Posts filed under 'General'
Have you ever seen those sales or opt-in (squeeze) pages that have countdown timers on them? Something like, “Receive these free bonuses if you sign up before (insert fake counter here)”? You’ll notice that if you stick around long enough, those counters just reset themselves once they reach “0:00″.
I don’t know about you, but these little tricks or gimmicks turn me right off. If you’re going to offer a free bonus, then give it to your readers! Don’t trick them with fake counters. It may yield results, but is the bottom line more important than your reputation or your customers’ perception of you?
I’m more inclined to subscribe or purchase from someone who seems like they aren’t hiding behind anything, someone who genuinely cares about their readers and customers, and the experience they have when they read or purchase their products.
How about you? Do you run away when you see those fake counters?
July 7th, 2008
Yuwanda Black over at Blogging Tips has written a great post about “blog jealousy”.
It’s a natural feeling to know that your blog is delivering quality content but doesn’t do as well as other blogs who are just as good, and in some cases, not as good. Yuwanda has a few good points to help combat that feeling and use it to your advantage.
One of the things she said really stood out for me.
“Don’t try to copy someone else’s style, what they’re doing or even how they make money online.”
I see so many bloggers doing this. Those “famous” bloggers didn’t get to where they are today by pretending to be someone else. They stayed true to themselves and wrote with their own words and style. They tried lots of different money making techniques before they found the ones that worked for them. I’m sure they even went through a few different stages of blog envy themselves before they reached their “celebrity” status.
They all started with that empty “Hello World” blog post, just like everyone else. What makes them stand out is they got from point A to point B by being themselves. Yes, I’m sure there are a few exceptions to this rule, but I believe the majority of us will only succeed if we stop trying to be someone else, stop trying to please everyone, and focus on doing what we know we can do best. Being ourselves!
June 28th, 2008
It seems to me that lately there have been a lot of online “battles” going on between different internet marketers. Usually, one marketer will call the other one out in a public forum (via blog post, forum thread, newsletter, Twitter, etc.) and the saga begins.
I normally try to ignore those things, although sometimes they become really entertaining.
However, in the majority of those cases, I lose respect for one or sometimes both of the people involved (and sometimes more if other people jump in). There’s a time and a place for things like that, but they’re never usually dealt with at that right time or place. This leaves me to believe that it’s a ploy to increase their “fame”, increase numbers (followers, readers, customers, etc.) or maybe it’s all for their own amusement. I don’t know.
I don’t play those games so I have no idea why those things transpire. It’s one thing to defend yourself when someone is saying things about you that just aren’t true, or making people aware of scammers. It’s another thing however to publicly criticize/bash/humiliate someone because of their opinion, the way they market their products (even if they’re completely legit), or how they write.
My whole point is this.
In the past few months, I’ve realized there are A LOT of marketers that I will never purchase from and I will never read anything they ever write - simply because of the way they dealt with those situations. How they act in those situations tells me what kind of person they really are. That is my opinion anyway.
I don’t care if you know the #1 secret to making money online. I don’t want to be associated with you in any way if you’re a douchebag. I’d rather buy something or learn something from someone who knows how to treat others the way they like to be treated. Just because you may hide behind your computer screen doesn’t give you the right to act like a total knob.
In addition to losing the respect of many marketers in the past few months, I’ve also made some really great contacts (especially through Twitter). These contacts are friendly, helpful, and genuine. I’m sure if they continue that they’ll go much farther than…some other people we know.
What can you take away from this? It’s simple. Be nice! If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. However, if something really needs to be said, especially if it can turn into a learning experience, then address it tactfully. There’s no need for finger pointing and tattling. It may feel good while you name names, but some sort of backlash is inevitably going to follow.
I have a lot more to say on the issue but I don’t want to sound mega hypocritical! This is a touchy subject and one that needs to be approached carefully in a lot of cases. I just hate when people feel the need to be so hurtful and rude with their comments towards other people.
UPDATE: John Reese wrote a great post here. One of the reasons that inspired me to write this post this morning is because of what he talks about in his post. Now there’s a prime example of how things should be dealt with when circumstances require it. John was attacked, and he responded. It’s an important read, so check it out. He makes his point much more eloquently than I ever could.
June 19th, 2008
I generally try and take my weekends off (even though I still sneak a look at my traffic stats a few times throughout the days) but I’m wondering if any of you do the same.
Working at home gives us a lot of freedom over when our work hours are, but I find that the days (weekdays and weekends) are more of the same than if I worked out of the home. For instance, I don’t look forward to Fridays as much as most people. My work is AT home so I can’t exactly get away from it. Even when I’m relaxing on the couch with a movie or a book, I can still see the computer out of the corner of my eye and there’s always that nagging feeling like I should be writing something.
Even so, I try and take some well-deserved “me time” which is usually on the weekends so that my leisure time coincides with my friends’ and family’s leisure time. However, I see a lot of my fellow mamas on the web are still diligently writing and posting.
There’s always the auto post feature in Wordpress that allows you to write a post and have Wordpress automatically submit it for you at a later date and time, but I’m not using it today. It’s Saturday and I should be spending time with my family. Instead, I’m sitting here with about 20 tabs open in Firefox and 3 posts on the go.
How about you?
June 14th, 2008
I was reading the comments of a fairly new blog today and one reader had asked the author how many RSS subscribers they currently had.
The author ignored that commenter but chose to respond to all of the other comments.
Personally, I think it’s kind of a rude question. Possibly along the same lines as “How much money do you make?” or “How old are you?”.
Some people don’t mind giving out that information because they either have numbers to respond with that are enviable to most people, or they just don’t care what other people think.
Others might be offended at having being asked that question because they’re ashamed of the numbers and don’t want to be somewhat forced into a situation where they have to give out that information.
If someone asked me that question in the comments of my blog, I would probably ignore them too. I’m not afraid of people knowing how many RSS subscribers I have (even though you’d probably laugh hysterically if you knew) but I think it’s a tad rude to ask questions like that - especially in such a public forum.
What do you think? I’d love to know your thoughts.
P.S. Feel free to sign up for my RSS feed by clicking on the orange button to the right 
June 10th, 2008
I have no idea why yet but I lost all the formatting on my blog. I guess it’s going to look funny until I fix it and I’m not feeling so smart at the moment so that could take awhile.
Update: Never mind. It’s fixed. And I didn’t do it. Weird. But good.
June 2nd, 2008
Statcounter uses The Planet as their hosting partner, however, there was an explosion in one of The Planet’s data centers last night caused by an electrical short. 9,000 servers and 7,500 customers were (and still are being) affected, including Statcounter. There were no injuries.
This means that people using Statcounter (like me) will have limited access to their stats, and some stats will even be lost.
The staff at Statcounter are gracious enough to keep everyone updated through their forum. They also suggest that if you are on one of the affected partitions and you need to track your stats before the issue is resolved, that you can set up a new project in your Statcounter account and start tracking again.
I think the team at Statcounter are being great throughout this whole ordeal and I can only imagine how stressful it must be for them. It’s during times like this when you realize which businesses believe in operating with integrity, and which don’t.
I just hope that everyone understands that this was an accident and was not Statcounter’s fault. I know people like to get pissy without knowing all the facts, but even though I may have lost some of my traffic stats, I’m thankful that things weren’t any worse.
I’m glad nobody was injured in the explosion, and I look forward to compulsively checking my stats like the obsessive freak that I am. In the meantime, this is an important reminder for everyone to make sure they have their eggs in more than one basket.
And also, keep backups of all your stuff! Servers have been known to lose data. Especially when they blow up.
June 1st, 2008
I just tried to log in to Twitter and I saw this.
“Thanks for noticing”?
I couldn’t help NOT noticing! But thanks for making me smile.
And yes, I know that most of you have seen this page a million times (due to Twitter’s infamous reputation of being down all the time) but as you may well know, I’m extremely behind the times.
I wonder if Twitter’s demise is imminent.
May 30th, 2008
Today I’ve been spending a lot of time optimizing one of my websites. I’ve made my pages smaller so they load quicker and made some keyword changes and ad tweaks.
I don’t do this too often (I’m a naughty webmaster) but every time I do I always notice positive changes in rankings, traffic, opt-in subscribers and income. Not bad for spending a couple hours on a few changes.
I use SiteReportCard a lot when I do this. It checks for any broken links, how fast your site loads, link popularity, rankings for keywords, etc. It’s free and super easy. Just plug in the URL of the page you’re checking and voila. Pretty simple but it can sure make a big difference.
Checking stats like how fast your site loads is very important. Many website owners don’t realize that their pages are loading too slow for people to stay on their site. Optimizing images and getting rid of unnecessary code can really speed up your loading times and help you keep more of that hard earned traffic.
I also like to check my keywords and their density. You can even compare them to other competing pages. This can not only help you optimize your content better for search engines, but also gives you ideas for even more keywords. I’ve written whole articles and added new pages after discovering keywords and phrases I hadn’t already thought of myself.
If you’re not already using a similar tool to check statistics like these, bookmark this page and visit it regularly.
May 5th, 2008
I subscribe to a few different magazines and there’s one thing that they do to their subscribers that pisses me off so I’m going to have another little rant if you don’t mind.
Once your subscription is about to expire, these magazines will mail you the standard renewal notice. In the letter they send, they always say the same thing in big red letters.
“RENEW NOW OR PAY MORE LATER”
Well guess what?!
The last time I received that letter, I didn’t renew now! Oh my goodness, I didn’t renew. What to do, what to do? I was going to burn in hell because I didn’t lock in at that special subscription price. Life as I knew it should have been over right?
Luckily for me, my life was spared when I received another letter a few weeks later. This one was especially interesting because it was essentially the same as the previous one, but with a lower price.
A Lower Price!
Those bastards lied to me. I’m not happy now.
I could have believed them with that initial letter and renewed my subscription and fork over 20 big ones. Instead, I called their bluff (cause I’m smart like that) and ended up paying only 12 bucks.
Now, while this was beneficial to me, I can say that I’m not too thrilled with this magazine’s ability to blatantly lie to their loyal customers.
I know this is a marketing tactic from the days of old but is it really ethical?
Whatever that answer is, it doesn’t really matter. The whole point here is that I may not be a loyal customer for long. I would bet there are others who feel the same way. (I hope anyway, or else I’ll feel like giant tool.)
I’m sure you can apply this type of tactic to many online endeavors as well. I’ve seen a lot of things similar to this in email marketing where people offer a program or product for a certain price, then lower it for future customers. (In some cases they’ll even give it away for free.)
What a great way to lose credibility and trust.
To make a long story short, just don’t do this. Be honest. Stick to your word. It’s worth it.
April 29th, 2008
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