Think big

Entrepreneur, May, 2000 by J. W. Dysart, Amanda C. Kooser

Why settle for a dinky site with nothing but a shopping cart and a logo? Feed your site. Grow it big. Grow it strong. Even grow it international if you want. It's a big World Wide Web out there; take advantage of the whole thing.

[less than]building community[greater than]

Given that the Net originally evolved from virtual communities, where surfers posted comments and responded to each other's messages on bulletin boards and mailing lists in cyberspace, it should come as no surprise that building a sense of community has become one of the most popular ways for businesses to increase Web traffic to their e-commerce sites. Case in point: David Rogelberg, the founder of Studio B (www.studiob.com), an Indianapolis-based literary agency that maintains a strong Internet component. Rogelberg, 36, says he built his $3 million-per-year business by establishing a mailing list that sent visitors back to his company's Web site.

"At the time, computer book authors felt isolated, and many were unsure of how to approach or deal with publishers," Rogelberg says. A former publisher of computer books himself, Rogelberg decided to create an Internet mailing list that would serve as a creative forum and offer answers to some of the common questions that aspiring book authors have on the computer book publishing industry.

Rogelberg says it took him about 30 hours to master the workings of mailing-list software, which has enabled business to circulate ongoing discussions on the Internet that can be accessed by subscribers. Subscribers can then respond back to Rogelberg's list with their own comments. Each comment is "posted" to the list via e-mail. And each post is automatically distributed via e-mail to every other subscriber on the list.

"I started the list by sending e-mails to 40 or 50 authors I knew, and I asked them to help me promote this list, which offered a clear service to the community," Rogelberg says. The result: Three years later, the list is now considered to be a major e-publication in the computer book industry, with approximately 1,100 authors, publishers, attorneys and others subscribing to it. Most important, Rogelberg's business has mushroomed from zero clients to 150 clients.

"We educated a market," Rogelberg says. And as happens with many Internet mailing lists, Rogelberg's has taken on a life of its own. Authors and publishers regularly hash out their differences on the list, authors pitch their ideas, and other industry experts--literary attorneys, for example--have begun using the list to offer free advice in the hopes that they can generate business for themselves.

According to Peter Kent, co-author of Poor Richard's Internet Marketing and Promotions (Top Floor Publishing), much of Rogelberg's community-building success lies in what he sees as an Internet marketing truism. "The people who are most successful at discussion group promotions realize something important," says the Lakewood, Colorado, writer. "In order to get something, you have to give something."

Kent should know. In addition to being an author, he's also the owner of Top Floor Publishing (www.topfloor.com). Plus, to help promote his company's titles, Kent moderates his own newsletter distributed via an Internet mailing list that carries discussions on designing e-commerce sites. "In the early days, sales were disappointing," he says. "But now I see a flurry of orders after each newsletter goes out. I spend around $50 to mail to 45,000 people, so you can see these mailings certainly make more than they cost me." Kent also publishes a book, Poor Richard's Email Publishing (Top Floor Publishing) by Chris Pirillo, on using [Internet mailing lists to promote e-commerce sites.

[less than]"members only"[greater than]

While "general admittance" virtual communities like those created by Rogelberg and Kent have worked well for some businesses trying to promote their e-commerce sites, others have decided to take the concept of establishing a community to the next level. Specifically, many companies are now creating "members only" domains on their Web sites, where they can attempt to win the loyalty of a select audience by offering to provide special restricted access to premium tools and services.

The nonprofit Promotional Products Association International (PPAI) in Irving, Texas, for example, offers subscribers a password-protected members-only domain on its Web site (www.promotion-clinic.ppa.org). After distributors and suppliers involved in the promotional-products industry register, they are able to log on to PPAI's restricted-access area and retrieve hard-to-find contact information on each other. According to PPAI's founder, president and CEO Stephen Slagle, 47, suppliers can also use the domain to verify that distributors are, in fact, PPAI members.

A members-only domain like the one PPAI offers was a sorely needed tool in the promotional-products industry to allow companies to find each other. The wall between distributor and supplier has always been jealously guarded, says Angie West of PPAI.