Interview with Martin Pedersen (FreeIndex.com)
By Brad CulbertMartin Pedersen is the Webmaster of www.freeindex.com which is a great free source for finding Webmaster and Internet related freebies. FreeIndex.com also has several Webmaster discussion forums and hundreds of user comments about the resources it lists.
1. How important do you think it is for new and existing webmasters to have access to free resources such as those listed on Freeindex?
It is like when animals grow up. When they are little they have no chance of surviving on their own. They have to train their survival skills from home by playing with each other.The same way new webmasters have no chance of creating a successful website right away - one that can support the hosting fees and so forth. So the free webmaster resources are like our playground. I, for one, would never had gotten involved with webmastering if it hadn't been for the free webspace providers.
2. One excellent feature I have noticed while using Freeindex is the helpful information provided on each link. For example, showing the impression ratio and accepted banner sizes for each banner exchange next to their link. What other time saving techniques have been incorporated in Freeindex to help visitors?
The one I like the best is the user reviews section. Here people can post their own reviews of the free services. Nobody can tell you what you need to know about a free service then a fellow webmaster. Surely you would guess that the service itself would be more qualified, but would they ever tell you about all of their downsides?
3. Clear design and consistent layout are important in any website, even more so in a site like Freeindex. What design aspects were taken into consideration when designing Freeindex?
Well, I did the FreeIndex design myself, and I am not very good in that area. I am more of a program-code-writing guy. But when I made this design I kept my mind on two things: Fast loading, and easy navigation. I think that I have accomplished both by using only few graphics and instead used a lot of tables and bgcolors.
4. It is well known around the web that building a community around your website is an excellent way of drawing back repeat visitors. Have you used this technique? If so, what features have been utilized for this purpose?
You are right, building an interactive community is worth a lot for those who want to earn money by showing banners. And I too have tried to take advantage of this.Of course I had to have the message boards - everybody has those. But unfortunately it also turns out for many that they do not have enough visitors to keep a discussion forum alive.The user reviews was another tool that introduced to make people come back. Unfortunately it turned out that other big sites like freewebspace.net and freecenter.com added similar tools to their sites later :)
5. Advertising plays a large role in helping maintain many sites offering free content. How big a role does advertising have on Freeindex?
Actually I have never really been thinking about buying advertisement for FreeIndex... although it would probably generate a better CTR than most other banners. But before I could afford paid advertisement I had learned that swapping links was the key to the most visitors. That and a link at Yahoo! helped me to get a good start.Of course I've been using banner exchanges and link submission services and so on. But those are nothing compared to the link swapping and a large useful site which makes people come back AND spread the word :)
6. Obviously with a site like Freeindex, there is a lot of work maintaining and updating links. Do you rely on scripts to do a lot of the repetitive tasks? What are some of the other tasks involved in running a service such as Freeindex?
At first, like most others, I worked with plain HTML files and took link submissions by email. But that soon showed to be enormously time consuming. I am now using the second version of a couple of CGI scripts which save, present and even check links. After I made these new scripts each link on the site is saved in a database and fetched each time someone load the page.Another thing that really takes up time when running a site like this is the email support. You would be surprised to find out how many people actually contact you with the strangest questions.
7. With 16 categories already existing, and features such as user comments, forums and topsites already existing, what plans do you have for Freeindex in the near future?
To tell you the truth, I am not sure. The free email service was the last of my ideas. Do you have any ideas?Actually I think that keeping the index up to date with new links and user comments is what people really want. At least that is what a recent poll among the visitors showed. So I guess that I will be focusing on that for a period :)