The Labour Movement and the Internet
An independent, online newsletter serving the trade union movement.
Edited by Eric Lee.
9 February 1997
Boost Hits
to Your Labour Website --
Using the Labour Link Exchange!
In mid-March, we're going to launch an initiative that should be good news for every trade union webmaster: the Labour Link Exchange. The idea of the Exchange is a simple one: every participating site prepares a single banner advertisement of a certain size and submits this to the Exchange. In addition, participating sites insert a few lines of HTML code into their pages, which will cause the display of other banner advertisements from other sites. The result: huge increases in the number of people who know about your site and come to visit.The original link exchange is the Internet Link Exchange. This Exchange works quite well, but the problem is that people seeing ads for your site are not necessarily interested in the labour movement. Your ad is likely to appear on home pages for computer game buffs -- and the ads on your site are also likely to be irrelevant to your own audience.
A solution to this problem is specific, targetted Link Exchanges -- and pioneering work was done by the Israel Hyberbanner Net in this field. I know from personal experience how this works. Over the course of the last few months, a political website I run has used both Link Exchanges -- the general one and the specifically Israeli one. The general Internet Link Exchange has brought me 200 new readers, while the Israeli one has drawn in 800 new people.
There is no cost to anyone for joining these link exchanges, and this will be the case with the Labour Link Exchange as well. Okay, so how does this pay for itself? The company providing the software and the server, Accordnet, hopes to finance the project by selling advertisements. All the Exchanges work on the principal of 50% credit for hits -- in other words, if your site gets 1000 hits, you get 500 ads on other sites. Who gets the other 500? Accordnet. And who would buy ads that reach thousands of trade unionists every month? Publishers of books for unionists, for one. Companies offering services aimed at trade unionists, like those who design and host labour web sites. Consultants who specialize in work for the labour movement. Progressive periodicals looking for a labour audience. And so on and so forth.
Right now, we're in the process of setting up the Labour Link Exchange at Accordnet. We'll have more details in mid-March when it should be up and running. Stay tuned. This is an exciting development for the labour movement, I think.
Home
Back to Eric Lee's home page.
Back to Solinet.
Copyright 1997 by Eric Lee.
| Member of the Internet Link Exchange |