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List Moderator:                     Published by:
Adam Audette                          LED Digest
adam, led-digest.com     http://www.led-digest.com
..............................................
May 31, 2006                        Issue no. 2172
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            .....IN THIS DIGEST.....


======= NEW ====================

        --== Dealing with Our First Advertiser ==--

                ~ Diane Schips
"A rather large advertiser approached my client,
but neither one of us has any experience in this area."


==== CONTINUING =================

        --== Search Engines Finding Sites ==--

                ~ Bill Slawski
"It's often a good idea, to develop a site on a
development server..."

                ~ Mike Banks Valentine
"One of the most persistent myths of SEO is that
submission to the search engines is necessary."

        --== Email Cloaking ==--

                ~ Carrie MacKenzie
"I also felt much like you did...until the spam
emails became so time consuming..."

                ~ Charles Oertel
"...you might as well resign yourself to being
a spam recipient."

                ~ James Miller
"...spammers are ruthless crooks who have
no morals."


==== BILLBOARD ===================

        --== Web Hosts ==--
                ~ Mary Johnson
                ~ Howard Zarabet
                ~ Andy Johnson
                ~ Martha Retallick


========== NEW ===================================

From: Diane Schips
Subject: New Post - Dealing with Our First Advertiser

A client and I are dealing with our first advertiser.  A rather
large advertiser approached my client, but neither one of us has any
experience in this area.  You could say we've been thrown into the
deep end of the pool - we have a form to fill out but don't know how
to respond to some of the fields and we have no idea what to charge.
 Any and all help will be very appreciated!

I assume Ad Placement means what page the ad will appear on.  Would
this include things like above or below the fold, or top of the page
vs a side margin?

For Format, we put Banner.

What is an Ad Unit?  Would this mean unit of purchase, for example
ads are bought 1000 at a time?  If so, would 1000 be a reasonable
unit?

Does Third Party Serving refer to having someone else track instead
of tracking ourselves?

If we accept animated (not Flash) ads, what is a reasonable loop?
We don't want ads to distract our visitors from the site content, so
I'm thinking maybe 2 seconds?

There is an Impressions / Qty field.  Is this for the advertiser to
fill in?  If we fill it in, how is this different from Ad Unit?

How is Net Cost calculated?  Is it based on Ad Unit, or determined
after the advertiser tells us what they want to  buy?

CPM / CPC / CPA - I know CPM is cost per thousand, CPC is cost per
click.  A search of [the Online Ads] archive revealed that CPA is
cost per action.  But what is "Cost Per Action"?  Since these seem
to be three different ways of looking at the cost, how do we respond
to a field labeled CPM / CPC / CPA?

What is Flight?

In the same section where they ask about visitors and page views,
they're asking if we accept Third Party Tags, and if we accept BI
T&Cs. What are they referring to?

How do we determine how much to charge?  I'm sure the advertiser
would prefer to pay for click thrus, but if we give space to an ad,
and the ad doesn't generate click thrus, we don't get paid for that
space.  So we would want to charge for impressions.  Is there an
industry standard formula that combines both?  I'm sure how many
unique monthly visitors and page views my client gets would
influence how much we could reasonably charge.  So how do we
determine what 'level' so-to-speak my client's site falls into?  Is
there a way to get the going rate - to see what other sites like
ours charge?

Diane Schips, Webmaster

Green Fire herbs
http://www.greenfireherbs.com


======== CONTINUING ===============================

From: William Slawski
Subject: Finding sites

> Apart from search engine submissions and links from
> other websites how do Google and MSN find websites?
> Do they look at recently registered domain names?
        - Sarah Hayes, LED 2170

Hi Sarah,

It's often a good idea, to develop a site on a development server
where the address used won't be the final address of the site, and
to work within directories that disallow search engine spidering
programs using a robots.txt file.  It sounds like you are using the
final address.  As long as there are no potential problems with
people finding the site before it is officially launched, it may not
be harmful to you that search engines have found you.

Search engines may find a link pointing to the pages, left from
anyone.  If someone explores the URL of a site, and guesses the name
of a directory correctly, they may link to the pages of the site.
This has happened with a couple of publically traded companies that
put delicate and very important financial information online, which
was discovered by others, linked to, and accessible through search
engines.  The Securities and Exchange Commission wasn't pleased.

Many people also guess domain names, and type them into browser
address bars, without knowing what might appear when the page
resolves.  I don't know how likely that scenerio is.

Microsoft has noted in a few white papers that they will look at
toolbar information, in addition to links to gather information
about URLs.  Google has mentioned doing the same thing in a few
patent applications.  If you or any of your coworkers who know the
address have toolbars installed on machines that they looked at the
pages upon, that may be a problem.

Google has mentioned looking at WHOIS information to adjust Pagerank
scores, along with a large number of "historical data" information,
in a patent application filed last March.  They also become a domain
name registrar early last year.  I'm not sure that there are many
who could tell you with any certainty (and without possibly braking
a non-disclosure agreement) whether or not either company is using
registration information.  It's a possibility.

If you can look at log files for the site, you might be able to get
a few clues as to how the search engine may have found the pages.

Cheers.

Bill Slawski

SEO by the Sea, Inc.
http://www.seobythesea.com


-------- new post - same topic ---------

From: Mike Banks Valentine
Subject: Finding sites

Google is a domain name registrar as noted in this news story in
TheRegister:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/01/google_domain_seller/

This means that they have access to the DNS records, know about all
domains, including owner, term of registration and history of domain
ownership, along with all domains currently registered in your name.
Although they don't currently sell domain names, they can do so at
any time if they choose.

One of the most persistent myths of SEO is that submission to the
search engines is necessary. It was important in the beginning,
maybe ten years ago - but is no longer necessary, or even advisable.
Here is a story from from SearchEngineWatch in early 2001 talking
about how Inktomi actually assigned ranking PENALTIES to those
submitting through the free "Add URL" submission page!

http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/2163401

That was over 5 years ago and it has since been admitted by other
engines that the majority of free submissions are considered search
engine spam. Here is a great article discussing the pointlessness of
submissions:

http://snipurl.com/r4dl  [beanstalk-inc.com]

In short, your site will be found, crawled and indexed by all search
engines without any action on your part.

Mike Banks Valentine
http://www.seoptimism.com/


-------- new post - new topic ---------

From: Carrie MacKenzie
Subject: Email cloaking

> Frankly, I post my email address on my business website
> because I *want* people to see it and write to me using it.
> If a few of the emails I receive are spam, so be it... What's
> the point in making it hard for potential clients to reach you?
        - David W. Starr, LED 2170

David,

I also felt much like you did... until the spam emails became so
time consuming to delete that I was spending more time doing that
than anything else it seemed... and more importantly...  People that
got the email address, also used it to spam others (or virus's that
they had did)... with the end result that my email address ended up
blocked as being from a "Known spammer" even though my computer
was turned off the times the emails were sent.

Once blacklisted, many of your customers will never see your
message.  Worse, they never got the proofs or the quotes that they
asked for via email... not good for business!

I had to change my email address, & cloak it, with great results up
until the other day when I thoughtlessly put a chocolate bar back
design up online that also had my email address in it, and forgot to
make it a graphic.  As soon as the spam started to flow in, I
deleted it right away, but my email address was still in some of the
"archive" sites for awhile, and I get a hundred or so spam per day
now.  Manageable at least.  Lately, when I do a google search for my
email address, nothing shows up, so hopefully all will become
peaceful and normal again.

Carrie MacKenzie :)
www.candybarwrapper.ca


-------- new post - same topic ---------

From: Charles Oertel
Subject: Email cloaking

> Anyone have the technical knowledge to KNOW
> for sure whether encoding no longer works?
        - Michael Linehan, LED 2167

Even if you never, ever publish your email address in any way on the
web it will end up in the spammers' lists.  If any of your
correspondents (read customers) use MS Outlook or Outlook Express
and are compromised by a virus or spyware there is a good chance
your address will be harvested.

Given that an enormous number of people use these products, and many
of them are ignorant of computer security, you might as well resign
yourself to being a spam recipient.

regards

Charles Oertel
finebushpeople.co.za


-------- new post - same topic --------

From: James Miller
Subject: Email cloaking

I analyse my spam and although I encode my e-mail addresses, most of
the spam I get is to daisy.co.uk, which has been on the web since
1996.

Perhaps twenty per cent of the daisy spam is to addresses that have
been on the web like This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it and This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
But most of it is to completely made-up e-mail addresses like
This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it   These have been made up by spammers and
as they get paid on the number of e-mails they send, they have no
conscience about making them up.  I also get quite a few bounces,
where spammers have sent e-mails as if they came from daisy.co.uk.

I also get quite a bit of spam to other URLs, that I have setup.
One www.daisybt.com has never been used to send e-mail or published
on a web site.  Spammers just look for new registrations and then
add them to the list.  I could easily write a program to do that, so
I suspect there are hundreds of thousands of people, who could do
the same in the world.

So in my view encoding is a good idea to protect your individual
e-mail addresses, but spammers are ruthless crooks who have no
morals.  So don't expect them to not find other ways to send out
their rubbish.

My analysis has shown a certain amount of good news in the last few
weeks.

PayPal / eBay scams have dropped to a much lower level and I get
about a tenth of those I used to get.  One thing I did was to make
my login e-mail addresses for these, different to the one they use
to contact me.  That way it's much more obvious if it's a scam.

I used to get about 80 phishing e-mails every day for Barclays Bank.
Last Sunday, all the professional ones stopped and I perhaps get
only three or four a day.

So perhaps the banks are winning this war.

I did laugh this morning, as I got a phishing e-mail that appeared
from the e-mail address and subject to have come from PayPal.  On
opening it, I found it was attempting to access my HSBC account.

James Miller

Daisy Analysis
www.daisy.co.uk


==== BILLBOARD ===================================

From: Mary Johnson
Subject: Web hosts

> Can anyone recommend a US based host with
> excellent Windows hosting and support?
        - Magnus Brattemark, LED 2170

I heartily recommend CrystalTech.com.  They have a professional
datacenter in Arizona.  I have used them for almost 3 years and have
been most impressed with their customer service, super website
statistics (much better than Web Analytics), and proactive measures
for upgrading their hardware and software.

I am able to get live, capable technical support 24 hours a day, by
phone, within minutes of placing the call.  They just keep getting
better every year -- adding more capabilities to their control panel
-- even making it very easy to setup SSL without having to do the
coordination yourself between your web host and the SSL provider.

Mary Johnson, Software Engineer

Web Site Helper
www.websitehelper.com


-------- new post - same topic ---------

From: Howard Zarabet
Subject: Web hosts

Datapipe!  I have been with them for about 5 years. Not the
cheapest, but I sleep very well!

http://www.datapipe.com/

Howard Zarabet
SigningsHotline.com


-------- new post - same topic ---------

From: Andy Johnson
Subject: Web hosts

Magnus,

We host with RackSpace. We have been with them for two years and
their service is excellent. I can't say anything, but good about
RackSpace. Before that we were with another hosting company that I
can't say anything but bad things about that company. RackSpace has
multiple data centers both in the US and the UK. They offer a range
of services and what they refer to as "Fanatical support".

We have no relationship with RackSpace other than a customer-vendor
relationship.

Best regards,

Andy Johnson
www.greenleafsoft.com


-------- new post - same topic ---------

From: Martha Retallick
Subject: Web hosts

In a recent LED Digest, Magnus Brattemark had this to say about
website hosting services:

> I need ASP and MS SQL Server.

Here's my recommendation:

When it comes to Windows website programming, permit me to recommend
Jim Hewitt. Through his company, Hewitt Consulting Enterprises, he
offers custom programming and hosting.

I've worked with Jim on website projects, and have found him to be
conscientious to the nth degree. More about him at:
http://www.hceonline.com/

Martha Retallick

Western Sky Communications
Web/Graphic Design & Consulting
http://www.westernskycommunications.com


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