Moons ago I used a product called position agent to to demonstrate to clients the importance of meta tags. Keep in mind that this was in the days before giant search engines existed in the way that they do today.

Position Agent was one of the first meta searches that would search several engines at once. They added on to the basic meta search by telling you where your site ranked on the search results against your entered keyword. For example, slot 5 on page 2.

It's a powerful message to share with clients. Once I presented to the executive team of a well-known sports magazine. They nearly cried when I demonstrated that the keyword 'sports' did not show them in the first 20 pages of results.

When Microsoft purchased Position Agent I thought it was a goner. PA was always free, and MS offers nothing for free, or so I thought.

I stumbled across the free PA demo recently...
Free Positon Agent Demo

So now you can try it too. Enjoy.

My bookmark list is a lot like my closet. Go searching for my other red shoe - discover that great Diva t-shirt I picked up in Paris.

Today a friend asked about great usability sites - so I went to the trusty bookmark list and found this: http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/imc/studentwork/projects/Sticky/about.htm

This project site talks about stickiness - not yet a stale topic although I can't bring myself to use the phrase in a client meeting- and argues that personalization, content and usability are key to a successful e-commerce site.

While I disagree with some of what's here, I do think it is overall a great resource and basic primer. It's free, well-organized and written by smart folks.

I'd love to hear what you think about it. mailto:websavant@websavant.net

Why don't affiliate marketing programs pay attention to affiliates?

If you are at all familiar with affiliate marketing programs you know there are three big players out there. Commission Junction, Linkshare and BeFree. The model for these companies is essentially the same - big name companies seek enthusuist and personal sites to link to them and in exchange reward the smaller site with a percentage of any sales generated from their link.

Now there are MANY, MANY more little sites out on the net interested in linking out to their favorites than there are Sony's, Amazon's and Reebok's... so why is it that signing up for the affiliate networks is so hard to do?

Their ENTIRE marketing message is about the corporate angle, but there is plenty to be said to the little guy. Sell me on your superior reporting. Tell me how you keep companies like WhenU from eating my referring ID and taking credit for my sale. Tell me how you know your stats are accurate. Tell me how you'll support me when I have issues. Give me SOME SIGN that you recognize the importance I play in the whole affiliate networking business model.

These are not merely the rantings of a frustrated person. I am genuinely confused by the strategy these network marketers employ.

So I put it to the Blog Audience test: go visit these three sites and see how long it takes you to sign up, or even get enough information to sign up. Jot notes about your experience and drop me a note with the details. mailto: websavant@websavant.net

Commission Junction - http://www.cj.com
Linkshare - http://www.linkshare.com
BeFree - http://www.befree.com

(I'm currently working on a deal with one of these three companies and I want to share this information with them to convince them that they do not have it all figured out!) I'll put any contributor's name in a drawing for a book from Psychotactics.com.