Author: Steven Schwartz
Date: 14:23:15 11/16/04
We are in the process of doing an emailing to the entire membership. Since some of you may have changed email addresses or opted off the list, I copy the text below. Since it takes about 2 weeks for all the emails to get out, you may read it here if you choose. As always, your comments are welcome. The text of the email follows... Steve To all members of CCC and CTF.... I want to personally thank (well I guess email or posting is about as personal as most people come to personally doing anything on the Internet) all of the members who graciously contributed to helping us support the CCC and CTF. I had high hopes that the plea for donations would help defray all of the expenses associated with hosting/administering the sites, and we are not terribly far off right now. Certainly we are not far enough away for me to want to send CCC away. Sitting here with a lull in the holiday shipping season, I have been thinking of some ways to make up for the shortfall that will be both helpful to us and very innocuous to the membership, and I will throw one out now in the hope that it will be an acceptable option for the CCC/CTF. First, some history: Two years ago, Your Move Chess & Games was #1 or #2 on keyword searches for "chess sets", "chess board", "chess pieces", "chess software", "chess computers", etc. on Google and all the other major search engines. Then, about 18 months ago we disappeared completely from Google. We made no changes (that we were aware of) that would have cause such a reaction. Nothing was different, but we were gone. And since they offer no help in telling you why you were removed or how you can get back on, we were out of luck. Several months ago we hired a consultant from the Netherlands (no, not Ed) to help us get back on, and we succeeded, but we are so far down on the various keywords that no one would ever find us, so we are spending a fortune for paid placement which gets us at or near the top. To make a long story short (I guess it is already too late for that)... we need to move up the free search listings and, therefore, pull back on spending all that money to get to the same place. It appears that the secret MAY be (nobody knows for certain) that we need more sites linking to us, and, to that end, I would like to ask the membership if they would be gracious enough to place a link on their personal or business sites to us. The hypertext link can look like this: <a href="http://www.ChessUSA.com/"> America's Largest Chess Store - chess sets and more!</a> You may bury it anywhere you wish. Should you wish a reciprocal link, just email me (icd@icdchess.com), and I will be glad to accommodate that. For those who might be interested in making a few dollars on the process, we also have an affiliate program that would pay you a commission for each visitor from your site who bought something from us. If that scenario sounds enticing, just let me know (icd@icdchess.com), and we can supply all the details. In any event, these are ways, aside from donations, that I think we can ease our burden and keep CCC here. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask. This is a way that you can help support our support of CCC/CTF without laying out any money. Maybe it is a compromise that will help both CCC/CTF and us. I hope so. Thanks. Steve
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