online book publishing

Case Study: Is Lycos InSite Pro Paid Inclusion Worth It?

Last Update: Sunday, March 06, 2005.

In this article I will show you the results of my test with the Lycos InSite Pro paid inclusion site submission program.

I recently tested the Lycos InSite Pro paid inclusion system. InSite Pro offers guaranteed inclusion in the Lycos web index within 48 hours of submission, and full refresh of my web pages every 48 hours.

Lycos InSite Pro offers two packages:

* 1-250 Pages: $189.00/month

* 251-500 Pages: $279.00/month

I opted for the $279/month plan. I have about 500 pages of content across my network of sites and wanted all of them indexed in Lycos.

The Results

Lycos currently do not provide keyword, impression or click-through stats, although they do intend to offer them in the near future.

So I checked my traffic stats according to my WebTrendsLive reports. I was shocked to find that Lycos only sent 41 visitors in the first 2 weeks of indexing my site. During the same period, Google sent me thousands of visitors.

So I wrote to Lycos and asked if they could provide access to click through stats for my account. I wanted to double check, just in case my stats were wrong. They couldn't.

So I also asked what I could change in my pages to get more traffic.

Here's their helpful reply:

Every entry in the Lycos index is created by automated software called a "spider." When a Web page is submitted to Lycos, the spider examines the full text of the page and determines relevant keywords based on its composition.

The spider will pay close attention to the components of the URL, the TITLE tag, headings and subheadings, frequency of word use, location of words on the Web page, and the distance between words.

If your Web page contains frames, our spider will be able to index the text in the <NOFRAMES> section only. We cannot examine the pages within your frame.

Once our software has extracted this information, an abstract is created and stored in the Lycos index. Our search software ranks the search results by considering a combination of the factors listed above. Web pages with fewer than 100 words of text are less likely to be found in a Lycos search.

Read that again in case you missed anything.

Note that the Lycos spider pays close attention to the URL. So if you ever wondered if search engines took into account keywords in URLs, you now know the truth.

Another important point is that your pages should contain 100 words or more, otherwise it's unlikely to be found in Lycos.

For some unknown reason Lycos doesn't like my web pages.

There's nothing new in their reply that suggests I have not optimized my web pages in the correct manner to achieve top rankings in Lycos.

Thankfully, Google does like my pages, so I don't intend to change my pages just to cater to the Lycos ranking algorithm.

In case you're wondering, I have canceled my Lycos InSite Pro subscription. But that shouldn't come as a surprise. ;o)

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This Simple Publishing Mistake Could Be Losing You Half Your Back End Sales!

By Jason Lewis

Article Word Count: 799 [View Summary] Comments (0)

Many of the Internets biggest ebook sellers are making this simple mistake, and it’s almost certainly costing them a ton of money in lost back end sales. You must not make the same mistake!

I was having a bit of a tidy up on my PC the other day. It really is amazing how many files you accumulate, even in a short space of time.

Anyway, to cut a long story short I was particularly interested in getting all my ebooks in some sort of organized filing system. I wanted to put them into files relating to particular categories. Then, when I wanted to go over a certain topic again, I would easily be able to find an ebook that covered the subject I was looking for.

Then I ran into a problem. The thing is, when I looked at this folder full of ebooks, at first glance, I didn’t have a clue what a load of them were about. I mean, I had read every single one of these ebooks, but from just looking at the file names, I didn’t have a clue what they were, or who wrote them!

The reason was; the ebook publishers had deliberately chosen not to give their ebooks a descriptive filename. Instead of using the actual title of the ebook as the file name, the author used some kind of shortened abbreviation.

Ebook authors must spend ages dreaming up a great name for their ebook that will reflect the topic of their publication. Then they go and ruin all that hard work; by giving the ebook file a 3 letter abbreviated name that doesn’t tell anyone what’s inside.

Why do ebook publishers do this?

There have been a lot of people giving out advice on Internet security over the last few years. One bit of advice that has been going round, is that you should always give your ebooks a weird, un-guessable file name so that Internet thieves, can’t find them on your website. I don’t want to go into exactly how these Internet thieves work because that is not what this article is all about.

Even if you don’t have a website, you may still get influenced by this advice, which is why I want to enlighten you.

Here’s an example of what I mean. Lets say an author has written an ebook called ‘Gold Swing Secrets’. Instead of giving the ebook a descriptive file name like ‘golf_swing_secrets.pdf’, they may name it something like gss-01.pdf or glfsgss.pdf.

Now, the author of the ebook had spent however long writing and compiling his ebook. The file name to him is instantly familiar; after all, he was the one that named the damn thing.

However, little old me ‘the customer’, who may be very keen to read his ebook again, didn’t have a clue what the ebook was about, withoutng it to find out. Now you might think that’s ok. I mean, how long does it take toan ebook to see what it is. My point is, most people’s eyes will be drawn to the ebooks with a descriptive file name that tells the reader instantly what the ebook is about.

What’s the big deal?

I found a number of ebooks on my PC that I had forgotten I had even bought. Some of them I had quickly speed read, with the full intention on reading them properly when I had time. 6 months, a year went by and I kept overlooking them. I just forgot what they were, and just assumed they were some free ebook or something.

The end result being:

* I never read these ebooks a 2nd time.

* I never signed up to any of the newsletters that were being promoted by the ebook authors.

* I never bought any of the products being recommended inside the ebooks.

* None of these ebook authors made a single back end sale from me.

I wonder how many ebook buyers have done the same as me? My very conservative guess is that at least 50% of people overlook the ebooks on their PC with filenames they don’t recognize. If I am right, you could be losing half your back end sales, if you choose not to give your ebook a descriptive filename.

If you have a website and you’re worried about Internet thieves, store your ebooks in a separate folder and give THAT a weird abbreviated name that no one would guess, not your ebooks!

If you have worked hard to write an ebook, do yourself a favor and finish the job off with a nice descriptive filename. Trust me, your readers, AND your bottom line will really appreciate it.

About The Author

Jason Lewis is Author of the new ebook ‘Website Not Required’ – 9 Sure Fire Ways to Make Money Online WITHOUT a Website! Click here now ==> http://www.websitenotrequired.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/