Can FFAs help you grow your business?
by: Steve Humphrey

Your business needs traffic to survive and it
might seem like you could get some from Free
For All (FFA) link pages.

In ancient times (2-3 years ago), people visited
FFA pages, posted a link to their site on them
and visited some of the sites listed on the page.

You may have heard a lot about FFAs recently.
Some of what you've heard is true, but most of
it is not. Allow me to clear this up for you.


THE PROBLEM:

Nobody clicks on your link. Why?

Thousands of people are posting to them, hoping
to get traffic. People using the so-called FFA
Blasters flood the FFAs with traffic. New links
are posted and yours is moved down the list until
it drops off. The bottom line is that this is
simply not going to bring you traffic.

THE SOLUTION:

You need to own the FFA page so that *you* get the
traffic it produces. There's a CGI script in my new
ebook to show its readers just how easy it is to
create an FFA with a CGI script, just for that
purpose.


Do I practice what I preach? Darn right I do! On
my site, my FFA page gets SIX TIMES AS MANY hits as
my home page! Guess what? I don't advertise my
FFA! Traffic just seeks it out.

Now, here's what I do:

Right at the top of my page it clearly states that
by using my FFA, you agree to receive email from me.
So, if someone cries SPAM, I can show they agreed
to get emails from me. My script sends an email
confirmation message when someone visits my page.
A sales pitch or ad is part of the message.

People know that 1000s of these emails are coming
because they've posted to 1000s of FFAs -- and dodge
them! How? They use fake addresses or set filters
to delete all your confirmation messages. They use
free accounts that fill up and start bouncing mail.
Etc...

My script compares their email address to those in a
"banned" list and to a set of patterns that represent
autoresponders and other useless addresses. An email
address that matches any of these makes the browser
display an error page -- not the perform requested
addition of their link!

The script also logs each *unique* address in a file,
so I have a record of every address that's ever been
allowed to use the FFA. It's a simple matter to add
the time and date of each entry if you wish.

When the script accepts an email address, it sends
an email to an autoresponder. This starts a series
of messages, spaced over several days.

Tip: ***
Be sure there's no limit on how much many names can
be on the list. Set up the autoresponder to start
sending messages 24 hours *after* the URL is posted.
********

When someone asks to be removed, I add their address
to the "banned" list! They've asked me not to email
them and I've complied. In turn, I've denied access
to my FFA. That's justice.

In summary, here's what happens:

1) Today - someone posts a URL to the FFA page.
2) Their email address is verified with fairly
good accuracy or else access is denied.
3) An immediate "confirmation" email is sent,
which might be deleted or ignored.
4) Tomorrow - a series of sales messages starts
going to the visitor and continues until they
opt out of the sequence or accept the offer.

And the answer is...YES, FFAs can help you to grow
your business - if you use them right!

===================================================
Steve Humphrey is an 8-year Internet veteran who is
widely regarded as a specialist in HTML, CGI, Perl,
SQL, PHP and other programming. His new e-book
"Learn to use CGI inTwo Hours: Automate your Web
site Tonight" is available across the Internet and
from his own Web site, http://www.merrymonk.com .
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