Many think that free Internet networking and advertising can't be very good like it was 10 years ago when the Internet started to happen in a more public way. But we have found that it is, by taking little microcommunities seriously. Such things as safelists, traffic exchanges, FFA pages, and other systems like little search engines and directories have "families." They are units of people who own and run these services, and their friends and relatives see their businesses and most likely use them. The bigger you make them by contributing to them, the bigger they get, and hence the more exposure your company or personal web page gets.

We have had our web pages online since 1994, and we have seen all that has happened to the Internet since then with a cautious eye. Our founder was one of the first people to professionally consult the Internet in Seattle, also put out the first general public ads in local papers such as The Seattle Times, The Computer User, and The Weekly.

We have seen small business people and others such as artists, writers, and innovative linkers get hit from both sides: from big businesses buying coverage and even closing down free marketing services, and from spammers. Spammers have destroyed much of Usenet Newsgroups, Usenet Newsgroups (now more well known as Google Groups) are still there, but they are not as populated as once before. Some are vacant except for spammer's ads. For those that don't know what they are, Usenet Newsgroups are a type of international public e-mail that has been around since the 1970's. You can talk about just about any subject and ask questions and get responses from some people who may be experts in these fields.

Even though our web pages have a link in the Yahoo directory, and we're in many other big directories. for many years we didn't care about the little Internet directories because we were also in AOL, MSN, etc. But it's not a good habit to frown on little ventures. 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. Some of them have created great technologies which link people and businesses together and make the Internet and the web still a very vital, active force at a grassroots level.

Smaller companies can't just rely on one or two Internet services to help them with their linking and marketing. Internet marketing is like investing, one needs to diversify.

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.

You MUST first have a few totally junk e-mail accounts that you will use only for getting the confirmation e-mails, safelist e-mails, etc. We have an attitude about spam. It's a part of the job. If you don't get any spam, changes are that your web site is not visible to customers either. If we're going to get 10,000 more hits a month on our web site, we'll be willing to put in whatever work it takes to delete more spam. People already receive spam without doing any Internet marketing. Remember, NEVER USE YOUR REAL E-MAIL ADDRESS, and if possible, create a secondary web page on one of those free web page places without your real e-mail address on it We also do not do anything that states it uses pop-ups/pop-unders or "Exit-Sales".

You must also be experienced in using anti-virus and anti-spyware software. We use both Ad-aware and Spybot, and use AVG Anti-virus. We also periodically check for trojans and check Windows Task manager (by hitting alt-control-delete) frequently to look for processes that are not supposed to be there. This takes some experience. We find the networking and marketing experience to be worth the effort, but we emphatically do not recommend it for people who are not comfortable running anti-virus, anti-spyware and anti-trojan softare. We use these softwares daily, sometimes more than once daily.

Some words from Robert Pearson, the founder and owner of ParaMind Brainstorming Software.

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 "50,000," "One Million," etc. All the Safelists said that they could do was send your message out to 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 or two thousand for their lists because there are only five hundred or two thousand people doing business-to-business marketing who have discovered and spent the time to sign up for that particular list. But there are about 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.

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, I found a great link for doing so, and 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 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.

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.

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.

If you do like what we've done on this and our other Internet awareness pages, please consider buying our software or signing up for these programs.

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.