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Newsgroups, the World-Wide-Web, e-mail, CU-SeeMe, IRC, ... -- with such a long list of available services, which can be used for commercial gain? As a business with adequate resources, you may be able to use all of the available services to your benefit. We focus our discussion on the least-expensive forum, the newsgroups. We talk some about the World-Wide-Web, and discuss e-mail in minor detail. We then briefly outline what you might do to use the other services, but effective marketing with other services is a new art, very developmental, and just begs for a consultant's help.
The misc.forsale.* newsgroups, and the hundreds of specialty groups which accept advertising, are tailored to the individual trying to buy or sell.
Several ad servers on the Web will accept your advertisement for free, or for a nominal charge.
A number of specialized-topic mailing lists are available which accept advertising similar to the specialized newsgroups. These generally have smaller audiences, but those audiences are much more focused on the topic than in the typical newsgroup.
Innovative and creative ways to market your business and provide customer support.
With some 26 generalized for-sale newsgroups for individuals, a dozen generalized groups for commercial entities, hundreds of specialized groups which accept ads, and scores of local for-sale newsgroups, the most daunting task ahead of you is choosing which newsgroup(s) to post to. If you choose wisely, you may well find a buyer for your items. Choose poorly, and you may receive large quantities of hate mail, or 3 a.m. telephone calls from unhappy netizens.
To make group selection easy, we have compiled an indexed list of many Usenet, Biznet, and Altnet newsgroups which accept a reasonable amount of advertising. Each listing provides details about what kinds of merchandise and services can be posted there, and more importantly, whether commercial ads and announcements are permitted. As a business, your primary forum will be the biz.marketplace.* groups. The listings for those groups are comprehensive. The listings for other specialized *.marketplace groups and other topical groups have been researched, but are not guaranteed. You should definitely read the FAQ for any topical newsgroups before you post, if one exists. Then e-mail someone who is heavily involved in that group before posting, and ask if commercial ads are accepted. The FAQ maintainer often is a good choice. All too often, commercial users will see a lot of commercial posts in a newsgroup and assume that commercial ads are fine. In reality, all of those prior commercial ads may have been posted in error; this phenomenon is prevalent in almost all of the newsgroups.
The most important thing to remember with topical newsgroups is that they are not forums for general advertising. You have to have a very special deal, or something very rare and difficult to acquire. If not, you are wasting your time, and others' money.
The rule of thumb is to crosspost to one biz.marketplace.* group, to one specialized group if it's a special deal in their topic, and to the group of local for-sale newsgroups in your "circle of influence". Note too that some local for-sale groups prohibit commercial ads. As a commercial entity, you may not post to the misc.forsale.* newsgroups. Their charters forbid it.
This system will allow you to reach all of your audience while maximizing the value of these newsgroups to the readers. Crossposting to too many newsgroups, or making your subject too broad (like mixing Macintosh and PC items in one article) leads to reader confusion, and will cause most people to ignore your ad. The only exception is if you are offering cross-platform computer hardware like printers. Then, if your article does not include any platform-specific items, you may post to both biz.marketplace.computers.mac and biz.marketplace.computers.pc-clone.
If your web browser is set up properly and supports news, all you need do to post your ad is click on a highlighted newsgroup name from the group lists in the section on The Advertising Newgroups. Read some of the articles in that group for examples, then you can write your ad and post it from there.
On another note, if you do choose to post the same ad to more than one newsgroup, then please learn to crosspost properly. Crossposting will send your article only once, but it will still appear for everyone who reads any of the desired groups. Multiple posts of the same ad will send multiple articles, wasting bandwidth and disk space. To crosspost, you normally need only enter all the newsgroups in the Newsgroups: line, separated by commas and no spaces:
Newsgroups: biz.marketplace.non-computer,rec.bicycles.marketplace,purdue.forsale
Also, if any local *.forsale groups exist for your area, you may choose to post there as well, if commercial ads are permitted. Please do not post to local groups for other areas. People in Houston, Texas don't want to see your ad in houston.forsale if you live in California or France. If you live in Houston, and post to tamu.forsale (for Texas A&M University, 2 hours away), then it's debateably appropriate. If you are willing to drive your merchandise there on very short notice, then go for it. If your job takes you there less frequently than every three weeks, then don't post to that group. You can recognize local newsgroups from the group name. If it doesn't start with one of the following, then it's probably a local group: misc, alt, biz, soc, rec, news, bio, sci, comp, clari.
Be careful about some of the local newsgroup names. A group name like phoenix.forsale may seem like it would be for Phoenix, Arizona. It's not; the phoenix newsgroups are for an Internet Service Provider in Houston, Texas. Likewise for ca.*, which is California, not Canada (can.*). You need to ask your system administrator what local groups you have access to before you post.
Often, a poster will have items for sale which belong in different groups. If you want your ad to catch readers' interest, and if you actually want to sell all of your items, then please tailor your posts to the target newsgroup. A printer will be ignored by readers in biz.marketplace.non-computer, and will cause most people to skip the rest of your ad, regardless of the remaining contents. Also, PC users hate to sort through a mash of Macintosh, Apple II, Commodore 64, and workstation equipment in order to find what they are looking for. Yes, it is easy for you to lump everything together. But, it clutters the groups, and wastes readers time. Remember who is paying for your ads, and try to make them happy by taking the time to separate your items appropriately. Otherwise, most readers will look for an ad with better organization and ignore yours. If you have a myriad of items, target the appropriate audiences with separate posts to separate groups.
No! In this case, you should post a separate article to each of the three groups. Post an ad for your bicycles in the specialized bicycle group, a different ad for your movies in their specialized group, and an ad which combines both items in biz.marketplace.non-computer.
If you aren't willing to ship your item overseas, please try to limit the distribution of your article with a Distribution: header at the top. Some posting software will ask you for a distribution automatically. Typical limited distributions include usa for the United States, fr for France, de for Germany; postal abbreviations for states like in, tx, ca, ny; and the first few letters of local newsgroup names for schools and cities like purdue for Purdue University and houston for Houston, TX. Please ask your system administrator for information on what local distributions affect your area. For more information on including distribution headers, please read How to cancel articles and limit distribution in Part VI.
Finally, if you sell out within 4 days, please cancel your article. This simple, easy gesture will save the time of thousands of people who won't have to read your article anymore. It will also save you from having to respond to messages from people who don't know your item has sold. In many newsreaders, you can cancel an article by pressing a capital "C" while reading the article. However, this varies from site to site. For more information, again read How to cancel articles and limit distribution in Part VI.
The World-Wide-Web is definitely the media of choice for advertising over the Internet. Web pages are comparatively inexpensive to build and maintain for the average business, and can be built by just about anyone with a little computer knowledge and the right software. In addition to text, they can be embellished with pictures of your merchandise, and even sound and motion clips, allowing you to create an ideal shopping environment on your customers' computers.
What's more, web pages are also suited to businesses with catalogs and a wide variety of product lines. Catalogs are a bad idea in the newsgroups because of space and user-unfriendliness. Web pages can easily be set up by a professional developer to directly access and query your existing product databases. Your customers can quickly access information on only the products they want, or on the select group of products you are most interested in selling.
Most successful businesses pay a professional to build their web site, then advertise the address over traditional means. TV, magazines, and newspapers are bulging at the seams with web URLs, or web addresses. Many companies also pay some of the more popular web sites to display a small graphical banner with a link to the new site. Both of these methods are successful.
Also, a free way to publicize your business is to register with the online databases. You can register your web site at all of the databases from a single place: the place to register websites.
Using the newsgroups is also permitted, but it requires delicate treatment. If your goal is to sell merchadise, then you can post an announcement to the appropriate for-sale groups. But, your announcement still needs to include proof-of-merit. Prove to the reader that your prices are better than anywhere else by listing a few examples. This will increase your exposure by an order of magnitude. Too many companies just try to say "Visit our web site!" without any qualification. Such simplistic ads are not offering anything for sale, and as such are not permitted in biz.marketplace.* newsgroups.
Another place to advertise your website is the newsgroup comp.infosystems.www.announce.
Yahoo has a nice index of classified-ad servers. Many of them accept commercial ads over the Internet at minimal cost. When writing your ad, we recommend you follow the same guidelines as in previous sections -- it is a tried and true way of getting the best response over the Internet. If you use one of these services, be sure to read and follow their on-line tips as well. They may have requirements in addition to the suggestions mentioned in this FAQ.
This form of advertising is severely limited for both individuals and commercial entities. Much like telephone solicitation, a lot of people don't want to be bothered by junk mail, particularly since newsgroups and the Web serve the advertising purpose so well. But, a few opportunities for you to advertise by e-mail are still available.
Much like specialized newsgroups, topical mailing lists serve much smaller, much more dedicated followings than newsgroups. Not all accept advertising; even fewer accept commercial ads. You'll have to find out which ones do on your own. To find out more, check out the list of available mailing lists at tile.net
They exist, but beware. Some of these lists may be legitimate, particularly if they are very specialized in Internet-related fields. Many of them, however, continue to use unethical tactics to acquire their (usually unwilling) audience. Often, they grab random names from newsgroups and automatically subscribe people who never asked. This kind of activity is criminal on the Internet, and if you inadvertently pick an unethical list for offering your products, it will stain your reputation. If you choose to go this route, make sure you find out through impartial channels how they obtained their list of readers. The reports we have received from companies which use such lists, even specialized lists, have been extremely disappointing.
Several other services are available to you for marketing your business. We mention them briefly, as none have been used as widely as news, the web, and e-mail. Also, because methods are not yet firmly established, these services require a bit of creativity on your part in order to maximize their potential. To best take advantage of them, you should seek the advice of an Internet marketing consultant. She will best know how to help you use these services to promote your business, and how to protect your site from possible security breaches.
FTP is so firmly integrated into the World-Wide-Web, that we almost needn't mention it. This service allows users to download files over the Internet. These files may be driver software if you are a computer hardware maker, your catalog in text and/or graphic form if you work for J.C. Penney, or simply a set of help documents for providing product support at users' fingertips.
You can set up FTP to allow file access to everyone, sometimes called Anonymous FTP. If you only want certain people to access your information, like those customers on your technical support contracts, this can also be done very easily with FTP.
The major on-line services have been successful for many years hosting real-time forums with personalities like T.V. stars. Many businesses, particularly Internet Service Providers and other computer-related concerns, have picked up on using this idea over the Internet at-large for promotional purposes.
Internet Radio Chat is a common service where many people gather in a virtual room, and hold a textual discussion. At present, the audience is primarily young male technophiles, high-school through college and the late 20's, although this is changing as quickly as the rest of the Internet. You might use previously-scheduled and advertised IRC sessions to disseminate product information or provide technical assistance to already-interested customers. Or, you might bribe them by sending them beta-test versions of the next release of your software if they'll join your real-time discussion of what improvements might be made.
One of the nice features of IRC is that you can step into a "private" virtual room with a select person or group of people, and exclude those whom you do not wish to attend your conversation. The conversation is not encrypted, but it does allow for non-secure group privacy.
CU-SeeMe is the latest in hot groupware technology. It allows reasonable quality video and audio to accompany the text of IRC, real-time, over any speed connection down to 14.4kbps -- a standard modem. A business might use this for personal, face-to-face sales and support, or to lead the same kind of discussions as in IRC.
Talk works basically like a 2-person simplified version of IRC. You are on one end, somebody else on the other, and you just carry on a textual discussion.
Telnet is basically a way of letting someone log on to your system from someplace else on the Internet. A number of companies have well-developed bulletin boards for which this is the ideal way to grant access to your pre-existing information inexpensively over the Internet.
Wide-Area Information Service and Gopher have technologically been superseded by the World-Wide-Web, but are still maintained in some places for backwards compatibility with existing services. Commercial entities should stick to using the World-Wide-Web for serving database (WAIS) or hyperlinked (Gopher) information.
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