| LED Digest 1512: Paying for Kanoodle |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest ................................................. February 6, 2003 Issue #1512 ................................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ===== NEW ====================== --== Kanoodle Rip Off? ==-- ~ Mary Lee "My traffic from them was very little but I paid for the nose for it." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Outsourcing Web Development ==-- ~ Carrie Cassidy "...full time employees offer benefits of their own..." ~ Nandini Pandya "How is it that offshore developers have the skills and experience and US ones don't?" --== Web Design Pricing ==-- ~ M. J. Young "...the solution for the professional is to recognize the point of the inquiry." ~ Ivan J. Jimenez "...setting up a 'form' with detailed questions works..." ===== GEEK TIPS ================== --== Glitches in AOL Email? ==-- ~ Patrick Brown --== Site Search ==-- ~ Kurt T. Francis ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Domain Registration Encore ==-- ~ Don Johnson ====== NEW ====================================== From: Mary Lee Subject: Kanoodle Rip Off? Last month I signed up for Kanoodle. I made the mistake of choosing to be a part of their automatic placement program which is suppose to monitor and adjust your bids accordingly to keep you in the top 5. My keywords are not very common so it showed my bids as being 05-.09 cents each. Next thing I know I look at my account and all the bids and every click through I have paid for in the last month are at .18 cents... even on keywords that have no competition! Has anyone else had this problem? Thinking on it more I realize that agreeing to let them change my bid with no cap automatically to stay in the top 5 was not very bright. If you get 6 people doing this for the same keyword next thing you know your keyword bid would just keep jumping sky high! My traffic from them was very little but I paid for the nose for it. I also wanted to ask if anyone knows of a really good CPC search engine in the UK? I have seen espotting but it is a high buy in rate which I don't care for. Something like $120 and part of that is application fee! Unless they get the traffic of Google I can't see it. The reason I am asking is that I have another site that sells murder mystery games and these are very big in the UK. About 75% of my sales comes from the UK. Thanks, Mary Lee www.dinnerandamurder.com ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Carrie Cassidy Subject: Outsourcing Though I agree that there are many benefits to hiring freelancers / contractors, full time employees offer benefits of their own: - You know they're available to work on your project - They are accessible; you can collaborate to develop solutions - You can be more assured that sensitive information won't be passed along to competitors - You can be more assured that research you've paid for isn't incorporated into the designer's "industry knowledge" - You aren't nickel-and-dimed - The company benefits from their contributions of skill beyond what they put on a page Remember too, someone has to provide information to the contractor -- and that takes time. The more specialized your site, the more time it takes to convey knowledge. Naturally, if you don't have the workload to hire someone full time, you shouldn't do it. If you don't have a highly competitive arena in which divulging the latest research to a competitor means losing a lot of money, a contractor may work fine. And a final note, there are a lot of bad contractors. If you accidentally hire one, you have the same cleanup to do as if you had hired a person full time. Carrie Cassidy, Marketing Manager ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Nandini Pandya Subject: Outsourcing > I have awarded jobs to companies from Slovakia, > Romania, Russia, Thailand and Brazil. All have > exceeded my expectations and cost a fraction of > what an American web developer would charge. - Chuck Hiatt, LED 1510 As a US-based independent software developer, I feel I must respond to the two posts extolling the virtues of offshore developers. 1. You say you get the expertise you seek by hiring offshore workers. How is it that offshore developers have the skills and the experience and US ones don't? How believable is it that these offshore developers gained those skills when there is virtually no indigenous market for such skills - that is, the only "clients" these consultants have are US based? From knowing some of the offshore developers personally, I know that a significant percentage lie on their resumes. This is not to say that they cannot learn - the point is that they learn on the job much the same way that college students or even other professionals, for that matter, do. *None* of us was born with the skills that companies seek. 2. US-based clients are more willing to swallow the lies on the resumes for only one reason - because they look at the lower hourly rate. Nothing wrong with that - after all we live in the brave new globalized world. But, dissing US-based workers to justify your choices is unfair. Who is to say carefully selected US-based workers would not deliver as effectively as offshore workers? 3. And, you do get what you pay for. A friend hired a web designer through elance to develop a 10-page web site. This was six months ago. The web site is not yet done. In between the designer was AWOL for weeks because he was getting married. The US-based client did not have a clue. Care to figure out her lost business because her web site is not up? Care to figure out how much time it will take to enhance / tweak the web site after it is done? 4. As for saving time and resources by not having to micro-manage, you could do the same with US-based consultants - it is a matter of management style. You don't have to physically remove your workers to feel you have to manage less! Nandini Pandya ------- new post - new topic ------- From: M. J. Young Subject: Web Design Pricing > [We] sometimes get calls asking for a quote for > a complete web site over the phone... How does > anyone else handle this situation? - Roland Matzke, LED 1509 I only design for myself and my company, and I've never called a web designer; but I have made calls to businesses whose situation was similar: they couldn't really give a price for something over the phone precisely because I couldn't give them sufficient details. One that comes to mind is a call made long ago to a transmission repair shop to try to determine whether I could afford to have repairs made to a car. Obviously the shop can't tell me what it would cost to fix the transmission without finding out what's wrong with it; on the other hand, I can't commit to having them repair it without some idea of how much it could cost. I think perhaps the solution for the professional is to recognize the point of the inquiry. If I call with a question like that, I'm window shopping. Your answer will indeed help me choose where to go for a web site; but I have a more basic question in my mind than "who should I get to build my site?" What I'm trying to find out is "can I afford to have a web site at all, and what kind of budget am I going to need to do it?" With this in mind, I would suggest answering these calls this way: "It really depends what you want on those ten pages. For ten no-frills pages of your copy and images it could be as low as X. Typically most sites that size run around Y, but we've done some cutting edge sites that went for Z. Can we get together and talk about what you hope to accomplish?" Now the customer understands that what he pays depends on what he wants. He also has some notion of the minimum it would cost to get on the web, and probably what it would cost to have a site similar to most of those out there. I hope that helps. M. J. Young http://www.mjyoung.net/ ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Ivan J. Jimenez Subject: Darwin Hi Mark, I've found that instead of having prospects send an e-mail requesting a quote, setting up a "form" with detailed questions works far better. Less-than-serious inquirers will not want to be burdened with questions since they don't actually need the service, serious inquiries without focus can re-evaluate their needs before submitting requests, and you'll eliminate those inquiries by people who prefer not answering your questions. After all, when you're busy, the last thing you want to lose energies on is a prospect who doesn't understand the nature of your business (for those just starting out or willing to "explain" how your business functions, you can make your forms shorter and optional thus taking advantage of extra work neglected by others). All the best, Ivan J. Jimenez, Business Development cosmicbreath.com ===== GEEK TIPS =================================== From: Patrick Brown Subject: Glitches in email from AOL? Over the past few months, some of my clients and associates on AOL have had intermittent failures sending email to my domain. They get a failure message of "550 This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it Host unknown (Name server: mail.domain.com.: host not found)". Not good for business! My host service tells me they've seen intermittent occurrences of this on many of the domains they host, and have heard of it from many other hosting services, as well. They claim it's a problem with AOL's name servers. Does anyone have insights, experience or solutions regarding this? Patrick Brown Learning Circle Associates, Inc. ------- new post - new topic ------- From: K Francis Subject: Site search > I have been trying to find a good site search > engine for a large web site... Does anyone > have any suggestions? - Niki Mcelroy, LED 1508 Hi, Niki -- I can't praise the folks over at http://bravenet.com anywhere nearly enough. They provide a very broad range of tools for web masters, both free and paid versions (the latter ad-free). No, I am not affiliated in any way whatsoever with Bravenet.com -- other than as a DELIGHTED user of numerous of their services! Kurt T. Francis, Web Master Bangkok's Voice On The Web http://bangkokatoz.com ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: Don Johnson Subject: Domain Registration Encore I know this has been covered many times already so apologize for dragging it out again but... Our domain is up for renewal at Network Solutions. Since they never changed our whois listing but send bills to our new (two-year-old) address, I want to leave there. To whom should we go for registration that is fast, accurate and competitively priced? Thanks. Don S. Johnson, Editor/Publisher PC Presentations Productions www.piscespub.com ------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 1995-2003 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change." - Confucius |
