| LED Digest 1976: Google Droppings |
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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 .............................................. June 1, 2005 Issue #1976 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Cancelled Orders ==-- ~ Thomas Yoon "I have been selling digital ebooks by download." ~ Rob Bishop "[A friend] has simply built into his prices the cost of a charge back..." ~ Dave Starr "Anyone looked very deeply into the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard...?" --== PHP & SQL ==-- ~ Michael Linehan "PHP / MySQL are...way overkill for small sites." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Automatically Updating RSS Feeds ==-- ~ Renee Kennedy --== Dropped off Google ==-- ~ Jonathan Webb ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Yoon Chee Tuck Subject: cancelled orders > Recently, orders from my website have been getting > cancelled and refunds requested... I sell digital content > that is sent to the customer on CD-ROM. - George Oliver, LED 1974 I have been selling digital ebooks by download. The way I do it is by designing the ebook so that some pages can be viewed normally while others are locked by passwords. After the potential customer has taken the time to browse through the contents of the normal pages and they are fully satisfied that the password protected pages will also contain similar information, they will then decide to buy the password to unlock the remaining pages. I do not rush them to buy as I do not put a time limit for them to decide. Once they are sure that the hidden information is worth getting, they will pay willingly and they will not claim a chargeback. Regards Thomas Yoon http://www.free-marine.com -------- new post - same topic ------- From: Rob Bishop Subject: Cancelled orders Hello, I am a subscriber since 199-something (back when there was an actual service called Link Exchange then Microsoft bought them ( if I remember correctly ) and called it ClickTrade...wow...memories) and although I do not post a lot I do still read almost every issue. George's post was interesting. I am not sure why he would hold his domain name back, or why he would worry about catching heat. I think his concerns are legitimate. I sell hard goods, and do not take credit cards for my bulk orders. (500 - 50,000 pieces at a time) Now that would be a nightmare, getting a charge back on a $75,000 US order. Ouch ! A good friend of mine does run a very successful site that you can purchase downloads from. He has simply built in to his price the cost of a charge back. His biggest concern is keeping below the CC merchants percentage for refunds and chargebacks so that they do not freeze his account and shut him down. He even had his people write a script so that his order page linked to three or four different gateways (all separate merchant accounts from separate companies) so that he could spread sales around, lowering his exposure. If he received warnings from a merchant account that he was approaching his max. for chargebacks for the month, he would simply take that merchant out of the loop. I could be wrong, but this seems like the nature of the beasts. Even shipping hard goods, which I do, we still get a person that logs on from an IP address from there town, signs the UPS clipboard at the door, and then states they never received it. Too much work to pursue ( $ 20 - $ 50 sale ) and even with all the evidence the merchant account upholds the chargeback. There are things you can do, like post the persons IP Address on the web, and state in plain English your policies but in the end, this will not stop everyone. I would simply work out a percentage per month and build it in to your price. Consider it shoplifting online. Bear Hugs Rob Bishop Binkley Custom Products www.customplushtoys.com www.custommadefigurines.com -------- new post - same topic ------- From: Dave Starr Subject: Cancelled orders I found this thread very interesting when it started a few days ago .. mainly because I have been toying with a business plan that would involve selling digital content as well and the subject of phony refunds and charge backs has definitely been on my mind. I think the advice to do the process from one's own site certainly has much merit (assuming the numbers justify it), but here's another apparent hurdle. Anyone looked very deeply into the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard which takes effect at the end of next month? I've been perusing the standard and it seems that any small retailer site might suddenly incur a huge amount of overhead if processing their own card customers. Perhaps there is some way around this for retailers less than a certain size? If not, for tiny startup operations it seems a 3rd-party card processor might be the only practical way to go. Dave Starr www.satviz.com -------- new post - new topic ------- From: Michael Linehan Subject: PHP SQL > What are the feelings about providing content that is > called up through databases, rather than through > plain old HTML? Do search engines read it with > a difference? - Wanda Gersheid, LED 1973 Hi Wanda, I'd love to look at your site to make a more coherent comment, because what is best for one site is not best for another. Note the other post last night -- Chad talking about his amateurish, plain old bloated HTML, very successful site. (Thanks Chad!) [see Chad Black's post in issue 1973] Given all that, beware of bleeding edge types or code freaks making out like you must have the latest or the most tech. PHP / MySQL are great -- for big sites with a lot of updating, or for large catalogues. In my experience, it's way overkill for small sites. It's just not worth the trouble if you have a few or a few dozen basic pages. And then, instead of managing your own site, you'll probably need the programmer to do anything beyond the most basic editing in the CMS. Such a dynamic site CAN be fine for the search engines, IF the person constructing it knows how to do that. E.g. long query strings are out. So if you do a dynamic site, check about that. Maybe a blog would be good. Maybe a niche-targeted gallery would be great. However, how many is "more than one young consumer"? What do all the silent ones want. Maybe the majority are completely happy with your site. I can't comment intelligently on any of that without knowing your market. But beware of marketing reactively or opportunistically because of the comments of a few. Plan. Market proactively and strategically. Remember, people do not come to your site for the design or for the technology. They come for your products and information. And they aren't persuaded to buy by techno- toys. They are persuaded by what you offer, the quality of what you offer, and the quality of your marketing copy. Take the feedback you've received and use it as PART of figuring out your strategic goal and plan. Your strategic goal then provides the standard by which any decisions are best made. Michael Linehan, Marketing Alchemy http://www.marketing-alchemy.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Renee Kennedy Subject: RSS I have set up an RSS feed on our site. However, it is a feed that needs to be updated manually. In my research, I learned that in order to update the feeds automatically I may need something like an RSS Scraper. Can anyone suggest a good scraper? Are their other solutions besides a scraper? www.e-healthcaresolutions.com/articles/ (URL where the feed is located) Thanks in advance, Renee Kennedy ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Jonathan C K Webb Subject: Dropped off Google I know this has happened to others so any advice is welcome My website http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/ has just plunged in Google listings so low its useless. I guess we have another Google dance and my site appears to be penalised but I don't know why. Its a very specialist aerial photography site. It used to come in the top 7 under searches for "aerial photographs UK" and similar placing for similar search terms. I used to be almost always no 1 for searches under "aerial photographs town name" where town name is the name of a northern England Uk ton which I have pictures of, e.g. Bolton, Manchester, Birmingham , Leeds or Liverpool, now I'm not on the first page and maybe no there at all. Curiously the image search still has me at no1 as before but that always lagged behind by about 3 months so I know what will happen soon. This may or may not be relevant but at Christmas I had to move the website from webbaviation.plus.com to webbaviation.co.uk as bandwidth was excessive on my plus.com host. Previously it was addressed as webbaviation.plus.com but with a forward just on the index page for my domain name of webbaviation.co.uk. I put redirects on every page with no other content or keywords on them. Now the old plus.com pages are still sometimes listed but low down, whereas the current site is no where. The website has been online for several years so I doubt it is sand boxed. There are 3800 pages, so I hope I don't have to re write them all. I have a German language section and exactly the same has happened there too. (searching in google.de for "luftaufnahmen Schwelm" I have gone from 1 to not on first page. The daft thing is Google is ruining its own results. Most of my pages ranked no1 because they were the only content on that subject. I have the only page of aerial photographs of Bolton and most other small towns, villages. The new Google results throw up irrelevant pages with usually no aerial photographs whatsoever. Any help / advice would be greatly appreciated as I am an "all eggs in one basket" business and I guess this makes me un employed as of today. Regards, Jonathan Webb www.webbaviation.co.uk ------------------------------------------------------- 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. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "He conquers who endures." - Persius |
