Visit our partners and sponsors:

SWeCS NEWSLETTER - 23 February 2004

In this issue...

- Overture Australia Launched - Why It's Important For You
- Free Spam Check - Are Your Emails Getting Through?
- SWeCS Newsletter Survey - What Do YOU Want To Read?
- New Email Marketing Service
- Resources For Small Business

OVERTURE AUSTRALIA LAUNCHED
Why It's Important For You

Overture Australia has finally been launched, and if you're serious about making the most of millions of searches conducted every day on the Internet, you need to consider it.

As we've said many times before, Overture is arguably the largest "Pay Per Click" search engine in the world. The reason why they're so big is that the American version, www.overture.com, provides results for so many of the world's major search engines. If you conduct a search at MSN, Yahoo, Altavista, and more, you'll find that the top results are called "Sponsored Sites" or something similar. These are provided by Overture.

Well they've already made moves into the Australian search engine market, which affect the search results of some of the major Australian search engines. If you conduct a search at Australian Yahoo (www.yahoo.com.au) or Australian Altavista (www.altavista.com.au), then you'll find Overture Australia results at the top.

So if you are targetting Australian searchers, then Overture is now an option you need to consider. Basically, you can no longer get a number one ranking on Yahoo or AltaVista without bidding on Overture Australia.

Another consequence of this is that Yahoo Australia have traditionally relied on Google to back up it's search results. This has now changed, with Yahoo now using Overture results first at the top of the list. The international version of Yahoo then uses it's own database instead of Google, and Australian Yahoo is expected to follow very soon (more on that another time).

Overture is a "Pay-Per-Click" engine, meaning you have to pay to be included, but you only pay when someone actually clicks on your web site link. It's actually good traffic, because you know that the visitors you get are people who have searched for your product, seen your site and description, and then wanted to visit you. It's good, targetted traffic.

It obviously does cost though. The minimum bid on Overture Australia for most terms is $0.10 per click, but sometimes more. And you need to put in $100 worth of bids to open an account, and there is a $20 per month minimum spend. But if you compare that to other types of advertising, where you pay more than that up front for uncertain results, it's money well spent.

FREE SPAM CHECK - ARE YOUR EMAILS GETTING THROUGH?

With the huge volume of spam email around at the moment, it is no wonder that many ISP's and other Internet services have installed anti-spam systems to protect their users.

These anti-spam systems work in many different ways, but a common approach is to have a computer program that actually scans and reads every email and makes an assessment on whether it is spam or not. It does this by reading the text and other things and blocks it if it looks like spam.

What makes an email look like spam? If it has lots of terms in it such as "Click here", "FREE", and other promotional terms, it could be classified as spam. Also, other more innocent things such as certain images, HTML, and other items may get your email blocked.

The problem is that sometimes when these emails get blocked, the system does not tell you. They just block your email and you don't ever know that it hasn't got through to the recipient.

How do you know if you're emails are getting through?

Thankfully there is a free service available that will check your email to see whether it is likely to be considered spam or not. What you do is send your email to the address spamcheck@sitesell.net. In the subject line, make sure that the word TEST is written at the beginning, otherwise it won't work. For example, the subject line could be "TEST email".

You will then receive an email back with a complete report on how "spammy" your email is. Usually the report comes back straight away, but a couple of times we have waited up to an hour for it.

If the report says your email looks like spam - don't panic, just follow the suggestions to fix it and you'll be fine.

SWeCS NEWSLETTER SURVEY

What do YOU want to read in the SWeCS Newsletter?

Is there an issue that effects your business, or something that you want to know about? Do you want to receive the newsletter more frequently, less frequently, have more freebies, etc?

We want to know what you want to see in SWeCS News, and we want your feedback on what you like or don't like about the newsletter.

That's why we're asking you to complete a very quick survey. It will take about 1 minute to complete, and for your trouble we'll enter your details into the draw to win a CD voucher to the value of $30.

Click here to complete the survey.

EMAIL MARKETING SERVICE

Would you like to maintain an email database of your customers and other interested people? And then send emails to remind them you exist and to inform them of your specials etc?

South West eCommerce can provide mailing list services to you which includes:

• a page on your web site that allows people to subscribe and unsubscribe to your mailing list - all automatically
• your own administration screen that allows you to add and remove email addresses yourself
• your mailing list is kept on our server, which is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for subscribing/unsubscribing
• we can then handle any mailouts you wish to do. Take advantage of our 3 years of experience in sending out full colour or plain text emails that arrive in the recipients Inbox correctly, every time, with fully automatic unsubscription links.

If you would like further information about this service, just contact us at admin@southwestecommerce.com for a free quote.

RESOURCES FOR SMALL BUSINESS

Ecommerce Library

Browse through the SWeCS Ecommerce Library, full of FREE information about getting more out of the Internet. Sections include Web Site Development, Web Site Promotion & Internet Marketing, Online Commerce, Computer & Technical Issues, and Miscellaneous.

Newsletter Archives

The SWeCS Newsletter archives provides a wealth of FREE information on small business and the Internet. Browse through the main topics or search for your particular query.

SWeCS Affiliate Program

Start up another income stream, by earning $60 for each referral who signs up for our search engine ranking package. Also earn $50 for each referral who signs up for our web site package.

Affiliate Directory

Browse through a list of reviewed Affiliate programs. Let us do the work of testing it out for you!

Do you know of a resource that should be added here? Email us and let us know. There is only one condition - it must be free.

OTHER EMAIL NEWSLETTERS

Here's some other email newsletters you might like:

www.southwestlife.com.au

www.dunsboroughbayvillageresort.com/news/newsindex.htm

www.west-oz.com/newsletter/newsletter.asp