| LED Digest 1971: The Incredible Disappearing Ezine |
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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 18, 2005 Issue #1971 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== The Incredible Disappearing Ezine ==-- ~ Martha Retallick "I'm beginning to suspect that a lot of my readers are not getting [my ezine] anymore." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Traffic Stats from RSS Feeds? ==-- ~ Tom Aman "...without the numbers, you have to take all of the intangibles on faith..." --== Problems with Web Design ==-- ~ Tom Anson "...writing for the web is different than plain, ordinary good writing." --== The Enemy is Always Present ==-- ~ Michael Linehan "I certainly have no ethical problem with revealing the identity of would-be criminal." ~ Mark Whitman "What a load of crap!" ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== URL Correction ==-- ~ Ken Evoy ======== NEW ===================================== From: Martha Retallick Subject: The incredible disappearing e-mail newsletter I converted my e-zine to an HTML format at the beginning of March. I'm beginning to suspect that a lot of my readers are not getting it anymore. Case in point: Here's a message from a subscriber: --------------------- "Martha, I keep getting your e-newsletter / updates (see below - it's the sum total of what arrived under your email of this day and date / subject line) with zero text or attachments!" ( What followed was a blank space. ) --------------------- So, LED Digest members and gumshoes, what is behind the mystery of the incredible disappearing e-mail newsletter? Is it due to the fact that I'm sending my e-zine in HTML, and due to the popularity of this format among spammers, it's being filtered out by ISPs? He is not the first subscriber to report this problem. Here's the issue that my subscriber had difficulty seeing: http://snipurl.com/eytc [postcardmarketingsecrets.com] And, FWIW, his ISP is BellSouth. I don't know what e-mail program he's using, or whether this is the source of the problem. Martha Retallick "The Passionate Postcarder" http://www.postcardmarketingsecrets.com ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Tom Aman Subject: RSS traffic > If you're going to take full advantage of RSS technology, > you cannot track its effectiveness through Web site statistics... > There are intangibles involved which provide their own value. - Michael Martinez, LED 1970 Small point - you CAN get a good idea of the number of people who type your domain name into their browser because in your log files this will show up as a page hit with with no refering URL (although I realize you cannot tell how many did this because they saw it in the feed). The big problem is that without the numbers, you have to take all of the intangibles on faith - you have to hope that the effort put into running a feed are actually accomplishing something. For a serious business operation, that is a major item. If all of the content is in the feed, then all you can do is hope that it is being viewed. If you are just doing a site for fun (like a lot of blogs) or if you don't really care what the return on your effort might be, then having the numbers is immaterial. I ran across one site that has 12 feeds, each with a "prayer of the moment" on a specific area. I suspect that, for the owner of this site, it is really unimportant as to whether the number of readers for any given feed is one or a million, the important thing to that person is that the prayer is available to anyone who feels the need. I have no argument with that. The same can be said for anyone with a site that just wants to get any kind of information out to the world where the result does not need to me monetized. The numbers may be totally unimportant. But to any of us who are running sites that need to make money, the numbers are very important. If the hours spent maintaining a feed do not generate dollars, then the time would be better spent doing something else that will generate dollars. To not know the facts is the equivalent of spending on an advertising campaign but making no attempt to see how well it is actually working. For example, when you clip a mail-in coupon from a magazine and the address includes some department number, the chances are that the only thing that department number identifies is the magazine from which the coupon came so the advertiser can tell how well that campaign actually worked. The clipout coupon that you take into a store for some discount is often that store's means of measuring the effectiveness of their flyer distribution. Same for the grocery store's weekly specials - the increase in sales of those items gives some concrete indication of the effectiveness of their flyers. Again with Web URLs - sometimes when you see a URL in the form http://some.site/somepage.asp?asdf, the only purpose of the "asdf" is to identify the source of the click in the resulting log file. The advertising industry has dozens of methods of making these measurements, some obvious, some not. And very often the measurements are only approximations - "sales up ~15%" rather than "120 more customers". In Web terms the only measurement might be that "since the feed became active, hits are up ~20%" or "for 3 days after a feed update, hits go up ~5%". All of which brings me back to my original request to feed maintainers: does anyone have goods stats on how effective their feed is in generating business? Tom Aman Aman Software http://www.cyberspyder.com amant, cyberspyder.com -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Tom Anson Subject: Web design I have to agree with Beth Earle's comments about plug-and-play web sites (LED 1967). But I'd add another point: 3. Even if you happen to be one of the few who can write well and have the time to actually do the writing, writing for the web is different than plain, ordinary good writing. You need someone who understands how to write an effective web page, or all of your money and efforts are largely wasted. Before I got involved in the internet (selling essential oils and nutritional supplements on-line), I had done a lot of writing. Most people who have read my work consider me to be a very good writer. I also have some pages on my primary website that do an excellent job of taking complex materials and presenting them in an easy-to-understand manner. I've had several requests for the right to copy these pages. BUT, when I hired a *professional* to to re-write some pages (thanks Karen), I couldn't believe the difference it made. Another aspect of plug-and-play web sites is that the coding generally stinks. I haven't seen one yet that doesn't have terribly bloated code -- including a lot of "hidden" links -- where the link is in the code, but the user doesn't have a page for that, so he/she simply deletes the link text. My feeling is that it's well worth the money to have a web site done right. -- Tom Anson Anson Digital Concerns http://www.ansondigitalconcerns.com/ -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Michael Linehan Subject: The enemy > One of the most fundamental privacy and security factors > everyone... should know is that you must NEVER publicly > publish ANY other person's email address ANYWHERE > without that person's specific permission. To do so is > malicious, dangerous and abusive. - Trevor Johnson, LED 1970 I don't have that original post, but in my memory, the desired purpose was illegal. Is that true? If so, I certainly have no ethical problem with revealing the identity of would-be criminal. Michael Linehan, Marketing Alchemy [please see issue 1968 for the original post. -ed.] -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Mark Whitman Subject: The enemy What a load of crap! Trevor's pompous morality lesson is one example of how spam became the problem it is. Most people take no action against spammers and spam has flourished as a result. Back when the Internet community took matters into its own hands to protect itself from abuse, spammers quickly learned the error of their ways and many abandoned the practice of spamming as a matter of survival. You promote what you permit Trevor [...] don't try to stop those who are willing to step up to the plate to protect the environment we depend on. Who's going to protect the 'net if vigilantes don't, the government? Does the Can-Spam farce ring a bell? It's useless, just like your suggestion to do nothing. I second Kathy's request for contact info on the lowlife Marty had the misfortune of crossing paths with. M. Whitman ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Ken Evoy Subject: Correction Hi to all, Tom Aman wrote, regarding the free copy of MYCPS! that I put up for the LED community... > There is a problem with the download URL. It should > read http://www.sitesell.com/LED/mycps.exe > (Remember, the Internet is usually case sensitive - LED > needs to be upper case in this URL.) Actually, the REAL lesson is to test every URL before mailing. ;-) The URL was corrected as soon as I received the last LED and clicked on the link, purely out of habit and... OOPS! Should have done that before mailing. And THEN, if I was really smart, I should have left BOTH versions of the URL up to avoid any further confusion. So in fact, I'm writing only to let everyone know that the URL was changed to lower-case directory format almost immediately... http://www.sitesell.com/led/mycps.exe (self-extracting zip file) However, now that the upper-case is out there again, I've uploaded it, too, for everyone, just to avoid further confusion. Also, in case this is coming out-of-context, MYCPS! fills that one big gap in knowledge that we have found most people suffer from. We all know how to write to SELL. But most small business people have no idea how to write to PREsell. We sell this book from... http://mycps.sitesell.com/ I was offering it to this wonderful LED community within the context of the "Web design" thread and out of respect and thank you to a group from which I've learned much. I'll leave it up for a few more days to spare an frustrations you may have had. Sorry about the bother. Ken Evoy http://www.sitesell.com/ ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2005 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "I've tried to create an atmosphere where I'm a friend first, boss second. Probably entertainer third." - David Brent |
