December 15, 2001

Issue 3

OZ-Traveller

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"

Gourmet Traveller

 

Hint - Make sure you add photo captions to your pictures.  This can be done via BBProfiler

 

B&B of the Month

Drawing Rooms of Berry, NSW

 

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.

Unfortunately, though, we cannot accommodate special changes to your web page outside of what our BBProfiler tool allows.

The reason is very simple: our members' web pages are generated dynamically. That means that your page is created on-the-fly by our database as someone goes to view it. We have standard templates that display our 500+ member web pages.

This powerful dynamic template is one of the main reasons why our format is so powerful, why we are gaining industry recognition, and why we can offer you a free four-month trial listing. We do not hand generate our pages.

This dynamic method provides you with the ability to modify your listing yourself with changes appearing online immediately. Our BBProfiler software takes your changes, updates our database, and then that information is grabbed by our template the next time someone goes to view your page. Cool!

 

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?
A: We prefer the following formats: TIF, JPG, GIF or in a ZIP archive.

We will resize your images as required, but we do NOT photo-edit any images. Please do not ask us to modify your images in any way other than to resize them.

Pictures can be e-mailed to info@ozbedandbreakfast.com. Be sure to include your B&B name and/or your member number so that your pictures do not get orphaned.

Pictures can be updated or loaded via BBProfiler.  The  directions are there and work well when followed completely.


If you have pictures on another website, you can e-mail us the URL (your website address) with instructions to the e-mail address above.

 

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)

By Elinor Mills Abreu and Bernhard Warner

SAN FRANCISCO/LONDON, Dec 4 (Reuters) - A new computer worm named "Goner'' was spreading quickly through corporate and personal e-mail inboxes on Tuesday, deleting system files and clogging networks in what could be the the biggest outbreak since last year's ``Love Letter'' virus, security software vendors said.


"Goner is one of the most incredibly fast moving and potentially dangerous e-mail viruses we've seen,'' said Mark Sunner, chief technology officer of MessageLabs Inc.

The worm, a virus that propagates itself to other computers through the Internet or other networks, is affecting users of Microsoft Corp.'s (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) Outlook and Outlook Express, said Ian Hameroff, business manager of security solutions at Computer Associates International Inc. (NYSE:CA - news)

Outlook 2002 users are not as impacted since it blocks potentially harmful attachments by default and warns users when a program tries to access e-mail addresses, according to Internet Security Systems Inc. (NasdaqNM:ISSX - news)

The Goner worm arrives in an attachment masquerading as a screen saver, with an e-mail subject line of "Hi'' and text that says: "How are you? When I saw this screen saver, I immediately thought about you I am in a harry (sic), I promise you will love it!''

Once the the attachment is clicked, the worm sends itself to everyone in the user's e-mail address book, tries to close programs that are running and deletes certain system files, including security software, said Hameroff.

One of the nastier aspects of the virus is its attempt to disable antivirus and firewall software, so that victims have to reinstall the software in order to prevent future infections, said Sunner of MessageLabs.
 

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
MSN - 18,503,907
Google - 6,739,335
Looksmart - 5,569,833
InfoSeek - 3,070,069
Ask Jeeves - 2,648,211
 

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)
6. WebCrawler (www.webcrawler.com)
7. Yahoo (www.yahoo.com)
8. HotBot (www.hotbot.com)
9. Google (www.google.com)
10. Alltheweb (www.alltheweb.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!


Your OZbedandbreakfast.com team

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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!
Bob and Veronica - TANJA RURAL RETREAT, NSW

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.
Darien - DARIENS BED AND BREAKFAST