I spend enough time thinking about the few annoying customers. Occasionally, for short periods, they manage to make me wish I were doing something else. Customer service is obviously not my calling, and I'm aware I'm not suited for it at all and tend to escalate situations with people I have difficulty tolerating. Suffice it to say that when I set about creating WSN Links I didn't give much thought to the idea that if it became sucessful I'd end up spending nearly as much time supporting customers as coding.
So, that in mind I think it's best if I take the time just once to note all the other people, those who make the customer service aspect rewarding. While providing support to a few people is a job, with a lot of you it's a pleasure. It's nice when I find myself actually wanting to help people instead of feeling forced to help.
din - Long-time always helpful poster. He created the JavaScript export feature a couple of years ago as a hack. kizer - The original forum moderator, did a great job maintaining a WSN Links FAQ a few years ago, and also one of the very very few people to ever share a WSN Links template set. Quantum - Has maintained order with the feature suggestions thread and the like depite my inclination toward chaos. Made a few hacks and inspired a lot of features. Jenny - Inspired me to a number of good feature ideas in the past. Cricket - Helped out with the manual when it was just getting started. azteca - Always noteably easy to work with. TigerDE2 - Did the original German translation among other things.
mrowton, peumus, sparkalina, Rik, Vix, fuee, gemini, midwestmedia, Emory, punterprofits, cityboy, wildflowerintn, sectionthirty1, pcarlow, Synozeer mrkarron, Brad, fresco, and a lot of others
I would like to thank you for your help and time Paul, i know I may have traveled in to the pain in the ass arena more then a couple times
Why dont you set up ads on WSNlinks? I am more then happy to click on a few ads for you every now and then just to help you make some extra cash. Your ranked 48000 on alexa so you must receive a lot of traffic.
I definitely appreciate the work you put into this, Paul. For the little you charge for this script, we sure get a lot for our money. And to find one where the author is constantly giving free tech support - priceless. I refer people to your script whenever I can - it's the least I can do.
I do see lot of applications for WSN scripts. Unfortuantelly I do not have, at the moment, enough time to develop them as I would like (this is why I'm always rushing with my inquiries to you).
Also for the flexibility and customizability I do believe WSN Forum should be one of the best forums available on the market.
Just some thoughts:
I found your program searching for links administration script, but I did not find it before when I was looking for classified ads or general online data clasification program as a yellow pages script. So I think your work should be promoted also for these applications that are the one I see your job is driving to.
Even more, should the name Links be maintained considering the stage of development you program has at the moment? Also as someone has suggested, a basic version "easy" can be extracted just for Links. This could make your support job easy for ones just looking for this application.
Three reasons: 1) Ads don't make much money these days. 2) I just don't think it'd look professional, even for the Basic Edition site... I know it'd scare me away from considering a script, as it'd seem to indicate the script isn't good enough to sell and thus they need ads to make their money. 3) Back around 2000-2002 I ran a "free webmaster resources without ads" site, telling everyone about the evils of banners and popups, so suffice it to say I'd never use them myself. (Though I did advocate targeted text affiliate links to things potentially of use to visitors, and employed those extensively to make some money until for some reason it declined and stopped generating any revenue. As a rambling side note, ironically enough WSN Links was originally supposed to draw people to come visit webmastersite.net so that I could make some money off of the webmaster resources content and its affiliate links... whereas now the roles are completely reversed with the site being just a vehicle for the scripts.)
I have tried an affiliate link to LunarPages web hosting, but got no result from it. Also I have the ulsearch integration which earns me a percentage of revenues (10% I think) for all the WSN Links users of it, but at last check that had totaled up to all of $7 thanks to 80+ users, so there really wasn't much point to it.
Your ranked 48000 on alexa so you must receive a lot of traffic.
With a glance at the awstats logs, it appears to average about 100 uniques of non-spiders a day at the main domain and another 400/day at the scripts subdomain (annoyingly it doesn't seem to give combined stats). In raw page views it comes out to about 2500/day. Don't know if I'd call that a lot, but it could certainly be worse.
Hm, in another glance I see the second most searched term to arrive at the scripts subdomain this month (behind "WSN") is "porn photos"... a lot of dissapointed visitors. I guess they're landing at WSN Gallery.
peumus wrote: I did not find it before when I was looking for classified ads or general online data clasification program as a yellow pages script. So I think your work should be promoted also for these applications that are the one I see your job is driving to.
Unfortunately I'm not quite sure how to do that. All the listings of WSN Links around the internet are in "Link indexing" categories, and the directories would most likely not appreciate it being submitted to multiple categories. Now that mrowton has made a classifieds template set, I may find some way to promote that, but I don't yet have a plan for exactly how I'll do that (though putting a mention of it on wsnlinks.com would obviously be a good start).
Even more, should the name Links be maintained considering the stage of development you program has at the moment?
About two years ago (if I remember right) when I was transitioning WSN Links from a free to a paid script and spawning off the Basic Edition as the free version, I think it was pablo who suggested I leave the "WSN Links" name with the free version and use a new more generalized name for the full script. My reponse then still applies now -- branding is priceless. There are reviews of WSN Links around the internet. I've got a decent hotscripts rating for it. All the links to the script reference WSN Links. The reputation of WSN Links has reached the point of being fairly well-catalogued on various sites. If I changed the name I'd be throwing all that away and trying to rebuild all the name recognition for a new name. And I'm really not sure I could ever duplicate the trick with a new name -- I've tried my best to promote WSN Gallery and WSN KB, yet they've really gone nowhere and WSN Links is still where almost all my revenue comes from. It's far too risky to mess with what's working, so it's got to stay as WSN Links.
All the listings of WSN Links around the internet are in "Link indexing" categories, and the directories would most likely not appreciate it being submitted to multiple categories
If I changed the name I'd be throwing all that away
Paul,
Some more thoughts just with the aim of triying be constructive: I also believe for shure name should not be changed for the actual product, but the question is, would it be maintained from maybe a ver. 4.0 onwards ? Maybe be from this ver. onwards you can have a name that fits more to the capabilities of your program to the proyection of it and to help clearly be recongized as the base of other applications. Regarding this last point I believe an important issue is to develop commercial templates for different applications. Each template (just the template as an application for WSN main) can be promoted to it's correspondig category on script-web directories and linked to it's own page at WSN main site.
Paul great script. Highly recomend WSN Links to anyone and have to many. Great support. Always helped me on issues. Keep up the good work Paul. I seen other links scripts out for a heck of lot more money than this one and that does a lot less. The potential for the script is basically unlimited with an somewhat experience web site builder familiar with php it can do amazing things. I must say Thank You Paul for all the time you have spent with my problems with the script, which in the most part was me trying to modify things to suit my needs.
Liz
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Comments on Customer appeciation
developer
Usergroup: Administrator
Joined: Dec 20, 2001
Location: Diamond Springs, California
Total Topics: 61
Total Comments: 7868
I spend enough time thinking about the few annoying customers. Occasionally, for short periods, they manage to make me wish I were doing something else. Customer service is obviously not my calling, and I'm aware I'm not suited for it at all and tend to escalate situations with people I have difficulty tolerating. Suffice it to say that when I set about creating WSN Links I didn't give much thought to the idea that if it became sucessful I'd end up spending nearly as much time supporting customers as coding.
So, that in mind I think it's best if I take the time just once to note all the other people, those who make the customer service aspect rewarding. While providing support to a few people is a job, with a lot of you it's a pleasure. It's nice when I find myself actually wanting to help people instead of feeling forced to help.
din - Long-time always helpful poster. He created the JavaScript export feature a couple of years ago as a hack.
kizer - The original forum moderator, did a great job maintaining a WSN Links FAQ a few years ago, and also one of the very very few people to ever share a WSN Links template set.
Quantum - Has maintained order with the feature suggestions thread and the like depite my inclination toward chaos. Made a few hacks and inspired a lot of features.
Jenny - Inspired me to a number of good feature ideas in the past.
Cricket - Helped out with the manual when it was just getting started.
azteca - Always noteably easy to work with.
TigerDE2 - Did the original German translation among other things.
mrowton, peumus, sparkalina, Rik, Vix, fuee, gemini, midwestmedia, Emory, punterprofits, cityboy, wildflowerintn, sectionthirty1, pcarlow, Synozeer mrkarron, Brad, fresco, and a lot of others
Thanks.
Forum Regular
Usergroup: Customer
Joined: Nov 01, 2004
Total Topics: 56
Total Comments: 121
I would like to thank you for your help and time Paul, i know I may have traveled in to the pain in the ass arena more then a couple times
Why dont you set up ads on WSNlinks? I am more then happy to click on a few ads for you every now and then just to help you make some extra cash. Your ranked 48000 on alexa so you must receive a lot of traffic.
Thanks for your hard work
Fuee
Forum Regular
Usergroup: Customer
Joined: Jun 02, 2004
Total Topics: 32
Total Comments: 142
I definitely appreciate the work you put into this, Paul. For the little you charge for this script, we sure get a lot for our money. And to find one where the author is constantly giving free tech support - priceless. I refer people to your script whenever I can - it's the least I can do.
Adam
Usergroup: Customer
Joined: Apr 17, 2004
Total Topics: 21
Total Comments: 50
Paul,
You do an absolutely fantastic job of developing these scripts, and I love referring people to you. Keep up the fabulous work!
Jen
Forum Regular
Usergroup: Customer
Joined: Aug 09, 2004
Location: Chile
Total Topics: 172
Total Comments: 462
Paul,
Your job is fantastic.
I do see lot of applications for WSN scripts. Unfortuantelly I do not have, at the moment, enough time to develop them as I would like (this is why I'm always rushing with my inquiries to you).
Also for the flexibility and customizability I do believe WSN Forum should be one of the best forums available on the market.
Just some thoughts:
I found your program searching for links administration script, but I did not find it before when I was looking for classified ads or general online data clasification program as a yellow pages script. So I think your work should be promoted also for these applications that are the one I see your job is driving to.
Even more, should the name Links be maintained considering the stage of development you program has at the moment? Also as someone has suggested, a basic version "easy" can be extracted just for Links. This could make your support job easy for ones just looking for this application.
Thank you again.
developer
Usergroup: Administrator
Joined: Dec 20, 2001
Location: Diamond Springs, California
Total Topics: 61
Total Comments: 7868
Why dont you set up ads on WSNlinks?
Three reasons:
1) Ads don't make much money these days.
2) I just don't think it'd look professional, even for the Basic Edition site... I know it'd scare me away from considering a script, as it'd seem to indicate the script isn't good enough to sell and thus they need ads to make their money.
3) Back around 2000-2002 I ran a "free webmaster resources without ads" site, telling everyone about the evils of banners and popups, so suffice it to say I'd never use them myself. (Though I did advocate targeted text affiliate links to things potentially of use to visitors, and employed those extensively to make some money until for some reason it declined and stopped generating any revenue. As a rambling side note, ironically enough WSN Links was originally supposed to draw people to come visit webmastersite.net so that I could make some money off of the webmaster resources content and its affiliate links... whereas now the roles are completely reversed with the site being just a vehicle for the scripts.)
I have tried an affiliate link to LunarPages web hosting, but got no result from it. Also I have the ulsearch integration which earns me a percentage of revenues (10% I think) for all the WSN Links users of it, but at last check that had totaled up to all of $7 thanks to 80+ users, so there really wasn't much point to it.
Your ranked 48000 on alexa so you must receive a lot of traffic.
With a glance at the awstats logs, it appears to average about 100 uniques of non-spiders a day at the main domain and another 400/day at the scripts subdomain (annoyingly it doesn't seem to give combined stats). In raw page views it comes out to about 2500/day. Don't know if I'd call that a lot, but it could certainly be worse.
Hm, in another glance I see the second most searched term to arrive at the scripts subdomain this month (behind "WSN") is "porn photos"... a lot of dissapointed visitors.
I did not find it before when I was looking for classified ads or general online data clasification program as a yellow pages script. So I think your work should be promoted also for these applications that are the one I see your job is driving to.
Unfortunately I'm not quite sure how to do that. All the listings of WSN Links around the internet are in "Link indexing" categories, and the directories would most likely not appreciate it being submitted to multiple categories. Now that mrowton has made a classifieds template set, I may find some way to promote that, but I don't yet have a plan for exactly how I'll do that (though putting a mention of it on wsnlinks.com would obviously be a good start).
Even more, should the name Links be maintained considering the stage of development you program has at the moment?
About two years ago (if I remember right) when I was transitioning WSN Links from a free to a paid script and spawning off the Basic Edition as the free version, I think it was pablo who suggested I leave the "WSN Links" name with the free version and use a new more generalized name for the full script. My reponse then still applies now -- branding is priceless. There are reviews of WSN Links around the internet. I've got a decent hotscripts rating for it. All the links to the script reference WSN Links. The reputation of WSN Links has reached the point of being fairly well-catalogued on various sites. If I changed the name I'd be throwing all that away and trying to rebuild all the name recognition for a new name. And I'm really not sure I could ever duplicate the trick with a new name -- I've tried my best to promote WSN Gallery and WSN KB, yet they've really gone nowhere and WSN Links is still where almost all my revenue comes from. It's far too risky to mess with what's working, so it's got to stay as WSN Links.
Member
Usergroup: Customer
Joined: Oct 30, 2004
Total Topics: 18
Total Comments: 47
Yeah Thanks Paul we finally developed a really good looking template for our sites.
http://www.urbanboston.com/directory/
It looked so sweet to us we puchased 9 more licenses.
I've also plugged your scripts in the webmasters forums I frequent (without affiliate link).
It's just a kickbutt kinda program...
Forum Regular
Usergroup: Customer
Joined: Aug 09, 2004
Location: Chile
Total Topics: 172
Total Comments: 462
All the listings of WSN Links around the internet are in "Link indexing" categories, and the directories would most likely not appreciate it being submitted to multiple categories
If I changed the name I'd be throwing all that away
Paul,
Some more thoughts just with the aim of triying be constructive:
I also believe for shure name should not be changed for the actual product, but the question is, would it be maintained from maybe a ver. 4.0 onwards ? Maybe be from this ver. onwards you can have a name that fits more to the capabilities of your program to the proyection of it and to help clearly be recongized as the base of other applications. Regarding this last point I believe an important issue is to develop commercial templates for different applications. Each template (just the template as an application for WSN main) can be promoted to it's correspondig category on script-web directories and linked to it's own page at WSN main site.
Kindest Regards.
Forum Regular
Usergroup: Customer
Joined: Oct 18, 2003
Total Topics: 32
Total Comments: 114
Paul great script. Highly recomend WSN Links to anyone and have to many. Great support. Always helped me on issues. Keep up the good work Paul. I seen other links scripts out for a heck of lot more money than this one and that does a lot less. The potential for the script is basically unlimited with an somewhat experience web site builder familiar with php it can do amazing things. I must say Thank You Paul for all the time you have spent with my problems with the script, which in the most part was me trying to modify things to suit my needs.
Liz