An existing web technology with great potential has not been well utilitized by artists and writers, nor by small businesses selling interesting and unique products.

I will show you here how can have a lot of fun and get more links to your pages. It is also vital to do this because it's about keeping a part of the Internet alive which in our culture we can expect to be more and more threatened by big business interests and spammers.

Even though my pages have three links in the Yahoo directory, and I'm in many other big directories, I just didn't feel I was getting enough coverage. I have had my web pages online since 1994, and I have seen all that has happened to the Internet since then with a cautious eye. I was one of the first people to professionally consult the Internet in Seattle, having the first general public ads in The Seattle Times, The Computer User, and The Weekly. I'm always learning. I took a 5 credit class at a community college in the Summer of 2002 on Internet Marketing.

I saw small business people and artists/writers/thinkers/innovative linkers get hit from both sides: from big business buying coverage and from the spammers. Spammers had almost destroyed much of Usenet Newsgroups, something which I'm angry about. Usenet Newsgroups are still there and active, but they are not as populated as once before. Some are vacant except for spammers ads. One would think with the net becoming more popular Usenet Newsgroups would be even more active.

For many years I didn't care about the little internet directories because I was in Yahoo, AOL, MSN, etc. But I was wrong. It's not a good habit to frown on little ventures. Basically, the Internet is about connectivity, connectivity not so much about bandwidth speed, but connectivity with other people. Those little web directories and people looking for affilliates are human beings, human beings with community, family, friends and business associates. They have created a great technology which links people together and makes the net and the web still a very vital, active force.

I found that one way I could continue to get coverage for my businesses (ParaMind Brainstorming Software, and my CD label and books) was to get involved in areas such as safelists, traffic exchanges, affiliate networking, free for all pages, and other things, merely for the sake of utilizing their free services. Once I mastered these ideas, it took me only about a couple of hours every week to gain coverage which added substantially to my web page hits. Here was everything that the artists/writers/thinkers/innovative linkers needed. Anything can be a topic in these free services. And luckily, the general public, who aren't so "Internet politically correct" don't know to look down on these things. People are just people, why do so many of us have to be so snobbish? The technology was already there for us, in fact, it's rather amazing. You can verify that after posting in the ways I describe you are getting more hits.

I didn't believe I am going to make any money from people becoming affiliates. After two years of doing these things, I did make about $150 from one company (Adtactics) by winning their referral contests. You usually have to buy something before that can happen. Some will give you more ad exposure and other benefits. It's a fun idea, but one thing I know, they've got my ideas out to many, many more people than what I had expected. And Microsoft can't steal this show like they have done to many of the good linkings of community such as ListBot and LinkExchange. We can't just rely on one or two internet services to help us with our linking and marketing. Internet marketing is like investing -- you need to diversify. We need other structures to support us if one company we depend on caves in to corporate greed, etc. We need to know what the other options out there are. We have to branch out further. This is one attempt to do so.

Part of what I'm doing is "blasting" my ads for my software, my CD's and my books to many of the FFA (Free for All) pages. They say there are over 500,000 out there. (I don't believe in any of these exaggerated numbers). I'm not looking at the commission figures and such. I've put together here the ones that get the most real web page hits for free, which I've verified. I've waded through dozens now and found some to be duds, so I've put the best on here. I appreciate you putting me in as your affiliate and it will be a joy to see who becomes part of my "downline"!

Gradually I overcame my fear of using "Safelists." I hated Spam and I didn't want to even be associated with any web page's promises out there. But when I thought about it, I saw that the real spammers always used numbers like "500,000," "One Million," and so on. All the safelists said that they could do was send your message out to about 5,000 people (usually they say less). But I could see that the difference in structure was what made it a different system from Spam. They only get five hundred to twenty-thousand for their lists because there are only five hundred to twenty-thousand people doing business-to-business marketing who have discovered and spent the time to sign up for that particular list. But there are over 3,000 safelists out there.

You MUST first have a few totally junk e-mail accounts that you will use only for getting the confirmation e-mails, which look like spam. There is some additional spam also associated, but many of these spam e-mails are confirmation letters with unique titles from the places where you put your ad/link. I was afraid at first to "Get My Own FFA Page" but it is a harmless free thing that these web pages give away, that is hosted on their sites, and which literally thousands of people DO post ads to and then check. They will have your website link and some even let you on put your banner. As of this date, I haven't tried any banner exchange programs. I'm looking to do quality banner trades with storing your banner on my site so I don't have to link out to another site and hence slow down the load of your site. If you're interested in this, you can e-mail me.

I have an attitude about Spam. Getting it is a part of the job of having more exposure. I try to report it whenever I can. Getting rid of spamming is a good little war to occupy oneself with. Or, you can just ignore Spam. If I'm going to get 10,000 more hits a week on my web site I'll be willing to put in whatever work it takes to delete some more spam. I already have received Spam without doing anything like what I'm doing now so it is just a part of the job. Remember, DO NOT USE YOUR REAL E-MAIL ADDRESS, and if possible, create a secondary web page on one of those free web page places (ones that don't have pop-ups -- I also do not go for anything that states pop-ups/pop-unders or "Exit-Sales").

Some places are misleading and merely want you to make their website your "home page" meaning the page your browser opens up to or when you click the home button. I personally don't get anything from these kinds of places, or anything that pays for clicking or surfing but supposedly people do make money doing that. You can waste time not knowing about these kinds of places so be careful.

What I found out is best are the free-for-all networks, classified ads pages, safelists, and being in all the search engines you can find. It's like I said, there are networks of people using these services, "microcommunities," and even though they are not the largest draws out there, you will get more hits, put out ads and messages, and it doesn't take that much time. Knowing how to copy and paste your information from a text file that you reuse is essential to doing this.

I believe in going after Spammers. Almost all of the good affiliate places seem to be after spammers too. Make sure you forward a copy of all spam you get to the U.S. government at uce@ftc.gov. They request you do so. When the ones I've listed say that the FFA site will send your e-mail, they mean confirmation letters to people who have posted ads on your FFA site. I also do not usually support anything that promotes pop-ups or pop-unders.

Here are the best I've found so far. I have more information that I have not put here for reasons of trade: if you know of any good ways to promote web pages, send them to me here. I will then send you some more tips and promotion pages that are legit.

There are others out there that I'm looking at that I will probably post soon. (So bookmark me for that). There are many that almost have something, but have annoying pop-ups, but I'm assuming you don't want to waste time. Some look good and have one good feature, but they are too slow to deal with. I also haven't linked any of the good classified ad sites as they take more time. If you do find any that meet my criteria feel free to e-mail me.

There are, most likely, on these pages illegal spammers who will put your name on junk mail lists. I became vocal against spam in a few areas on the internet and I believe that my name was added to lists either because of my stance against Spam, or just because of the added exposure to the general public that I'm doing with these tips that I describe here. I believe this activity that I describe on this page is more free from spam for those who can promote activity in which there is no link at all to any personal domain (such as webmaster@yourdomain.com) or personal e-mail address they want to keep clean. It may be good for those whose e-mail accounts have already been comprimised and already rely heavily on junk-mail filters. I believe in these ideas as a case in point of an interesting technology (FFA pages) which could be co-opted for various interesting purposes to keep the power of the internet at the grassroots level.

The next sites are very similar and verifiable in what they offer. You create your own FFA page on their site which clickly, er, quickly fills up with tens of thousands of ads. This means that you get a "permanent" action by doing only about five minutes of work. To set it up takes some time and experience, but hopefully I've given some good tips here. I have over ten years experience now with the Internet in a professional manner, so I am covering a lot of ground pretty fast, but hopefully if you start to try this stuff out you can really get some good promotion going for free.

Like most anything else in life, there are some problematic areas. Some people's sites seem to work improperly, and a lot of people are just trying to get your money for nothing. I see some of these sites that have the very small payments may be good, but so far I've done this for over a year and I haven't paid anything.

This one is ok. Click where it says "Free Submitter."

ffanet.com -- this is the best type as it allows you to add your own banner and automatically send out confirmation e-mails automatically to those who post their link on their site with your announcement in the e-mail title.

Multi-Links.Net This one also allows you to add your own banner. Check out their "Free Stuff" page.

On here, go to where it says FFA Promotion. It's a true FFA page across a network, which is more than I have found in some.

Yet another FFA page that gives you your own page. This one displays the diversity of the interesting processes and scripts that one witnessses. I think this stuff is a lot of fun, just watching this kind of automatic computer technology, which sends out your message across the net. This one however is a bit of a drag as it asks you to put in five submission codes that come in five separate e-mails. If one didn't enter them, would it still work? (Note: After checking them for a week, I have found that they only offer free web pages and don't seem to send your link across their network. Hence, you have to advertise the free web page you get to get any traffic).

This one is not bad as it allows your ad on their main home page.

This is another FFA page that gives you your own page. It has some pop-ups, but I don't get them anymore since Netscape 7.1 has a popup stopper. It even makes having free pages at Tripod or Geocities now more realistic.

Linkstation. This one has a great FFA page. There seems no way to verfiy anything so far, but there are nine files of FFA links in a scroll-down that you submit to one after the other, only having to type the short ad once, each having a processing time, which seems to mean it's working. I will e-mail them and see what I can find. They also have a good search engine submission here.

MyeBizPageoffers free message boards, FFA's, and classified ad pages for you to promote your concepts. Check out the link "Show All Messages" in the FFA section. This is a unique concept in FFA's.

Visible Ads FFA

WebWork Pro FFA Network

(Note 1/24/04: This site has been down for a few days now). This was the first one I joined. It had a great FFA page, a great search engine submit page, and was helpful in getting you started. It became a map of what to look for in other sites. (The FFA page's page two doesn't work, but page three on do).

Kiosk offers 10 meg free websites.

Tripod, Geocities (really Yahoo) and others still offer free web space. Never have information on a free web hosting service that you only have one copy of, because they have known to go out of business and then you will lose your design and information. You need to learn to know how to back it up on your hard drive and then on a disk or CD. Just go to each page and then to the file menu and Select "Save As."

I list my safelists here. They are all free, have nothing at all to do with spam, have been used for over five years, and it is a good and fun experience using them.

I created a Free and Fast 100 Search Engine Submission page . It consists of five sites that have easy-to-fill out forms and also give you other worth-having free benefits. I have never paid any site one cent. I do things for them by promoting them to others who may pay, and for that they are grateful.

Greensponder is by far one of the best new companies on the web. They give you many free features including a free e-mail account, web space, six traffic exchanges, and a free FFA. You could use them for one of your free e-mail accounts. I recommend having at least five free e-mail accounts for these services because free ones will fill up and then your accounts can get cancelled.

Here is my free Greensponder FFA.

Usenet Newsgroups -- These have been around since the early universities and the U.S. government started them in the early 1970's. It is the public e-mail of the international community, organized topically. This where you find groups like "soc.culture.french," "alt.spam," "rec.music.progressive," etc. There are also business and marketplace Usenet rooms in which you can do business to business posts.

Add-Me asks you to put their logo/link on your page.

Biggest Legit Free Safelists and Free Fast 150-in-1 Search Engine Submission page.

A list of the Best Free Traffic Exchanges Traffic Exchanges are technically described as a system where you see a web page so that someone will also see yours.

A list of the Best Free for All pages. Free-for-all pages are open bulletin boards where you can post your link. Some are filled with trash, some are monitored and kept clean, so beware of which ones you visit. (We can't monitor these for clean content due to the random nature of the posters).

If you do like what I've done on this and my other Internet Awareness pages, please consider buying my software or signing up to the programs underneath myself. I'm not against all marketing services that charge money yet. I just haven't tried any yet. There are dozens that only charge $1 or thereabouts and I may try them one day.

In the first few years of the big public splash of the net, it was very exciting and people were very friendly. I think that spirit can always exist on the Internet.

Note: Added February 1st 2004. page

Computer skills are essential. For that reason I'm offering my ten computer tips below:

Ten Basic Skills to Do Anything

These tips have helped a lot of people. Consider sending them to the elderly or others who may have a hard time using the computer.

1) Click on X on top right of window to close window or program.
2) Process the action next to where you fill out the form, or where you see what you want.
3) Plow through error messages like they aren’t that important, taking notes of what they are until you understand them.
4) Study the arrow keys, the backspace key, the delete key, the tab key, and the escape key.
5) Learn the manners, or syntax, of how different programs operate. Web
browsers have spinning designs, hourglass symbol, cursor shape.
6) Use enter key to see if there is a default action, which means, the action that would be done next. This can speed up your work so you can do more of what you want to do.
7) If program or computer acts funny, restart the program or computer. Restart is a selection after you hit the Start Button and Shutdown.
8) Get a sense of looking over every inch of the computer screen.
9) Tab and Enter keys work different on different programs and different web pages.
10) Always focus on where the screen is blinking.