Do They Know What You're Doing?

If you run a genealogy web site, you probably (or maybe not) spend most of your time building the business by adding more content, or working on your marketing efforts to drive more traffic to you site. But do you ever ask yourself if the people arriving at your site understand what you're trying to offer them?

Many people (especially earlier this month while I was on a great genealogy tour) ask me what Genealogy Today is all about. And the more often I get asked, the better I get at answering. But, the better I get answering, the more I begin to realize that the Genealogy Today home page wasn't as successful at conveying the same message. [The home page has been improved since I wrote this post]

Often it's the evolutionary process that creates this disparity, so you should expect this to happen if you often engage in a variety of projects -- involving different type of information, or geared towards a slightly different audience.

There are plenty of articles out there on the topic of testing, but they typically measure success based on the number of visitors that complete a specific task. How do you measure whether or not someone understands what you're actually doing after they visit your web site?

Find Yourself a Genealogical Niche

If you're a small genealogy business owner, stop posting general information like census data or passenger lists on your site, the big companies will always outpace your efforts. And our industry is seeing an increase in the number of medium companies (e.g. WorldVitalRecords.com and GenealogyBank.com) joining in the fray.

Yes, many genealogists are frugal and will often seek a free source for the information they are looking for, but as these medium companies grow and the bigger companies invest more and more in mainstream advertising, will the next generation of genealogists even think to check your site for these commodity items?

Compound this changing climate in our industry with the glut of keyword-happy Google AdSense web sites, and the visibility of a smaller genealogy web site will clearly be on the decline.

One of the solutions is to hone your collecting skills and expertise on smaller, more unique information sources and then become the best online resource.

Another reason I'm looking at this strategy is that the affiliate marketing opportunities available today (versus several years ago) are more focused on new customer acquisition. By specializing in more unique resources, you have the opportunity to reach individuals that may be interested in genealogy but not actively pursuing the hobby.

For example, a couple of months ago I stumbled upon a World War Two ration book in an antique shop. The book had interesting genealogical information on it, so I bought it. When I got back to the office, I did some research and found that there weren't any online repositories of these little books.

Now, as I'm collecting and expanding the WW2 war ration book database index on Genealogy Today, I'm also attracting military enthusiasts and researchers.

And the last marketing incentive for creating a specialized online resource is the ability to establish links from non-genealogy web site. Developing a highly focused page on the topic will get you good search engine placement, thus webmasters will find your page and link to it. How can they resist when you're the only site with an abundance of information on the topic, right?

The remaining question is how many niches can you establish and still have enough resources to be remarkable in each!

Trading or Donating to Create Goodwill

Do you collect stuff? Have you ever noticed that in the process of collecting one type of item, you end up with a bunch of related stuff? I find that this happens often when I purchase lots off of eBay. I don't have any use for this extra stuff, and yet I cannot bring myself to throw it away.

Then I started thinking that this must happen to other collectors as well, so what if I could find people that are looking for things I've accidentally collection that may have stuff I want. When I was a kid I used to trade my duplicate baseball cards with my friends, why not trade some of these items! We've become so accustomed to buying the things we want that the practice of trading has all but faded away.

Now as I'm buying things, I will often ask the seller, "what do you collect?" and then check my inventory to see if I have any matching items. Then (since the stuff has no value to me) I just mail them the items and suggest a trade. That's right, I send them the stuff without striking a deal in advance. Before you dismiss me as crazy, ask yourself how much effort does it take to get the items you collect and then read on.

Here's an example. I collect funeral cards for Genealogy Today. In the process, I get a bunch of holy cards, some blank, some with prayers. Sometimes I'll buy a mixed lot of say 100 cards, of which 20 are funeral cards. Repeat this several times, and you get a large pile of non-funeral cards sitting in a pile.

Now, I can (and have tried to) sell these on eBay and get a few bucks back. Instead, in the process of asking sellers what they collect, I made a friend who collects holy cards and doesn't know what to do with the funeral cards he gets. Viola! An open-ended mutually beneficial relationship. I mail him any holy cards, he mails me funeral cards.

I do the same with unwanted military items to get WW2 war ration books. And am currently looking for someone who collects railroad items so that I can get more conductor business cards and seniority lists.

This has opened up a whole new acquisition channel which is yielding some fantastic results. So much so, that I'm even bidding on lots at the live auctions that I attend just for the purpose of sending to my trading partners.

Antique Book and Paper Shows

I'm often asked, "where do you find this stuff?", in regards to some of the information published on Genealogy Today. In addition to the network of book dealers, antique shop owners and estate sale managers that look for items that I collect, I attend regional ephemera and book shows.

These shows are really wild as you get to see vendors who collect all sorts of odd paper items (and even some non-paper items like coins, buttons, badges, etc). Sometimes the vendors travel (long distances) to attend, but most are local to the area. As a result, you're able to find items of local interest, as well as, some from other parts of the country.

Perhaps you're reading this and saying, "why bother, I can get anything I want on eBay". Yes, there is a lot of stuff on eBay, but eBay (while a fantastic site) does have its limitations. For example, you'll only find sellers who own a computer and have the time to post their items online. There are many (many) book and paper dealers out there with huge collections that never appear on eBay.

What's more, these dealers have so much knowledge of the items -- how to find them, what they're worth -- that you just can't get the same kind of interaction on eBay.

Meet Peter Masi. He owns "peter l. masi - books" and this year is celebrating 25 years of bookselling. Peter doesn't have a brink-n-morter store, or an Internet site. He does have an extensive collection of resources, and publishes his own catalogs regularly and mails them to his customers.

What I love about many dealers like Peter, is that they pay close attention to what you're interested in. Duh, that's how they can successfully sell more stuff. So, by attending these regional shows and meeting people like Peter, you can have a bunch of "content agents" out there looking for the items you wish to collect.

If you'd like to get on Peter's mailing list, send him a note: peter l. masi - books, po box B, montague, MA 01351.

Yes, I do purchase many items from eBay, but you should see how full my truck is after attending one of these shows. Just the postage and time savings alone makes it worthwhile.

Striking a Genealogical Balance

As 2005 came to an end, I thought about possible resolutions for 2006. One of the things that has bothered me lately are the emails I get complaining that Genealogy Today is just another paid site.

It always strikes me as odd, when the site (launched in 1999) didn’t have any subscription databases until the end of 2003. But when visitors voice their impressions, I do listen.

While I am not a Buddhist, I do put a lot of creedence into the philosophy that everything should be in balance. I follow this in my personal life all the time through the holistic therapies and remedies I use for any ailments. So, why shouldn’t I apply it to my business.It made me think back to June 2000, when MyFamily.com acquired RootsWeb. The announcement said, “the acquisition will provide the RootsWeb.com site the financial backing to expand its focus on preserving, sharing, and exchanging family history research. The RootsWeb.com site will expand with additional technology tools, increased family research content and a greater range of genealogical resources.” Did RootsWeb really need to be supported? Or were there higher powers at work trying to put MyFamily back into balance?

Well, this was unlikely a holistic action to balance their growing collection of subscription information, but it did give me the idea for my resolution. Well, at first, it just made me wonder what the ratio of subscription versus free data was.

I’d always had plenty of free content, both organic and through acquisitions, but never thought to monitor the quantity of free versus paid names. So, I added a feature to an administrative page that I have to show me the exact counts of all paid a free databases. And, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the site was not too far out of balance at 56% paid.

So, since then I have been resolved to getting (and maintaining) the site’s data collection at a more exact balancing point. And I am pleased to share that since February this goal has been achieved and the ratio has stayed at 50% (+/- 0.75%) ever since.

Whether it’s the free vs. paid issue, or original content vs. affiliate links, you should always try to maintain a reasonable balance. Have you looked at your own site lately? How balanced is it?

Being a Smart Affiliate Partner

In the online world there are several ways to generate revenue; you can sell things, you can seek paid advertising or you can join an affiliate program and earn money for referrals.

When you sell things, you are always thinking of better ways to present your products or services. You try different ways to draw in visitors and analyze your page layout to make sure the purchase process is simple and efficient (otherwise visitors won’t make it all the way through).

When you add banner or text advertising to your pages, you usually plop them in the highest trafficked and/or visible places. Since most webmasters settle for CPM advertising relationships, impression volume is all that matters.

So, why do many affiliates treat affiliate relationships like advertising? Yes, it is true that with any affiliate program, shear volume should yield sales. But, why waste all that traffic?

As an affiliate partner, you’re an extension of the partner company’s sales and marketing department. You’re effectively selling (or pre-selling) their products or services.

While you still want to focus some attention on placing creative that yields a solid clickthru rate, you also should consider whether the landing page for each creative produces the best sales per click.

The partner may offer two search boxes that have comparable clickthru rates, but one may yield more sales. Commission Junction offers EPC (Average Earnings Per One Hundred Clicks) calculations with all the creative. This is a helpful calculation for comparing similar creative.

Remember, however, that all web pages are not alike, and so the program-wide statistics you see may be distorted. For example, a US Census creative might show a high EPC, but there may be sites in the program that are census-oriented and draw in traffic looking for census data. These kind of sites will probably achieve a higher EPC for a census creative than your site if it is less focus on the topic.

My own web site, Genealogy Today, is a pretty generic site and with a specialized piece of creative like a US Census banner I would never see the EPC that say a census-centric site like Census-Online.com would. So, pick creative that best matches the needs of your own unique visitors.

That’s not to say that you should avoid creative that doesn’t match your site’s focus. It’s always good to have some in the mix as your visitors may actually check our you site and not find what they’re looking for. Just recognize the performance of these creatives may not match the EPC listed.

One of the most important factors in selling things on a site is to make sure you clearly state what the product or service offers. For products, it’s key to layout all of the attributes down to size, weight and a clear, readable picture is essential. For services, it’s important to spell out the terms, benefits and any deliverables.

You’re pre-selling a partner company’s product or service, so you should do some of the same things you would if you were selling it yourself. Look at the creative you’re using and ask yourself if the visitors know what they’re getting when they click on it.

Think about your own objective. You want visitors to click on the creative and do something — preferably make a purchase. You can send blindly send 1,000 visitors and hope to make a few sales. Or, you can selectively send fewer, more qualified visitors.

A “red flag” goes up in my head whenever I look at a performance report and I see clicks increase without a relative increase in sales. That red flag usually indicates that I’m not doing my job in pre-selling. (Yes, it could also mean the affiliate partner landing page is lame, but I rarely can control that. It could also be that the partner changed the landing page)

I find the following tactics to be the most effective at whittling away unproductive clicks:

1. Make sure partner company name is clearly displayed,


2. Make sure it is clear MONEY is involved (nothing is free),


3. Provide an alternative, more direct click.

Let me explain #3. Visitors like options. Many like shortcuts. Say, for example, you’re displaying a search box that (after clicking) shows the visitor some results and asks them to signup. The “action” button may be somewhere on the page that the affiliate partner feels is the best place, and you’re not likely to change it. So, give your visitors a shortcut before they get there and lose interest.

There’s one last suggestion I want to make, and its one I am just beginning to explore. There’s a feature on Google that I’ve rarely used, but I now see the relevance and think it could be applied to affiliate marketing.

I’ve often thought about the situation where I’m promoting an affiliate (let’s call it “A”) and the visitor is already an “A” customer. They either pass by the creative, or generate an unproductive click. My thought is why not offer something akin to Google’s “Similar pages” feature. This way, if the visitor already knows what “A” offers, you can share with them related sites (that are also affiliate partners).

So, to do a quick recap:

1. Monitor clickthru rates. Replace low-clickthru creative placed in high traffic areas.


2. Compare EPC values of similar creative.


3. Match creative to your own visitors, but mix in some unrelated stuff also.


4. Make sure partner identity is clear on creative, or add it yourself with text or modify graphic (if program rules allow).


5. Clearly show where $$$ are involved.


6. Provide shortcuts to action pages.


7. Try offering related alternatives.

There are plenty of “tricks” and slightly-deceptive ways to drive clicks to affiliates, but if you give me 1,000 visitors, I’d rather send each of them to a place where they are most likely going to act, rather than rely on “chance” that some of them will.

Sold to the Highest Bidder!

This week I attended (and participated in) my first LIVE auction. Wow! What an unbelievable 3 1/2 hour rush!

It took place at the Old Feed Mill Auction Center in Boonton, NJ [map]. Jack Wootton and his family have run these for years, and you could see that there were quite a few “regulars” in the audience. They do both antique and paper auctions.

I arrived at 3:00pm for the preview, and had already reviewed the catalog of the 1,999 lots to be auctioned that night. During the preview you can check out any of the items that you are interested in.

Then at 5:30pm, everyone takes their seat and the fun begins. They explain the basics, but there were a few things that I didn’t know, but quickly learned. For example, when they call a lot, if noone bids on it, then it gets added to the next lot. Well, I was quite surprised to find out that after winning the first item I bid on (a box of art books), I had actually won 10 other boxes of books!

By the time we reached the final lot, I was exhausted. Aside from the excitement of bidding on items, you also have to keep carrying the stuff out to your car since there’s not a lot of room where you’re sitting. I can see now why some people brought a friend along.

So, while I expected to drive home with 6 or 7 items (mostly club and society rosters and some yearbooks), the truck was fully loaded with crates and boxes of old stuff.

eBay certainly offers a lot of content acquisition opportunities, but none of the excitement of being at a live auction. And while I do enjoy attending book shows, flea markets, estate sales and the occasional garage sale, live auctions now rank #1 for ephemera-seeking thrills.

Library Discards — End of the Line? Or not?

As genealogists, we cherish historical information about our ancestors — especially when they’re not policitians, celebrities or otherwise renowned. Several years ago I began harvesting books and ephemera that contain lists of people associated with groups and activities. Along the way, I’ve found that some of these great resources have actually been library discards. So why did these books get discarded?

Most libraries need to get rid of, or “cull”, books at the same rate that they acquire them; otherwise, they would run out of space. They usually sell these books to the public, or in lots to dealer, to raise funds for additional acquisitions and library services. The librarian must face a difficult task — which old books to discard to make space for the new ones?

I would love to see more (non-dealer) outlets for libraries to have for discarding books of a historical nature. With a quick look online, I did find Better World Books, an organization that helps libraries sell off their discards. Unfortunately, included in their listing of “What type of books/materials does Better World Books not accept”, are telephone books, tax documents, government documents, directories OR any damaged books/materials not suitable for sale.

The State of Rhode Island web site has a page about “Selling library discards and donations on eBay,” so I guess it is possible to purchase these discarded items directly, although I don’t believe any of the books I’ve obtained via auctions have been from libraries. (As an aside, they mention a cool website to help determine what to charge for a book: www.addall.com)

I will probably post something to the Librarians Serving Genealogists mailing list to see if they have any ideas on how to best channel discarded historical items. It’s a great list, by the way, for understanding the issues and challenges reference librarians face.

For any librarians reading this post, Genealogy Today will gladly reimburse you for the costs involved with packing and mailing discarded books to us. We’re looking for books with lists of names. Examples include masonic rosters, club and society member lists, church directories and school yearbooks or catalogues. Our mailing address is P.O. Box 911, New Providence, NJ 07974. Please address the packages to “Genealogy Today, Dept. LD” and include a note stating your packing costs. PLUS, if the book does not meet our needs and I am able to auction it off, you’ll get 100% of the sale price (less ebay/Paypal fees).

Looking for Sites with Automated Research Tools

The bottom line is that I’m a lazy person. Many would disagree and say I’m a hard-working individual, but the truth is that I don’t like having to do more than is necessary. So, when it comes to technology, I feel the computer should earn its keep. The same goes for web sites. The problem I find with online research is that with good genealogy sites (i.e. ones that add new information regularly), you have to keep going back to see if they add something you’re looking for. Shouldn’t the site (not the webmaster) be able to tell you instead?

Back in 1998 (seems like ages ago), I had the idea to equip my personal web sites with a tool that would allow visitors to be notified of new user contributions by email. I called it GenWatcher, and it is still a popular feature of my sites at the D’Addezio.com domain. [Read the 1998 announcement, “Test Drive Our New GenWatcher Service“] It wasn’t very sophisticated. Basically you entered a surname and your email address, and whenever someone else added something to one of our databases, the site (while it was saving the information) would check the GenWatcher list and send an email to anyone who was looking for that particular surname.

The idea received such good feedback, that a similar service was developed for Genealogy Today in 2003 called Surname Tracker (sample email pictured right). The difference with this new service is that it has access to much more information, and can tell registered users when new names are added to our databases. By the way, I use both of these services for my own research — you never know who may add some D’Addezio information! Well, the Surname Tracker is quite popular, with over 45,000 people registered and monitoring their surnames.

In 2002, the web site CousinConnect added a query notification service similar to our GenWatcher, but for their genealogy query boards. They even added a twist — you can decide if you want to be notified for “exact” surname spellings, “partial” surname spellings, or “soundex” matches.

Then sometime in 2003 (as I can best recollect), Ancestry.com finally added an equivalent feature that is now simply labelled “names and locations I’m researching” (it’s under the My Research tab). Later, when they introduced their Obituary collection, they added another agent service called Obituary Hunter. The web site still says it is in a “beta period”, but it been around since December 2003 when I added D’Addezio to my account. I never used the former service, but just added my surname and a few variations as I’m writing this post. It’s simple to do.

While I’m excited that people are using and benefiting from these services, the lazy part of me wants to know when we’re going to see more of them and/or better technology to make this easier for smaller sites to accomplish. Well, perhaps it has!

As many blog readers have learned (some unknowlingly), there is a new technology, called RSS, that allows you to read news feeds offline and quickly and easily see what’s new. You’ve probably seen the little orange XML boxes and others like “+ My Yahoo!”. These are the links for adding an RSS feed to your reader. So, how well could this technology apply to a SURNAME feed?

To my knowledge, CousinConnect is the only genealogy web site to offer a service of this nature. From their home page, search on your surname and then on the results page, scroll down and on the right hand column you’ll see “RSS Newsfeed” and those familiar buttons. Add the RSS feed to your reader and you’ll always see the latest queries for your surname. I just added D’Addezio!

This seems like the right direction for web sites to follow, but I’d like to get some comments from anyone who has used it (or the other services). I imagine it would be great if all sites with real data could provide a similar feed and then every morning when you opened up your reader (e.g. My Yahoo!) you’d see what ancestors have awoken with you.

I’m thinking of adding a similar service to Genealogy Today, and extending it beyond the bounds our own databases by offering to index new information posted by other webmasters. We already do index some other sites, but if I added RSS surname feeds, I would probably expand this to index others.

If you are aware of any other sites that offer either an email-based agent or RSS surname feeds, please let me know.

Anonymous Genealogy

Everyone has pet peaves, right? Well one of mine is the proliferation of genealogy web sites with little or no identification of the owner and/or the source(s) of their information.

How would you feel if you went into a library, picked up a book on your favorite subject and after reading it, wanted to know more only to discover that there is no author or bibliography listed!

The Internet is a publishing platform, and yet so many of the established standards adhered to by authors (for as long as there have been printed documents) have gotten lost along the way.

The webmasters of these sites fall into two categories: those that don’t realize what they are doing, and those that deliberately don’t want you to know who they are. This post certainly will have no impact on the latter.

Genealogy is a hobby with tremendous emotional impact. As people discover information about their ancestors it can affect their lives. So, it is critical that we (as an industry) make sure that the information we publish is accurate and properly sourced.

It’s one thing for a genealogist to be sloppy with their research, but it’s simply unacceptable for webmasters to do likewise.

Well, here’s the bad news. There is no one policing the Internet, so we have no one to turn to for help. The only solution is for YOU, the genealogist, to demand better quality of information from webmasters.

If you come across a web site and cannot tell who created it, or where the information came from, write to the webmaster and complain. Let them know that you want to use their information, but cannot TRUST it without them coming out of their shell.And if you cannot find a way to contact the webmaster on their site, contact me and I’ll do my best to help you identify the owner.

Of course, this does make me wonder if there is a need in our industry for some sort of service where you can find out who is responsible for a certain web site. Hmmmm…

Look Who's Talking Genealogy

It’s great to see new technology come along, but it’s even better to see it applied to the field of genealogy. What am I talking about? Podcasts!

Podcasts differ from traditional internet audio in two important ways. In the past, listeners have had to either tune in to web radio on a schedule, or they have had to actively download individual files from webpages.I recently purchased a Samsung SCH-a950, the V Cast music phone, and now download these pods every week to my phone and listen to them in the car or anytime that I’m hanging around.

Here are two shows from some familiar names:

The Genealogy Guys - A weekly genealogy discussion by George G. Morgan and Drew Smith (new podcast every Sunday night)

DearMYRTLE’s Family History Hour - Great guests and excellent regular features. (new podcast every Tuesday night)

I hope this trend continues and more “shows” begin to appear. Please give me your feedback on these shows (e.g. length, format, topics covered, etc).

Podcasts are more flexible and much easier to get. They can be listened to at any time because a copy is on the listener’s computer or portable music player, and they are automatically delivered to subscribers, so no active downloading is required. More information…

For a listing of additional shows and details for how to get on our upcoming episode notification list, visit the Genealogy Podcast Schedule and Audio Guide at Genealogy Today.

Do Less with More?

Seems like the opposite of what some companies are doing, however, it also may be the right tactic for the challenging financial times we’ve been facing since 9/11. Well, this is my mantra for 2006 and I’ll explain why.

If you’ve been to a national genealogy conference in the past few years, there are always a bunch of small booths, and then there is the BIG one. Yes, the Heritage Creations booth run by Leland Meitzler (blog). The vast quantity of books and CD’s and the unique displays for concentrating his inventory in a relatively small area, were an impressive feat.

Well, much to my surprise, Leland blogged that Heritage Creations [was] Filing for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy, and spelled out the history of how his company arrived at this point. Leland and I have exchanged emails over the years, and even had the pleasure to meet and hang out at the 2005 NGS conference in Nashville, TN.

Recently, Leland said something to me that struck a chord. He “wasn’t making a profit at [genealogy conferences] and wasted a lot of valuable time chasing around the country.” It sounded to that he was trying to do more with less (income in return).

Was I following, albeit at a smaller scale, in his footsteps? I reflected on the things I’d accomplished with Genealogy Today, and decided it was time to focus on those things that I was really good at (i.e. core strengths), and had the potential to generate revenue.

Another recent event in our industry was the extensive MyFamily.com, Inc. layoff. Dennis Partridge (blog) wrote about the “tragic loss for the employees and families involved,” which I don’t dispute. But the real messages, and the people to “blame”, are that (in my opinion) management allowed the company to grow too rapidly and invested energies in areas that offered less value to the organization.

Rather than haphazardly expand my holdings with smaller, less valuable content month after month, my plan is to stay focused, measure every opportunity against a more refined set of criteria, and begin to grow the company at a faster (yet managable) rate.

If someone were to ask you, “what exactly does your company do?”, would you have a clear answer for them? The ease of Internet technology and the abundance of information floating around us promotes a “heck, why not” kind of attitude when it comes to new prospects. Don’t go adrift, identify your core competencies, and build on them.

(Genealogy Today is an affiliate of Ancestry.com, a unit of MyFamily.com, Inc.)

Introduction

In keeping with our core values, I’ve established this blog to maintain a level of open communication about the achievements of and the challenges faced by my company, Genealogy Today LLC.

My name is Illya D’Addezio, and I’ve been developing genealogy web sites since 1998 when I launched my own family site at D’Addezio.com. Since then I’ve had many successes and launched a few duds, but in every case I’ve learned a great deal about my three passions: marketing, technology and genealogy.

As with all of my projects, I hope that this blog helps to improve the genealogy community through the open discussion of topics that are pertinent to genealogists and webmasters alike. Your feedback is appreciated, however, I will reserve the right to not publish comments on this blog if I feel they are inappropriate.