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'Word of Mouth' is still one of the most effective marketing techniques, online or offline.

Joe arrives at your website and he likes it. In fact, he'd like to tell Fred about it. It's just the thing Fred's been looking for. What if Joe could recommend your website to Fred by sending him an email straight from your website?

Well, he can...if you have an 'email to a friend' script installed on your website.

There are many free scripts that will do this for you. But the one I found easiest to install is a script developed by William Bontrager, called 'Master Recommend'.

This one was easy. I had it working on my second attempt.

You can see this script in action at: http://www.freezineweb.com/index.html

Basically all you have to do is (1) configure the cgi script and upload it to your cgi bin, (2) create a new web page with a form that is linked to the cgi script on your server.

You can download Master Recommend at: http://willmaster.com/master/recommend/mr.pl?v=zip

To get a detailed explanation of how to install it, visit: http://www.willmaster.com/master/recommend/MasterRecommend.manual.html

This script will even send you a copy of your visitor's message (it's useful to know what your visitors think about your website).

If you prefer not to have anything to do with cgi, there's a much easier way of putting 'email to a friend' on your site.

Thetellafriendnetwork.com has a program that is hosted on their site. Installing it is as simple as pasting some HTML code into your web page. Your visitors will be presented with a simple form where they can enter up to three of their friends' email addresses.

You can add this service to your website at the following URL: http://www.thetellafriendnetwork.com/addasite.html

(c) 2001 by Michael Southon