From: dlhpfm.uucp!dlh@ab.com (daniel lance herrick)
Newsgroups: misc.entrepreneurs
Subject: Re: Something for the Herrickster (was Re: MAG Ad's)
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 92 20:18:04 EDT
Organization: dlh Performance Marketing

Sorry I'm so slow to show up.  I have an infinite expiration on this
group so it is waiting when I do come back to read it, but it is easier
to wade past the noise in big batches and I haven't been reading it
regularly.

timk@tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (Tim Kuehn) writes:

> In article <6ggkRB3w165w@dlhpfm.UUCP> dlhpfm.uucp!dlh@ab.com (daniel lance he
> >(Oh, I'd love to work out a test on this news group with two or three
> >different headlines and have merchant run the ads in competition with
> >each other and report the results back here.)
> 
> Then let's do it! 
> 
> I recently found myself with an "excess" 386 PC running Xenix which 
> I've been using on a small-time basis selling news/mail feeds to 
> personal uucp sites (usually PCs of one kind or another) at a fixed 
> monthly cost ($7.49/month). For that service they get all the news 
> and mail they can download in an hour each day.

dlhpfm is now feeding news and mail to one business and one personal
system (which is developing a tail), mail to a Mac (we haven't found
suitable software for news under $200 yet), several other news and mail
connections in various stages of development.  My pastor (with a Mac)
is logging directly into dlhpfm to participate in a mailing list and
use email.  He and I are talking about collaborating on a book about
how and why to connect up and trying to sell it to people like us. 
This connectivity stuff is fun.

> One perceived market that this could be marketed to are the local 
> University and Community College students who've left school and 
> suddenly find themselves without access to news/mail. 

My wife has tried to get me to talk about this idea.  Sounds like work,
to me.

> I've gotten other people to try USENET, and once on they're generally 
> hooked. The (rather) hard part's convincing them to get on in the first 
> place. The big difficulty here is in getting them to get enough of an 
> understandind of the tremendous information resource USENET is to want 
> to go through the learning curve of navigating such things as Waffle, etc.

Ed Vielmetti's "What is USENET? NOT....." posting gets some of the
character of the medium.  Is "information resource" the right word? 
Reminds me of the book that has the title "Numerical Methods that Work"
imprinted in gold on the cover, but if you look closely, the word
"usually" is stamped without ink between "that" and "work".  Call
USENET a "[dis|mis]information resource".

Andrew Sandlin, the pastor mentioned above, has recruited a bunch of
people who expect me to help them get connected now, just by talking
about what he is doing electronically.

> I'm also wondering if maybe I'm not charging enough, and what to charge 
> for larger feeds that take up more resources to run.

Charge more for slow modems and less for fast modems.  I wouldn't try
to meter uucp by connect time here at dlhpfm because of the number of
things I'm learning about that eat up connect time without moving
traffic.  You could meter it by limiting the amount you will batch for
them at a time (doesn't cnews have this kind of metering built in?).

> Anyway, since this isn't going to be risking that much $$ or time 
> wise, and it's not my main line of business, I'm willing to make 
> this a net-guided venture/learning experience. We talk about how to 
> do things here in misc.entrep and put the ads together. I'll run 'em, 
> and when the numbers come in I'll post them here for all to see. 

All my comments above were about the service itself.  Not much about
marketing.

> So what do you say Dan? Are you up to a little fun and games? :-)

I'll catch up to date on misc.entrepreneurs in the next few days and
then we can interact in something resembling real time.

My first thought about the target market you named, kids leaving school
for a bout of cold turkey, is that the time to hit them is the end of
the term, and probably the best way is through the net.  Anyone who has
the stomach to become visible on talk.bizarre and some similar places
could quite possibly effectively advertise the service you talk about
by putting an ad in a sig file.

The places I hang out, comp.bbs.waffle, comp.arch, rec.autos.sport,
here, for example, don't have suitable demographics for that campaign.

But they don't have any money.

The real constituency for this service is a group that is scattered
over the country or world and has something they want to talk about for
months or years.  My mailing list is hitting such a group.  The target
market for the book will be an enlargement of that group.

> +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
> | Tim Kuehn | TDK Consulting |(519)-888-0766| 				|
> | <><       | Services       | timk@tdkcs.uucp timk@tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca|
> +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

Why didn't someone send me mail saying I was missing somethin
interesting?

dan  of dlh Performance Marketing  POBox 1419  Mentor Ohio 44061
       NCoast.org!dlhpfm!dlh or ab.com!dlhpfm.uucp!dlh   (216)974-9637
"The wicked worketh a deceitful work:  but to him that 
 soweth righteousness shall be a sure reward." Proverbs 11:18
Newsgroups: misc.entrepreneurs