Free-For-All … Schmee-For-All
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Free-For-All … Schmee-For-All
The Facts About Free-For-All (FFA) Links Pages.
Free-For-All (FFA) pages are big on the Web these days. But, they have evolved from what they used to be into something almost useless. So, why are there so many of them?
- What’s a Free-For-Links page anyway? This is a links page on someones website where you can post a link. There’s no need to post a return link to them. Just post your link, and there it is. But, the page will only hold a set number of links in each section. After that number is reached, the older links are replaced with the newer ones.
In the old days (prior to 1998), your link might stay on a page for a day, maybe for several weeks. It all depended on the popularity of the site, and on what category your link was in. Most of these sites used Matt’s Free-For-All Script to operate their site. It is a free CGI script, and is still available. If you want to look for others, just go to The CGI Resource Indexand try out several.
- But, these are not the old days. Almost all the FFA pages on the Web now are part of a type of FFA network. Join for free and get your free, remotely hosted FFA page. And, since it’s a network, when a submission is made at one site, it shows up on sites throughout the network. There are many networks like this.
The problem with this kind of network is this: if it is popular enough, there may be so many submissions that a link may not stay listed more than a few hours. So, if you plan to do a lot of postings to FFA pages, keep this in mind.
Another problem is who will see your link. Almost nobody. Since most of the links that get posted are automated, not much of anyone goes to these pages. A while back our site put up a page through Link-o-matic to test the results. We got plenty of links posted. When the page said "there have been a total of 1000" links posted — our hit counter said 3. And, those hits were me checking on the page.
- The Upside of FFA Pages. So, if no one is going to see the page, why have one? Most of these automated FFA services also have an automated confirmation e-mail. This can usually be customized to include a message from you. A sales message. If you’ve ever submitted to a FFA page, you’ve received them.
The FFA page gives you a good, spam-free way to send your sales message to as many as 1000 or more people each day. So, if you have a good message. Not too long, and preferably offering something free — you could attract dozens of new people a day to your website.
- The Downside. A lot of web veterans, and some newcomers do what we do. They get a free, web-based e-mail account with Yahoo or Hotmail or some other company. Then, when submitting links to FFA pages, classifieds, or other things with automated confirmations — use this address instead of their "real" one.
This does two things. First, it keeps our regular e-mail mailboxes from being overrun with messages we do not want to see. Secondly, these services allow us to "block" senders. So, effectively when a new automated message comes in, we tell the system to block the sender. After a while, all the automated messages are filtered into the trash, and we never see them.
It’s hard to tell what percentage of people do this. But, it’s a good bet that at least half of the people who get your automated confirmations will never even see them. Of course, that leaves a lot of people who will see it.
- Where Can You Get FFA Pages. I used to give links to some of the major FFA networks, but these are changing all the time. The best advice here is to search on your favorite search engine using the keywords, "FFA Pages". You’ll get many 1000’s of sites listed, but the key networks will probably be list around the top.
- Alternatives To FFA Networks. Yes, you can still get a page that is not part of a huge FFA network. Most of these require that you have your own cgi-bin on your server. Unless you are using some of the free web hosts — you have cgi access. You can do a search on your favorite search engine, or go to a free cgi scripts page and find what you want. Or, might we recommend a good free links script at :
http://www.rrudder.com/scripts.
This is the one we use.If you have no cgi access, an alternative is to design your own page, set up a form to email the data to you, and enter the link manually (yourself). This requires that you have some knowledge of HTML, but will get you a FFA links page.
Until next time,
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