| LED Digest 1810: UK Services Lagging Behind US? |
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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 ................................................ May 26, 2004 Issue #1810 ................................................ .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Third Tier PPC Providers - Worth It? ==-- ~ Marty R. Milette "...contact owners of 'complimentary' web sites and work out a private PPC deal..." --== To PayPal or not to PayPal ==-- ~ Stephen Hunt "...us poor British clients find the [Paypal services] lag well behind the...U.S. mothership." ~ Ronni Rhodes "We have used PayPal for years and have never - ever - had a problem..." ~ Richard Stubbings "...using Paypal is seen as 'cheap' 'not professional' and potentially even 'unsafe'..." ~ Emanuel D. Errico III "...no one has mentioned the merchants that have been abused and robbed by Paypal. I was one of them." --== Credible SEOs and SEMs ==-- ~ Michael Linehan "I had signed a percentage agreement with one company..." ~ Shari Thurow "...designers and copywriters need to understand search and incorporate those skills..." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Outbound Links Increasing Rankings ==-- ~ Michael Martinez --== Experiences with BizRate.com ==-- ~ Lanell Grant ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Marty R. Milette Subject: 3rd tier PPC > While the Pay Per Click advertisement market is dominated by > Google and Overture, there are a number of smaller providers out > there and I was wondering if it is worth spending money on them. - Abu Haider, LED 1808 Another PPC option that hasn't been mentioned here but that could be extremely effective would be to simply contact owners of 'complimentary' web sites and work out a private PPC deal with them directly. Most webmasters who aren't already in 'the game' would be tickled pink to have even a small source of regular revenue. The trick here would be to first find the appropriate sites and contact them with your offer. Then, to set up a 'shared' tracking system that everyone will trust. (Unique IP detection, etc.) It seems to me that this would be a win-win-win situation because the vendor would receive more targetted traffic from the complimentary site, they could pay less than what they pay for 'untargetted' (generic) PPC and the webmaster would probably earn more (100% of the fee instead of 30% to 50%) and have higher paid clickthrough rates. Another side benefit would be that if you host the tracking system on your site, every time you work a deal for a private PPC placement, you'd get another link back to your site. Technically, this would be exceptionally easy to implement. For example, the free .NET script "AdMentor.NET" already has almost everything necessary to manage such a system already built in. Just a little extra .NET programming could bring it up to 100% in no time at all. (UNIX solutions abound also, but I don't know of any to personally suggest.) Marty R. Milette http://www.custom-toolbars.com marty, milette.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Stephen Hunt Subject: PayPal or CC Dave McClure from PayPal commented [issue 1809] that: > PayPal no longer requires buyers to signup for PayPal to complete > their transaction. We now offer an optional signup to buyers, > *after* they make their purchase - aka 'PayPal Account Optional'. He forgot to mention, as does the PayPal.com web site, however, that this functionality has only - so far - been applied to PayPal's US-based merchant customers. All the UK merchants who use PayPal were moved into a UK-specific scheme late last year as (quoting from the UK site): -------------------- "PayPal UK is the company's first international website and part of its broader plan to expand the service in Europe. On September 16 (2003), PayPal announced the establishment of its new European headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. The Dublin headquarters provides customer service, fraud prevention and operational support for PayPal members in the UK and other European countries." -------------------- As is so often the case, us poor British clients then find the, ahem, 'expanded service', lags well behind the full functionality of the U.S. mothership. I do love PayPal as a payment system, but rather resent having to wait what can often be many months to years to compete on an equal footing with competitors using exactly the same service, but who have the good fortune to be born the other side of the 'ol big pond. There's a customer quote on the PayPal.com home page advertising the new streamlined payment system in which the client boasts he has doubled his transaction volume since using the new 'PayPal Account Optional' service. Reversing the logic, presumably every day PayPal lag from offering this to their non-U.S. customers, they're also preventing us from doubling our order volumes? I'm put in mind of a mischievous rhyme commenting on how the complete design for Sir Frank Whittle's jet engine were passed by the UK to the USA 100% patent-free during World War II (handing the USA domination of the post-war air industry on a plate). A 'special relationship' which still seems to carry on to today .... "God made the bees Bees make the honey British do the work USA makes the money" Ho hum. Stephen Hunt www.stephenhunt.net ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Ronni Rhodes Subject: PayPal or CC We have used PayPal for years and have never - ever - had a problem using the interface or receiving our monies in a timely manner. PayPal's new policies make it even easier for people to pay via credit card. For a small business that doesn't handle consumer goods - like ours - PayPal is a cost effective and convenient way for us to offer a "credit card" option to our clients. Best regards, Ronni Rhodes Ignite Your Site with Sound and Motion! http://www.wbcimaging.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Richard Stubbings Subject: PayPal or CC I have recently tried to use Paypal as a customer when purchasing a webcam. After half an hour wasted on the checkout I gave up and moved on to another site which used another payment processor. I now actively avoid any shop that uses Paypal. I have found that although eBay are happy to take money from my credit card, Paypal will NOT as it 'fails some of their checks'. Nor will Paypal let me set up a second account which would have all the correct details as they will not allow the same credit card on two accounts. (For the curious ones amongst you my eBay account uses one address which is not the registered address of the credit card). I also feel that using Paypal is seen as 'cheap' 'not professional' and potentially even 'unsafe' by many potential customers. I feel it is worth going that extra inch and get a proper merchant account and proper secure service and show your customers that you are a respectable professional organisation. Although the set up costs are more, the percentage charge is much less than Paypal, and thus if you are a serious business and take sufficient orders it works out much cheaper than Paypal. Richard Stubbings Kulture Shock http://www.kultureshock.co.uk ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Emanuel D. Errico III Subject: PayPal or CC I can't believe that after discussing Paypal for days and days on this board, that no one has mentioned the thousands of merchants that have been abused and robbed by Paypal. I was one of them. Please make sure you read www.paypalwarning.com before you decide to give them any of your business, and ask yourself, "Can my business afford to have it's paypal account arbitrarily seized and continue as an on-going operation?" Thank you, Emanuel D. Errico III STFB Inc. http://www.stfb.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Michael Linehan Subject: Percentage deals for SEOs > ... will [the SEO] sign a contract whose only payment > will be a percentage of your increased profits? - Bill Davison, LED 1807 As an SEO, development, design and marketing company, I won't - unless I am very confident about the company's ability to convert prospects to sales. I had signed a percentage agreement with one company. Anyone asking for a quote had to fill out an extensive form, so they were definitely good prospects. Out of about $1,000,000 per year over three years of such good prospects, the company made a few thousand dollars of sales. I recontacted one high-end resort because they were also a possible client for a web site. The manager told me that they bought in Japan (a $100,000 contract) because no-one had followed up with them. I won't tell you how much commission I lost on that, just that I felt sick! Michael Linehan www.marketing-alchemy.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Shari Thurow Subject: Credible SEOs Hi all- This is in response to Steve Pronger's post in LED #1809. In his post he stated: > Surely an SEO's task is to increase traffic to your site for > targeted keywords, not to convert that traffic to sales. That's > the job of your copywriter / web designer. Here's the deal. The copy and the Web site design affects search engine visibility. And it affects conversions. So I disagree with Steve. Part of an SEO's job is to help a site with conversions, not just to rank and drive traffic. Please note that I said SEO, not SEM. Optimization is not advertising. In fact, I feel one of the reasons that the SEM industry is inundated with spammers is the attitude of, "I made a page rank well. Now my job is over." I can do that with a bunch of doorway pages and IP delivery. The really hard part is to develop a Web site that is both user friendly and search friendly. My definition of an effective Web site is a user-friendly, search-friendly, and persuasive site that converts. Since many developers are still pretty clueless on how to develop search-friendly sites, that leaves a wide-open niche which both ethical and unethical SEMs are happy to fill. I figured I've been in the minority for the following statements. I feel Web designers and copywriters need to understand search and incorporate those skills as a standard service. I don't only mean optimizing for Google search (or whatever your preferred search engine is.) Search is not just about being found in Google. It's about making your products / services / info easy to find after people arrive at your site, too. Even after 8 years of being an SEO, I am still amazed that designers still don't get that. Best wishes, Shari Thurow, Webmaster/Marketing Director ~ Search Engine Visibility book now available http://www.searchenginesbook.com/ ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: Michael Martinez Subject: Outbound links > After doing linking campaigns for a couple of clients, I noticed > that pagerank seemed to increase as soon as I put outbound > links on the site, long before any number of links could be > reciprocated. > This is contrary to how Google's descriptions, and all > of the "expert" opinion that you read... But I saw it. - Dave Roberts, LED 1808 > Whilst I do not disagree with your findings it is impossible > to evaluate your results based just on what you saw. - Simon McArdle, LED 1809 I have been pointing this out for years, folks. But don't take my word for it. Listen to Google: ------------------------ http://snipurl.com/6o9r [news.com] "Q: Some computer scientists suspect that PageRank is dead, because Internet marketers have managed to exploit it by creating false popularity for their sites. Is that true? Has it been altered, or is it playing less of a role? "A: The point of view that PageRank is dead is kind of a very static view of the world. It will always continue to be a part of our ranking scheme but, over time, as we develop new ideas on how to do ranking, as we tweak existing ideas, as we think about new ways to have them play together--the role of any one of the techniques that we use will obviously change. "Q: Are there any other algorithm techniques that you are using that are playing a bigger role? "A: Well, there are certainly other techniques that we are using. Talking about it is the trickier part. In broad terms, techniques we use fall into, like, two or three categories, and one is we try to understand and leverage human intelligence. We look for signals that people put in to indicate intelligence, like deciding to link from one page to another or annotating text with the description of what the text is about." ------------------------ Outbound links work for two reasons with Google: First, as you are adding them, you are creating new content. Secondly, as you increase your ratio of unreciprocated outbound links to reciprocated, your site becomes more authoritative. Google will always look for those inbound links, but they aren't being as easily manipulated by the reciprocal links as many of you continue to believe. You are creating more work for yourselves in the long run, and wasting a lot of other Webmasters' time, in the search for reciprocation. Google wants NATURAL link relationships. Not artificial ones. Michael Martinez http://www.michael-martinez.com/ ------- new post - new topic -------- From: Lanell Grant Subject: BizRate > Recently ran across a service call BizRate.com. I was wondering > if anyone has had any good / bad experiences with them? - Mark Roberts, LED 1809 Mark, We began the process with BizRate about early March. I believe our timing was unfortunate as BizRate changed their "feed" specifications three different times over the next 75 days or so. We submitted our initial product feed four or five times before our data format was finally accepted. We had no such problems with Shopping, a similar competing operation. Apart from changes in field order and what fields data must be provided for, our greatest single difficulty was with the tab delimited format utilized by all these folks. They say, "...simply use Excel and save in the tab delimited format". We found that to be TOTALLY unreliable in an environment where one extra "tab" means trouble. EditPad Pro came to our rescue as a text editor that makes the miserable non visible "tab", visible, so that these feeds can be visually verified before submitting. Why this primitive format continues today remains a mystery ? We create in Excel and line by line clean up in EditPad Pro. Note: We always find extra "tab" characters. Our traffic has been poor. I suspect that as "newbees" to this form of marketing we have much to learn. In general the search capabilities these little "engines" provide is rather weak. We notice an inability to deal with fraction expressions and more complex product descriptions, but then perhaps we are spoiled by Yahoo, Google, et all. We are experimenting with one product group, earrings, at this time. I don't think we will add additional product until we better understand the game... Good Luck to you, Lanell Grant www.ediamondco.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. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled." - Plutarch |
