| LED Digest 1787: Building Trust |
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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 adam,led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com ................................................ April 21, 2004 Issue #1787 ................................................ .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ===================== <Moderator Comment> ~ 'Monkey Encoding' Email Addresses --== Building Trust ==-- ~ Jamie T Voss "My biggest concern is building trust in those who might use my services." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Reciprocal Linking: Dead or Alive? ==-- ~ Jill Whalen "...you can expect reciprocal linking...to continue at an even more frenzied pace." --== Why People aren't Buying Online ==-- ~ Sheryl Coppenger "...you have a better chance of becoming a successful online business if you have a unique product." --== HTML Editors? ==-- ~ Dave McClure "...we need to lower our expectations and improve the usability of web publishing tools." --== Keeping it in Perspective ==-- ~ Mark Whitman "Our knowledge not only *is* worth a lot right now, clients are willing to *pay* a lot..." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Patent Attorney Needed ==-- ~ Trent Wilcox ~ Brad Waller ~ Mark Frank ======= NEW ===================================== <Moderator Comment> Just a quick update -- I've been using a new "monkey encoding" system for email addresses recently. You may recall our old system, which was: adam [at] led-digest [dot] com. Effective, definitely. But too time consuming! The new system I've adopted is: adam, led-digest.com I'd like to hear your thoughts. I think this is pretty fail-safe, and it's definitely faster for me. But let me know... Thanks, Adam ----------------------- From: Jamie T Voss Subject: Building Trust First of all, I don't have any dreams of being the next Yahoo or Google. I just want to meet my own very modest goals. Working with very limited resources I've built some Pay Per Click scripts (portxml.com), a search site which I mostly use for testing ideas (vsoftdev.com), and a directory / PPC feed engine (vsofdev.net). I'm building everything from scratch, hoping to use the most pleasant experiences and best ideas I've experienced in other web sites to build one that will be very apealing to others. At least enough others to meet my goals. My biggest concern is building trust in those who might use my services. I honestly want to deliver value and I want potential customers to sense that. My whole reason for being where I am is because I've been disappointed myself. I hope to provide something better for others. Unfortunately, with limited resources I can't afford to have the most beautiful site and to have all my ideas developed immediately. I have to do as best I can as I go. Is this enough? What do you think? Do you have similar concerns? Thanks for listening, Jamie T Voss http://login.vsoftdev.net ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Jill Whalen Subject: Reciprocal linking > People are using yesterday's Google-optimizing technique > (boosting link popularity) under the misguided belief that the > people at Google are too stupid or lazy to have caught on to > the trick after four years. - Michael Martinez, LED 1785 Apparently the people at Google are indeed too stupid or lazy to have caught on, because from where I'm sitting, link farms and worse continue to propel sites to the top of the rankings. In fact, link farms in the guise of directories, are the most prominently featured sites for many commercial search queries at Google. To say that those techniques don't work any more is simply wishful thinking. Until Google actually does come to their senses (or gets smart or whatever), you can expect reciprocal linking, link farming, and all the other quick-fix methods to continue at an even more frenzied pace. After all, Webmasters are only giving Google what they apparently want. Personally, I feel that those techniques are short-sighted, but if you want to do what works at today's Google, then find, buy or trade as many links as you can, regardless of the relevance or significance to your site. At some point it may stop working and you'll have to start from scratch, but it'll work nicely for you at the moment as evidenced by many of the top-ranking sites being shown at Google at this very moment. Jill Whalen High Rankings http://www.highrankings.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Sheryl Coppenger Subject: Buying online > I never buy clothes without first feeling the material. > I never bought from catalogues and I don't buy online. - Ian Dickson, LED 1785 Good for you that you have that option. I'm large and tall and catalogues and online are my best (sometimes only) option for some shoes and articles of clothing. IMO the mistake that a lot of people make when they start an online business is that they are selling an average product to an average market and then wonder why people don't beat a path to their door. I would think that niche marketers do better. I think people who have a history of buying through catalogues also may be more open to buying online. I grew up buying through catalogues. > I did recently go shopping for a piano... in the music shop > I found that a high end electric Yamaha beat the acoustic > ones... So I saved $1000+ buying online based on the > product number. OK, $1000 is a lot. But don't you think you abused your local merchant just a bit by using him for free demos and then buying elsewhere from someone that doesn't have that kind of overhead? If everyone does that, the local guy will go out of business and nobody will have anyplace to comparison shop anymore. If it had been me, I would have tried to talk him down some before I went elsewhere after taking up his time. That said, I'm lucky enough to live in a market where there's a good music retailer who does enough volume to compete with the online folks. I bought a Yamaha P-90 from them last year before the online sellers had it, and I bought it for about the same price that online vendors offered the P-80 (the model the P-90 was replacing). Not high-end, but I wanted something portable. I researched features on the web sites belonging to Yamaha and other vendors. I've also bought acoustic instruments through this shop (clarinet and a violin). > In practice the only things I buy online on a regular basis, (as a > "stranger" are software, air tickets and hotel rooms. (I don't even > use Amazon, I have big local bookshop and like browsing). I do use Amazon, generally for unusual things I can't find in the book and record stores (and I'm in an area where we do have large bookstores -- the problem is they often carry 30 copies each of the same middle-brow items). > Look hard at what you are trying to do, and if, in reality, the best > you can hope for is to inform a future buying decision (or generate > follow up that might lead to one), don't worry too much about > whether or not people are actually transacting business online. And I would say that if you're obviously not a large concern people may be leery of turning over their private info or credit card information to you. I prefer to call in my order if I'm doing business with a mom-and-pop that is on a shared web site with a shopping cart of questionable provenance. But generally I *find* these mom-and-pops through search engines and contact info on the web site, so the web site still is a success. I'd also say that you have a better chance of becoming a successful online business if you have a unique product. I order clothing online because I'm outsize and my local choices are abysmal. I order books and CDs online that I can't get at my local stores. I've ordered hobby materials from Canada and Chicago, lingerie from England, collectibles from England and Australia. Plus, like Ian, I use the Internet to buy plane tickets and hotel rooms. Everyone is different. Sheryl Coppenger, SEAS Computing Facility Staff The George Washington University http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~sheryl ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Dave McClure Subject: HTML editors > It's amazing to me that people use HTML > editors at all, *especially* FrontPage... - Mark Whitman, LED 1786 Sorry, I'd have to say it's amazing to me that people expect that the *average* user will ever learn raw HTML. While it's possible there may be a limited amount of HTML awareness among say 10-20% of online users today, and perhaps a slightly higher number among business people who might want to sell something online, it's naive to think that there will be any significant amount of distribution / adoption without at least providing people a basic, WYSIWYG tool or hosted interface for web publishing. The success and distribution of web publishing tools like FrontPage, Dreamweaver, GoLive, Netobjects Fusion, and any number of other hosted HTML editors is precisely based on their ease of use and their ability to handle HTML creation without requiring folks to get their hands dirty. While I realize this may result in poor ability to do proper formatting & layout, and indeed occasionally some butt-ugly websites, these tools get the job done for people who have no desire and limited ability to do proper HTML editing. For our company (Paypal), we've been modestly successful in getting people to do *very* basic cut-and-paste HTML editing of our payment buttons (see www.paypal.com/pdn-ppsolutions). However, we don't expect very much there, and it's still a problem for many folks who have trouble even setting up websites or doing cut & paste. In order to get our solutions into the hands of the average online user, we've made a very determined effort to build add-in wizards for the tools noted above (and even outlook, see www.paypal.com/outlook ) so that raw HTML editing is not required. Recently, we worked with Macromedia to integrate our website payments functionality into the most recent version of their contribute product ( http://snipurl.com/5uc4 [macromedia.com] ), so that users who don't know HTML can setup a basic storefront solution and easily accept credit cards. Again, if we really want to empower a broad audience ("unwashed masses yearning to breathe free", if you will ;), we need to lower our expectations and improve the usability of web publishing tools. High-end solutions are great for the folks who are willing to learn HTML, but easy-to-use, WYSIWYG tools like FrontPage and Contribute (and indeed, basic blogging tools) that reach out to less-skilled users are what is needed to really make everyone feel like they can be a web publisher. Dave McClure The PayPal Developer Network www.paypal.com/pdn dmcclure, paypal.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Mark Whitman Subject: Perspective > Some people in the Internet Marketing area seem upset that > traditional marketers don't have enough respect for our knowledge > about Search Engines, but as David Yancey points out; in the big > picture our knowledge is not worth that much right now. - Lennart Svanberg, LED 1786 If I had to point to my one biggest mistake regarding Internet marketing it would have to be that I was selling myself short for too long. Our knowledge not only *is* worth a lot right now, clients are willing to *pay* a lot -- right now. For example, I don't condone their tactics, but some spammers have made a killing marketing online. There are many legit marketers who make big incomes too. Our knowledge is worth as much as people are willing to pay for it. If you can spike sales you can make serious money. Part of the problem may be in how some marketers sell their services. Personally, I take my lowest sales conversion results and use that as a benchmark for a marketing agreement. If I know that I can achieve 5% (which I haven't dipped below in years) in sales conversion and I see a product I feel confident I can sell online, I'll go 100% performance based because I can *fairly* confidently project my minimum income. Since I do everything from restructuring the website presentation to SEO / SEM to using a variety of marketing tactics I have total control of my destiny. In some cases it makes sense to make a long term arrangement and in some cases I just make a lump sum guarantee ("bet") with a merchant or entrepreneur type. The deeper I perceive the merchant's pockets to be, the higher the stakes for the "bet". The deal would be something to the effect of "if I can double the sales conversion you're currently getting (which is say 0.9%) within 60 days you pay me $x.00". If I use 5% as my base benchmark for expected sales conversion then I'm well above the point I need to be to "win the bet" which in this example is only 1.8% (this is a typical scenario). My lowest "bet" so far has been $5,000 and I spend about the amount of time I would charge maybe $2500 for on a non-performance basis. This scenario only works however under certain conditions. I turn down business all the time because for the most part I choose my clients, they don't choose me. The point is, the knowledge a skilled Internet marketer has is *potentially* worth allot, and there are many merchants ready, willing, and able to stuff your piggy bank. You just have to be creative sometimes in how you get paid. As far as the statement "traditional marketers don't have enough respect for our knowledge" goes, I have yet to meet one who wasn't a fish out of water on the Internet. In *all* cases, the "traditional" marketers I've worked with have been seriously humbled by their own ineptitude regarding marketing on the Internet. Mark Whitman webstuf dot net ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: Trent Wilcox Subject: Patent Attorney Recommendation > Can anyone in this group recommend a top notch patent > attorney who specializes in internet related intellectual property. - Mark Whitman, LED 1785 I recommend Lance Venable. His firm and contact information is available at www.ellisvenable.com . Lance is a great patent attorney, very reasonable with his fees and just a nice guy w/ whom to do business. Trent Wilcox Wilcox & Wilcox, P.C. Attorney at Law ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Brad Waller Subject: Patent attorney I do have one I can recommend, but I'm not sure about sending his full contact info to a large list like this. So I'm going to have to direct you to the firm main number instead. If you need direct access, I can send an individual email back to you with his direct line. We have used this firm for Trademark and Patent work and we are very happy with them. Contact our IP attorney and he can help you find the best patent person for this - and of course, please let him know Brad Waller of EPage sent you: David Makous Lewis, Brisbois, Bisgaard & Smith (213) 250-1800 http://lbbslaw.com/ Brad Waller, VP Affiliate & Business Development www.ep.com - Classifieds since 1994 waller, ep.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Mark Frank Subject: Patent attorney > For a small company owning a patent can be > a waste of time / money unless it is absolutely solid. - Ian Dickson, LED 1786 I see a lot of information and opinions presented here on the Digest. Following the "everyone is entitled to their opinion" philosophy, I rarely respond to those posts that run counter to my own views. But I need to speak up this time. The recommendation not to get a patent on an original idea is very bad advice. You may not be able to fend off Microsoft or IBM in court, but it is unlikely you will ever have to do so. Large corporation rarely steal ideas. For the most part, they have very strict rules of operation and ethics. That's why it's such big news when it happens. Your biggest threats will not come from large corporations. They will come from other small companies and other entrepreneurs. Some will deliberately steal from you, others may develop the same ideas (or software, etc.) on their own. Filing a patent help you demonstrate prior claim. You should always patent your original ideas, file copyrights, and register trademarks. Doing this may make the difference between keeping your intellectual property or standing by while the courts award it to someone else. Mark Frank, Author Start Your Own Home-Based Website Design Business http://www.websitedesignbiz.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2004 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come." - Matt Groening |
