get the banner and the url to link it to.
Good Luck!
CLOSING
That's it for this week portal kids. I'm always a little paranoid about rambling on too much.
Love Y'all
Bob

Publisher -- Bob Massa

========June 28, 2000========

IN THIS ISSUE:

Weekly Portal Owner's Diary

Google Bends Over Backwards To Help Searchking Portals

Strategy Forum Produces Results
$100 Contest

Here's a Firecracker For You

Good News For Next Week

WEEKLY PORTAL OWNER'S DIARY
The biggest advancement in my life as a portal owner this week comes not from the world of technology, but more from the medical field. The world of pharmacology to be exact.
I have been an insomniac since my childhood. I can remember forming a tent with my bed covers and writing poems, drawing pictures, and writing out business plans when I was in the second grade. Bedtime was 9 pm at my house, but I would rarely get to sleep before 2 or 3 in the morning, which meant my mother had to go through a daily ritual of yelling at me, shaking my bed, even having to go as far as throwing water on me a few times to get me out of bed at 6 in the morning so I could get to school on time. I've been tired most of my life.
About 8 years ago I was diagnosed with diabetes. No sympathy please because there are much worse diseases to have. Reflecting on the kind of life I lead as a younger man, I'm actually pretty lucky that all I have to deal with is diabetes. (Speaking of this now puts me in mind of a dear friend who understands exactly what I'm talking about, love ya K). With diabetes, you can live a normal life without much pain if you just get a little exercise, (which I don't of course), eat right, (again, which I don't of course), and get enough rest. AH, rest. Hence the rub!
Over these last few months, Searchking has given my life one thing above all else. STRESS! Jeez, I've spent the last 6 months getting about 4 hours sleep a night. In my youth, this wasn't a problem. I was one of those guys that could party all night and go to work the next morning and then when I got off at 5, do it again! Well, those days slipped away with my waistline. Now if I don't get enough sleep I feel like crap. For a long time now, I have longed for only one thing. A day where I just felt good. I've been so long feeling sick and tired I was becoming a little scared that no matter what rewards life held for me down the road, that I would never be able to enjoy them without feeling bad.
About 20 years ago, I had complained about my insomnia to a doctor and he prescribed some pills for me called Halcyon. These things could knock an elephant down! Well I slept and the next day I felt great. I thought I had found the answer.
Within 90 days, I took my sleeping pill and the phone rang. A friend had some minor disaster and I HAD to give her a ride. I figured I had enough time to take care of this emergency and get home before the pills kicked in. On my way home, I fell asleep at the wheel, ran off the road and hit a culvert going 60 MPH. I woke up in the hospital with no recollection whatsoever of the accident. My face was cut to shreds. My teeth were knocked out and of course my new van was totaled, BUT, once I realized what had happened, I also realized that I was completely out of control of that vehicle and I could have just as easily went off the road the other direction and hit someone head on.
I simply can't imagine a more frightening hell than living with my back broken and getting to spend the rest of my life lying there thinking about some Mother and her two kids that I killed in a car wreck because I was driving under the influence of those pills. I stopped taking them and swore to never take sleeping pills again.
I'm part Cherokee Indian and enjoy the benefit of paid medical services through the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Last week was my regularly scheduled check up and I complained that my quality of life was deteriorating rapidly because I couldn't sleep. After arguing with her for several minutes, she convinced me of two things.
#1. There have been incredible advances in prescription medication over the last 20 years and that there were several options available now that I didn't have then.
#2. I'm older and have the experience to realize I'm an adult and not a kid and if a friend wants me to drive them somewhere after it's time to go to bed, --- call a cab dude!
She prescribed some sleeping pills for me.
I started taking these pills, (I can't even remember the name of them right now), last Friday and while I still have to watch my diet to keep from feeling a little sick, I'm sleeping! I have felt better in the last few days than I have felt in the last 5 years! I feel like a new man. I'm excited and no longer scared of what the future holds for me. I FEEL GOOD! Wow, what a difference. I have more energy, (which Kathi seems to appreciate), I can think more clearly and it's a whole new world.
It's not really my nature to blow my own horn, but I'm not blind either. I know that to have accomplished what I have with Searchking and Magic-city over the last few years is nothing short of incredible. To start with absolutely nothing and to have come this far without ever even considering giving up is quite an achievement and I am very proud. My biggest concern for a long time now has always been that my health would give out. Now I know that all I ever needed was some sleep. I'm going to go out on a limb here and make a prediction.
Everything I've done in the last four years is nothing compared to what I'm going to do in the next two. Now I've got a lot of really great people behind me, now I've got knowledge that few people have and now I feel good! I feel like building something really great that can change the world and I'm going to do it. Am I a dreamer? You betcha!

GOOGLE BENDS OVER BACKWARDS TO HELP SEARCHKING PORTALS
For those of you that don't know, Yahoo is the single largest traffic generator on the net. Also for those of you who don't know, if Yahoo doesn't have listings for a keyword search in it's own directory it uses a default engine to bring back what Yahoo calls "Web Page Results". For years this default engine has been powered by Inktomi. Well, it's a new ballgame now.
Yahoo announced this week that they are dropping Inktomi and within 30 days will be using Google as their default search engine. Yahoo will still be using Inktomi for what they are calling corporate portal results which I don't have the foggiest notion of what that is at this point, (however, the word portal did catch my eye), but as far as keyword searches go, Google is it.
Well, guess what Google uses to determine rank? Link popularity. It's a little more complex than just having a link pointing to your site but it's the same basics. They also are concerned with the length of time spent on your site and how many pages from your site get accessed but over all still having a link from somewhere else is going to help dramatically and the more popular the site that links to you is, the better off you are.
Some of you may remember me harping at you all over the last few weeks about setting up a link program with all your portals. One reason I had been pushing you for this is that I had heard rumors over a month ago that Yahoo was negotiating with Google. I had thought that they were going to start using Google technology to display their category results instead of using the alpha system they use now, (I'm still hearing rumors to that effect), but I did know that having link popularity was going to become very important to Yahoo.
As it turns out, it couldn't have worked out much better for us if I had paid them. With Google's system, the portals are going to kill when it comes to link popularity. People stay on portals longer and access more pages and more people link to and bookmark portals than web sites. That's not me saying that. That's statistics!
If you guys don't get to the forums and work this out, you are going to let your competitors get the edge. That's not the end of the world but I sure don't see why you wouldn't take advantage of what you have earned through your efforts!

STRATEGY FORUM PRODUCES RESULTS
A few weeks back I advertised for some of you to join a private strategy forum. Lo and behold I was able to get some really great people for it and off we went. We started out using a third party service for our forum boards but after a week or so, it just wasn't working out. We then went to Searchking, (where we should have stayed in the first place), set up a password-protected site and BINGO, we got results!
This strategy forum is going to make all the portal partners a lot of money. Not because we're smarter than anyone else or because we have some secret way of making money, but for the simple reason that planning is the key to success in any business. In my opinion, the single biggest challenge for Searchking to overcome is not the fact that we lack the deep pockets of most of our competitors, it is that we lack effective planning. Oh I've got all kinds of scraps of paper all over my office with notes to myself regarding what I "plan" to do. Also, I've had the basic Searchking "dream" written down actually pretty concisely and have reviewed it so many times, I pretty much know it by heart and that is probably the single biggest factor in what has gotten us this far, but as far as short term and long term objectives and strategies -- I need help.
Back to the deep pockets issue. We're always hearing things like "of course they're successful, they had a million dollars to invest". Well, the recent decline in tech stocks show us that just having money doesn't make it work. The smart ones are the ones that took that money and hired people to do the planning. So what does planning cost? The good thing is it doesn't cost any money. It's just that it's not easy and that makes it hard for most people to feel comfortable about doing it.
This is exactly why I'm so excited about our little strategy forum. I've been fortunate enough to find a few people who share my vision and are willing to invest a little of their time to contribute. This is such a huge asset! This forum is going to do more for Searchking than all the servers and all the programs put together. The first step is planning and I finally feel that we are at a point where we can take that first step.
In fact we have taken the first step. Our short term objective is to increase the number of portal partners in July. We developed a strategy that affects you all and that brings me to. . .
$100 CONTEST
Searchking will pay $100 to the affiliate who brings in the most sign ups in the month of July. No big complex deal, no hold-backs, no restrictions. Which ever affiliate has the most wins the money!
We don't care if you get those sign ups by calling friends, posting in forums, taking the order form to shopping malls and signing up people as they walk by! Short of spamming people, we encourage you to be creative and get those affiliate trackers rolling.
Run some free ads.
Put something on your website about it.
Write and submit articles about the portals to some of your favorite e-zines.
If you publish an e-zine write an article about it.
In fact, I'll pay $50 to anyone who writes an article and it gets it ran in e-zines that reaches at least 10,000 readers. I don't care if that's one e-zine or 20 as long as you can show me that it went out to at least 10,000 -- 50 bucks! (If you go for the $50 I would encourage you to use your affiliate link).
If you haven't signed up as an affiliate yet, DO IT! Go to www.searchkingportal4u.com/affiliate.htm and sign up before July 1st.
The $100 will be paid in addition to your regular commission, so here's your chance to make a buck just by doing what I love, (was that a typo?) getting new portal partners! Hurry and don't miss out on your opportunity to become a hundredaire!
HERE'S A FIRECRACKER FOR YOU
I'm not going to write a 4th of July story. I know you guys have all come to expect me to tell you some tear drenched tale of holiday woe that ends with some poignant point, intended to deliver some socially redeeming and spirit-lifting moral. Well, not this time.
Oh, I've got 'em to tell. Like the time my step-father told me to hold the firecracker and throw it just before it went off. Of course laying it on the ground, lighting it with a shaking hand and then running like crazy was always my favorite way to partake in the festivities. On this occasion though he informed me that I was just a big scaredy-cat and he was going to bust my butt if I didn't hold it until he yelled NOW. My step-father was a 250 lb roofer with arms the size of a gorilla and when he said he would bust your butt, trust me, you're butt was about to be busted!
One second, two seconds, three and BOOM!
NOW!
Holding my blackened and blistered hand I ran into the house crying while all I could hear was his roaring laughter in one ear and the ringing that I can still hear to this day in the other.
But I'm not going to tell that one. I just want to wish you all a safe and happy 4th of July!
Enjoy the holidays and take a nap. You need the rest!
GOOD NEWS FOR NEXT WEEK
There will be no issue of the Portal Partner Press next week. Please, please dry your tears and try to be strong. It's just that I'm going to be out of town next week and will not have time to get it done. I'll be back in the ole PPP saddle the following week though and with any luck will be able to announce the EZ Builder is operational.
Love y'all
Bob

Publisher -- Bob Massa