From chris@cnd.co.nz Wed Nov 18 00:18:29 1998 X-Digest-Num: 10 Message-ID: <44114.10.50.959273823@eGroups.com> Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 21:18:29 +1300 From: "Chris Double" Subject: Re: more on change in Lojban Central ISP > I think there is one aspect that should be improved greately: advertising. >That's the way people get in touch with the language for the first time. An >effort should be made so as to have lojban in the first ranks among the main >search engines. Good idea. I searched for 'constructed language' in yahoo and the lojban home page was one of the top links there. No other lojban pages were listed though. I'll have to try submitting mine and seeing what happens :-) Using hotbot I had less luck. Neither 'constructed language' or 'artificial language' gave lojban within the first 20 links at all. Searching for 'lojban' itself did give a few references though. I noticed that even relatively new languages like 'ngl' appeared higher up the list in hotbot ! Maybe this is the popularity that goes with youth. > If the problem when deciding between a bigger site or a smaller one is the >money, I think that a good advertising policy would certainly improve the >number of lojbanists, therefore rising the demand of books and allowing the >lojban community the luxury of having the bigger site, with the "lojban.org" >name. I like the idea of having a 'lojban.org' to go to. It's a lot easier when explaining to people about lojban to say 'go to www.lojban.org'. It's easier for them to remember too. Buying a copy of the lojban book and donating it to your local library may help as well - then you can tell friends and colleagues that they can read all about it at the library. Somehow the impressive look of that book makes the task of learning lojban look more 'real' to people than just learning 'some weird internet language'. Learning to speak it is good advertising too. I'd like to learn some good lojban curses - then I can let loose with some arcane sounding utterance when upset and the stunned onlookers will learn all about lojban when they ask what the heck I said - just kidding ;-) > I know several "URL submitters", which allow one to submit the site to >different search engines at the same time, which would make the process >easier. Also, the site should definitely have META TAGS (veijo's site does >not have). Good stuff. Would it help if we all submitted the URL's to the search engines or is that a 'bad thing'. > Another improvement that could be done is to put an online form to buy the >book. That may seem trivial, but it is always good to facilitate things to >the buyer. I don't honestly know if these are easy to install, though. Easy to install but harder to administer I think. Although the process can come free with some web sites I believe. How to arrange payment through credit cards is probably the most difficult part. The easier it is for someone to click a button to buy a book, the better. Just plugging a card number in would be so much easier than having to snail mail a request. Does the logical language group get much out of sales through Amazon? Is it worth plugging the availability of the book through this avenue or do you make very little money from it after Amazon get their cut and would prefer we get 'potential buyers' to email lojbab? Chris. -- http://www.cnd.co.nz/lojban