| LED Digest 2564: Business Tips & Advice |
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The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom www.WillMaster.com/Master : the LED's Key Sponsor Master Series Software - Get Connected with Your WebSite www.SEOToolSet.com/training/ : the LED's Premier Sponsor Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training & Certification ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. January 7, 2007 Issue no. 2564 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== Business Tips & Advice ==-- ~ Janet Pickard "Care to share?" <Moderator Comment> ==== CONTINUING ================= --== The Paid Links Scam ==-- ~ Dan Thies "Maybe some folks in the text link business just don't keep up with SEO..." ~ Dirk Johnson "There are plenty of situations where a paid link is genuinely a good investment." --== Vacation Autoresponder ==-- ~ Eva Rosenberg "Consider doing something simple..." --== Ad Copy with Low CTR ==-- ~ Will Bontrager "...when people do buy from us, chances are high they will really like our work." ~ Shel Horowitz "The trick to successful copywriting...is to be very specific." ========= NEW ===================================== From: Janet Pickard Subject: Best Business Advice Many years ago I asked at the Holiday Season of LEDers, what they were doing for their holiday marketing. One response was from a company that made blocks. They responded that they raised prices at the holiday season because that was the time when people did their purchasing of their products. I thought about that and tried it. To my amazement my sales increased and so did my profit margins. That was some of the best business advice I have had. I now use price as a spigot to control the flow of sales. No matter what business you are in, there is advice that fits almost everyone. Care to share? Best, Janet Pickard ChessCentral www.ChessCentral.com The Leader in Cutting-Edge Chess <Moderator Comment> Janet, great tip there. I did some digging and found the post you're thinking of - it's in issue #1886 - Sandy Galvin of Barclay Blocks http://www.barclaywoods.com is the author. The full post is on this page: Preparing for the Holiday Season http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1329/190/ Here's part of it - -adam ------------------ In the fall, our monthly sales are linear for the first 9 months, increase about 1.25 in October, about 3.0 in November, and about 5 times in the first 18 days of December. This is from (a) a general increase in traffic, (b) an increase in the ratio of buyers to visitors, and (c) an increase in the average purchase (about double). When all is done, we make about 50% of our gross in the last quarter, and about half of this in December. We place some emphasis on reassuring customers after November 15th that their orders will arrive in time for Christmas -- for sure, no exceptions, 14 pt. Bold in blinking red. After this date, our customers seem to sense that free shipping is a con game, but that fulfillment is a real issue. We think that the "Big sale" cum "Free Shipping" ploy is a pre-Thanksgiving tactic and rings false after December 1. We try to slowly ramp up prices beginning in August. We change prices weekly. Between October and December, the remaining inventory may also play a role in our prices. After December 1, anything goes. I think that the essential thing abut a Christmas strategy is to puzzle out the evolving thinking of one's modal class of customers. "What are they thinking?" "What are they worried about?" "What are they seeing elsewhere?" "What heuristic do they use to calculate value?" The strategy may not be the same every year, it may not be the same for different businesses, it may not be the same at different points in the cycle, and you can't tell afterwards whether a rejected alternative would have worked (since you didn't do it). Welcome to management. If you end up with some money in your pocket -- you done good. Sandy Galvin Barclay Blocks http://www.barclaywoods.com ------------------ ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Dan Thies Subject: Paid links Wow, you make one semi-inflammatory statement to Search Return, and it jumps lists! :D Thanks to Chris for the thoughtful response. I'm going to ignore his straw man arguments about Yahoo directory listings as paid links, and get right to the heart of this. > Here's a truth for you: You cannot always > tell the paid or unpaid status of a link by > looking at it, it's placement, or the > underlying code. - Chris Nielsen, LED Digest 2563 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1978/190/ That's kind of the point - automated detection algorithms don't depend on these things. Naturally, the "obvious link rentals" do feed the data sets that are used for automated detection, and there are plenty of obvious ones out there. Once a search engine knows that this site is buying links with this anchor text pointing to that URL, they have some useful information. Once they have tens or hundreds of thousands of bits of similar data, sniffing out other sites on TLA networks and other link farms is a matter of identifying the places which link to many known link buyers. This isn't some hypothetical idea. I saw a demonstration of some research work by a grad student more than two years ago which was, to put it mildly, shocking. I think it's safe to assume that progress has, uh, progressed since then. The risks in buying or renting links from TLA networks and link farms like Search Engine Trust (which was wiped out by Google last fall) is that you join that pool of known link buyers. This increases the chances that your other paid links will get filtered, but that's not the worst part. As search engines identify paid links, they can use that information to filter out other paid links as well - which means that simply jumping to a new link farm or network when the old one stops working will just help to kill the new link farm or network... but even that isn't the worst part. What's worse is that joining the ranks of link buyers also increases the chances that your real natural links will also be filtered out, because there are no doubt a good number of "false positives" just as there would be with email spam detection or any other automated discovery system. If you get dirty enough, it could be hard to clean up. Maybe some folks have been around long enough to remember the "Links To You" link exchange and others like it. You may remember all of the member sites that were banned by Google. Even after that happened, the operators kept on promoting these programs as an SEO solution, even though it could literally get your site removed from the world's largest search engine. Just like back then, the 'service providers' today don't disclose the downside in their sales pitches. They don't remove sites from their networks, even after they've been publicly identified by search engine reps at major conferences. But to be fair, maybe "scam" isn't the right word. Maybe some folks in the text link business just don't keep up with SEO, or simply don't understand how much the world has changed. The guys I met at the Pubcon trade show seemed to sincerely believe that their (IMO) easily- detected network was immune to detection. Buyer (and renter) beware. Dan Thies - Author & Publisher of SEO Fast Start http://www.seofaststart.com ========= Begin Sponsor Message ========= Tired of testing? Rotate ads automatically. Set up as many as you please. Built-in display statistics. Free yourself. http://bontragercgi.com/Rotate ========== End Sponsor Message ========== -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Dirk Johnson Subject: Paid links > If you want links, build something worth > linking to and market the hell out of it. > It's easier, it's cheaper, and it works. - Dan Thies Hi Adam, Good thread.... There are plenty of situations where a paid link is genuinely a good investment, on it's own merit. An auto parts vendor buying links from an automotive forum or automotive portal is a good example. Neither party in that deal has any legal requirement to satisfy the "needs" of a search engine by using a "nofollow" tag. Whether they declare it as an "advertisement" is another issue. It is up to the search engines to sort it all out. The more the engines try, the more that site owners will find ways to mask these links as natural content. It's a cat and mouse game. Short of illegal activity, it is the right of a site owner to buy links from whoever wants to sell them. There are as many formulas for getting rankings as there are SEO consultants. Everyone has a preferred method. It is the Wild West in this business. In the end, what works consistently becomes evident in real search results. Theories based on assumptions, gaming schemes, and "sounds good" logic are worthless, but still quite prevalent. Smart people will spend time reviewing what really works, and replicate it as best they can. That takes a lot of work, and a lot of seat-of-the-pants flight time in this industry. Best regards, Dirk Johnson DomainDrivers LLC www.domaindrivers.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Eva Rosenberg Subject: Autoresponder > I'm would appreciate it if someone could > point me to a vacation autoresponder that > would also forward the sender's original > email to me. - AE Johnson, LED Digest 2563 Consider doing something simple: 1) Open a gmail account to use to receive all your vacation mail. www.gmail.com - as with all Google tools, there's no cost. 2) Set your autoresponder in your server's e-mail system. Just go to your server's control panel. 3) Set up a forwarder in your server's e-mail control panel so all your mail forwards to your gmail account. And voila! You can access your mail from anywhere in the world. You can sort it, filter it and respond to it - without spending one cent. Oh yes, remember to turn off your server's autoresponder and forwarder when you return. Once upon a time, your Humble Guide, Eva Rosenberg, EA & TaxNerd www.taxmama.com www.taxquips.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: William Bontrager Subject: Ad copy Hello LEDers. The ad critiques in issue 2562 [ http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1977/190/ ] were a surprise for us. It started a wild ride. Thank you to all who deliberately and kindly pointed out things which can result in better click-throughs in our LED sponsor message. We *always* appreciate considered and helpful suggestions. And you who said such nice things about us and our work, thank you very much. We are admittedly not the best copy writers. You reflect the fact that when people do buy from us, chances are high they will really like our work. Let me address a few of the non-copy issues that were raised: ~ We make both PHP and perl CGI software. ~ All of our software, except a few of the free, is used somewhere on our web sites. ~ Willmaster.com was purchased when I first became excited about the possibilities of the Internet, a decade or so ago. It represented "I will master this." The domain name itself unfortunately does give some unfamiliar with us the first impression that the domain may have to do with legal wills, until they click through. ~ The short URLs in the ads are click counters and redirectors. Google "site:bontragerconnection.com short URLs" (no quotes) for our article that explains how to do it. May year 2008 be all you believe it can be. Will Bontrager http://Willmaster.com/ -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Shel Horowitz Subject: Will B's ad As a copywriter and marketing consultant, I see several poroblems. The trick to successful copywriting--and marketing in general--is to be very specific. You want to know your market, address your concerns directly to that market, and tell them what problem it solves, what pain it eliminates, what hedonistic pleasure it facilitates. I'd think about a specific task that's easier to accomplish, a specific frustration you solve, etc.--and link to a landing page for the specific product that solves that problem. Focus very clearly on benefits, feature different products in different ads, and see what happens. PS--public thanks (I've already thanked privately) to those who sent their heldesk suggestions. Shel Horowitz Marketing Strategic Planning, Consulting, and Copywriting http://www.frugalmarketing.com (c) Copyright 1995-2008 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work." - Rita Mae Brown |
