| LED Digest 2307: Marketing for Classical Musicians |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Registration 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 .............................................. December 13, 2006 Issue no. 2307 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ===================== --== Online Marketing for Classical Musicians ==-- ~ Luis Diez "...there are inmense possibilities for marketing music online...why isn't this being done? Or is it?" ==== CONTINUING ================= --== The Email Crisis ==-- ~ Anonymous "A colleague...said his friend makes $15,000 to $18,000 a month sending out spam." <Moderator Comment> ~ Will Bontrager "...one way to hide a mailto link is by making a PHP web page...and then linking to it." ~ Steven Birk "I would be interested to see [a survey of LEDers] that are still using the mailto link on new sites." ~ Peter D'Aprix "Anyone? Silence? Am I the only one [using mailto]? I knew it!" --== Web Development Auditing ==-- ~ Shel Horowitz "...people think they're powerless because they see lawsuits as the only option..." --== Questioning SEOs ==-- ~ Dirk Johnson "...we do outsourced reciprocal link building work for several SEO firms." ~ Beth Earle "I wish our own clients would think to ask questions like these." ========== NEW =================================== From: Luis Diez Subject: Online marketing for classical musicians? Hi, I've been lurking for some time but still quite new in this arena. Hope some of the very informed and kind souls on this list have some time for my doubts! I have always been puzzled by why the big companies don't seem to make more use of all the possibilities (marketing-wise) that the Internet offers for promoting (classical) musicians. There are gazillions of places where one can share / post music, most of the time for free. These run the gamut from social sites (a la MySpace), to video-sharing (YouTube, etc.), and newsgroups to name just a few (I have over 100 on my list). IMHO there are inmense possibilities for marketing music online, without having to be a huge company. So, why isn't this being done? Or is it? Secondly, I think I know classical musicians pretty well, so I was considering offering a promotion service to musicians and record labels. How would you go about marketing such a service? My first impulse would be to offer it through their current web-designers, thus saving me the effort of educating the clients about the value of this service. As you can see I am quite inexperienced, and I am not expecting anybody to share any trade secrets! Just hope more people will benefit from my ingenuity and your comments. Regards, Luis Diez ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Anonymous Subject: Email Adam -- be very careful about believing that any encryption -- java script, vb script, hex, decimal, octal, whatever -- will keep your email from harvesters. I have a colleague who writes harvesters and there isn't a mailto link that his program can't harvest. Of course, forms are a different story but forms are not email, just as a Volkswagen is not a Cadillac. But believe it or not, they pay people to fill in forms, to get the email address. Another colleague dropped by after lunch today and said his friend makes $15,000 to $18,000 a month sending out spam. (Wow, I have a lot of colleagues in low places!) Believe it or not, I ran a legitimate, legal website. But I am getting tempted... Anonymous <Moderator Comment> This poster, who has asked to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, also included screenshots of scraped email addresses that were supposed to be hidden. Thus proving the truth of his comments above regarding email harvesting. -Adam -------- new post - same topic -------- From: William Bontrager Subject: Email > Do you have a nice code that us morons could use > to take the place of "mailto:' that is more secure? - Peter D'Aprix, LED Digest 2304 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1394/55/ Peter, one way to hide a mailto: link is by making a PHP web page like here and then linking to it: <?php header("Location: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ")'; document.write( '' ); document.write( addy_text26173 ); document.write( '<\/a>' ); //-->\n This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ; ?> The PHP code must be at the very top of the page -- no spaces or blank lines may be above it. Replace This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it with the email address you would otherwise have in your regular mailto: link. If you wish, you may put content below the PHP code, between HEAD and BODY tags just like a normal web page would have. Upload the PHP web page and make a note of its URL. In your regular web page, replace the mailto: link with a link directly to the PHP web page. You're good to go :) ... mostly. When the link is clicked, some browsers will display a blank page instead of whatever content you put below the PHP code. If that is a concern, the link could be put into an iframe. The details of putting the link into an iframe may be a bit much for an LED post. For that reason, and for subscribers who's email readers messed up the PHP code, above, I've published an article showing how to do the whole thing. http://bontragercgi.com/hiding_email_links.html Important considerations and additional details are in the article. It may be prudent to read it before going ahead with changing your mailto: links. Will Bontrager http://weatherwimp.com/ -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Steve Birk Subject: Email > I am not sure how Mr. Birk objectively ascertained that > his email address is no longer subject to spam. - Al Toman, LED Digest 2306 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1397/55/ Al, I think you misunderstood what my post was regarding. I said that when I changed the path to my forms URL to ASCII, that caused the spam I was getting through the use of my contact form to disappear. I never said that my email address is no longer subject to spam because of changing it to ASCII. It's quite apparent that once your email address is exposed and harvested that you're on "Mr. Spam's" list a long time, if not forever. All the defenses and methods discussed to protect your email address from a harvester do not apply to an email address that has already been harvested... that's a given. Once again, after I used another LED member's suggestion and changed the path to my forms program in my source code to ASCII, I stopped getting spam through the use of my contact form. That's what that particular post was about. On another note, I would be curious to see the results of a survey of all those who design sites for a living, or even those who do it for a hobby, as to what spam defenses regarding contact / email addresses you currently design into new sites? I would be interested to see the percentage of respondents that are still using the mailto link on new sites. I would hope it would be 0.0%... The mailto link was great back when it was used to legitimately contact someone from their web site. Now because of the spam epidemic, IMHO it's obsolete. Knowing now what you know about spam and the problems and time its costing you, would you have used the simple mailto link back in the day? Keep giving those harvesters something to eat and they will never leave... and kudos to all those offering various protection techniques! Hopefully people will try and employ these techniques on new and even current sites to slow the flow of spam. Although who knows... with some of the percentages that have been quoted here recently with "90% of all emails being spam", and "97% of all spam coming from web sites", maybe the war on spam war can never be won... and its something we will all just have to deal with somehow. Regards, Steven Birk, FF/EMT http://publicsafetyhub.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Peter D'Aprix Subject: Email Dear "Granny", Al, Steven and Joel Hey what a great Christmas gift from you all! Code! My favorite! And thank you for your time and generosity. I will try my hand at applying them (call me gramps! I just turned 60 but managed to pry my old, creaking frame from my chair and get prescription glasses for reading and computer work so I don't have to blow fonts up to balloon size to read. Of course, macular degeneration is something else entirely!). But I hope my question will be useful to all the others out there who also have been using mailto: Anyone? Silence? Am I the only one? I knew it! Happy Holidays to all faiths. Peter D'Aprix - Visual Communications http://peterdaprix.com -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Shel Horowitz Subject: Web dev auditing > After we successfully finished the project the owner had our > work audited by a third party. He then took our bill and modified > it using the Auditing company's recommendations. The end > result is we were denied about 35% of our bill, and this company > basically said "tough luck, what are you going to do about it". - Cayley Vos, LED Digest 2295 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1376/55/ Sorry to come late on this. It sounds like the "audit" in this case was nothing more than an excuse to cheat you. You'd think after seeing all the negative examples of cheating in business -- Enron, WorldCom, and all the rest -- that people would know by now that good ethics is smart business. I wrote an entire book (Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First) to show businesses how ethics, cooperation, and service can actually drive business success -- and started an international social movement http://www.business-ethics-pledge.org to foster an actual change in the culture. Maybe you should buy a copy to give your deadbeat client <wink>. John Audette and several members of this list are among the 70+ endorsers of that book, BTW. But switching from my ethics hat to my publicity and marketing hat... there's actually a lot you can do without filing a lawsuit. A few examples, with the caveat that if you go public, you want to present everything as bulletproof as possible -- let the facts make the accusation, rather than accuse them directly of cheating you. Have all documents vetted by a slander / libel attorney. A few of the many options open to you: * file complaints with the BBB, their local Chamber of Commerce, any trade or professional orgs in their industry * let it be known to your client that you intend to tell the web design community about how you got burned * develop (and publicize) a website like compaynamestiffedme.com -- and optimize it so it shows up ahead of them on the search engines * set up Google news alerts for the company name, and make a cautionary comment every time there's a post with a public feedback mechanism Etc. etc. Of course, I can't comment on the merits, and I'm not an attorney -- but I do get a bee under my bonnet when people think they're powerless because they see lawsuits as the only option, and that option prohibitively expensive. Just as an example of what's possible... when a local developer proposed an extremely inappropriate project that would have killed a local mountain, and all the "experts" interviewed in the front-page article in our local paper issued variations on "oh, this is terrible, but there's nothing we can do." Well, I read that and that's when I got angry and inspired. "Of course there's something we can do," I shouted. And made that shout public four days later with a press release and flyer campaign, plus a webpage and yahoogroup, announcing the formation of "Save the Mountain." 70 people jammed themselves into my modest house for the first meeting, we had over 70 news stories, killed the project in just 13 months -- and never had to file a lawsuit. Seven years after starting that group, I am considered a presence to be courted in the area of development within our town. People still think I have a huge constituency that I "control." I don't, and I've never pretended to, but I have been able to have some positive impact on the face of development in our town. OK, I'll get off the soapbox. Shel Horowitz http://www.principledprofit.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Dirk Johnson Subject: Questioning SEOs > How will you be getting links to my website? (If the SEO > mentions a proprietary network of websites, outsourced > link builders, or automated blog comments its a bad sign) - Cayley Vos, LED Digest 2306 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1397/55/ Cayley, we do outsourced reciprocal link building work for several SEO firms. We do it properly, successfully, affordably, and professionally. Our SEO clients continue bring new domains to us to work with, based on that past performance. In a multi-client environment, reciprocation work is a massive data management and process challenge, and there are no shortcuts. We have invested hundreds of hours into an in-house system that provides substantial efficiencies to us. As well, we compile and manage the ever-changing link partner data on a daily basis. Most SEO houses have not made that kind of commitment to this aspect of the business, so we are their preferred solution. I am not sure why you made that statement about outsourced link builders, but it certainly doesn't apply to us or our SEO clients. Best regards, Dirk Johnson, Partner - Operations DomainDrivers LLC www.domaindrivers.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Beth Ann Earle Subject: Questioning SEOs > You want the founder to work on your site, not an intern. In this > industry, experience counts and it is worth paying a premium for. - Cayley Vos, LED Digest 2306 Well, maybe not necessarily the founder, but definitely someone who's been there a while and is as experienced and dedicated as the founder would be. In our case, if our customers would only work with our founder, our business would be dead, just like our founder. Still, Cayley's post is right on target. I wish our own clients would think to ask questions like these. It would at least show that they've invested some care and interest into this part of their marketing. Wishing all the best to LED'ers everywhere, Beth Earle www.pilotfishseo.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2006 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Surrender is faith that the power of love can accomplish anything... even when you can not foresee the outcome." - Deepak Chopra |
