WebRing: An E-zine Publisher's Survival Guide

By Shelley Lowery

Are you publishing an email newsletter? If you are then you probably already know all of the great benefits, but for those who aren't, you really should be. If you're serious about your Internet presence, having your own publication will help you build a huge database of targeted customers. Studies have shown, it may take several contacts with a prospective customer before closing a sale. What better way to make those contacts and close those sales then by having a complete list of targeted potential customers ready and waiting. In addition, you can eventually make a nice income selling sponsor advertising and classified ads.

Survival Guide for a Successful Online Publication

Provide your readers with the quality content they're looking for. A quality e-zine should contain at least some original content, but it is also a good idea to have some additional resources available. Before using any articles, make sure you review the author's copyrights and make certain the article may be published. If you're not sure, contact the author and request permission to publish their article. Most articles for publication can be used in your e-zine free of charge as long as the authors credits or resource box is included.

-------------------
- Free Content -
-------------------

Web-Source.net
http://www.web-source.net/free_articles.htm

GoArticles.com
http://www.goarticles.com

1st-in-articles.com
http://www.1st-in-articles.com

EzineArticles.com
http://www.ezinearticles.com

--------------------------
In order to gain new subscribers for your publication, you must continuously promote it. There are many sites on the Internet that will list your e-zine free of charge.
-----------------
- Listing Sites -
-----------------

eZINESearch -

http://www.site-city.com/members/e-zine-master/

EzineSeek -

http://www.ezineseek.com

E-ZineZ.com -

http://www.e-zinez.com/

Flying Inkpot's Zine Scene -

http://www.inkpot.com/zines

John Labovitz's ezine-list -

http://www.meer.net/~johnl/e-zine-list/

--------------------------
Announcement Lists provide a great way to announce your new publication to their entire list of subscribers. Subscribe to these email lists to announce your e-zine. Make sure you review their posting guidelines prior to making your posts. Look through some of the other posts to get an idea of how your post should look.

---------------------------

- Announcement Lists -

---------------------------

New List - Announcement list for new e-zines.

http://www.scout.cs.wisc.edu/scout/new-list/

AAnnounce

http://www.onelist.com/viewarchive.cgi?listname=-AAnnounce

NewJour List

http://gort.ucsd.edu/newjour/subscribe.html

New-List.com

http://New-List.com/

--------------------------
A discussion Forum is threaded discussion on a web or message board. This is a great way to get your name out into the Internet community and make some new friends and/or customers. Although blatant advertising is prohibited, signature lines are acceptable.

-------------------------

- Discussion Forums -

-------------------------

EzineSeek - Email Publishers Forum

http://www.ezineseek.com/forum/index.cgi

Biz-Gold Discussion Board

http://www.profitinfo.com/discuss/marketing/

--------------------------
Webrings are groups of sites with similar content all linked together to exchange traffic. If you don't have a web site for your publication, you definitely need to get one. Having your own site will enable you to give your visitors an in depths look at exactly what your publication is all about. You can include highlights of upcoming issues, polls, archives and a subscription box to enable your visitors to easily subscribe. When you've gotten your site set up, you can join a webring and benefit from all the traffic you'll receive from the other sites in your group.

-----------------------

- E-zine Webrings -

-----------------------

E-zine Webring -

http://ezinewebring.hypermart.net/

ZinesOnline Webring -

http://members.tripod.com/adm/popup/roadmap.shtml

World Of Newsletters Webring -

http://bizx.com/newsletter_ring.html

--------------------------

Trading Ads with fellow publishers is one of the best ways to build your subscriber base. It's as simple as it sounds. You simply contact the publisher you're interested in exchanging ads with and ask them if they would be interested in an ad exchange. If they're interested, you would then run a classified ad promoting their e-zine in your publication in exchange for them running your classified ad, all completely free. Here are some great resources to assist you in the process.

-----------------

- Ad Trading -

-----------------

Ezine Publisher Trade List

http://www.bizpromo.com/ezinetrades.htm

Publishers' Business Exchange

http://www.cashconnection.com/publisherssite.htm

I-Barter

http://www.i-barter.com

Free Barter Exchange

http://www.loska.com/barter

Ezine-Swap

http://www.promotefree.com/eswap.htm

--------------------------

Participate in newsgroup discussions. As with most discussion lists or groups, blatant advertising is prohibited, but sig files are acceptable. Before posting to any newsgroup, read the groups policies and review other posts to give you an idea of how your post should look.

------------------

- Newsgroups -

------------------

alt.zines

alt.ezines

alt.etext

alt.binaries.zines

comp.infosystems.www.announce -

(Read FAQ prior to submission)

http://www.sangfroid.com/charter.html

--------------------------

Winning awards is a great way to build your subscription base. Stop by any of the following sites and submit your publication for a possible award.

----------------------------------

- E-zine Awards & Reviews -

----------------------------------

Best Ezines

http://www.bestezines.com

Techmailings List of the day

http://www.techmailings.com

Choice Ezine Award

http://ezineseek.com/award/index.html

E-Zine Z Excellence Award

http://www.e-zinez.com/eaward.htm

--------------------------

Write a press release and tell the world about your publication. If you're not comfortable with writing your own press release, Dr. Kevin Nunley will write it for you at a very reasonable price: http://www.drnunley.com/

Visit any of the following sites to send out your press release.

--------------------

- Press Release -

--------------------

Gebbie Press

http://www.gebbieinc.com/

Press Promoter

http://www.presspromoter.com/

Press Release Network

http://www.pressreleasenetwork.com/index1.html

PRWeb

http://www.prweb.com

Internet Wire

http://www.internetwire.com/

BBL Internet Media

http://bblmedia.com/

--------------------------

Don't forget about offline promotions. There are still millions of people around the world who aren't online. Place your ads in newspapers, magazines, etc.

-------------------------

- Offline Promotions -

-------------------------

Gebbie Press -

http://www.gebbieinc.com/

Newspapers Online -

http://www.newspapers.com/

This guide is just a small example of e-zine publishing and promotion. For a complete e-zine tutorial with hundreds of resources, visit http://www.web-source.net/ezines/ to pick up a copy of the acclaimed eBook, "E-zines: A Complete Guide to Publishing for Profit."

For further information on publishing a successful ezine, visit http://emailuniverse.com/ezine-tips/

About the Author

Shelley Lowery is the author of the acclaimed web design course, "Web Design Mastery" (http://www.webdesignmastery.com) and "eBook Starter - Give Your eBooks the look and feel of a REAL book" (http://www.ebookstarter.com)

Visit http://www.Web-Source.net to sign up for a complimentary subscription to eTips and receive a copy of Shelley's acclaimed eBook, "Killer Internet Marketing Strategies."

You have permission to publish this article electronically, in print, in your eBook, or on your web site, free of charge, as long as the author bylines are included.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Shelley_Lowery

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

WebRing

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

A webring in general is a collection of websites from around the Internet joined together in a circular structure. When used to improve search engine rankings, webrings can be considered a search engine optimization technique.

To be a part of the webring, each site has a common navigation bar; it contains links to the previous and next site. By clicking next (or previous) repeatedly, the surfer will eventually reach the site they started at; this is the origin of the term webring. However, the click-through route around the ring is usually supplemented by a central site with links to all member-sites; this prevents the ring from breaking completely if a member site goes offline.

Webrings are usually organized around a specific theme, often educational or social. Web rings usually have a moderator who decides which pages to include in the web ring. After approval, webmasters add their pages to the ring by 'linking in' to the ring; this requires adding the necessary HTML or JavaScript to their site.

[edit] History

Denis Howe started EUROPa (Expanding Unidirectional Ring Of Pages) at Imperial College in 1994. The idea developed further when Giraldo Hierro conceptualized a central CGI (Common Gateway Interface) script to enhance functionality. Sage Weil developed such a script in May of 1994. Weil's script gained popularity, pushing Weil in June 1995 to form a company called WebRing. In 1997, Weil sold WebRing to Starseed, Inc.

In 1998 Starseed was acquired by GeoCities, who made no major changes to the system. Just a few months later, in early 1999, Yahoo! bought GeoCities, and eighteen months after the acquisition, on September 5, 2000, Yahoo! unveiled a fully-overhauled WebRing, known as Yahoo! WebRing. Although Yahoo!'s implementation was meant to streamline the way the rings were managed and provide a more consistent interface for all rings, many of these changes were unpopular with ringmasters accustomed to the older system which gave them more flexibility. ^{[citation
needed]}

On April 15 2001, Yahoo! pulled their support of WebRing, leaving it in the hands of one technician from the original WebRing. He unveiled a WebRing free of Yahoo! influence on October 12, 2001. In the years since this change, many of the features which had been stripped by Yahoo!, particularly customization options, were reimplemented into the WebRing system.

On September 26 2006, Webring Inc. announced a new WebRing Premium Membership Program. They have separated memberships into two types, WebRing 1.0 and WebRing 2.0. Sites that are part of WebRing 1.0 will be limited to 50 webrings per URL. Existing 1.0 members can maintain more than 50, but can not add more. In conjunction with the premium membership program, WebRing introduced an affiliate program, in which webmasters earn money when others join webrings from their site; they earn an additional payment if the new member purchases a premium membership.

In early October 2007, Webring was granted a trademark on "Webring" from the USA Tradmark office. Also in that month, Yahoo's long partnership ended as Webring ownership repurchased Webring stock held by Yahoo, marking the first time since the late 1990's that Webring was again privately held.

A similar website is RingSurf.com, which uses the term 'Net Rings'. The site first appeared in the Internet Archive in June 1998.

Some have derived the web ring system to create a viral marketing system.^{[citation
needed]}

[edit] See also

Link farm

[edit] References

^ Member Program Transition. WebRing. Retrieved on 2007-01-01.
^ http://www.ringsurf.com/
^ http://web.archive.org/web/19980612213331/

[edit] External links

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The strange saga of Yahoo and WebRing

The sad tale of a hip little software program for linking Web sites together that was swallowed by by a once-hip behemoth -- then crashed and burned.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Katharine Mieszkowski

Dec. 5, 2001 | It was a day known forever after as "Black Tuesday" or "The Day the Rings Died." On Sept. 5, 2000, the day Yahoo assimilated WebRing, the "ringmasters" responsible for tending the chains of Web sites linked together by WebRing software fumed with pitched fury.

Protest sites sprang up proclaiming the outrage of webmasters who saw themselves losing control to an all-devouring corporate overlord. On one especially melodramatic site, Edvard Munch's "Scream" wailed next to this lament: "The toll has been terrific. Rings are dead or dying everywhere ... Yet, we are victims and it's time that someone hears our Screams." Another site blared the theme music to "Mission Impossible" while displaying an image of a skull in a top hat with the logo of the new master.

WebRing is essentially little more than a way for sites devoted to similar topics to share links and boost each other's traffic. But to its fans, it makes beautiful order out of chaos. However, from all the wailing and moaning, you'd have thought a marauding King Kong bot had barged into these sites and started ripping out great hunks of HTML. Even now, more than a year later, after the somewhat anticlimactic liberation

"Yahoo took one of the best things on the Internet, a method by which ringmasters could create little garden paths through the uncharted wilds of the Web, and completely ruined it," says Richard Lowe, a webmaster whose sites include USA Memorial, a commemoration of Sept. 11.

The sorry saga of WebRing is just a squinty footnote in the history of one of the Web's biggest, still-standing companies, Yahoo. But it tells more about what was sacrificed on the Web in the Great Internet Bubble than a terabyte of spreadsheets detailing paper losses. It's what happened when a nifty little homegrown Web phenomenon that was never designed to make money got swept up and sucked in by the boom, only to be orphaned in the bust.

Today, WebRing once again has the chance to try to make it as an independent, guided by the members of its community. In mid-October, Yahoo sold WebRing to Tim Killeen, one of the early engineers who'd worked on the system. It seemed like a happy ending made for the Net: WebRing comes full circle!

But some ringmasters wish that the whole system had been put out of its misery: "Personally, I wish WebRing had just died. I think it's been decaying for quite some time and I don't see that it's going to be recovered," says Lowe.

And as for Yahoo? The once-mighty portal beloved by millions -- in part because it represented the original do-it-yourself spirit of the Net -- is now scrambling desperately, like everybody else, for ways to make a buck. Its inability to figure out what to do with WebRing is symbolic of the entire dot-com failure to transform the Net into a cash register.

Yahoo may still find the secret formula, though whether anyone will care is another question. After the boom and the bust, it's easy now to wonder if the do-it-yourself Net ever could have had a happy capitalist future. In any case, post-bubble, mid-recession, the execs of Yahoo and the ringmasters of WebRing are both struggling to survive. Now, Yahoo hopes to turn a fraction of its 218 million "users" into "customers," to make up for dramatically reduced advertising revenues. And WebRing has no greater ambition than to find a way to keep running obscure circles around the Net, without a multinational corporate parent to lean on or rail against.

BACK HOME