Guaranteeing sales leads is the key Despite last year’s downturn in Internet advertising, one of the fastest-growing ad-based online publishers was able to increase its sales 140 percent in 2001 compared with 2000, according to ContentBiz.com. TechTarget.com, which began in 1998, now publishes more than 100 e-mail newsletters with more than 1.9 million opt-in subscribers. It also offers Webcasts and face-to-face industry conferences. Each product specializes in a high-tech field that’s typically as specialized as, say, “HP-UX Administrator Tips.” The business, which is backed by the print newsletter publisher United Communications Group, uses a unique method to justify the high ad rates that keep its e-mail newsletters free. Its ad salesmen and saleswomen guarantee that advertisers will receive a minimum number of sales leads as a result of an ad campaign. But each advertiser must agree to use a click-through landing page that’s designed by TechTarget to maximize conversion rates. ContentBiz says readers of TechTarget e-mail newsletters have a high click-on ad rate of 1 percent to 2 percent. And the readers who click these ads wind up becoming sales leads (by signing in at the landing page) at a rate of 30 percent to 50 percent. As a result of its effectiveness, TechTarget now has more than 700 advertisers and sponsors of its various products. There’s more on the secrets behind these techniques at the link below. FREE, AD-BASED NEWSLETTERS GROW RAPIDLY IN DOWN MARKET: https://www.contentbiz.com@a6r.ms/?4e55 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – E-BIZ TECH REVIEW: LIGHT STRIPS COMMUNICATE VIA INFRARED Here’s a fairly low-tech invention that I think may have some high-tech applications: Hokey Spokes. These are $24.99 illuminated plastic strips that clip onto the spokes of a bicycle wheel and flash colored patterns or text messages. The best part is that you can clip multiple strips onto more than one spoke. The maker claims that the devices then communicate with each other using infrared messaging to synchronize their designs and timing. If you can do all that, it seems to me there are a variety of more sophisticated applications for these things. Couldn’t you program them to do “the wave” in, say, a football stadium — without the fans in the bleachers actually moving? The uses are limited only by your imagination. HOKEY SPOKES LIGHT THE WAY AND DISPLAY TEXT MESSAGES: https://www.hokeyspokes.com@54.vg/?7565 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – LIVINGSTON’S TOP 10 NEWS PICKS O’ THE WEEK 1. Kazaa file-swapper contains secret PC-using feature https://www.news.com@a2.tc/?41d 2. Surfers searching more on e-business, less on s-e-x https://www.eurekalert.org@n6.be/?805 3. Shopping sites taking more privacy steps, study says https://www.advisor.com@836.as/?bed 4. Why people don’t buy jeans online (Wharton analysis) https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu@e.la/?fd5 5. Yahoo changes its privacy policy to permit spam https://www.wired.com@a6r.ms/?13bd 6. New technology allows ads to change browser skins https://www.siliconvalley.com@5a0.tc/?17a5 7. Global positioning is shrinking into tiny devices https://www.cnn.com@3n.be/?1b8d 8. HTML tips: Identifying browsers, even when they lie https://www.webreference.com@31.dk/?1f75 9. Here are the week’s best April Fool’s Web jokes … https://www.bayarea.com@th.gs/?235d 10. … and the top 10 April Fool’s hoaxes of all time https://www.museumofhoaxes.com@1c.to/?2745 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – WACKY WEB WEEK: THE SECRETS OF GOOGLE REVEALED! Comedians this week took over numerous Web sites and inserted April Fool’s jokes (sometimes without the Web site owners’ permission), as you can see from News Pick #9, above. Many of these hoaxes soon disappeared, but I think one of the most hilarious pages will stick around. This page was posted at Google.com to explain how its computers can identify relevant pages so quickly in response to a search request. At first, it sounds totally legitimate, describing the company’s “low cost pigeon clusters (PCs)” in a way that made me think Google had invented a new form of parallel processing. After discussing links to B.F. Skinner’s behavioral experiments with animals, the page then explains, “The common gray pigeon can easily distinguish among items displaying only the minutest differences.” When an Internet user submits a query to Google, “it is routed to a data coop where monitors flash result pages at blazing speeds. When a relevant result is observed by one of the pigeons in the cluster, it strikes a rubber-coated steel bar with its beak, which assigns the page a PigeonRank value of one. For each peck, the PigeonRank increases.” The results from different sites are then displayed in “pecking order.” From here, it gets better and better, but I’ll let you discover that for yourself. Enjoy! PIGEONS POWER GOOGLE VIA “MASSIVELY PARALLEL PECKING”: https://www.google.com@836.as/?c385 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – E-BUSINESS SECRETS: Our mission is to bring you such useful and thought-provoking information about the Web that you actually look forward to reading your e-mail. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: E-Business Secrets is written by InfoWorld Contributing Editor Brian Livingston (http://SecretsPro.com). Research director is Ben Livingston (no relation). Brian has published 10 books, including: Windows Me Secrets: https://www.amazon.com@isbn.at/?0764534939 Windows 2000 Secrets: https://www.amazon.com@isbn.at/?0764534130 Win a gift certificate good for a book, CD, or DVD of your choice if you’re the first to send a tip Brian prints. Mail to: Brian@SecretsPro.com Software DevelopmentTechnology Industry