| LED Digest 2007: E-book Ideas and Concerns |
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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 .............................................. August 9, 2005 Issue #2007 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== E-book Options ==-- ~ Brian Rotsztein "After reading about publishing e-books, I have two major concerns..." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Changing IP and SE Rankings ==-- ~ Malik Usman Javaid "...why would crawler or bot go through IPs?" ~ Mauro Jose dos Santos "Keep both for awhile until you make sure Google is reporting the new IP." --== Not Just Linking ==-- ~ Marc P. "I agree there's far too much smoke and mirrors around certain SEO/M practices..." ~ Michael Martinez "This ain't rocket science." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Recommended Email Clients? ==-- ~ Paul Ding ~ Tom Anson --== Revenge of the Spammers ==-- ~ Scott Wang ~ John "zeke" Brumage ======= NEW ===================================== From: Brian Rotsztein Subject: New Topic - E-book Options Hey Everyone, Thanks again for making this list a great source of information. A friend and I are putting together short books which include worksheets. Our target market includes educators and parents of children with special needs (autism, learning disabilities, etc). I am building a website to promote our work and we intend to sell it as a series of e-books. I have been researching e-book options for weeks and have found that most of the sites discussing them are just pages filled with affiliate links, sometimes with useful info but usually lacking. We want our customers to be able to purchase and download the e-books because the worksheets are meant to be used as literally 'hands-on' teaching tools. Our intent was to create them in PDF format. After reading about publishing e-books, I have 2 major concerns for which I would appreciate advice. First, what is the best way to sell these books? For example, should we set up a payment form such as paypal and once it is paid, re-direct them to a page where they can download the file? Is there a way to email it to the purchaser as an attachment? What would be the pros and cons of these approaches and others? What service should we use based on your past experiences? Second, we are worried about fraud and copyright infringement. Since our work will be of value to so many people, it is conceivable that if one parent or educator likes our work, they would email the file to "everyone else." Should we place a password that expires after 14 days on the file or something similar? How would we go about doing this? Should we avoid PDF and use some other system that is safer? Obviously nothing could prevent photocopying but at least the digital format would be protected. One final, more minor concern is pricing. Is there a way to gauge what we should charge? There is nothing like what we are offering that is available and most books, stories, worksheets, and information will be anywhere from 10-50 pages. Thank you so much. Brian Rotsztein ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Usman Malik Subject: Changing IP > Our dilemma is that we've achieved exceptional visibility > and results from Google (as well as MSN and Yahoo) over > this period and understand that a new IP address will likely > result is some fall-off of visibility while the Googlebot > locates our new IP. - Jim Berry, LED 2005 Hello there, We once had a similar issue when we had to migrate to another server, and well its not obviously always down to the IP you have been given but still it does and did matter on search engines. But we survived! How? well trick was simple we placed H1 style comment on each page's top (on old server) that we have moved these to a new location, and click here to continue to the new page, clicking on which took our visitors to a new and most up to date page on our new servers. Trick worked, the crawling back then after 1 week, we had similar and even more good ranking. But theoretically I have been always left to think why did Search engine do that? Like my IP is always masked with a domain name, and well the browsing is done on that even, so why would crawler or bot go through IPs? Anyway things worked for me so I am cool, hope it goes for you too. Malik Usman Javaid, CEO Darbar Tag! - Pakistan http://www.darbar.biz/ -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Mauro Jose Dos Santos Subject: Changing IP and SE Rankings Keep both for a while until you make sure google is reporting the new IP. During the make over have a script redirecting searches and hits to the old IP to the new one. Following those steps you will remains googable! Regards. Mauro Jose dos Santos, MA, Dr. Artwork New Marketing, Brazil -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Marc P. Subject: Linking Dirk, thank you for such a well-informed, reasoned and rational opinion [issue 2006]. I agree there's far too much smoke and mirrors around certain SEO/M practices, and as you point out, not all of it is from the so-called "black hat" community. It also comes from those who have built their business models persuading others that only certain practices are "ethical", and setting themselves up as the moral high-ground. Your post was most refreshing. Regards Marc P. marcp, osiristrading.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Michael Martinez Subject: Linking > Michael has been claiming that nearly all > reciprocal linking is being nullified. - Dirk Johnson, LED 2006 Once again, you put words into my mouth. I have never made any such claim. I have simply pointed out that reciprocal linking is NOT NECESSARY. I don't sell link building services. I don't use link building services. And I discontinued my own linking program years ago (http://www.xenite.org/essays/articles_0000/13.html). > I'll allow that legitimate links, placed as content citations, > when they are unsolicited, unpaid, and (importantly) > unprompted, are certainly the most genuine links to get... > For most sites, waiting for that to happen is just not > a practical option... Well, most commercial Web sites can get free unsolicited, unreciprocated links from major services right now. Will that last forever? Who knows? But people don't need to sit in the dark and tell themselves they cannot get free, good quality links. Everyone, right now, who can tie a physical address to their business should be taking control of their Local listings at Yahoo! Local, MSN Local, and Google Local. These are FREE DIRECTORY LISTINGS from the major services. They can also update their listings in various online telphone directories such as Switchboard FOR FREE. I use these services every day for my online research. Regrettably, most companies don't know they can take control over their listings and get the free linkage. Any company that releases a new product, starts up a new service, celebrates an anniversary, hires a new executive, builds or leases a new facility, expands its service area, lowers its pricing structure, etc. has a legitimate reason to put out a press release. You don't have to pay to get press releases distributed online, although it now appears that the search engines are no longer indexing any of the free press releases in their news services. You can add a press release to your own site for free (this increases your indexable content and internal linkage). Writing good press releases is a bit of an art, and it would probably behoove this discussion group for us to start a discussion on how to do it. But my point is that most Web site operators under-utilize the resources available to them. You don't need to morally justify the use of these kinds of resources. They are available for free, they are intended to help business site operators increase their visibility, and they don't require a great deal of time and effort. Most Web sites don't need very many inbound links. The vast majority of the business Web sites I look at every day are poorly designed, not optimized, and just don't take advantage of the easy, natural means of increasing their own visibility. Long before you pay anyone for SEO services, you should be sure you have covered the basics yourself. Why? Because if you don't master the basics on your own, how can you possibly hope to know which SEO services you need, or how to pick someone who will provide you a quality service? This ain't rocket science. We don't need to make it look like it is. Michael Martinez http://www.michael-martinez.com/ ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Paul Ding Subject: Email apps > I am looking for a SAFE e-mail client that can live > on a small network and share a common message > file / database. It has to be easy to use, and safe. - Richard Stubbings, LED 2004 The first specification being SAFE, I'd rule out Eudora, which uses MSIE to display HTML email. For over a decade, I've been using Pegasus. It's been around longer since 1990 - longer than any other internet email program for the PC. It was initially written to be used on a Novell Netware network, so networking should not be a concern. I spend half my time on Linux servers, half my time on my local PC, so it would be convenient if I didn't have to mentally switch gears between dir and ls, between virgules and backslashes, etc. The one thing that's keeping my desktop firmly rooted in XP Pro is Pegasus; I can't find another email program that can do what Pegasus is capable of. About a year ago, I thought I would isolate my email files to a separate disk, so that my other drives would stay defragmented, and was surprised to find that they wouldn't all fit on a 30-GB drive. They're even bigger today, but Pegasus deals wells with that tremendous amount of data. I recommend Pegasus to my customers, as safer than Microsoft's software. The newbies to PCs like the ease of use. The experienced users appreciate the power. There's a new public beta out. A beta of Pegasus, though, is safer and more stable than most other companies' gold code. The price is right, too. For a personal copy, it's free. If you use it in your business, it's free. If you want a site license, it's free. I tell my users to buy a manual for $30 because the programmer deserves to be paid for this software, but that they shouldn't bother reading it. Pegasus is available for download from http://pmail.com Paul Ding http://amishhosting.com ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Tom Anson Subject: Email apps Charles Oertel (LED 2006) recommended Mozilla Thunderbird for email. When I switched to FireFox this year, I tried Thunderbird as well. There is a lot I really liked about it, but I also ran into a lot of problems trying to do HTML email. With some work, I was usually able to get it looking okay in my window, but there were often surprising results at the other end. I asked around about this, and the only answer I ever received was to stick with plain text. So I switched back to OutLook Express (sigh . . . ). A couple of times over the years, I've tried Eudora. I never could make it work. I can't remember what the problems were -- I never got far enough into it to have a clue what the problems were. I have a question, too: What is "safe computing"? Tom Anson Anson Aromatic Essentials ------- new post - new topic -------- From: Scott Wang Subject: Spammer revenge > A couple of weeks ago I wrote to you of a site that I had made > as a result of receiving spam ["A Little Humor", issue 2000]. > Although it was tongue in cheek, it obviously hurt somebody > because for the last week I have been the target of scammers > using my domain name to run a phishing scam. - John Quinlan, LED 2006 John I'm not sure what to say. Your domain is registered through MelbourneIT - have you tried logging in and changing the DNS addresses yourself through the control panel? Have you tried calling them instead of emailing? Are you using Pipex Communications for hosting? If so, everything appears to be in order. When I visit the site it works fine - your original site shows up. No phishing at all that I can see. We are talking about the spam-scam.co.uk site right? Scott Wang Scott's Computing ------- new post - same topic -------- From: John "Zeke" Brumage Subject: Spammer revenge You may rest assured that your site has not been tampered with. Phishing emails may have a link that appears to go to your site, they may serve the pages in such a way as to make it appear that they are coming from you, but your site is probably not touched. (Which is apparently what you discovered upon "cleaning" and re-uploading your site. Unless your password has been compromized, it is extremely unlikely they can add pages to your site. The second email... Is probably not from your hosting company, but actually another embodiment of phishing.. Could you send me the original message source (in Outlook: highlight the email, click file, properties, details, and message source, then ctrl-a to select all, and ctrl-c to copy) start a new email to john (at) brumage (dot) com, and hit ctrl-v to paste the source. I will be happy to analyze and annotate the source and post it here as a help. In general, if you follow the instructions and look at the source, you will find that the email originated from another domain, not your web hosting company. I know we all appreciated your little joke page, and its a darn shame some spammer took offense (and phishing is a federal felony) and subjected you to such unnecessary grief. John "zeke" Brumage anyhoo dot 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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