Can you guarantee all search engines will list my site? Can you guarantee me a top  position?

We will submit your site to a great number of resources, but we can not make them index your page. Many will personally visit your web page and will make a subjective decision concerning inclusion. Normally, about 95% of our submissions are successful.

If you order any of our "annual" promotional services, we provide suggestions for improving your search engine position. However, your actual position is determined by a number of factors, some of which are out of our control - such as:

• the amount of competition you face - there may be thousands (or millions) of web pages with similar products

• your domain name (URL) - keywords in the address are influential

• the number of relevant links inbound to your site. Our submissions will help your link popularity but you may have competitors who have spent years building 1000's of links

• competition who "buy" a keyword position - see below

For more details about the "realities of search engine positioning, please visit  www.artcraftmarketing.com/searchenginereality.htm

We will not employ dubious means to "trick" search engines such as hidden text, key word spam, doorway pages, etc. These represent tremendous ways to have your site banned completely from important indexes. 

There are firms who will guarantee a top 10 position. They generally charge $300-$500 per term per search engine. 

You may also "buy" your keyword position. Yahoo, Google, Looksmart, and others allow you to bid on select terms. The cost varies depending upon demand, but most charge between $.50 to $3.00 per term each time your site is displayed. Participants  could (and do) spend hundreds or thousands of dollars monthly on these programs. 

Special note about "pay for inclusion" resources - some of our packages include registration with PFI search engines. This means your site should be quickly indexed by select popular search engines (normally within one week) This does not guarantee specific position for any particular search term.    return to top

Do you send out reports? Can I see a complete list of the submission sites?

We use a wide variety of resources when making your submissions. We also manually submit your site to many locations, including the craft related. There is no one report we could generate to reflect all the submissions made. The time required to prepare such a report would be cost prohibitive, and we prefer not to increase our prices to compensate.

We have spent literally hundreds of hours compiling our list of craft-related resources to which we submit your site. Our competitors would just love get their hands on it as it provides us with a tremendous competitive edge - no one else provides such a targeted marketing system. For that reason, we consider the list of craft sites proprietary. However, you will receive confirmation messages from a number of the craft related locations when we make your submissions.   return to top

I see website marketing services on the web - why should I chose you?

We have been serving the needs of arts and craft webmasters and site owners for years and were the first to provide specialized Internet marketing to that community. We maintain the largest and most popular arts and craft banner advertising resource "Arts & Craft Banner Network", the largest and most popular arts and craft top sites system "Top Craft Sites Report", the very popular and high traffic virtual craft mall "The Country Crafts Gallery", the very popular gift shop directory "100 Gift Shops", the new craft link exchange resource "Craft Link Exchange", the high traffic arts and craft links directory "Arts & Crafts Link Directory" and more! We have the experience and marketing muscle to successfully market your website and to increase your traffic, sales, and profits. 

Some of the biggest names in arts & craft website design trust us to market their client's sites. We have exclusive privileges with some of the most popular craft directories and search engines serving the arts and crafts community.

Because we are "debt-free" and keep overhead to a minimum, we can provide you with the best service at the lowest cost. We do not maintain a large staff with fancy titles. We  utilize state-of-the-art equipment and software to provide professional and efficient service. 

 We have a tremendous customer satisfaction rating, and receive the majority of new clients as the result of referrals.   

We are a Christian based company, and do what we say we will do.

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Why should I select the enhanced annual submission plan over the standard?

The enhanced package provides for:

• Registration with resources which require a fee for listing - we pay the fee for you
• Submissions to 100,000+ locations (versus 20,000)
• Submission of five of your web pages to top search engines (versus 2)
• Preferred listing in the Top 100 Craft Sites Report
• 25,000 banner exposure on the Arts & Crafts Banner Network (versus 10,000)
• A more prominent display on our very popular Arts and Crafts Website Directory, including banner display and higher page placement. 
• Prominent links on our new 100 Gift Shops gift directory.
• New! Inclusion of your link on high Google PageRank pages which boosts your own PageRank 
  
  There are other differences, but the bottom line is that we give
  preferential treatment to clients willing to spend twice as much - it only
  makes sense, and is the way we would want to be treated.  

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I use a shared ISP (Geocities, AOL, Hypermart, Ebay, etc). Can you still promote my site?

Yes we can - however - some search engines do not like shared addresses and may not readily index them. Because of our extensive experience, we are often successful in getting your site indexed when other submission services fail. return to top

What are the requirements for banners?

Many of our promotional packages include banner advertising. To participate, we require banners to be located on your own server (we do not host them for you), and be of a specific size. Banners must be 468 X 60 pixels in physical size, and less than 18,000 bytes (18K) in file memory size. You must provide us with the the web address (URL) of your banner image on your web site. We cannot accept copies of the image via email attachments. Banners are quite easy to make or you may ask your site designer to create one for you. There are also free banner design services available online, or we have found that Cheryl at http://ww.primgraphics.com and Trina at http://craftygraphics.com/ both make very attractive banners for a very small cost.     return to top

Can I renew my submission plan?

Yes, you will be given the option of renewing at the end of your promotion period, normally at a special "customer loyalty" price. A large percentage of our clients renew to keep the traffic coming. return to top

Do you use email or spam to promote my web site?

NO! We detest spam. We send no unsolicited emails to anyone, nor do we provide your email address to anyone other than target submission sites which require it for registration. To protect your privacy, we use a secondary email address for many of your submissions. This dramatically cuts down the amount of junk mail you could encounter.   return to top

Do "pay for inclusion" search engines registrations create an additional charge or recurring fee?

We only use "pay for inclusion" resources with a one time or annual fee (which is included in our fee). We do not use resources which require payment for each "click" to your web site, or have you "bid" for keyword position. Our selection of "pfi" resources for your site will be determined by the promotional plan you choose and your existing position on those resources.  return to top

 

Privacy Statement Information you provide is never sold or made available to a third party for mailing list purposes. Obviously, we have to provide information to search engines, message boards, and other locations to promote your site. In the case of popular link pages or other submission sites known to generate unwanted mail, we will use a secondary email address (we will provide). Credit card information is transmitted via a secure server (PayPal) - we do not even see your account number. There will never be a recurring charge unless you authorize it (i.e. renewals - you must approve at time of renewal).   Disclaimer - Disclosure - TOS We cannot MAKE people visit your site, nor purchase your products. We CAN submit your site to the most popular search engines, directories and indexes so that most shoppers looking for your business name or products should see your link. We CAN submit your URL to many, many sites giving your craft site good Internet visibility. It is our goal to put you in a position to be successful. We cannot MAKE a search engine, directory, index, message board, classified board or link page display your link. Most of those we select will. Many now personally visit your site and make a subjective decision whether to include you or not. Others may not include you because you do not have a fax number or your own domain name. We will not falsify information about your site just to get it listed. We cannot guarantee you any particular search engine position - there are too many variables beyond our control (see comment in FAQ above).  If you have a web site hosted by AOL, Geocities, Angelfire, Ebay, etc., be aware that many search engines and directories will not list your site. Some flat out refuse to, some have problems if you use frames, and some can not handle being redirected to sub-addresses. We will attempt to make submissions to these sites but their acceptance of your site is beyond our control. If you are would like information on establishing your own domain name and site, please contact us (we do not provide these services but can point you in the right direction). Anticipate your amount of email to rapidly increase following submission. You will receive a number of confirmations from directories, craft sites and others. Sites which are known to send "junk mail" have either been excluded from submission or been given your secondary email address which we set-up. We do not sell your email address. However, there are many firms out there who "spider" sites gathering email addresses to put you on mailing lists. Given that your address is now going to be on 800-1000 sites YOU WILL receive more junk mail. Just because you are listed on a search engine does not mean people will visit your site. It is very important to have good meta tags in place when we submit your site to search engines. Part of our service is to check your meta tags and make suggestions for improvement. Do not expect your site traffic to skyrocket overnight. Search engines, directories and indexes take anywhere from two days to twelve weeks to index your site. It generally takes at least one month for submissions to really take effect. Also, your link popularity (as rated by the search engines) will not change until after the search engines have re-spidered the sites you have links on (allow 30 days). Your web site traffic will fluctuate.  It commonly peaks in the fall and early winter as you approach the holidays, and wanes in late spring through the summer months. Quite often, a client will notice a jump in traffic is the early stages of their promotion (similar to a grand opening), then a leveling off occurs. Traffic normally begins to build significantly  over time.  Promotional services are not transferable from site to site nor can you change web addresses (URL's). We spend a huge amount of time establishing links and making submissions for one web address (URL). If you decide to close the original site but start another, everything we have done and all the time we have invested is negated. To switch to a different URL would mean we would have to start over from scratch. We have had requests for the list of craft sites to which we submit. We have literally spent hundreds of hours compiling this list and for that reason we consider it proprietary information and will not make it publicly available. If there is a top craft site which does not charge a fee to list and does not require a reciprocal link, they are probably on our submission list. Rest assured that we do what we say we will do as our many satisfied clients will attest. Refunds/Cancellations: The services we provide are personalized for your website. Our custom work on your behalf is extremely time-intensive, and we invest MANY hours working on your promotion. Obviously, we cannot recover time. Therefore, orders may only be canceled within the first five days of original receipt.  Thereafter, refunds are not available, neither in full nor in part. As mentioned above, services are also not transferable to different domains. We maintain Christian ethics is conducting our business. Hopefully you will be so satisfied with our service you will use us again and refer your business associates to us. We do what we say we will do.

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