| LED Digest 1968: The Enemy is Always Present |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest post, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. May 11, 2005 Issue #1968 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== The Enemy is Always Present ==-- ~ Marty R. Milette "I wanted to share a recent request by someone wanting me to develop a custom toolbar for them." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Merchant Account for Infrequent Transactions ==-- ~ Reg Charie "Have you looked at 2CheckOut's card processing service?" ~ Tom Aman "...I have heard that Paymentech are suitable for low volume accounts." --== Problems with Web Design ==-- ~ Mark Roberts "I now market myself as a solutions provider." ~ Ed Clark "Well, I got a big laugh at Rick Gortatowsky's thoughts..." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Traffic Stats from RSS Feeds? ==-- ~ Michael Martinez ~ Martha Retallick ======== NEW ==================================== From: Marty R. Milette Subject: The enemy is always present... I wanted to share a recent request received by someone wanting me to develop a custom toolbar for them. I publish it here so you get an idea just how low some people want to go. (Money seems the root of this evil.) Yes, my system COULD easily produce such a toolbar -- but NO, I flatly DECLINED the offer! :) ------------------------ Dear Sir, We need a custom built toolbar that does the following: 1. Silent Installation upon execution 2. Completely invisible in IE 3. URL hijacking (Eg. If someone types in www.test.com in the browser toolbar should redirect to www.test.com/?testtest or whatever is specified in the hijack url file that should be fetched from our servers once a day. We should also be able to use " * " for url hijacking, eg. if we specify *tool* in hijack url file, all domains containing "tool" should be redirected to a site we specify. 4. Check our site for toolbar upgrade, if upgrade is available it should be executed silently, if not, ignore it silently. 5. Every hour it should fetch popup html from our servers. This type of popup should not be blockable by other software. If popup html is not available at our servers, it should ignore it and not open an empty popup window. Please let us know if you are willing to code this type of toolbar for us and how much it would cost. Regards, [Name Deleted] ------------------------ Marty R. Milette http://www.custom-toolbars.com ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Reg Charie Subject: Merchant accounts > I would like to be able to take credit cards... I would > only need to do this 20 - 25 time a year and total > amount of the sales could only be $500 - $750/yr. - Mark Roberts, LED 1967 Hi Mark, Have you looked at 2CheckOut's card processing service? (www.2checkout.com). There is only a one time setup fee of $50 -- no monthly or gateway fees as they act as a reseller. No electricity should not be a problem if you are using a laptop with a wireless connection. You could set it up to be on your purchase page, log the customer's details and turn it around for them to enter their credit card details. Thank You, Reg Charie www.dotcom-productions.com -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Tom Aman Subject: Merchant accounts This is pure "hearsay", but I have heard that Paymentech (www.paymentech.com) have low rates and are suitable for low volume accounts. My wife has a similar problem with her business (in Canada) and I am just ready to start checking out the possible options. I expect that, as long as there is telephone or cell phone service, it would be possible to safely accept credit cards almost anywhere. I will follow up this post in a day or two as soon as I have further information. Tom Aman Aman Software http://www.cyberspyder.com -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Mark Roberts Subject: Web design > I was hoping that this post would generate some ideas... - Catherine Parvensky, LED 1964 Catherine, let me throw in my .03 here...... I am not sure you will ever be able to supply a convincing reponse to these questions or the people to pose them. I currently run 3 businesses, one of them being a web development business. Almost all of my customer base comes from people who were referred to me by other customers of mine, so I have not really had to go out and look for business. I mention this for a couple of reasons: 1. Small businessmen (and women) either know the value of a service or are convinced that if they do something themselves, then it must be free and you will have a very difficult time convincing them otherwise. When I first started out, I also believed this until I finallly came to the realization that my time is not free. 2. I now market myself as a solutions provider. If you need someone who can just create a website, you can find them at the local elementary school. I provide much more than development services. I review what my customer is trying to do and provide a solution that will accomplish that. It may be just a few web pages or it may be a web application involving a database, RSS, XML or other technologies. 3. When customers are refered to me, I know that they already know about what I charge and what I can do. I impress them with my quick and prompt customer service and responses to their needs. Not every situation warrants a quick fix...but every situation warrants a quick response. I provide that for my customers, they appreciate that, and I am rewarded with customer retention. Try to get that from a 4.95 hosting service or a template. One of the other businesses that I have is building birdhouses. Mine are very well crafted (and I don't charge nearly enough for them....but that is another story). It not unusual for a customer to walk by my booth and hear them whisper to another person that my prices are way too high. 5 minutes later another person walks in the booth and compliments me on my work and states that my prices are way too low. Value of a product or service is a matter of perception. My suggestion would be this: If someone asks these questions, my response would be "You get what you pay for". You would probably want to rephrase that somewhat, but the point is the same. Try to cultivate new clients from your existing clients. Ask your current clients if you can use them as a reference. In other words, don't market yourself is a web designer, but as a web solutions provider. If you want to do nothing but web design, then think about sub-contracting yourself out. Mark Roberts Roberts Computing Systems http://www.robertscomputing.com -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Ed Clark Subject: Web Design > Plug And Play web's ... assure the prospective customer > such as businesses effective sites, real SEO ... - Rick Gortatowsky, LED 1964 Well, to say the least, I got a big laugh at Rick Gortatowsky's thoughts ("Plug & Play" websites). This digest has given me many new and wonderful ideas to pass on to my client base and answered many of my questions about so many subjects. To get a giggle now and then is just a bonus. While I have a printing business for over 25 years, I have been doing Web Design for over 3 years. My client base is mostly smaller business. I really enjoy doing the design work, which is my reason for creating websites. For Rick, my background in education is more than MBA. I have been involved with building computers for so long that I have seen most all of the software since the beginning. My brother, living in the Silicon Valley area, is responsible for a great deal of software. Wonderful things can and will be done in this area. However, I am not shaking in my boots with worry about losing my client base as Rick projects. Most of my clients would not even be thinking about the Internet if it was not for the someone like myself starting the ball rolling. If "Plug & Play" websites come to be the norm, website designers will still be in the picture. (I have to show almost all of my smaller clients how to visit their own site, how will they use this valuable software? ). The big boys will get their share. Of this I am certain, but that is the truth about all business. As to the question of small or larger business to design for, I have more small business than large. I could make a living with the small business, but if you do well with small size business, larger business will come your way. If you enjoy what you do, keep on trucking. Learn all you can, because you will never learn it all. Most of all, offer your client base a fair deal and work with them after their Web Site goes live. They will appreciate it and help you get the new clients you need to succeed. Ed Clark ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Michael Martinez Subject: RSS traffic > Since Michael has used RSS feeds for some time... maybe > he can give us some real stats on the subject. An RSS feed > is almost guaranteed to generate lots of inbound traffic... - Tom Aman, LED 1967 (snip a lot of unrealistic numbers) Mr. Aman occasionally rewrites what other people say in the most unfavorable ways. What I actually said, rather than simply claiming to "get lots of traffic" was: > My sites get widespread exposure and visibility through RSS feeds. > They are a good source of generating inbound links and traffic. I > have been using RSS feeds to build links and traffic since 1998. Anyone who looks at .RSS feeds as only a source of traffic doesn't understand what .RSS technology is doing. An .RSS file itself should be viewed as content. When converted to HTML format, it is a page of links. My sites include many HTML pages of links. Everyone's traffic will differ based on who their target audience is and what they offer. In OUR statistics, the most active aggregators tend to be Web aggregators. There is one possible aggressive desktop aggregator. All of these aggregators, so far as I have been able to determine, are converting our .RSS feeds to HTML pages. The MAJORITY of our .RSS hits come from Web aggregators. There are many of them. The two most active sites retrieve files once every 5 minutes. That's an average of 288 retrievals per day per file. The largest .RSS file currently on my server is just over 7000 bytes. That works out to less than 2 megabytes per day, or about 58 megabytes per month. In fact, we only record about 1200 retrievals a day for all 12 .RSS files. Worst-case scenario for us on bandwidth at current retrievals (mostly from the Web aggregators) is about 8 megabytes a day, or 240 megabytes a month. In reality, it's much less. Since we lease a dedicated server and run at about 30 Gigabytes per month, the .RSS feeds are trivial (less than 1% of our bandwidth). Since traffic isn't all I'm looking for with the .RSS feeds, I don't do anything special to track page views they generate. I see the traffic coming from the aggregator sites and know they do send traffic. They also get crawled, because I check their listings in the search engines. But I have no way of measuring the number of page views an aggregator site that uses our .RSS feeds realizes, unless they remotely link to the graphics associated with some of the .RSS files. And I'm not seeing much activity on those images, so the aggregators appear to be caching them. An .RSS feed distributes my content to other servers. That is, no doubt, why many people now say RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication" (rather than the original "Rich Site Summary". Michael Martinez, Author Understanding Middle-earth, Parma Endorion, and Visualizing Middle-earth http://www.michael-martinez.com/ ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Martha Retallick Subject: RSS - The hype vs. the reality I publish an e-zine that goes out to more than 4,200 subscribers, and I've been contemplating the idea of offering it as an RSS feed. So, I asked my readers if they'd be interested. Result: One reader e-mailed back to ask what an RSS feed was. So, in spite of all of the RSS hype, reality shows that it has a long way to go. Martha Retallick http://www.postcardmarketingsecrets.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2005 Orange Wheel, LLC. 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