In light of your goal of increasing traffic to your site to the 2000 visitors per day target from present levels, I would suggest a balanced campaign made up of the following online marketing techniques.

1. Posting to Newsgroups

2. Posting to/participating in email discussion groups

3. Submission of your URL to the major "Award Sites"

4. Affinity Link creation

5. Exchanging content with Ezines/sites and moderated discussion groups for links to our site ( or specific sections of our site)

For the sake of this discussion we will combine steps 4 and 5 into one step.

You are fortunate that your target audience is broad and easy to locate online. However considerable thought must be put into the quality and form of contacting them. I will briefly give an overview of the above mentioned techniques and conclude with a proposed plan of attack.

· Newsgroup posting. The following is a PARTIAL list of newsgroups where your target audience resides. Each newsgroup would require thorough investigation to determine posting procedures and acceptable content to effectively bring visitors to your site.

alt.activism.children.
alt.activism.youth-rights
alt.adoption
alt.adoption.adoptive.parenting
alt.child-support
alt.childcare
alt.christnet.religion
alt.education
alt.education.alternative
alt.education.home-school.christian
alt.education.home-school.disabilities
alt.fractal-design.painter
alt.mothers
alt.parenting.solution
alt.parenting.spanking
alt.religion
alt.teachers.lesson-planning
can.schoolnet.chat.teachers
comp.graphics.misc
comp.graphics.animation
k12.chat.elementary
k12.chat.teacher
misc.education.home-school.christian
misc.education.home-school.misc
misc.kids
misc.kids.computer
misc.kids.health
school.teachers
sci.med
sci.med.dentistry

· Posting to email discussion groups The following is a PARTIAL list of email discussion groups which may be appropriate for posting and interfacing with the community. In order to formulate a posting plan, it is necessary to subscribe to each list, monitor the posts, (in some cases, communicate with the "list owner") before composing value added posts which will bring attention to our message and site.

In consideration of my time I am posting this resource UNEDITED, knowing that there are many groups included which are not appropriate for our message. This is done to give you some sense of the enormity of this resource.

ADDKIDS ADDKids- The List for Children with Attention Deficit Disorder

AUT-2B-HOME AUT-2B-HOME Homeschooling Children with Autism

BEHAVIOR Behavioral and Emotional Disorders in Children

BOLFAM-L Support for families who have or are adopting children from Bo+

CAMPUSCARE-L campus environments for children

ETC.....

Parents

SB-PARENTS Spina Bifida Parents Discussion List

STEP-PARENT Step Parents and Relationships Discussion List

UIUCPARENT-L U of I Parents Advocacy Group

WVUMPCC Mountaineer Parents Club Chairs List

WVUMPCM Mountaineer Parents Club Members List

WYCOOL-L Way Cool Software Reviews by Children, Teachers, and Parents

ETC.....

Private School

1L 1L - 1st Year Students at the Brandeis School of Law Discussio+

98STEER 98STEER - The 1998 School of Education / BellSouth Steering Co+

AACSB Business School Accredidation

ACUAMD-L ACUAMD-L ACUA Medical School Auditing List

AERA-H AERA-H Division H School Evaluation and Program Development

ARCLIB-L Architecture school librarians' group

ASUSPAN Arizona State University School of Public Affairs Network

BSCS-L Business School Computing Support

BUDANEWS BUDANEWS LIST FOR SCHOOL NEWS EXCHANGE. BUDANEWS

CENTER-STAFF Audubon Centers staff discussion -- private

ETC.....

• ·Submission of your URL to the major "Award Sites" A list of the top 20-50 sites giving awards should be contacted. Recognition by one of these sites would result in increased traffic as well as a great number of potential new links.
  
• Affinity Link creation Contacting aligned sites and informing them about our resource and offering to exchange links.
  
• ·Exchanging content with Ezines, WWW sites and moderated discussion groups for links to our site (or specific pages (book) of our site)
  
• For example a great resource for children's sites can be found at http//dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Cultures_and_Groups/Children/
  
• Selected sites would be contacted and communication established as to how win/win opportunities might be created.

I would suggest the following approach to the project. Lets begin with a 20 hour contract ($1500) during which time I will create and carry out a balanced campaign combining the above mentioned online marketing techniques.

I will put greater (weighted) emphasis on the areas which I feel will give us the greatest return on our investment, but will include all of the techniques so we can determine their individual cost effectiveness.

During this time period, I will keep a detailed worksheet outlining time spent on all activities. I will also create an excel file (which will be your property)listing all resources contacted, email address, URLs and contact person.

Initially, I will need your assistance in determining which content (message to be delivered) would be most appropriate for individual groups. Once we have created a working model I will be able to operate with minimal assistance from you.

Lastly, as there is some immediacy to promoting the Space Elf Sam book for the holiday season, I will try to give it some priority in the overall frame of our trial campaign.

I have carried out successful online marketing campaigns for a wide variety of clients and would be happy to put you in contact with some of them if you would like further references.

Please contact me with any questions.

Best regards,