| LED Digest 1530: Sender Warranted Email? |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest ................................................. March 4, 2003 Issue #1530 ................................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ===== NEW ======================= --== Online Credit Cards & US Dollar ==-- ~ Andreas Huttenrauch "...to have a US bank account you now need a corporation in the US." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Artificial Traffic and LinkExchange Service ==-- ~ Dave Zenker "The exact same thing happened to me." --== Site Revamps and Outsourcing ==-- ~ Lorilyn Bailey "I recently learned that even the top companies in the U.S...are outsourcing to India." ~ David Blumenthal "If there is a goodly supply of domestic companies... then where will I go to find them?" ~ Marty R. Milette "I have handled this situation in a couple of different ways..." --== International Fraud Protection ==-- ~ Scott Marino "...I tend to just contact the CC company for the international orders." ~ Ivan J. Jimenez "...you may want to look into head quartering your business in another country." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Heard of Habeas, Inc.? ==-- ~ Michael Yost ====== NEW ====================================== From: Andreas Huttenrauch Subject: Online Credit Cards Hello fellow LED-ers, We've recently stumbled upon a huge problem that I would like to hear your comments about. For years, the US dollar has been accepted as the currency of the internet. In Canada we could get a shared merchant account with a gateway company and in this manner charge in USD. In the middle of January all of this changed when US legislation apparently changed and every bank now insists on a one-to-one relationship between merchant and merchant account, and that you have to have a US bank account to do this. Furthermore, to have a US bank account you now need a corporation in the US. This is almost impossible for most web-based companies. Planet Payment has offered all it's Canadian customers to PsiGate, but ultimately most companies cannot trade in USD because the requirements are prohibitive. Has anyone else had this experience outside the US? Andreas Huttenrauch Globi Web Solutions ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Dave Zenker Subject: Artificial Traffic Inflation > After having used the same [LinkExchange] setup for years, > my accounts were suddenly terminated because of a violation > of the terms (artificial inflation of traffic)... They refused to > reactive my old (and cherished) account ID's although I > reassured them that nothing had changed on my side of > the equation. - Jochen Savelberg, LED 1529 Joe: The exact same thing happened to me. I tried for 10 days to get Microsoft Tech people to tell me what I had done wrong and why my account, created in 1996, was terminated. They were nice, but very arrogant. They know they have you by the short hairs and simply don't care. Their suggestion was to get a new account and replace all the banners with the new number. I'd changed nothing regarding the LE banners since 1996. I didn't have a clue why they stole my account. They wouldn't tell me why they stole my account, so... I selected a new banner exchange. http://www.bannersgomlm.com These guys have over 35,000 sites in the network. Smaller than LE, but substantial nevertheless. It's got a much better back-end interface, more precise targeting for your adds. You can target multiple individual ads for testing. If you care too, you can subscribe to purchase additional impressions. Otherwise, it's absolutely free. Oh... and rather than a 2 to 1 exchange, it's a full 1-1 Exchange. Now that the grunt work of pulling the LE banners off my site is done, I'm glad they're arrogant. :-) Thanks! Dave Zenker triumphmarketing.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Lorilyn Bailey Subject: Re: Overseas Outsourcing As much as I would have liked to use U.S. programmers, my small-business budget simply would not allow the $50 an hour I was quoted by several of my programmer friends. If I had to pay that, I wouldn't be able to be in business. Although I design my own sites, I often need someone to do the database programming. I was lucky enough to find a brilliant American programmer living (permanently) overseas who goes above and beyond on every project for less than half of a U.S. wage. Despite my lucky find, I was still uncomfortable about not keeping the work in the U.S. However, I recently learned that even the very top companies in the U.S. -- including ones that portray themselves as American as apple pie -- are outsourcing to India. I found that disturbing, thinking that THEY had enough money to invest in U.S. workers. Unfortunately, it all comes down to money, regardless of the size of the business or scale of the project. I think it's a trend that will continue. The out-of-work U.S. programmers will, I'm afraid, never see the bounty of opportunities of the past. Lorilyn Bailey smallbusinessuniversity.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: David Blumenthal Subject: Site revamps If there is a goodly supply of domestic companies willing to charge fair pricing, then where will I go to find them? Spending several days just to cut through the overpricing situation is not reasonable. Just go to an offshore site, and the prices are lower. David Blumenthal ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Marty R. Milette Subject: Site revamps Moving pages and returning '404' is a bad, bad thing. It WILL result in search engine penalization AND in webmasters removing your links. (I've personally experienced both, and don't plan on repeating the mistake! :) When doing major site revamps, I have handled this situation in a couple of different ways: 1. If you have a good relationship with your hosting provider (or host the site yourself) -- instead of having a 404 page at all, simply have the web server automatically redirect any unfound page requests to the root of the site. ("/") This will take people to the home page, no matter which page they try and reach -- even ones that never existed (http://www.beer-store.com/boguspage.xyz) as an example -- they'll STILL be able to always reach your home page. 2. Replace the page with a server-side-scripted page that redirects the user to the new page. For example, in 'Microsoft land' -- if you had an old page called http://www.beer-store.com/old-product/ (which may also be referred to as: http://www.beer-store/old-product/default.asp or http://www.beer-store.com/old-product.htm ) -- you would create an ASP page at: http://www.beer-store.com/old-product/default.asp that contains the single line of code: <%Response.Redirect "http://www.beer-store.com/new-product/" %> and that would handle the redirection nicely for all acceptable variations of the name. (The first method is a good 'catch all' to do first, while you are doing the changes and later using the second method to properly redirect to the new pages.) A third method, which is rather primitive, but effective, (and that requires no script) is to simply duplicate the new pages to the old location as well. (Or what the heck, leave the old pages where they are, if they aren't hurting anything.) I recommend that people DO NOT use 'client-side' redirects (using meta refresh or JavaScript redirects), as the search engines often consider this a clue that the page is just a 'doorway', and you risk penalization. In general, client-side redirects are bad news -- first, because if you had proper access to the server, you wouldn't need them -- and secondly, because clients without JavaScript enabled (for JavaScript client-side redirects) are left out in the cold. (The 'noscript' tag and a message "if you aren't redirected in 5 seconds click here, bla bla bla" is also 'amateur-time', but better than nothing, I suppose.) Since proper use of redirects is such a common question, please contact me directly if you'd like a copy of the eBook on the topic. Best regards, Marty R. Milette, P.Prog. et-al. ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Scott Marino Subject: Fraud protection > ... what if every merchant reported each time a fraudulent > order crossed their desk. I think there would be less bad > orders for others to deal with. - Joe Taylor, LED 1529 3 Cheers for Joe for doing his part. Like him I try to report as many as possible, although I tend to just contact the credit card company for the international orders. For the ones shipping orders to U.S. addresses, I call the postal inspector. Using a stolen credit card is considered mail fraud and the postal inspector takes it very seriously. There is no main number that I know of to report mail fraud, but a call to your local post office will get you the right numbers. One time I had a couple of orders come from a college library (traced back by IP address). I called the campus police and the dean of student affairs for the college. I was assured that disciplinary action against the students would be taken. Sometimes it takes a little detective work, but if we all did it, eventually we would have less of these orders, and less work overall. Regards, Scott Marino www.webundies.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Ivan J. Jimenez Subject: Fraud protection > ... our business is based in a country [Africa] where Worldpay > will no longer be servicing... [How can I] settle this question of > obtaining an online credit card processing solution... - Andrew Muigai, LED 1524 Hi Andrew, Until we're able to come up with a better solution, you may want to look into head quartering your business in another country. I know it's not the best solution but if you're losing a significant amount of sales, it may be the most efficient strategy. Many companies here in the US are doing this to escape paying taxes and it's growing increasingly popular therefore it shouldn't be difficult to do this for your business. As far as I'm aware, you are not required to have a physical office in the hosting country, you just need a mailing address -- and it seems that many services have been popping up just to serve this particular need. Do your research, go over the numbers, and decide if the cost compensates for the inconvenience. Side note: This post isn't condoning OR promoting 'moving' your business overseas for tax reasons. Our company isn't registered overseas nor are we involved in helping other do so thus we have no vested interest. We're simply offering a possible solution to a problem 'honest' business people are encountering and trying to overcome. Until there's a better solution or a true international merchant program, this may be a viable option for many. Thanks for being open! ivan j. jimenez, business development cosmicbreath.com marketing group ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: Michael Yost Subject: Heard of Habeas, Inc.? Adam, I am not sure if you have heard of Habeas, Inc. or maybe heard a few of the "rumors" circulating that you may soon be "paying" to send email... well... it is NOT a rumor. Habeas, Inc. is quickly installing their "version" of "spam control" on ISP's everywhere... MSN, AOL, Juno, and others (they have not disclosed) are already on board. As are many of the spamfiltering software designers like SpamAssassin, Cyber Sitter and others. Let me share with you the seriousness of this email. Since the LED Digest has a couple of ads in every issue, your ezine would cost you upwards of $3,000 a month in licensing fees paid to Habeas for the use of THEIR "warrant mark" to insure that you're not mailing spam... and that your subscriber REALLY wants to receive this publication. This is not rumor... it's right from Habeas, Inc, website (http://habeas.com) I ask that you take some time and visit the site below... in my humble opinion we either FIGHT this form of "extortion", or ALL forms of email as we know it in which Internet Marketing and Online Businesses depend on will be gone for good... or very costly to send. http://nohabeas.megalists.net Please consider joining the hundreds and thousands of Ethical Internet Marketing Professionals, Ezine Publishers and Businesses that have joined our organization. We can stop this insanity before it's too late. We are the Online Marketing Professionals United Against Censorship (OMPUAC) and have began a FIGHT to say NO HABEAS. Michael Yost Megalists Networks OMPUAC ------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 1995-2003 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "No legacy is so rich as honesty." - William Shakespeare |
