| LED Digest 2445: Blogs or Articles? |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom www.GetWebContent.com/LED : the LED's Key Sponsor The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. www.SEOToolSet.com/training/ : the LED's Premier Sponsor Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training & Certification ================================================== Guest Moderator: Published by: John Audette LED Digest john, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. July 10, 2007 Issue no. 2445 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ===== NEW ====================== <Moderator Comment> ~ Blogs or Articles? --== RSS Feeds ==-- ~ Jon Langley "Does anyone use them. Does anyone read them?" ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Offline Action: Print Catalogs? ==-- ~ Dirk Johnson "...a full-line catalog project will soak up your time (and money)..." --== Sketchy Incoming Links ==-- ~ John Barendrecht "Perhaps if you also complained to Miva, they might pull his account..." ~ Jeremy Weiss "The search engines understand that you can't control who links to your site." --== Image Protection "Curtain" ==-- ~ Roy Williams "...we found the best way was to put our URL on the scans..." ~ James Haley "I once used the Internet Explorer 'Save As' option under the file menu..." ~ Pete Montaldi "All that was required to defeat this piece of script was to turn scripting off..." ~ John Barendrecht "Firefox is clearly superior to IE for borrowing images." ~ Al Toman "...they are using a simple flash (swf file) script." ======== NEW ====================================== <Moderator Comment> Jon Langley's question on RSS (directly below) reminded me to share Ken Evoy's latest blog post. He argues that, in general, the noise on blogs drowns out the signal. Quoting: ------------------- "Most blogs deliver quickly "banged out" thoughts, some smarter than others, all the successful ones written by very clever people. But very few really push my thinking forward... "Blogging is a powerful vehicle for the small number of smart, erudite people who can "pop corn" quickly and efficiently, branding themselves in the process. But there's so much noise before you get to any signal. "And comments? Comments are not community. Blogging is just one-to-many broadcasting." Source: http://blog.sitesell.com/sitesell/2007/07/create-real-con.html ------------------- I think these points are spot on. For the most part blogs don't serve a useful purpose, except for the blog owner. But they can be very powerful marketing tools. And there are some fabulous blogs out there, so be discriminating in your reader and slowly build your subscriptions. Another well-known Internet dude, Jakob Nielsen, took a shot at blogs today. Quoting: ------------------- "Blog postings will always be commodity content: there's a limit to the value you can provide with a short comment on somebody else's comments. Such postings are good for generating controversy and short-term traffic, and they're definitely easy to write. But they don't build sustainable value. Think of how disappointing it feels when you're searching for something and get directed to short postings in the middle of a debate that occurred years before, and is thus irrelevant." Source: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/articles-not-blogs.html -------------- ----- Although Jakob sort of throws the baby out with the bathwater in this article, I find it hard to disagree with him. Apparently so do most of the best bloggers out there, who craft excellent, thoughtful articles and simply use a blog CMS to expedite publishing. I'd love to hear your comments on my comments :) Adam Comment? ---------------- From: Jon Langley Subject: New Post - RSS Feeds Quick Q.... I haven't had a digest since Tuesday, so I hope everything is ok between you lot... I have certainly missed if nothing else.. [Adam popping my head in here -- sorry about that, had to take a nice long break for the 4th! you got yesterday's i hope? if not contact me about it. -adam] Anyway, Here is the post. RSS Feeds. Does anyone use them. Does anyone read them? I have an "option" of an RSS feed on my new system. I was thinking about using it as a sort of "blog" system. I know that Blogs are all the rage at the momnt. The Q is is it a good idea? Should I add an RSS of "new products" (Ecommerce system), or just keep it as a Blog. Will RSS get indexed as "content"? Will it improve Ratings? I understand that like a Blog, ramblings shouldn't be made but more "relevant" content should be made clear... Ie,. New Brand of xyz launched... NOT!!! I just had a Baby today type thing. Has anyone had any results from an RSS feed? In theory, the feed could take a couple of minutes and can be automated... But the content will have to be updated by muggins. Jon Langley http://www.jons-all-sorts.co.uk Comment? ============ Sponsor Message =========== Would you write your own Super Bowl commercial? Or would you hire a professional ad copywriter? Guess what? Your website copy is your Super Bowl spot, your best shot at winning new business. GetWebContent.com is the web's premier provider of "Super Bowl-winning" web copy. When words are king, visit GetWebContent.com, the King of Words. http://GetWebContent.com/LED ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Dirk Johnson Subject: Print catalogs > To open a new topic, I'm interested in folks' > experience with paper catalogs... we consistently > get catalog requests from customers... - Chris Allen, LED Digest 2443 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1849/190/ Chris, I was in the small-time mail order business in the 1980s and 1990s. I have since sold that business, and the new owner has weaned it off catalogs entirely. There is a lot to consider with print catalogs, some of which may not be readily apparent, so I will try to shed some light. Are you losing sales without a print catalog? Probably. But the real question is, "At what cost to you?". Will your margins support the added costs of printing and distributing the catalogs? You can't have one set of prices for online customers and another in print. So you have to eat the extra cost of the catalogs, and hope to make it up in a much higher order volume. For a small catalog mail order house, that can be very hard to do. Here are just some of those added costs, which include both time and money. Management time is a valuable resource that is constantly minimized in these kinds of analyses. 1) Graphics design and layout, with substantial management oversight time required. Will you do it in-house, or use a specialist who understands catalog production and the various cost saving methods? A genuine specialist can save you a lot of headache and money, both now and down the road, on revisions, variations, etc. An inexperienced graphics artist can cost you dearly. 2) Print quoting. Prices vary widely, based on the shop's equipment, paper stock, layout format, etc. You need to find the right shop for your job and your design. 3) Full-line catalogs will require a big chunk of working capital. Small runs (5,000 to 10,000), in color, are very expensive, per catalog. Are you prepared to invest $20,000 up-front, just to see if this works? 4) Catalog storage and handling - Catalog boxes are heavy to move around. And if you use them, you will. 5) Mailing list management software that complies with postal regs and the upcoming State "do not mail" laws. Or outsource it. Your existing mailing list that clients have provided for you will need to be prepped and scrubbed properly if you plan to bulk mail. 6) Deciding who to mail & test. If you don't test your list, you risk a real financial disaster. 7) Price correction and product change management. By the time the catalog is printed, it may be out-of-date. So your mailings may require additional notices as to pricing, new products, and discontinued items. 8) Labeling and mail sorting will require either in-house equipment and management oversight, or outsourcing. 9) Postage is just more working capital. And you have to learn to coordinate with USPS, if you do it in-house. Postal rates are set to rise, big time. 10) Address correction oversight. If not, you may just keep sending to dead addresses or moved clients. 11) You may need more phone operators for handling the inevitable increase in telephone sales and general customer questions. A $30 per hour employee (with benefits) taking a 10 minute call costs you $5, out of pocket, in addition to the catalog cost. Most people ignore that cost. 12) Unless you have people on hand with time to spare, you will need data entry personnel to convert mailed-in orders to usable system data. Use the same kind of cost calculation as above. 13) You will get a lot of payments by check, compared to online sales. This requires a more bookkeeping time, and it may add to your bank charges, as well. 14) Pre-paid back orders will present new challenges and require much closer customer coordination. Do they want a refund, or will they wait? Postal regs require that they be notified. If they want a refund, you have to cut them a check. That's more work for the accounting department, and the sales department. The per-order costs continue to mount with back orders. Large catalog houses have huge economies of scale that small business owners can never enjoy. Their fixed costs are spread over hundreds of thousands of catalogs. For example, the catalog layout costs to a large mailer may be just 1 cent or less per catalog. For a small mailer, they may be $1 per catalog, or more. Likewise, when outsourcing various tasks, like printing and distribution, the small mailer is at a huge disadvantage with vendors, if the vendors are even interested in small jobs. Most mail distribution houses cater to very large volume clients. They have to. That often leaves the small mailer to figure it out in-house. That's more hassle, and may even require equipment, like labelers. Yes, people do like to peruse a catalog in their easy chair. But to send them one may cost upwards of $5 or more per color catalog, once it's all said and done. With an order rate of 10% (that would be a blockbuster success rate, btw), then the "catalog cost per order received" is now set at $50. For a business with a 10% net profit margin, it would require a $500 average order to break even on this project, with additional costs not even added, such as the additional data entry and accounting costs. Most owners would just hide these various costs as "admin overhead", and think they are still making money per order, but in reality, it is net profit that rules, not the gross margin on sales. A mail order project that is not fully self-sustaining simply taxes the rest of the business, and lowers the overall net profit margin. Here's a more workable solution.... Print a simple price list, and maybe even print flyer sheets for selected new or hot items, and stuff them into your online orders. You can even mail the price lists and flyers, as a test, and refer people back to your website for more product information and to place orders, just to see how "reaching out" with print materials might work for you. If it seems to work, then expand the program, carefully. You might eventually ramp up to a full catalog, but you will do it with a full knowledge of what's expected. Chris, you have a successful online presence. As the business owner, a full-line catalog project will soak up your time (and money) in ways that you can't yet imagine. But, then again, it might be a roaring success for you. I am not being negative, just realistic. I'm just trying to make you realize that the time, cost, and headache factor related to catalog production and distribution is substantial, and it needs to be fully examined, all the way to the expected final profit margin, using realistic examples. Best regards, Dirk Johnson www.domaindrivers.com Comment? -------- new post - new topic --------- From: John Barendrecht Subject: Incoming links > ... someone is putting [our] links at the bottom > of link farm pages... I'm afraid this will hurt our > site with search engines because of the low quality links. - Sandra Combs, LED Digest 2443 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1849/190/ We had the same problem with zscarinsurance.info/525753-91-0.html and others. They are listing our info page at the bottom. If you look at the source code, you will discover what you see and what search engines see is quite different. I wrote Miva, as they appear to be serving the PPC ads and asked that this "customer" not serve any of our ads. They wrote back a few days later: "The source in which you mentioned has been blocked from sending you any more traffic." However our name still appears at the bottom of the page, what the advertiser gains by this, I don't know. Perhaps if you also complained to Miva.com, they might pull his account and he would make different spam pages without our links? Best regards, John Barendrecht http://www.musicridge.com Comment? -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Jeremy Weiss Subject: Incoming links Sandra, There's no need to worry about these links hurting your rankings in the SERPs; they won't. The search engines understand that you can't control who links to your site. If things like this could hurt you then we'd all be out there putting our competitor's links on every FFA site we could find. :D Sincerely, Jeremy Weiss Internet Consultant | Blue Phoenix Consulting, LLC Small Business Consulting and Internet Services http://www.BluePhoenixConsulting.com Comment? -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Roy Williams Subject: Image protection We tried all sorts of scripting and table cell methods to stop our main competitor from lifting our CD scans. Whatever we tried, he found a way round! We also had people 'hot-linking'. In the end, we found the best way was to put our URL on the scans, ensuring that it was spread across lots of different colour areas. That stopped him! We're now quite happy for people to hot-link these images - they now act as promotion for us! Real gone, Roy Williams Nervous Records www.nervous.co.uk Comment? -------- new post - same topic -------- From: James Haley Subject: Image protection > This is how you 'curtain' your images. Though, > keep in mind, anything that you digitize can be > had very easily. Go to studio9.ws/scripts/mypicture.html - Al Toman, LED Digest 2443 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1849/190/ I looked at your sample curtain web site and remembering when I wanted to save an article from a website... I once used the Internet Explorer "Save As" option under the file memu to save the html content of a web page. I tried this while viewing your sample page, and put it under a folder on my hard drive. I then checked it and the picture file was there and also the 1k file was there. So based on that I don't know if that curtain option is going to stop them if Internet Explorer is going to copy it for them and defeat the curtain feature. James Haley Comment? -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Pete Montaldi Subject: Image protection > No right click script II (on images) > dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex9/noright2.htm - Pieter van der Vyver, LED Digest 2443 All that was required to defeat this piece of script was to turn scripting off in my browser. Once off, I was able to right-click and save both images in both Netscape 7.01 and IE 6.0. You could serve up the images using javascript so that viewers wouldn't see them at all without scripting enabled... Pete Montaldi Comment? -------- new post - same topic -------- From: John Barendrecht Subject: Image protection > Myimg.gif is a transparent image, hence, your > curtain and that's what your image takers will get. - Al Toman, LED Digest 2443 Almost true, Al. However, if your image taker is using Firefox as his browser and clicks Page Info under Tools and then goes to the Media tab, all 4 of your "pictures" are clearly shown. It shows the path on your server and a handy preview and "save as" button. Even the no right click is useless here. Firefox is clearly superior to IE for borrowing images. I'm not sure you can protect your images on the web, although a watermark may deter some? Best regards, John Barendrecht http://www.centralhome.com Comment? -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Al Toman Subject: Image protection > Pieter, you might try contacting [TattooFinder.com > and TattooJohnny.com] to find out what the software > program they're using is, and if you do, please let us know. - Lorelle Smith, LED Digest 2444 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1850/190/ Lorelle, To answer your question, they are using a simple flash (swf file) script. Not difficult to do. Al Toman studio9 web design Comment? ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by: GetWebContent.com The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. 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