About.com-good news and bad news

just need to vent a little..

[mona]

So, I've e-mailed several guides about adding a site and have never heard back from one of them.

I e-mailed one today about adding a new site and guess what? She wrote back immediately! There's one little problem, though.

The URL isn't working.

Nice, huh?

The boys here are trying to figure out what' s wrong...wish them luck.

Edited by: mona

[rcjordan]

>Nice, huh?

Welcome to the club, mona. My dedicated server has chalked up an incredible up-time record over the last 5 or 6 years. However, I cringe every time I receive good press because I now know that if the server or a router hears about it, I'm toast.

[mona]

>if the server or a router hears about it, I'm toast.

Hee-hee.

Thanks, man. I'm so happy to be in the club.

[jimmykav]

HI Mona
I have had the same dreadful service from about.
I have emailed guides over the last 12 months and still not received a single reply.

[Bobby79]

Hi There,

I got listed in About.com, but i can't see any visitors in my Stats program, i think it's because they use frames. How can i see my about.com referrers?

[skiguide]

bobby79 -

I have never seen a stats program not report About.com referrals - it may be different with yours, though. i have seen them come through on many types of log files. if you look at referring URLs, you would see something like: [sitename.about.com...]

but, it may depend where you are listed on About.com, how much traffic that Guide site gets, and how easy the link is to find on that particular site. About referrals are all over the block - it depends on the topic, and the traffic/seasonal cycles.

[Aaron]

I decided to try something more subtle, and suggested that the guide write a article on a related subject..Of course, I kindly gave her the link to several of the more prominant sites [including mine. :)]

I got a reply back the next day, saying that it was a GREAT idea, and that he would definitely be writing something about it soon..

No mention of adding me to the links though..LOL..

[ijan]

What about.com guides really want is deep links not site links. If you have written an original article, tutorial, etc. submit it to the related guide, and you'd probably get a positive answer shortly. Sometimes, they don't bother to answer your mails, but they still add your links. Once I discovered what they really want thanks to selfpromotion.com, my submissions started to be accepted (remember: deep links! :)).

Ah also don't forget to offer a link back to them if you can because the more traffic they get the more they earn (more ad click-throughs).

Good luck.

[mona]

>>>(remember: deep links! :)).

I finally spent some time at About last week and that sounds like very sound advice. It did seem like most of the links were deep ones to very specific information.

Very cool. I will start sending those instead of just links for a site.

Thank you, ijan!

[mona]

I had to dig this one up today because I just received an e-mail from this editor at dmoz.

She just added the site that I had recommended to her over 3 months ago. LOL!

It's good to know that my efforts with the editors have finally paid off. I guess it's time to start sending out more mail...

[rcjordan]

Welcome to the club, mona. My dedicated server has chalked up an incredible up-time record over the last 5 or 6 years. However, I cringe every time I receive good press because I now know that if the server or a router hears about it, I'm toast.

Double DITTO on that, word for word.

Just over a week ago, I wheedled a few links out of some departments at an edu site... my server heard about it, and knowing that edu webmasters are skittish and the links are valuable, it burped and cleaned out all my content files while leaving the index pages (weird!).