Chapter 1 - What is a Niche Market? - Are You In It To Win It

Become a Stumbler. Download Firefox, install the Stumble Upon extension,start a Stumble account, and vote for your site with a glowing review. Voteup a few other sites to make it appear random. Now forget about that ID.Uninstall Stumble and Firefox. Reinstall and create a new ID, possibly undera different email address. Get the idea? There's no harm in doing this threeor four times, but that's it!And you just might find an opportunity to work your site into theconversation in a chat room or two. Really, there's no harm in dropping thename of your site here and there. Don't spam, you'll be blocked, banned,and maybe get in trouble with your ISP. But one night, oops, maybe you gota little tipsy and posted a link in an AOL chat room or ten...These are shady practices; they're also not very productive. But every nowand then, at the right place and time, they can't hurt just once. If you skipthese, it won't make much difference. And entirely excusable when you'rejust starting out. But if you can't get traffic without making a long-standingpublic nuisance of yourself, you probably are in the wrong line of work beinga webmaster.And it's not like Big Corporations don't drown the web in spam every singleday. I hate to break this to you, but "astroturfer" is now a job description atcompanies like Microsoft and Adobe. The term "astroturfer" comes from theidea of creating a "fake grassroots" movement. People are hired to appearas impartial web citizens, but actually everything they say and do is donewith a slant towards creating good word-of-mouth for their company, ormodding down or flaming those who had something negative to say abouttheir company or praising of the competition. Political campaigns are alsofamous for doing this.