December
15, 2001
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Issue 3 |
OZ-Traveller |
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We are
driving traffic to our site to get you bookings by advertising on
news.com.au
"Ozbedandbreakfast.com is an unusually quick, user-friendly and consistent site that profiles accommodation around the country, from guesthouses and beach shacks to heritage city pads"
Hint - Make sure you add photo captions to your pictures. This can be done via BBProfiler
B&B of the Month |
Editor's notes
Welcome to the third edition of OZ-Traveller! The Christmas season is upon us, and all of us here at OZbedandbreakfast.com wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas!
The past two weeks has found us working hard to keep up with the incredible number of registrations. We now have well over 500 members!!!! The more members we have, the better presence we have on the internet. Travellers want to be able to find a site that has an all inclusive listing of bed and breakfasts. That is our aim. The one-stop-shop for Travellers. In this issue, we will discuss in greater detail how we are marketing ourselves on the web.
We had yet another fantastic review in the December issue of Gourmet Traveller. The article entitled "That Romantic Weekend" mentioned some good things about us. Pick up this month's issue as seen on the left and turn to page 194, or visit our webpage and look in the Press Release area. Articles like these continue to drive visitors to the site. This means bookings for you!
We plan on taking a bit of a break over Christmas, but will always be available to answer any of your questions. Once again, we appreciate your support and want to wish you all the best this holiday season.
Major deal with NEWS.COM.AU
Many of you may be familiar with news.com.au or News Corporation. Their newspapers include: The Australian, Sun Herald, Daily Telegraph, and the Courier-Mail to name a few. OZbedandbreakfast.com advertising is now appearing on news.com.au in the areas of News Home, Breaking News and Spotlight. This advertising entails our banner (as seen at the bottom of this newsletter) appearing at the top of their webpage. We have arranged for a total of 300,000 impressions to appear on their webpages in the months of December and January. So far we have seen traffic to our site triple in response to the banners appearing on news.com.au. Take a look for yourself. As you surf their site you may just catch a glimpse of OZbedandbreakfast.com!
Some Frequently asked questions:
Q: Why can't you change my web page to exactly how I want it? I'd like a bigger font and 10 pictures. A: In a
perfect world, we could accommodate any request.
Q: How are the search results sorted? A: To be fair to all our members, we do not list our search results from A-Z. This would be unfair to those lower in the alphabet. Instead, we sort the search results by region from A-Z for a two week period, then Z-A the next two week period. Within the region grouping, we then alternate and A-Z and Z-A sort by B&B name. Therefore, your B&B name will not always appear in the same spot based on the search performed. This gives everyone an equal chance at being near the top of the list.
Q:
What format can I e-mail photos in/How do I upload photos?
These Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's) and more can be found on our website under FAQ on the navigation bar. |
Virus Alert! A news clipping you should know about!
'Goner' worm hitting corporate, individual PCs (UPDATE:
updates with Outlook 2002 users not affected)
VIRUS UPDATE: The full details of this virus can be found on : http://vil.nai.com/vil/virusSummary.asp?virus_k=99069
Potential guest - where are they coming from?
The
internet is growing rapidly and to give you an example of just how much
traffic is congesting the digital highways, here are the numbers of unique
visitors to some of the major search engines (source Nielsen/Net Ratings). Yahoo! -
19,415,595 In just these six web sites, there is a potential 55.95 million customers. This makes it easy to understand why it is so important to have exposure on some of the major search engines.
This is all great information, but how much does it cost? There are so many different sites out there that offer you a listing on all of these plus hundreds more, for hundreds of dollars. What they don't tell you is that they are just submitting you for inclusion via some automated process. There is no guarantee that you will be included on the search engine. Therefore, read the fine print before spending any money. Before spending any money, remember the benefits of OZbedandbreakfast.com! We have paid the following search engines for a manual submission by hand:
1. AltaVista - (www.altavista.com) 2. nineMSN/excite (www.ninemsn.com.au, www.excite.com) 3. Infoseek (www.infoseek.com) 4. Lycos (www.lycos.com) 5.
Magellan (magellan.excite.com)
Some of the submissions will take up to 12 weeks to process. However, nineMSN and Looksmart are already producing great results for us. Just type "Australian Bed and Breakfasts" in the search phrase and see for yourself. We are ranked No. 1 on both! Thanks again for your support!
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Here is what some of our new members have
to say... Your new bed and breakfast directory is so refreshing! It is great to see people like you committed to the industry and your own dreams, putting together the nuts and bolts of what it takes to look after both the potential visitors & the B&B hosts to find each other on the web. As a webmaster that assesses directory type sites like yours as a routine (and often unpleasant) chore I want to let you know you have just flown to the top of the list of the "yes, do it" ones. You really have done your home work and live up to your words, "offer a powerful, easy-to-use, database driven Bed and Breakfast website for both the Bed and Breakfast owner, as well as the B&B traveller. You have done your homework and I give you a big thumbs up! All the best,
Dianne - DIAL DESIGN
We are impressed. You are obviously committed to maintaining customer
contact. The tone of your correspondence reflects this. Keep it up! Very impressed with your level of service. The sight looks terrific! Many
thanks for uploading pictures. Look forward to seeing the responses over the
coming holiday period. |