Poor Richard's Internet Marketing and Promotions: How to Promote Yourself, Your Business, Your Ideas Online (Poor Richard's Series) (Paperback)

~ (Author), Tara Calishain (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Operators of small business have always been attracted to the Internet's seemingly bottomless supply of ready customers, but their hopes can quickly be dashed by the competitive realities of business on the Web. Poor Richard's Internet Marketing and Promotions aims to take the entrepreneur by the hand and show him or her how to draw attention to an Internet resource without spending a lot of money.

What the authors present is a sort of guerrilla model for online business in which you use your apparent weaknesses to your advantage. You might, for example, exploit your woefully low traffic level by delivering an extraordinary level of attention to the customers you do have. The idea is that good news spreads, and the publishers of Web resources should provide lots of good things for their visitors to pass along. You can also go outside your customer base to attract visitors without buying banner ads--you can join a professional association or a Web ring, for example.

In addition to their particular brand of marketing advice, authors Peter Kent (who also wrote the excellent Poor Richard's Web Site) and Tara Calishain do a fine job of explaining more pedestrian technical subjects, such as how to prepare your pages for listing on search engines. --David Wall

Topics covered: Audience identification, basic page design and coding, registering with search engines, creating newsletters and other mailing lists, joining affiliate programs, filing press releases, and tracking reactions.

Review

"Full of ideas and suggested actions . . . a very stimulating read, and the most useful one of its kind that I have come across." -- Internet Resources Newsletter

An extremely useful and easy to use handbook on what one has to know to market and promote your ideas, goods and services on the Internet. I can't imagine anyone, from someone who is building their first web site to an expert who builds sites professionally, who wouldn't find this book extremely useful." -- Frank Lowe, Archizine, The Internet Edition of The Architecture Show Magazine

Another lucid and practical gem . . . admirably different from others on the same theme. You won't find hype, fluff, jargon, or hi-cost marketing programs here. Instead, you get suggestions, strategies, and details, equally useful to full-time promoters and to part-time webmasters who work at home. -- The Midwest Book Review

The 'Poor Richard' approach means that a lot of the programs they recommend are shareware, cheap, or even free. It's all very practical, and aimed at the average reader with answers to basic questions such as 'Where do I get this? How much does it cost? How does it work?'" -- Roy Johnson, Mantex Information Design

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 404 pages
• Publisher: Top Floor Publishing (May 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0966103270
• ISBN-13: 978-0966103274
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,345,869 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A superb resource for promoting your entity online., June 3, 1999

By A Customer

It's about time! Peter Kent and Tara Calishain have managed to avoid the tremendous hype surrounding internet promotion, by providing a well-organized volume of solid information. They cover not only search engines and adverting, but lesser-known areas, such as awards, newsletters, discussion groups, press releases, and e-mail, among others. This book provides not only information, but a basis for developing your electronic marketing strategy. Buying this book is a must for anyone with a web site because it will pay for itself very quickly. Highly recommended!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great tool for small businesses!, October 8, 1999

By A Customer

As a writer myself (Quicken for Dummies and QuickBooks for Dummies) and a small business person and CPA, I think I appreciate more than most people the skill and craftmanship of a technology writer who knows how to make the complex simple, the tedious interesting, and the painstaking fun. Peter Kent is in that small group of writers who has this wonderful gift. Buy this book--you won't be sorry! BTW, I especially recommend this book to small business owners and managers who want to use the Internet as tool for boosting profits and gaining a competitive edge.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Very Disappointing, May 4, 2000

By	"dmeredith" (Morris Plains, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

I am the CEO of an Internet design company. I picked up the book because one of my clients recommended it. I was very disappointed in the book and actually think that it would cause more harm than benefit to anyone following it's advice.

At least the first third of the book is completely unrelated to Internet marketing - it is more related to how to build a web site, with plenty of "this is what we've done" type advice.

As an example of how bad the book is, they spend 2 chapters on search engine registration. This is a vital part of any Internet marketing strategy, and yet there was zero useful advice on how to achieve a good position, or how to really optimize your site for SE's.

Also, many of the links in the book are out of date, many of the products they mention are no longer "best of breed", and I found their constant "Peter did this" or "Tara found that" extremely annoying.

The authors need to realize that "what they've done" is not necessarily the best thing to do - and does not necessarily work for different types of businesses.

If you are looking for a truly introductory text on how to get started on the Internet, you may want to consider it, as long as you are prepared for it to be out of date. However, if you are looking for help with your Internet marketing, there are much better books to spend your money on.