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> From: jfurr@acpub.duke.edu (Joel K. Furr)
> Subject: Advertising on Usenet: How To Do It, How Not To Do It
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> Original-author: jfurr@acpub.duke.edu (Joel K. Furr)
> Archive-name: usenet/advertising/how-to/part1
> Last-change: 23 Jul 1996 by jfurr@acpub.duke.edu (Joel Furr)
> Changes-posted-to: news.misc
>
> Introduction
> ------------
>
> Advertising on Usenet is a frequently misunderstood subject. The purpose
> of this message is to explain some Usenet conventions regarding
> advertising to new users and, hopefully, spare everyone involved a lot of
> needless worry.
>
> To start with, let's define the term. "Usenet" is *not* synonymous with
> "Internet." Usenet is the system of online discussion groups, called
> "newsgroups," e.g. rec.humor, comp.misc, news.announce.newusers,
> talk.origins, misc.rural, alt.sex, and so forth.
>
> This FAQ does not attempt to describe in detail all the various ways in
> which one can conduct commercial activity over the Internet and attempts
> simply to explain the issues involved in advertising in Usenet
> newsgroups.
>
> The philosophy of Usenet
> ------------------------
>
> Usenet started out in 1980 as a UNIX network linking sites which needed
> to
> talk about and receive prompt updates on UNIX system configuration and
> other UNIX questions. Message traffic started out at a few messages per
> week, but the system was so useful that traffic quickly boomed and Usenet
> almost immediately expanded to include forums on science fiction, humans
> and computers, and other subjects.
>
> In the beginning, Usenet was largely confined to educational institutions
> such as universities and colleges, and to research companies and other
> commercial enterprises with UNIX machines on-site. It has now grown to
> include millions of users at commercial sites such as America Online and
> at companies around the world involved in every sort of business
> imaginable. Nevertheless, many of the customs found on Usenet today have
> their origins in the days when Usenet was very small and most Usenet
> sites
> were universities.
>
> That these customs and traditions began when Usenet was much smaller and
> quite different in nature in no way lessens the anger many users feel
> when
> these customs and traditions are violated.
>
> One such custom is the tradition and belief that it is rude to advertise
> for profit in Usenet newsgroups.
>
> Advertising is widely seen as an 'off-topic' intrusion into the
> discussions of any particular newsgroup (newsgroup is the Usenet word for
> discussion group or bulletin board). Each newsgroup has a specific set
> of
> subjects it is intended to cover, and in order for newsgroups to function
> as effective discussion forums, it is important that people stay
> 'on-topic'. If everyone disregarded the particular topics each newsgroup
> is intended to cover and simply posted whatever they wanted wherever they
> want, the entire system would break down.
>
> Due to the decentralized nature of Usenet, there is no one person or body
> which can "enforce" the custom of staying on-topic. It falls on each
> user to help preserve the culture of open discussion and free speech that
> Usenet has come to embody by not posting off-topic material.
>
> This, of course, includes advertising. Advertising is by far the most
> pervasive form of off-topic posting, and therefore, gets most of the
> heat.
>
> An analogy
> ----------
>
> If an analogy will help you to visualize the situation, imagine a meeting
> at your workplace or school.
>
> At this meeting, people are discussing a certain issue -- for example,
> getting new sidewalks installed downtown or getting new schoolbooks for
> the elementary school, or what to do about the new product your company
> is
> planning on introducing.
>
> In the midst of the discussions on the new sidewalks or textbooks or
> product, someone walks into the room, interrupts everyone, then reads an
> advertisement for a local restaurant. He or she then leaves without
> waiting for comment.
>
> Now imagine if this happened over and over again each time your group
> tried to hold a meeting. Every time someone tried to make a point, in
> walks some other stranger who reads an ad for some business that has
> nothing to do with the subject of the meeting.
>
> It would soon become rather difficult to hold effective meetings,
> wouldn't
> it?
>
> Similarly, it's very difficult to keep Usenet newsgroups interesting and
> useful when people deluge newsgroups with advertisements.
>
> ==> It might even kill a newsgroup, if some advertiser keeps trying
> ==> to drive content offsite, say to a web portal...

>
> The hidden cost
> ---------------
>
> One of the things that attracts some people to the idea of advertising
> via
> Usenet is that it costs so little to do it. You pay $20 or $30 per month
> for an Internet account, and you can post literally *millions* of
> advertisements at no additional cost.
>
> But there *is* a cost. Each message you post takes up disk space on each
> site around the world where it lands. People don't much mind paying for
> disk space to hold Usenet discussions since they know that people like
> taking part in those discussions and since they know that it's sort of
> like mutual backscratching: "I let your messages reside on my site for
> free, and you let the messages I post reside on your site for free."
> Everyone benefits from interesting, informative, or amusing discussions,
> so no one really minds paying for the space.
>
> But there's only one person who benefits from advertising: the
> advertiser.
> Sure, you can say that the people who see the ad benefit from the product
> or service advertised, but when you balance that against what they lose
> when their favorite discussion group is taken over by non-stop
> advertising, it's a poor trade.
>
> ==> Yep, they might benefit from their "bread and butter" service,
> ==> but they don't care that it kills the discussion group.
> ==> Perhaps some even welcome that happening.

> No one wants to give their disk space for free to someone who selfishly
> posts a copy of an advertisement to every newsgroup on Usenet.
>
>
> How to advertise on Usenet
> --------------------------
>
> There *are* acceptable ways to advertise in Usenet newsgroups.
>
> 1. The on-topic notice
>
> If you have a product or a message that is specifically related to a
> particular Usenet newsgroup, and you want to let people know about it,
> it's *usually* all right to post *one* notice about it.
>
> ==> One. Like say posting an FAQ for your product. Cool
> ==> But, posting two... nah, overkill. And especially if the subject
> ==> line is deceptive about the content of the advertisement.

> Note the word "notice." A notice is a brief mention of the product with
> information about how interested persons can find out more. It's not a
> sales pitch. It's not an advertisement. It's not a "BUY BUY BUY" sort
> of
> message. It's a notice.
>
> You are encouraged to make such postings one-time-only. When your polite
> informational notice starts getting posted every week, people are going
> to
> start getting irked at you.
>
> ==> Some might welcome it, though... for some strange reason...

> You are also *strongly* encouraged to keep such postings hype-free. What
> often works very well is to post information about your services or
> product and include a contact address, World Wide Web site, or phone
> number for people to use to get more information.
>
> ==> Yeah... a contact.. but nine... overkill again...

> For example, if you want to post a notice about your immigration law
> services, you could post a message to alt.visa.us or the various
> misc.immigration.* newsgroups, where you'd find a large population of
> people interested in that or related subjects. Posting the same ad to
> rec.sport.football.college would *not* be appropriate because
> rec.sport.football.college has nothing to do with immigration law, visas,
> or becoming a citizen of another country.
>
> One way to tell if a post is appropriate is to look at a newsgroup's
> charter. The charter is the formal declaration of what is on topic and
> what is not, and was generated at the time the group was created if the
> group was created in the so-called Big 7 hierarchies of comp.*, soc.*,
> rec.*, talk.*, misc.*, news.*, sci.*, and humanities.*. Some other
> groups
> have charters as well, but not all -- and if they do, they're often one
> or
> two lines in length. Where can you find a charter? Well, in some cases
> the charter is regularly posted to the newsgroup or is contained in the
> newsgroup's Frequently Asked Questions files. In other cases, the
> charter
> has been all but forgotten. Charters can occasionally be difficult to
> locate, so you may have to use your best judgment and/or ask someone
> who's
> been reading the group for a while if a particular message would be
> appropriate.
>
> This is not to say that on-topic notices will always be welcome; the
> proliferation of inappropriate advertisements (ads posted in the wrong
> way
> to the wrong place) has resulted in *all* ads, even informational notices
> posted to appropriate newsgroups, tending to get a cold shoulder. You can
> help by limiting your ads to *informational* postings posted *only*
> *where* *appropriate*, and abiding by any local restrictions a given
> newsgroup's readers have placed on advertising.
>
> 2. *.forsale and *.marketplace newsgroups
>
> There are many newsgroups directly involved in selling. You can
> generally
> spot them by the word "forsale" or "marketplace" in their names.
>
> For example, rec.games.board.marketplace is a newsgroup where people post
> for-sale and want-to-buy notices about board games they want to buy or
> sell.
>
> Similarly, the misc.forsale.* hierarchy is full of newsgroups for buying
> and selling various computers, monitors, printers, devices, and so forth,
> as well as misc.forsale.non-computer.*, for selling stuff that's not
> computer-related. However, the misc.forsale.* policy is rather resistant
> to *commercial* ads -- the hierarchy is intended as a place to post
> classified-style ads.
>
> Many parts of the Net have local hierarchies as well where you can post
> for-sale and want-to-buy ads.
>
> For example, in central North Carolina, the triangle.* hierarchy has
> triangle.forsale and triangle.wanted, where classified-style
> advertisements are the rule of the day.
>
> It's generally considered rude, though, to crosspost a notice about your
> product to every forsale newsgroup, even ones on the opposite side of the
> country or world. Post your notice only to your *local* forsale
> newsgroup, if one exists.
>
> 3. comp.newprod
>
> If and only if you are with a computer company which is releasing a new
> product and you want to make word of this new product known to the
> computing community, you can post a notice to the moderated newsgroup
> comp.newprod. The moderator of comp.newprod requires submissions to be
> informative and hype-free so people will use comp.newprod as a reliable
> way of gaining information.
>
> 4. biz.*
>
> There is a hierarchy of newsgroups called "biz.*" which exists mainly for
> announcement from companies of new products, fixes and enhancements,
> postings of demo software, and so forth. If your site carries biz.*, and
> you feel that a biz.* hierarchy group would suit your purposes, go to
> biz.config and ask for it.
>
> Be warned, though, that if your goal is to create a biz.* newsgroup for
> posting hype-filled advertisements, no one would read such a newsgroup.
> People only want to read newsgroups that are of benefit to them; they're
> not about to subscribe to a newsgroup that's nothing but ads for Bob's
> Bait and Tackle.
>
> There are a few dozen biz.* newsgroups, some of which get used regularly
> and some of which are essentially defunct. If your site carries biz.*,
> you can find out more about the hierarchy by asking in biz.config,
> biz.general, and biz.misc.
>
> 5. .signature advertisements.
>
> A .signature is a mini-file that is automatically appended (stuck at the
> end of) to any Usenet messages that you post -- regardless of what the
> content is. Whether or not you can create and use a .signature depends
> on
> what sort of system you're using to access Usenet news. Many UNIX
> systems
> simply require you to create a file called ".signature" in your root
> directory within your shell account and put whatever you want your
> ..signature to say within that file. Other systems, like America Online,
> allow you to do something similar, but the implementation varies from
> system to system. If you can't figure out if your system supports a
> ..signature, ask the people in charge for help.
>
> Typically, it is considered bad manners to put more than four lines of
> information in your .signature, regardless of what those four lines might
> say or contain. Gigantic ASCII pictures of dragons, for example, are
> annoying when you have to see them every time a certain person posts.
>
> Similarly, it's considered bad manners to put an advertisement in your
> ..signature and then post a lot of empty or nearly-empty articles simply
> to get your .signature into various newsgroups.
>
> On the other hand, if you post meaningful, responsible messages in groups
> you're actually interested in, and those messages happen to have the
> address of your Web page tacked on at the end, few people will complain.
>
> Just keep .signature advertisements extremely short and sweet. Let your
> Web page contain the sales pitch -- the .signature should usually be
> little more than a listing of your URL and perhaps a mention of what sort
> of business you're in.
>
> Restraint and responsibility are everything -- if you've got those,
> people
> will sit up and listen to you.
>
>
> How *not* to advertise on Usenet
> --------------------------------
>
> Unfortunately, there are just about as many *inappropriate* ways to
> advertise on Usenet as there are appropriate ways.
>
> 1. Posting off-topic messages in unrelated newsgroups
>
> Each message you post to Usenet, regardless of its content, should only
> be
> posted to related newsgroups.
>
> For example, you run a rug company. You want to sell lots of rugs. So,
> you post an advertisement about your rugs in sci.physics. Not
> surprisingly, a lot of people send you email telling you what a jerk you
> are.
>
> Why'd they do this, you ask? It's simple: sci.physics has nothing to do
> with selling rugs. Your ad was as off-topic as if someone had tried to
> get a discussion going there about the upcoming football season or
> started
> posting a lot of messages about their recent vacation.
>
> Suppose you own that rug company, and you regularly read
> rec.crafts.textiles.weaving. Would you like it if someone started coming
> in and posting a lot of ads to the newsgroup about ginseng tablets, and
> then someone else came in and started trying to sell magazine
> subscriptions, and before you knew it, it became hard to find any actual
> discussion of weaving going on?
>
> Try to look at it from the other person's point of view. If you'd resent
> someone posting an ad for *their* product to *your* favorite newsgroup,
> why would you post an ad for *your* product to thousands of other
> people's
> favorite newsgroups?
>
> Remember the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto
> you."
>

> 2. Spamming
>
> Spamming is defined as posting identical or nearly-identical messages
> (not
> just ads, although ads are usually what spammers post) to a lot of
> newsgroups, one right after the other. Since it's really not that
> difficult to write a program that will post the same advertisement to
> dozens, if not hundreds or thousands of newsgroups, a lot of people have
> taken to doing this.
>
> What's happened to people who've spammed?
>
> They've lost their accounts, been mail-bombed (had thousands of pieces of
> junk email sent to them), had people call up and yell at them in the
> middle of the night, had people forward their mail (by this I mean paper
> mail, not email) to someplace strange, had people sign them up for
> thousands of unwanted magazine subscriptions, had people send them
> thousands of pages of condemnatory faxes, and so forth.
>
> *Nothing* is as hated on Usenet as spamming. It's extremely, unbelievably
> rude and if you do it, you *will* come to regret it.
>
> This is not a threat -- it's an observation. Any benefits spamming might
> have brought you will be more than counteracted by the intense public
> outcry against you in every newsgroup you posted your ad to.
>
> Some members of the media have gotten the mistaken impression that
> spamming is hated because it's *advertising*. While it's true that
> Usenet
> users don't have much fondness for advertising, the real reason spamming
> is hated so much is because it's unbelievably *rude*.
>
> If you don't regularly read a newsgroup, why would you post an ad to it?
>
> ==> DAMN GOOD question....

> In so doing, you're basically saying that you don't care what the people
> in that newsgroup think or whether your ad might inconvenience them;
> you're out to benefit yourself. When you spam by posting the same
> advertisement to hundreds or thousands of newsgroups, you're saying that
> your personal profit is more important than the discussions of millions
> of
> people.
>
> Would *you* like it if someone came by your house day after day and
> shoveled several thousand copies of an advertising circular through your
> windows?
>
> ==> I think your "free" access gets revoked, if you do it
> ==> on some web portal sites

>
> Each copy of the ad takes up disk space on thousands of machines around
> the world -- and if you post the ad 1,000 times, that's millions of
> copies
> of your message that *you* are making other people pay to store copies
> of.
> When you spam, you're hogging hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of
> other people's storage space.
>
> So please, don't do it. I've already explained that *one* copy of an
> off-topic ad is rude because it has nothing to do with the group it was
> posted to. Multiply that by a thousand times to get an idea of how rude
> it
> is to spam.
>
> A quick note about what happens to spam:
> ----------------------------------------
>
> Another consideration against spamming is that Usenet readers developed
> defenses against it, so it's not very effective. There are quite a few
> spam detectors running on Usenet, and if one of them detects that the
> same
> message has been posted repeatedly to multiple newsgroups, the humans who
> run those spam detectors will step in and actually *erase* the spamming
> messages with 'cancel' messages which are honored at most sites around
> the
> world.
>
> A common misconception shared by many members of the media is that spam
> is
> bad because it's *advertising* and that people who cancel spam are doing
> so to get rid of *advertising*. In actual point of fact, most Usenet
> users
> consider cancellation to be extremely bad manners and something to be
> done
> only as a last resort. When spam-cancellers cancel spam, it's done
> because
> of the *volume* (posting hundreds of times), not because of the content.
>
> The analogy that's often used is that yes, you have the right to walk
> down
> the street and say whatever you like -- but you do NOT have the right to
> stick your head in someone's house at 3 am and shout through a bullhorn.
>
> So if you *do* spam, you're likely to lose your account, have your
> personal life made a living hell, possibly get sued by people whose
> storage space you're taking up, and in the end, not very many people are
> even going to see your advertisement. It's just not worth the grief
> you'll get.
>
> Sorry to be unpleasant about it, but spam's a really bad idea.

> Finally, if you're wondering where the term "spamming" came from, it came
> from a Monty Python sketch in which the characters were in a restaurant
> which mainly sold Spam. Items on the menu included things like "Spam,
> Spam, Spam, eggs, ham, and Spam." Whenever the waitress recited the menu,
> a group of Vikings in the corner would chime in with her, chanting the
> word "Spam" over and over, drowning out everything else.

> Some members of the media have spread the explanation that the word
> "spamming" derives from throwing chunks of Spam into a fan. This is not
> where the term comes from.
>
> 3. Unsolicited junk email
>
> Another often-practiced and often-punished scheme is to send email to
> thousands of strangers whose addresses you found in various Usenet
> newsgroups. In the last year, dozens of people have lost their Internet
> access after sending thousands of strangers ads for timeshare condos in
> Cancun or dubious credit schemes, and yet, the junk email continues to
> flood in.
>
> Suffice it to say that junk email, using Usenet posters' addresses, is a
> really bad idea. Most sites will yank your account if you do that kind of
> thing.
>

> 4) 'Mail-Merged' ads
>
> Some advertisers noticed that it was only *identical* postings that were
> getting cancelled by the spam cancellers, and cleverly came up with a way
> to post their ad to dozens of newsgroups while varying a line or two to
> make it look sufficiently different to avoid being cancelled.
>
> For example, one book editor posted ads to dozens of newsgroups about his
> book, essentially giving a sales pitch for said book, while adding a
> paragraph to each article that purported to contain the text that had
> been
> printed about each newsgroup in said book.
>
> It was rather obvious that the editor wasn't interested in getting
> feedback on the text since the book had already been published;
> eventually
> an employee at the company admitted that the technique had been used to
> try to avoid triggering the spam cancellers -- and that the point had
> indeed been to broadcast the ad widely without getting cancelled.
>
> Don't do postings that say things like "Congratulations,
> REC.FOOD.DRINK.BEER reader, you are among the lucky few to be included in
> this amazing offer." Spam that makes a token effort to relate to each
> newsgroup it's posted to is still spam, and will still be erased on
> sight.
>

> Conclusion
> ----------
>
> To make a long story short, off-topic advertising and advertising that
> equates to a bullhorn stuck into someone's window in the middle of the
> night are bad ideas.
>
> *Please* exercise restraint and don't make the mistake many have of
> thinking that just because there's no central authority that can punish
> you for spamming newsgroups, that there will be no consequences if you
> do.
>
> There will be consequences if you spam -- and you might be surprised by
> the lengths that vengeful Usenet users can go to when someone spams their
> favorite group with yet another off-topic advertisement.
>
> If you want to advertise on Usenet, you can, but please follow the tips
> contained in this document's "How to" section and don't make the mistakes
> listed in "How not to do it."
>
> Stay on topic; keep your notices hype-free; only post your notices to
> newsgroups where they are appropriate.
>
> Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
>
> Afterword: Advertising on the Internet
> --------------------------------------
>
> It should be noted that there are many ways to advertise on the Internet
> that don't involve Usenet at all.
>
> Usenet, you see, is NOT the same thing as the Internet. Usenet is
> transmitted via the Internet, but is also transmitted via other means
> (see
> "What is Usenet" in news.announce.newusers for more information). The
> Internet also includes services like ftp, telnet, gopher, and the World
> Wide Web.
>
> A World Wide Web page allows you to put up graphics, text, and sound in
> an
> interactive hypertext format that's remarkably easy to set up and use.
> Many thousands of companies and individuals and organizations have put up
> World Wide Web pages that can be viewed by anyone around the world with a
> Web browser such as Mosaic or Netscape.
>
> Since the only people who see a Web page are people who *choose* to see
> it, and since the person who pays for the storage space necessary to hold
> the Web page is the person or business or organization who put it up and
> designed it, a Web page is a *much* better way than advertising on Usenet
> to put your company's information up on the Internet.
>
> If you need help getting going, ask the people who run your site for help
> on getting started; usually, all you really need to do is go buy a book
> on
> basic HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language) design and/or scout out the
> newsgroup comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html. It's really not that hard
> to set up a Web page, and it's much, much, much more neighborly to put
> your advertising message on a Web page than to barrage the readers of
> Usenet.
>
>
> IF YOU HAVE FURTHER QUESTIONS:
>
> A board of experienced Usenet users stands ready to help suggest
> non-destructive ways to use Usenet for your commercial purposes. Send
> mail to commerce@acpub.duke.edu if you have questions or would like help.
>
> This FAQ can also be found online at http://www.danger.com/advo.html.
>
>
>
>
> ==> I'd add, it's also bad form to post an advertisment that has a
> subject line stating it addresses a subject... and then start the body of
> the posting with a statement that nothing in the post should be assumed
> to refer to the subject.
>