Free Usenet Newsgroup Server Tutorial
This Free Usenet Newsgroup Server Tutorial will teach you how to effectively use newsgroups to advertise your product or service without getting spammed, flamed or booted by your ISP. The main focus of this tutorial is how to gain respect and be helpful to targeted audiences, not how to blast out a spam ad to hundreds of groups ( which is more headache than it is worth ).
What Is A Free Newsgroup Server?
Newsgroup Servers are basically servers that route a special kind of message, much like email, but public, like a bulletin board or forum. People ask questions, rant, offer ideas, give stuff away, sell things and discuss just about every topic you can imagine. If there is a hobby that is even mildly popular, there is a newsgroup dedicated to it. If there is a fetish, there is probably several newsgroups dedicated to it. And all businesses have their own category of newsgroups too. There are literally thousands of different newsgroups to choose from, and all of them are very specific in what they like to talk about.
Most ISPs give you newsgroup access for free. Some ISPs block your outgoing newsgroup posting, but if you are required to use a paid newsgroup server it is usually very affordable ( less than $10 per month ).
Most people want the free newsgroup servers so they can download porn or stolen software that their ISPs have blocked ( newsgroups have everything and then some ). Most businesses will not need these groups in the list, so will do fine with what their ISP provides. If you do require complete access you can either try and find a free server ( which usually is closed down within days of being found ), or just pay for access for $10 a month or so from any of the newsgroup providers. Here are a few that I recommend:
- newsfeeds.com - $4.95 per month
- supernews.com - $4.95 per month for 1.5GB a month
- usenet.com - $4.95 for 2GB a month, has privacy and security features
- search google - there are many other speciality newsgroups too. Some specialize in porn and stolen software ( I know that is what 80% of the people that hit this page are looking for ).
- forteinc.com - the makers of agent, my favorite newsreader. They have 2GB for $2.95 per month.
What Is Usenet?
Usenet is the largest and oldest networks. The term Usenet is used throughout this article because it is the most common, and most well known newserver. In reality, there are hundreds of other providers, but most of them rely on usenet to get their feeds.
How Will Usenet's Newsgroups Help You Get Traffic?
- Use A Signature File - the email signature has the same principals for newsgroups, read it.
- Gain A Reputation - as people get to know you, they'll trust you. Their trust will show up as they post responses to your statements and questions. This trust is what is required for long term sales.
- Get Your Name Out - this is free publicity, and when used correctly is very effective. Newsgroups are yet another location to get your name out.
- Links To Your Website - If you have established yourself as an authority and have earned people's trust, they will tell others about you. Links are the cyber world's way of giving a testimonial. More links means more traffic and sales.
- groups.google.com archive posts for at least 10 years, see the value yet? Go there now and search for a few well known companies.
How Do You Protect Your Email?
- What are Harvester Bots? - people have written programs that scour newsgroups looking for emails. Once you start posting, your email will get harvested. We recommend that you post from a fake email, but in your article, print your autoresponder address.
- Use Autoresponders - an autoresponder is basically an email that sends back a certain document every time it gets an email. You really wouldn't care your autoresponder got into the hands of spammers because you would just give them your sales letter back. Usually you can safely put a good email in the body of your autoresponder message. The humans that read the autoresponder message will then be able to contact you. Note that now they are double qualified though and most of their questions should of been answered in the autoresponder message.
Once you start getting spam, it is really hard to block it. We recommend that you use glocksoft.com's free spam blocker. It works great and is free for one email account.
How Do You Post To Usenet Newsgroups Without Getting Flamed?
- What Is Flaming? - Flaming is where you get a response to your post, but it is hateful and degrading to you. Sometimes flames are vulgar and highly offensive. Flames hurt your reputation so it is best to not get flamed if at all possible.
- Do Not Crosspost To Usenet Newsgroups - crossposting is selecting more than one newsgroup and posting the same message. The advantage is a slight savings in time. The many disadvantages include: if you get flamed, that flame will also get crossposted. All responses get crossposted. If you crosspost to more than 9 groups, you get automatically cancelled. Instead of crossposting, take the time to cut and paste your message singly to each group you want to see it.
- Monitor The Newsgroup First - spend some time ( a few weeks ) watching the newsgroup and seeing who the "leaders" are. Note what kind of information is appropriate and how people respond. Once you get the feel for it, then it is safe to post a short introduction or helpful post. But do not post a blatant advertisement unless that is what the group is for ( unlikely ).
- Be Respected In A Few Instead Of Hated In Many - take your time and earn the respect in a few popular groups isntead of being hated in hundreds of them. Only the respect will land you long term sales.
- Be Helpful - This is singly the most important thing you can do. Provide accurate and helpful information to anyone that asks. Use your sig file to subtly advertise your website or service.
- Post Appropriately - Just because "sex" is a popular word, do not think that it is appropriate to all groups. Only post on topic, do not drift off that topic.
- Use Good Subject Lines - People do not download the bodies of all messages, they use the subjects to determine if the body will be interesting. Spend extra time to properly summarize the article or question in the subject, if your article is not opened, it is useless. Really spend extra time on a good headline ( subject )
- Do Not Use Trickery - If you have a few accounts, you could ask a question, log onto another account, and answer the question ... you'll eventually get caught. Sometimes people post fake headlines too. Doing things like this will make you completely lose respect which is the opposite of what you are trying to obtain.
- Do Not Flame Back - It may make you feel better to flame someone back and show them how stupid they are, but resist the temptation. Instead smother them with kindness and professionalism. Most people have no clue about how to respond to a professional response and will give up flaming or apologize because of how stupid they look. Be polite and helpful, admit when you are wrong and keep going. In the long run you'll earn much more respect.
What Are Some Examples Of Good Newsgroup Server Postings?
- 3 Pages Of Factual, Accurate And Relevant Information with a short 2 or 3 line bio and link at the end.
- Post any Updates About Your Website such as new content
- Post Examples From Your Newsletter
- Offer An Invintation To Your Newsletter
- Ask For Feedback
Cory Rudyl said an example like this is the proper way to ask for feedback:
"SUBJECT: Feedback on Our Tutorial Site"
"We'd like your help. Digitalcrunch.com has 42 tutorials on Internet Marketing. We've been good tutorials at the rate of about 2 or 3 per day. There is a new site design too. I feel that I am too close to our website ( www.digitalcrunch.com ) to evaluate it objectively. If some of you could look it over and give some solid input I would really appreciate it. My questions are:"
- On the first viewing is the basic feel clear? Do you know what the site is about?
- Is information easy to find and are the categories self explanatory?
- What information wasn't clear. What would make it better?
- How did it look, were the colors good? Did it load fast? Any bugs or errors?
- Any recommendations on topics?
- Is there anything that will grab your attention more?
Thank you in advance for your expertise and help. Any feedback can be sent directly to me via a contact form or posted here.
James, www.digitalcrunch.com
And here is the proper way to recommend your articles or autoresponder:
"SUBJECT: Tutorial on the Top Search Engine Dirty Tricks"
"I wrote an article that talks about the top dirty search engine tricks that people use and why they shouldn't do them. It tells how people try to trick search engines and fail. I also give examples of how it could work, but basically I just want people to be aware of the most common mistakes in search engine marketing. I didn't want to post it here because it is pretty long and I'm not sure it is appropriate, but if you are interested please ask my autoresponder for it. Send an email to me@example.com and it will be sent back to you so you can read it offline. I also have the article posted on my website at www.example.com/tutorial.html if you want to read it online."
Adv - This Is A Blatant Usenet Newsgroup Advertisement
Sometimes, it is appropriate to blatantly say your message is an advertisement. Put "ADV" in the subject so people can know to skip over it. You still may get flamed, but this is one way that may be acceptable. Ask the newsgroup first and see.
How Long Does Usenet Newgroup Server Marketing Take?
- 2-4 Months, And Posting Every 2 Weeks At Least
- Post Regularly To A Few ( at least once every 2 weeks )
- Consistentcy Is The Key ( you have to stick with it for at least 2-4 months )
- Don't Do It Half Way, All Or Nothing - you get no results until you earn the respect of the group. If you cannot afford the time to complete this and maintain it, do not begin free usenet newsgroup server advertising.
How Do you Post Messages and Read Them?
Agent News Reader
I prefer agent newsreader ( download free from forteinc.com ) but you can also use outlook express to read your news from newsgroups.
Hopefully, you'll see why I like agent newsreader by the time you finish reading this. If you don't then that's fine too. Outlook express is great for reading emails, but not so great for doing anything else.
Style / Conventions
When programming we use "style" that everyone agrees on, such as indenting certain spaces, capitolizing certain words, and using descriptive comments.
By agreeing on a style, it makes it easier for other programmers to come back to the code later and update the code. It's also easier for troubleshooters to see what's wrong with the code.
I think we should do something similar with posts. Most newsgroups in the public ( ask your internet provider what newsgroup they give you access to) follow their own kind of style.
What is Agent?
Agent is a newsreader. It does the same job as Outlook Express, but it does it better. There is a learning curve, and a ton of features, most of which you will not use. It allows complete control over your newsgoup posting / reading. You can get it from forteinc.com. They have a free version and a pay version. For our purposes the free version will work fine, even though I am personally using the pay version.
How to Setup Agent Newsreader
After you download and install agent you make get choices from a wizard that pops up, or you may have to setup everything afterwards. Below are the settings I use for bellsouth.net's free usenet newservers. You should only have to change the actual server, and everything else will be the same as my example below:
First, you'll have to setup the newserver. Some servers require a login, bellsouth does. The newserver for bellsouth is newserver.bellsouth.net for my identity I always use uce@ftc.gov so spammers will send their spam to the ftc and hopefully get busted. This is the "fake" email that I talked about earlier. You will want your real info in your autoresponder ( not part of agent, your hosting company aka: me, sets this up for you. )
Next you'll have to setup how you send your mail. For bellsouth you would use mail.bellsouth.net
The first thing you should do is get new groups. This is done by clicking "online" and "get new groups". This takes a few minutes to download the complete list.
You could spend days reading each group, or just do a keyword search. The hot key for this is ctrl + F, and then F3 to repeat the search. You can also click with your mouse on "edit" and then "find" and type in what you are looking for.
In my find example, I typed in "angel" because that is one of the products I sell ( ceramic angels ). One of the groups that came up looked like an appropriate place to post.
I have to get the new headers before I can see what the current messages are in this group. Messages change all the time too, so every day that you check, you should probably get new headers. Get new headers by highlighting the group you want "alt.religion.angels" and then clicking "online" and "get new headers for selected groups".
This can take a bit depending on how popular the group is as all of the headers are downloaded.
There appears to be a good example of a non intrusive advertisment:
And it looks like the group liked it too.
This might be a good group to ask for article resources or writers from too. I am guessing that 10 to $20 per article would get you several articles per week.
How to Follow Threads and Post
Here is a screen shot of my agent screen:
click for details
In the picture above you'll see that I've organized posts by date. This lets me scroll down the bottom and see immediately only the new posts. The new ones that I have not read are in red. ( note that I read a couple out of order in my example above).You may have the option of setting Outlook Express to Organize by date, if so, you can try that and ignore the rest of this tutorial
Threads
If you intend to sort and organize your messages by thread ( the original idea of each post ), then you should not make new subject lines. This is best illustrated by an example:
You'll notice that there is an original post "Unorganized" And then a reply with "response to Adam's frustration" and finally a correct threaded reply "Re: response to Adam's frustration". The effect of changing subjects means that you cannot view this entire "thread" as a contiguous post.
Now, Adam's response to Kristen's response was threaded. So lets see how that organizes itself:
The group moderator told me to add my intials ( BF ) on the end of my subject header, however when I do that, it messes up threads. So I assume that Joe is reading his organized by date, not by thread. It is probably easier that way for him to see who is posting what instead of trying to get us to follow a "style" of posting.
What Style Do Most People Use?
Here is a link to the FAQ ( Frequently Asked Questions ) from another public newsgroup. They have their guidelines and if people don't follow them, they get flamed ( two year old attitude with college educated words belittling someone ).
Here is a list of some good resources to see what the general public does concerning posts.
- usenet primer - read the summary at the bottom
- sarcasm at it's best - I wouldn't like this woman
- posting rules - read this one it's good for us newbies.
- Other Good FAQs - good reading if you have time.
Summary:
This excerpt taken from posting rules.
All newsreaders should have two ways to post a news article. First, there is an original posting; this is used whenever you are starting a new topic. Second, there is a "followup"; this is used when you are posting a response to another news article. In several newsreaders, including "rn", the "f" command usually generates an original posting if your current position is at the end of the newsgroup, but a followup when you have a current article; you can also use the "Pnews" command outside of rn to make an original posting.
The news posting software does special things in the second case that indicates to the news system that this article is "related" to the article to which you are following up. First, the newsreader adds "Re: " before the existing subject line to tell people that this is "regarding" a previous article. Second, the software adds a "References" line that contains the Message-ID of the article you are following up. This header is used by threaded news readers such as "trn" to follow "threads" of discussion.
It is important that these two posting methods not be confused. Don't follow up to articles without using the newsreader's "followup" mechanism. Conversely, don't use the followup mechanism to post an article that is an unrelated thread. Violating this convention sometimes leads to confusion and annoyance of users with threaded newsreaders.
I hope this helps. Basically if we all agree to post in the same method, it's easier for everyone. As for me, I don't care too much. It's generally not worth the effort to police it, just showing you what others think.