Hi
Gang,
Thanks for
being here, I value every one of you
and truly hope that you become successful online!
If you are
a member of some of the more prominent Internet marketer's
lists, you'll be getting a prompt to buy a new eBook called
"SUCCESS ALERT! <<
Conversations With Successful Internet Entrepreneurs"
that is touted as the "best eBook of 2004".
That's quite a bold statement and it is coming from some
top marketers who pull in 6 figures online consistently.
But, resist
the temptation to jump the band wagon until you
hear it from me...the truth is, I don't know
yet if this book really is the best of '04!
As a subscriber
of "Starting Smart!",
you'll get the benefit of not having to risk your money
on this book. I have bought "SUCCESS
ALERT! << Conversations With Successful Internet
Entrepreneurs" and will give you
a full review in the next issue in 10-14
days.
Wait till
the next issue of "Starting
Smart!" to decide, I'll let you know
if the $47 is actually worth it!
What
I'll discuss in the intro of this issue of "Starting
Smart!":
1.
Looking beyond Alexa ranking when reviewing possible linking
partners.
Once again,
thanks for being here, your membership to this e-zine
is what matters most to me as an Internet marketer.
"The Regular
Guy"
Karl Augustine
In
this edition of "Starting
Smart!"
*Intro
by Karl, 1 topic - Looking beyond Alexa Rankings
*Featured Article #1: "Is the
'IronPort' Whitelist Actually An Extortion Tactic Targeting
Small, But Legitimate Email Marketers?" by
Jim Edwards
*In "The News" - SEO
Trade
Secrets - 8 Great Tools for Search Engine Optimization
*Featured Article #2:
"Do Popups Affect Ranking?"
by John Ricera
*Welcome new subscribers!
*Copyright and Publisher Info
Intro
by Karl...
1.
Looking beyond Alexa ranking when reviewing possible linking
partners.
Alexa ranking
only measures traffic amount, not quality of traffic.
Alexa ranking also only measures traffic from those who
have the Alexa toolbar (as of the time of this writing).
So, while Alexa ranking gives you an indication of how
"busy" a website is, it doesn't necessarily
give you a detailed picture of the quality of the traffic
that runs through that site.
Remember
this: There's nothing more important in measuring
traffic and cost of that traffic than unique first
time visitors...and Alexa Ranking doesn't measure
this. Alexa ranking is measured by traffic hits only,
not relevant hits or unique hits, or "first time"
hits. A webmaster who has a membership site that is well
traveled due to content or offers that bring the members
back over and over again might have a good Alexa ranking,
but it doesn't necessarily mean they get new targeted
traffic daily.
By contrast,
a site that has seemingly poor or high numbered Alexa
rankings may have targeted traffic via
unique visitors, even though that site only gets 200 or
so visitors per day.
Don't let
the numbers fool ya!
When you're
looking at exchanging links with a web site that has Alexa
ranking that isn't as good as yours (higher # than yours)
or has an Alexa ranking that seems to be out of touch
with what you'd call a "fit" for your site,
take the time to fully explore the visitors
that site gets. That site may be a great linking partner
regardless of its Alexa ranking, you never know till you
explore.
On such
sites, take a look at these things to "assess"
Alexa ranking:
1. Look and
feel of site
2. Unique
selling proposition?
3. Follow
up responder series that has actual value?
4. Solid
e-zine
5. Relevant
content to yours?
Etc.
Keep in mind
that you should look at the overall value of a site and
how it fits within your selling proposition when
deciding whether or not to exchange links with another
site. Alexa ranking alone is not nearly enough to make
an accurate or wise decision.
Enjoy the rest of this edition
and thanks again for reading.
Karl Augustine
"The Regular Guy"
(c) Karl Augustine
*Featured
Article #1:
"Is
the 'IronPort' Whitelist Actually An Extortion Tactic
Targeting Small, But Legitimate Email Marketers?"
by Jim Edwards
© Jim Edwards - All
Rights reserved
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
It appears that Mr. Gates'
prophetic prediction that charging marketers to send email
across the Microsoft email networks (MSN and Hotmail)
to cut down on Sp*m is about to come true.
According to CIO Today, Microsoft
is now employing "IronPort Anti-Spam Technology."
"IronPort" is a
paid "white-list" for people who send "mass
email" (including newsletter publishers, ezine publishers,
affiliate managers, mini-course operators, and basically
anyone who has a list of opt-in emails).
If you send any type of email
where you do a broadcast to everyone on your list, this
applies to you.
If you want your email broadcasts
to get through their filters, you must pay a hefty fee
and post a "bond."
Here are some
facts about this developing story:
1. They charge by how much
email you send a month, but the minimum charge is a: $375
Application Fee, plus $500 Annual License Fee, plus
$500 "Bond" fee. That's $1,375.00 just to get
in the game.
If you want to see the complete
breakdown, go here:
https://www.bondedsender.com/fees.jsp
2. If you go over the "complaint"
threshold of 1 complaint per month, then they will debit
$20 from your bond fee for each complaint to "fine"
you for being naughty.
Now that sounds good on the
surface, but here's a scenario
to try on for size:
Your competitor / enemy /
Net "psycho" signs up for 50 fr~e email accounts
at HotMail and complains about you every month when you
send your newsletter.
49 complaints (50 - 1 allowed
complaint) times $20 a complaint comes out to $980 in
fines.
Now, can you dispute the
fines? Sure, absolutely!
But how much will you lose
in time, energy and effort disputing the allegations?
(My guess is, a whole lot more than that.)
You can check out all the
"rules" here
https://www.bondedsender.com/fees.jsp
Here are the details of the
program straight from the horse's mouth...
https://www.bondedsender.com
Here's my take on this whole
thing (which dropped on me out of the blue today):
First, don't get me wrong...
I hate sp~m with a passion!
I spend at least an hour
a day fighting it (down from 3 hours a day just a few
weeks ago before I shut down about 2 dozen email addresses
that got harvested by spambots over the last few years).
With that said, this whole
"IronPort" thing sounds and smells to me like
"white list" extortion.
Why?
Here's the basic premise:
"Pay to get your email through our filters, or else
you run the very likely risk of not getting your email
through at all."
In fact, here's a *direct
quote* from their website
https://www.bondedsender.com/faqs/sender.jsp
<-- Start Quote -->
"What happens if I don't
bond my email? You're rolling the dice and taking your
chances with spam filters, black lists and bulk folders.
Some days all of your email may be delivered; other days
30-50% could be blocked."
<-- End Quote -->
Kind of reminds you of a
cheesy mafia movie on late night TV:
Me:
"Hey Bugsy, what happens if I don't pay my 'protection'
money this month? What if I stand up to you and refuse
to pay?"
Bugsy:
"Well, maybe nothin' will happen to you because the
Boss ain't payin' attention when I tell him you decided
not to pay. On the other hand, maybe I'll just smack you
around a little bit... or maybe-- I'll BREAK YOUR LEG
with this baseball bat! Go ahead and not pay us... then
we'll see what happens!"
Now, back to my question:
"Why should I have to pay a huge fee to send email
to people who have opted in to my lists?"
The argument from Microsoft
(and soon to be other ISP's) is that the uncontrolled
sp~m on the web is costing them a lot of money to deliver
email nobody wants to read.
Well, if that's the case,
aren't email users shelling out cash or credit to pay
their ISPs for email services (mine charges me $40 a month
for cable), or paying for free services like HotMail or
Yahoo Mail through viewing advertising on every page?
I was under the impression
we were already paying to receive email... and last time
I checked, there was no place to put a stamp!
Okay, even if we make it
past that and we accept the argument that legitimate emailers
should have to pay a fee in order to get on that big "whitelist
in the sky" somewhere... there are still two very
important considerations here:
1. First, what about the
little guy who starts doing really well?
You know, the small newsletter
publisher who puts out a great ezine or fr-e report or
whatever, and gets a lot of subscribers and then wants
to broadcast email to them on a regular basis?
Let's say they start making
$20,000.00 a year from their ezine... are they now supposed
to shell out 6-10% of their earnings in order to get their
messages through? (And that's if they never get a fine!)
Do they have to be penalized
for being successful?
Apparently so if this system
gains widespread acceptance by all the big ISP's and email
service providers!
2. Second, what about the
high potential for abuse at the hands of unethical competitors
and just plain jerks that populate the Internet!
I know it might seem hard
to believe, but there are psychos out there who will sign
up for a bunch of free email accounts just so they can
make trouble.
(This is not paranoia! I
had a user who signed up, definitely opted-in from my
website, had the emails routed through a SpamCop address
so I got blacklisted by SpamCop until I could get it straightened
out. Oh, and guess who owns SpamCop... IronPort, that's
who!)
Now, some idiot making waves
with 100 email accounts won't put a dent in the pockets
of most big players in the email arena... for them it'll
just be a business expense.
But for the case of the "little"
guy, fighting that potential abuse and those fees could
seriously cripple and even kill a fledgling enterprise...
and that, in my opinion, is a serious problem.
Also in my opinion, all this
is going to do is cut out the little guy and make it easier
for big companies to email the hell out of the rest of
us.
A small newsletter publisher
will find it cost-prohibitive to pay for the service,
and some giant company will just keep pumping the email
out because they have the staff and resources to fight
the inevitable complaints.
And let's face it, if a big
company is paying a $10,000.00 a year licensing fee plus
posting a $4,000.00 bond, how aggressive do you think
the IronTrust people will really be to get rid of them?
In my opinion, not very.
In conclusion: Despite my
ranting, I actually think this is a step in the right
direction (albeit an inconvenient step).
Something has to be done
to fight spam.
However, at this point, this
whole system has (in my opinion) too many unanswered questions,
especially for us little guys.
Namely:
~ Do I really need to do
this if I'm a little guy operating and growing a newsletter?
~ What happens if I get unfounded
spam complaints?
~ At what level does it make
financial sense for me to do this?
~ What if my newsletter isn't
a big profit generator... am I supposed to give up the
revenue I do create just to get my emails through?
To their apparent credit,
Yahoo! is also trying to pioneer a solution, but this
one doesn't appear (at this point) like it will cost publishers
or subscribers any money (and I like the sound of that).
http://antispam.yahoo.com/domainkeys
But with so much at stake
(on both sides), this issue is a far cry from any satisfactory
resolution.
Stay tuned for further updates
as events warrant...
--
Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist
and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach
you how to use fr^e articles to quickly drive thousands
of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links...
-=-=-==-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Need MORE TRAFFIC to your website or affiliate links?
"Turn Words Into Traffic" reveals
the secrets for driving Thousands of NEW visitors to your
website or affiliate links... without spending a dime
on advertising!
Click Here> http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com
In
"The News"
SEO
Trade Secrets - 8 Great Tools for Search Engine Optimization
Read the article by clicking
the link below (new browser
opens)
8
Tools To SEO
Featured
Article #2:
"Do
Pops Affect Ranking?" by
John Ricera
Someone from our membership
site recently asked "Do Popups Affect Ranking?"
My gut instinct was "How could they?" and "Why
would a search engine care whether your site used popups
or not?" Then, I thought "Well; if the search
engines do pay any attention to popups, they probably
rank them lower due to quality issues."
However, since it was a member
of our site asking the question, I decided to run it through
our statistical analysis engine. Wow! What a surprising
result!
Here is the methodology I
used to answer this question. I gathered the results of
the queries naturally performed last month by myself and
three associates using Yahoo and Google. I then visited
each page and kept a tally of pages that used the javascript
"window.open" command (a very common way to
implement popups). The tally was kept for each of the
first eight rankings for each of the two largest search
engines (Yahoo and Google).
On the Y-axis, you will see
the number of pages found that use a javascript "window.open"
command. On the X-axis, we have rankings from 1 to 8.
Here are the graphs for Yahoo and Google:
http://www.SearchEngineGeek.com/graphs/dey04.gif
http://www.SearchEngineGeek.com/graphs/deg04.gif
Yahoo doesn't seem to care
very much about use of the "window.open" command.
However, the trend is positive. Pages with the "window.open"
command did rank higher on average than pages without
it.
The Google result was absolutely
amazing though! The correlation was an amazing +92 on
a scale of -100 to +100. Pages which used the "window.open"
command ranked much higher in an extremely consistent
manner than pages that did not use the "window.open"
command.
Is it possible (likely?)
that Google actually does use this as a ranking factor?
Why? We may never know, but now we do know that pages
that implement popups using the "window.open"
command do rank higher on average on Yahoo and MUCH higher
consistently on Google.
Notes:
1. Over 1,000 queries and
over 10,000 sites were examined for this study.
2. There was no exercise
to attempt to isolate different keywords. I merely took
a random sampling of the queries performed by myself and
three associates during the prior month.
Conclusion:
Pages using the javascript
"window.open" command rank higher on both of
the leading search engines (Yahoo and Google).
This is merely a correlation
study, so it cannot be determined from this study whether
the leading search engines purposefully entertain this
factor or not. The
actual factors used may be far distant from the factor
we studied, but the end result is that both of these search
engines do, in fact, rank pages with a "window.open"
command higher on average.
Jon Ricerca is one of the
leading researchers and authors of the Search Engine Ranking
Factor (SERF) reports at SearchEngineGeek.com.
For access to the other SERF
reports, please visit:
http://www.SearchEngineGeek.com
*Welcome New
Subscribers!
For those of you just joining,
welcome!
Your time is valuable
and I'll do my level best to make this "read"
time well spent. I am just a regular guy, just like many
of you out there. I stuck with it, and now am having a
blast doing what I love to do. Keep a positive attitude
and you can do just about anything...seems like old news,
but it works and we all can use a little reminding now
and then.
Please forward this e-zine
in its entirety to any friends or colleagues who you think
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Thanks for helping
us grow!
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http://www.9mistakes-online.com/startingsmartnewsletter.htm
