Hello,

I'm interested in advice in how would you recommend one would go about
promoting a free web mail service which would offer later on a bit
more premium services at an added value.

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Request for Question Clarification by ragingacademic-ga on 27 Dec 2002 18:22 PST

lizardnation -

Hi again.

What kind of free Web mail service do you have in mind?  Is it the
kind where you give away name@lizard.com or something like that?  And
are the premium services you hope to add on related to Web mail - or
to something else?

thanks,
ragingacademic

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Clarification of Question by lizardnation-ga on 27 Dec 2002 19:04 PST

Hello Ragingacademic,

It's the kind that presents the mail.com in another language, such as
correo.com for Spanish as an example.  It is now available in English
and in the native naguage of the language which that domain would mean
mail.com.

Premium services are more storage, POP3 access, Fax Intergration with
mail and on the desktop via a printer driver and bidirectional SMS
with folders and contact lists.

I've had the domain since around `95 and was offered reasonable
amounts for my $70 annual investment back then. ;-)  Today, I've
opened up the domain online without advertisement and within two
months reached 1k registrations whom landed there by trying the
domain.  My logs show a far more number of users arriving and that
number is a subset of those whom actually went ahead and registered.

I've checked the search engines for links to the domain and none exist
on other sites nor is it on the map as far as search engines as their
robots haven't gotten to it yet.

I know a thing or two about search engine optimization and paid
ranking.  What I seek is advice on how to promote the domain.

I've always thought that asking people whom are active in mailing
lists to get very attractive user names at the domain with lets say
free for life 25mb storage and POP3 in return for using it as their
prime.  I'm sure it's not that attractive, but it's something.

I also know of the existance of lists online showing free web mail
sites and what they offer in a table format and I should list there as
well.  Also, was thinking of mailing lists and newsletters which allow
affordable paid sponsorship to be mentioned in text form somewhere for
a period of time.

The serivce currently has protection from Spam, viruses and porn based
on home brewed methods which are weak and slow and would not last long
and I'm evaluating the professionals out there in those fields to
outsource those issues to and protect my users.  Though, from the
costs I found to be associated with that level of service, only
premium accounts will be moved to servers protected in latter
mentioned method.

Let me know if I may clarify a bit more what is not clear or if I have
confused you further.

/lizardnation

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Request for Question Clarification by sublime1-ga on 27 Dec 2002 19:14 PST

lizardnation...

It seems to me that one of the easiest ways to promote
the site is to append a tag to the bottom of emails
sent by the members who have already registered.
Something along the lines of the tag used by Yahoo
mail. Have you considered this option yet?

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Clarification of Question by lizardnation-ga on 27 Dec 2002 19:38 PST

Hello Sublime1,

Already done.. In fact, I have done a bit of tweaking for that to
allow those sites that I'll setup with to have a different version for
the users they bring to me which co-promotes both of us in the footer
as a payback for the site.

Thanks for the idea though! :-)

/Lizardnation

Slightly off topic for future development and thoughts,
the selling features from a non-researched, personal perspective are:
1. Virus protection, very small businesses I know use Hotmail and I
say 'why on earth are you using hotmail?' they say 'virus and spam
protection'
2. Spam protection
(both the above you already have in your feature set)
3. Encryption to keep messages private, which inturn can act as a
viral marketing tool as receipients need to sign up to read the
encrypted messages of the sender. Normal method of course is to use
standard PGP key signing which is far to complex for the average user
to install and use.
4. Ability for businesess users to send via your SMTP server so their
outgoing email is formatted in theircompanyname.com so when they are
on location they don't have to resort to webmailservice.com
5. Instant messaging with encryption, the biggest providers e.g.
Hotmail, Yahoo re-purpose the email addresses for instant messaging
and logging on checks webmail automatically.
These are features that would attract little ol' me.
regards
lot-ga

Hello Lot,

Thanks for the comment, I always look forward to your input.

3. It might be a counter encouragement to force users to join in order
to read a message.  It might be more polite to send them a key in the
e-mail and ask them to come to the site and enter it to read it once
and it disapears.  This should help findout if someone snooped it as
it would be labled as 'Read'.

4. I like that, even more so what Yahoo is doing by providing the
ability for small businesses to host their domain in addition to the
yahoo.com domain in a business addition as well as a personal
addition.

5. When you say Instant Messaging, are you referring to their
messengers?  I was under the impression they're not encrypted and also
allow some security wholes to give away passwords of users on the
local machine.

Thanks!

/Lizardnation

Hello lizardnation,
actually regarding 4. I didn't really mean to host the business'
domain name (though that is another interesting twist). What I was
referring to is allowing users to input their own 'reply to address'
(for those on the premium paid subscription) so it reflects their
company's email address. e.g. salesperson@widgets.com and when anyone
replies to it, it goes to their normal company's POP box and gets
delivered into their Outlook. By diverting their outgoing email via
your SMTP mail server it allows them to send emails with their
corporate email address from your web interface.
Though you may need some form of registration authentication to
prevent people relaying spam through your system.
5. Yes, I'm referring to messengers and they are not encrypted as you
correctly point out, which is the reason why I highlighted it as a
useful function as nobody has done it yet (to my knowledge). But this
point needs a lot of development.

regards
lot-ga

Hello Lot,

4. Yes I agree with you.  The easy way to prevent relaying is to
switch on POP3 authentication as a requirement before being able to
send which is what we use for even those using the same domain.

5. As to a messenger, not that many people would like to be isolated
into a new born IM.  You might be referring to one which connects to
the existing communities.  It's a reasonable task development wise, I
don't know about its legalities.

Thank you.

/Lizardnation