Skype Outage – December 22, 2010

Like most online entrepreneurs, Skype is a staple of my business and one of my first logins everyday after having my 2nd cup of coffee.    Today, I was relieved to learn that the problem is not related to Skype hackers or phishers … a rising trend on Skype.

After being unable to login through the client interface, I immediately went to the website to assure myself that my account had not been compromised somehow.  I was able to login and verify my account there, although that capability has since gone down.

While I was logged in, a brief visit to the support page revealed that Skype was aware of the problems that people were having with logging in.  I followed recommended steps to remedy the problem, which included shutting down my home network and resetting the routers.  I guess that should be done periodically anyway so, even though it didn’t solve the Skype login problem, it wasn’t a complete waste of time. 

This is probably quite an embarrassment for Skype in the advent of their upcoming IPO.  For the rest of us, we can breathe a sigh of relief that our Skype accounts have not been hijacked by the hackers and phishers who prey on Skype users.

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Eliminating Blog Spam on Your WordPress Website

The longer your wordpress website is online, the more pages that are listed in search engines.  Getting pages listed is good for your business, for sure, but it also makes it easier for blog spammers to target your site in their efforts to get links to their own sites.  One method of doing this is referral spam.  Perusing some of the comments blocked naturally by Akismet, it is fairly clear that they were not written by a human.  Even though some of the malformed subjects and content created by spinning tools can become a source of amusement, having to manage your blog spam queue is a PIA and waste of time.

To keep your site healthy, you have to learn something about how things work and keep code up to date.  Another term for this is website maintenance.  Over the years they have been online, I have tried several things in my efforts to overcome my blog spam at GetIncomeBlog.com and my WordPress Website Development business site.

Within this post, I offer some alternative solutions and details about the one that I’ve settled on which is working perfectly for me. 

Disabling New Comments

Within the WordPress dashboard, under Settings –> Discussion, there is an option to automatically close comments on articles older that a user definable time frame.  This is probably the easiest counter-measure against blog spam but I’ve never enabled that option because most of my content is not time sensitive and I don’t want to disallow comments for people who might find it weeks, months or years after the post has been published.

Plugins

For a while, I used the Antispam Bee plug-in.  It was effective against blog spam but it didn’t allow me to review comments that had identified as spam.  Because there have been times when I’ve found comments from people that I know which have been marked as spam by Aismet, I didn’t want to risk it.

Referral Blog Spam Comments

Referral blog spam is generated by software and used by people who are looking for links back to their pages.  These people are banking on the fact that their blog spam will land on blogs where comments are automatically approved.  I’ve never set up a site that way and I’ve never allowed any of my WordPress Website Development clients to do so either.

The biggest headache for me was referral blog spam.  Recently, I implemented some changes.  After 72 hours of testing, I’m satisfied that I’ve found a solution that is worth sharing.  Bona fide comments are still delivered and there been ZERO referral spam comments.

What a gift!

Eliminating Referral Blog Spam

The  technique that I used involves three things:

1. WordPress configuration
2. Modification of .htaccess
3. Captcha plug-in
4. A little vigilance

WordPress Configuration

First, here is a screen shot of how my Discussion settings are configured at all of my sites:

Some of these are defaults but others are not.  I do not automatically approve comments from people whose past comments have been approved.  By way of explanation, the reason that I only request notification when a comment is held for moderation is because that second email that comes after I’ve looked over a comment and approved it was redundant. 

.htaccess changes

To completely eliminate referral blog spam, you must add a few lines of code to your .htaccess file.  This is a file that resides on your server and was created at the time you installed the wordpress application.  It is critical that you retain a backup copy of this file because your site may become non-operational if you do not get it right the first time and you need to recover quickly when things go wrong.

# DENY ACCESS TO NO-REFERRER REQUESTS

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} POST
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .wp-comments-post. [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !.*YOURDOMAIN. [OR,NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ ^http://YOURDOMAIN.com/your-page/ [R=301,L]

These lines of code are placed just above the line that says # BEGIN WordPress. You will need to customize the code to agree with your domain names and destination URLs. This post does not endeavor to teach you the function behind the above code but, in summary, what it is doing if diverting comments that are not originated through the comment form on your site and, if someone’s software is trying to do that, they are directed to a page on one of my other domains that counts down the time until Christmas.  Granted, referral spammers will never see that page but it gives me a way to track their attempts when I review statistics that are logged by the Statpress plug-in.

You can use any text editor to read and modify the .htaccess file.  When you are saving the file, you must use double quotes so the file extension is not “.txt”.

Captcha plug-in

After a little trial and error, I decided to use the SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam plug-in.  All that I can say about my choice is that this one did not require any additional coding and it accomplished the task.

Vigilance

WordPress also incorporates the ability to blacklist commenters.  You can bar a comment that contains user defined words in its content, by commenter’s name, by URL, by e-mail, or by IP.  For those referral blog spam comments that slip through the cracks for any reason, this will be the final authority on whether or not you have to manually handle their unwanted comments.

Caveat

There is one caveat to my preferred anti-referral blog spam method.  It will only work with a self-hosted WordPress website.  In other words, if your blog is hosted at WordPress.com, you will either have to put up with referral spam or install one of the available plug-ins through your dashboard.

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With all the outsourcing, is anything made in the USA anymore?

Enough with all this outsourcing talk!  This is the season where many of us are overtly shopping.  Economic circumstances may be forcing greater frugality but, as you are scanning shelves for stocking stuffers and gifts, take a moment to read the labels.  When I did this yesterday, none of the products on the shelf were made in the USA.

If you’re thinking globally about the events that led up to where things stand today in the USA economy, it cannot all be assigned to fiscal irresponsibility on the part of individuals and/or government.  Simply put, the root cause culprit is greed and any business who is outsourcing to overseas resources is contributing to the problem.

During my adult lifetime, from automobiles to toothpaste production, I’ve witnessed the discontent caused when corporate financial decisions were made to improve shareholder earnings.  Opposing forces clashed at annual meetings as the affluent passed through the picket lines of the affected employees.  But it didn’t stop or slow down the processes that have embraced offshore outsourcing and speeding the erosion of the financial foundation of the USA.  Since the early 70’s when this began, more and more US citizens have been put out of work and entire communities have been hobbled by the closing of manufacturing plants and businesses that once enabled them to thrive.

A trending online business is training that teaches internet entrepreneurs how to use offshore outsourcing for parts of their business.  While this may enhance one’s bottom line, these business owners seem to have lost sight of the larger picture.  By sending their business offshore, they are contributing to the problem that their training seeks to solve, in my humble opinion.

I’m not just ranting.  Over the years that I’ve been in the Online Marketing & Branding business, I’ve acquired new contracts with many USA business owners who have been burned by using offshore outsourcing tactics.  When those people seem to expect me to lower my rates based on their bad experience, I’ve had to remind them that whatever happened before they began working with me does not create an obligation on my part to make it better for them.

My rates are my rates, and I’m worth every penny! 

For new entrepreneurial technical talent who are just starting out, using freelance sites to acquire new clients without incurring advertising expenses is a valid but temporary tactic.  I only could do it for about 3 months because devaluing my services was not good for my business … or my self-esteem.  When buyers who had invited me to bid pursued me and begged me to reconsider, I would sometimes calculate out their proposed hourly rate in an effort to inform them that what they were willing to pay was below minimum hourly wages in the USA.

Pretty simple project. Please bid reasonably.

These are words that you might find in a post on a freelancer site.  What are the parameters of a “reasonable” bid?

Budgets for gigs with statements like these normally range from $5 – $200 USD, and they assume they will win by outsourcing to an offshore developer.  When the low end of the proposed budget is $5 USD, the definition of “reasonable” is guaranteed to unreasonable for anyone who is trying to sustain a lifestyle in the USA.  Scanning through the requested deliverables, qualified AND experienced wordpress website design talent can see that the level of effort involved in meeting their expectations will consume no less than 20 hours of development and iteration time, including the iteration time that is part and parcel of the client not having a clear idea about what they want until they become aware of what they can have.

Much to my amusement, many such postings state they will only consider USA resources.  Either these buyers are lacking an understanding of what their outsourcing request entails or they don’t care to pay fairly.  I applaud wanting to control business operating costs but I can’t help wondering if they would ever consider a position that paid a maximum of $2 an hour?  And, with all due respect to anyone who has put something like this on a freelance posting, if someone is incapable of doing the work themselves in a few minutes time, how can they possibly characterize it as being simple?

More importantly and back to the point of my post:

When will those racing for wealth by using offshore outsourcing understand they are undermining themselves too?

Freelance outsourcing service values are only the latest in a long chain of progress that has cascading peripheral effects for us all.  As our country’s dependency on petroleum products shows no signs of lessening and the cost of a loaf of bread spirals upward, we all are feeling the pinch in our pocket books.  When manufacturing began moving offshore during the late 70’s, the source of our country’s expertise was described as being the service industry.  The train has left the station but which way is it heading?  After we’ve outsourced our services industry,  what will be left?

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Don’t Should on Yourself!

A wise man with whom I worked during my earlier years once came up with a profound New Year’s resolution at our annual marketing support meeting.  The entire group laughed out loud when he said his resolution was to never say “it should work” again.

There does seem to be a resurgence of people not thinking through the answers to questions that are asked.  Responses like this are pointless:

“It should have been there by now.” or “That should have worked.”

Normally, a long explanation about how the process is supposed to work follows comments like these.  All kidding aside, it almost seems like an assumption has been made that I wouldn’t have done something simple, like checking my spam folder or reading instructions.  As the support person drones on about how their process works, I’m thinking, “If your system worked the way you’ve described it, I wouldn’t have picked up the phone to find out what was wrong.”

Communicating is such a critical component of business.  Whether it is written or verbal, our phrasing has a lot to do with how the other side of the conversation receives our responses.  We need to empathize with the caller and, above all, treat them professionally.  Without our customers, we have no business.  This applies to ALL business models … assuming the business is legitimate.

Even though this may sound cliché, there really is no such thing as a dumb question.  Entrepreneurs who are operating a truly customer-facing business must learn how to respond appropriately to their customer’s questions.  Here are some suggestions for improving your customer communications:

1. Smile before picking up the phone.
2. Establish set time frames during work days for taking calls to ensure minimal disruption..
3. Draft agenda topics for scheduled meetings and allocate time limits to the topics.  Distribute the agenda to all invitees in advance of the meeting.  Be flexible to requests to alter or rearrange the agenda and time frames.
4. Don’t make customers wait more than 24-hours for a response to their email or voicemail.
5. Set “office hours” so your customers are respectful of your personal boundaries.  Inform active customers of your vacation plans.   If you have a dedicated business line, update your announcement to reflect any extended time away from your office so potential new business doesn’t think you are non-responsive.
6. Ensure that you understand your customer’s problem statement before suggesting a solution.  They’ve been immersed in it long enough to determine it is a problem.  Sometimes you must back them up to the beginning so you can be of better assistance to them.
7. Remain calm and be empathetic.  Understand that your customer may have struggled for hours before calling you and that they could be tense as a result.
8. Set expectations properly if your customer’s issue cannot be handled during the call.
9. Publish an FAQ page on your website and refer people to it first.  Whether you have a product or service, if you’ve been in business a while you know what questions are most frequent.
10. If your product is digital, prepare documentation that assumes the least amount of knowledge while making it complete enough for advanced users.

Most of this blog’s readers are aware that I have a service business and that one of my services is WordPress Website Development. Many of my clients are unfamiliar with the software and part of my service fees include one-on-one training.  I welcome client calls because I love teaching people things that will make them feel more self-sufficient and confident with the products and services they have purchased from me.  Because I also enjoy the clients with whom I work as people, I have to monitor the gab time with some of them because we have so much fun just talking.

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Where the Hell is Matt?

In these times of entrepreneurship and light-speed marketing, I’m frequently reviewing things that other people are doing online.  YouTube is a great place to locate innovative marketing techniques.  It is also a great place to wonder how people came up with their ideas but some things are better left unexplained … especially a video like this!

Make Your Business Fun!

Here is a video where Matt explains his business and how he has grown his ideas into something that not only is more fun but also is profitable. It is carrying a beneficial message to our world too.

Last weekend, I attended a reception for a well known nature photographer named Thomas Mangelsen.  He autographed my purchase with this message:

Dance while you can.  Scream when you must.

There is wisdom in those words, and Matt’s video and business plan reinforces them somehow.

Here is another favorite quote of mine by one of this world’s most famous writers, Mark Twain:

“Sing like no one’s listening, love like you’ve never been hurt, dance like nobody’s watching, and live like its heaven on earth.”

For those of you in the USA, have an awesome Thanksgiving.  For all my other readers, enjoy the day!

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The Proposal …

In my business, potential clients sometimes ask for me to submit a detailed proposal that outlines deliverables and costs for milestones on a project.  This usually follows a lengthy phone conversation.  This is not an unreasonable request but preparing these proposals takes time that cannot be spent on other business activities and exposes details about my strategies and methods so my quandary is what level of commitment to ask of the prospect in exchange prior to delivering the document.  Although it is part of doing business, nobody likes paperwork.

When I launched my business, I submitted detailed proposals without a second thought.  However, I modified my approach after a potential client failed to acknowledge the receipt of the proposal and ignored my requests for follow-up and negotiation until he contacted me to share a listing he had placed on a freelance site which was a verbatim copy of everything I had written in my proposal.  I was shocked.  He seemed pleased about the fact that he had sourced the project at a lower rate than I had proposed.  He has returned with new requests since then but I’ve declined.

My proposals now include a time limitation for pricing and a copyright notification that is intended to discourage prospects from using my content to shop their projects around.  In spite of these measures, there still are people who promise to meet with me after the proposal is sent, fail to return calls or emails for a while, and send a cryptic email saying that they “going another direction” with their project after a couple of weeks.  This is disappointing … and suspicious.

This isn’t a sour grapes post.  I certainly don’t expect to win every contract but I honestly don’t know how to handle prospects who leverage my copyrighted content to shop around for better pricing.  It is a bona fide conundrum.

These are the possible solutions that I’ve come up with:

1. Withhold the delivery of all proposals until a mutually agreed to meeting time where we can walk through and discuss each point/price.
2. Charge a flat fee for preparing and delivering detailed proposals and estimates that covers the cost of my time.
3. Propose only an hourly rate for all projects in the future and track time, which is a big headache for me.
4. Join the Circus and escape it all. 

Well, the last one isn’t really an option but it is fun to muse about sometimes.

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Step Away from the Computers!

We are all aware of the value that our digital tools bring us.  Our technology expedites information delivery, allows us to follow our social networks, makes calling from anywhere possible, and provides on-demand entertainment.

Based on this quote from researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, we are actually depriving ourselves of much-needed mental downtime that ultimately may be affecting our learning capabilities.

“Almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and turn them into permanent long-term memories,” said Loren Frank, assistant professor in the department of physiology at the university, where he specializes in learning and memory. He said he believed that when the brain was constantly stimulated, “you prevent this learning process.”

Perpetually Plugged in People

There are armies of mobile application developers who are hard at work creating new productivity tools and producing games to entertain us in between tasks.  I am not a Luddite.  I use mobile technology for both business and pleasure but it does seem possible that society is becoming enslaved to its mobile devices.

Entrepreneurs benefit greatly from the advanced technologies availed by multimedia mobile devices but these same advantages have potential to introduce stress, which can have a negative impact on our overall business productivity.  While we want to give our customers the impression nothing matters more to us than our business, we are of no use to customers if we are burned out.

Reboot Yourself!

All of our technology needs to be rebooted periodically to clear memory and cache.  The same is true of us humans.  While it is easy to assume that browsing the internet, checking email, or playing a brief game is a break, these activities don’t remove our technology chains nor provide our brains the breaks they require to renew our creative juices.  Regardless of our professions, most of us are tethered computers throughout our work days so taking a break on another computer isn’t really a break, is it?

During a keynote speech, Harvey MacKay suggested that the most productive time that he spent was time spent looking out his window.  He went on to explain that he was both resting his eyes and refreshing his imagination.  This “stuck” with me.  In situations where there was no window, I hung a photograph of a beautiful place upon which to fix my gaze.

When I am confounded by a bit of code for a wordpress website development task or unable to come up with fresh ideas for a new branding strategy, leaving my office for a stroll along the ocean shore totally renews my perspective.  While I am away, I am not thinking about the work task.  I am enjoying the salt air and interacting with people around me.  I also leave my mobile device in the car while I am at the beach.  There is nothing so earth shattering that it cannot wait for a few hours.  Relaxing in a chair with a good book (with REAL pages!) or doing a crossword puzzle is another method that I use to get away from bright LCD screens and computers.

So, whether your thing is shopping, cerebral pursuits, or nature, do your favorite things and leave the mobile devices at home so you can clear your mental cache and attract new ideas.  You will return to your tasks and I guarantee you will feel better and be more productive.

Cyber Vandalism, Skype Hackers and Social Networks

Skype is an invaluable business building tool.  Not only does it allow you to conduct business internationally without incurring international long distance charges, it make is very easy to share large files and engage your customers in video chats when the need arises.

There is a dark side to Skype.  Hackers prey on naive online users.  Last year’s hacker game was to usurp an account and initiate contact with all confirmed contacts, inviting those people to accept files.  Even though I do not consider myself to be naive, I was duped into accepting and opening a file, in March 2009,  when a seemingly active client offered it to me.  When I lost access to my Skype account, I realized I had been hacked.  It took a few days to put everything back together and it was a real headache.

I haven’t accepted any spontaneously offered files or clicked on any uninvited links since that time, even if the offer is extended by a long-term contact on my list.

This year’s hacker game is to hijack an account and offer a link that  looks like a Skype link to all confirmed contacts in that account.  With a slight amount of scrutiny, it is obviously not a link you should follow.  The link will probably ask you to login to your Skype account, at which point the hacker has your credentials.  If you have a Skype subscription attached to your PayPal account, the hackers can run up huge expenses for you.  Skype takes no responsibility for this.  Neither does PayPal.

When my Skype account was hijacked in March 2009, I had no Skype subscriptions but friends of mine who were hacked by the hackers who hacked me were harmed financially.  A hacker’s sole intention is to steal something from you.  They are clever people and it is truly a shame that they have chosen to use their creative talent for malicious intent.

Safe computing and surfing is an old topic but its relevance is not stale.  It is comprised of more than running Spyware blockers and Antivirus software, especially if you are a member of any internet messaging application.

How to Avoid Skype Hackers!

Here are some steps you can take to be safe on Skype:

1. Whenever a friend offers you a picture or file, ask them what it is.  Try to engage them in a longer conversation so you can determine if the language they are using is native to them.  If you feel uneasy about it, ask if you can connect through voice to have them explain why you should accept the file.  A hacker will not be able to talk to you.
2. When you are asked to confirm a contact, ask the requestor how they found your ID.  If they can’t provide information that links to any sites or chats you have a membership in, decline the opportunity promptly.
3. When you are invited to click on a link unexpectedly, look at the link carefully first.  Here is the dialogue from a recent attempt to hijack my account today.  You will notice in the first line that English is not their native language.  By the way, THE LINK HAS BEEN DISABLED IN THIS POST!

[11:20:10 AM] MyFriend says: hi how are you,i send to you link please sign in ok and thanks  http://smii.host.sk/www.skype.com/?id=79826&lc=us
[11:23:04 AM] Marj Wyatt says: oh dear, hackers at work
[11:24:01 AM] Marj Wyatt says: more importantly, what sorts of idiots spend their days trying to wreak havoc on nice people?

I received no response to my inquiry, but I wasn’t really expecting one.  I admit to my brutality in my biting response but, frankly, it was a way to shut them down immediately.  I posted this thread here so you could see an example of a hacker’s link.  There will always be something after the domain name.

The first time I encountered this in Skype, I asked what the link was for.  The user at the other end kept repeating that it was “a surprise.”  I was polite with them and informed them that, if I wanted to access my Skype account, I would login through a browser and not through their link.  The abandoned their efforts.

Managing Your Online Life

Tools, like social networks and Skype, have made it easier to build business and promote products and services at a minimal cost.  They have also opened up a new channel for hackers.  Both Twitter and Facebook have been hacked repeatedly during the past year.  To the best of my understanding, it always starts with a malicious link.

Very early in my practice of conducting business online, I learned to set every profile that I have on social networks to approve comments manually so I could avoid the use of my pages as advertising space for others.  People who have a penchant for doing this have had the nerve to complain when I do not approve their posts with links to their list building tools or business opportunities.  Oh well…

New contacts on Skype are always advised that my accepting them is conditional and presumes that they will not promote every business opportunity they come across on the web via Skype broadcast tools.  When a confirmed Skype contact sends me a link to something that they are promoting, I always ask questions and remind them that I’m not looking for get rich quick schemes.  Not so long ago, one of my contacts decided to launch a group chat with the founders of one business, after I declined to enroll myself.  It was quite embarrassing for me.  I didn’t want to hurt my friend’s feelings but I also did not like the feeling of being cajoled into joining yet another “worthless webinar”  so they could get a bonus.

The LinkedIn network uses a process for profile publications that begins with a request, from you, for the feedback.  It is very straight forward.  Additionally, LinkedIn uses associations like school or work to help people find friends.  It may take a little longer to build your social network there but at least you know who you are connecting with, which provides you with a reasonable expectation about how they will behave online.

I have also monitored my Twitter feeds carefully.  When a Twitter contact presents themselves as being uncouth or a Twitter Spammer, I will “unfriend” them so my Twitter feed isn’t cluttered with junk.  It is my feed, after all.  :)

With the caveat that I find the Facebook user interface unwieldy and may not have taken the time to figure it out, there doe not appear to be a setting for manually approving comments on my Facebook wall.  This is a bother because it enforces a need to go into your account and delete content that you do not want displayed.

Building Business Online

Skype, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are powerful business building tools when they are used appropriately.  Social manners should not be tossed out the window just because you are in an online relationship with your prospects and customers.  When you are respectful of your online contacts, you will attract more business contacts who are also respectful of you.

Have fun online, be careful, and be prosperous!

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Email Marketing and Your Business

Email marketing came of age after direct marketing practitioners realized that their methods of engaging customers with postal mail could be applied to the Internet.  For those who are unclear about what email marketing is, it is using email to promote offers and/or obtain new customers.  Reports have proven that this is the next best marketing technique after search marketing.

You can rent a list, purchase a list based on demographics for your niche, or set up an opt-in page to gather list members from your target market.  Even though it takes longer, building your own email marketin list from scratch is probably the safest and most reliable method to use.

No matter where you begin with your list building, a well-written email marketing message can gain a prospect’s trust by disclosing relevant information that helps them to make informed purchasing decisions.  Email marketing also has potential to enhance relationships with existing customers if you continue to provide valuable communications that facilitate repeat or referral business.

The major advantages of email marketing is that there are multiple ways to automate your scheduled or broadcasted communications and it is much more cost-efficient than postal mail.  In addition, your offers have potential to “go viral” because members of your lists can easily forward messages to friends and colleagues who they feel might be interested, which increases your opportunities to make sales and add new customers to your email marketing lists.

Within a relatively short period of time, a large audience can be identified and targeted.  Autoresponders, like Aweber, allow you to monitor the responsiveness of your list with email open statistics and click through rates on your embedded links.  They can also help you craft a message that won’t be filtered out by built-in spam catchers.

The sales ratios of your email marketing campaigns or inquiries from members of your list may lead you to new ideas for products and services.  Email enables you to engage your customers in dialogue that helps you to scope your new product development by inviting list members to take surveys or provide feedback on ideas that you are forming.  Talk about convenience!

How Much and How Often?

Loose statistics from direct marketing resources indicates that new customers may need to hear about an offer up to 10 times before making a purchasing decision.  Equally important is that your messages must be timed in such a way that your new list members don’t feel overwhelmed.  For example, I’ve enrolled in campaigns and opted out immediately after receiving multiple messages in quick succession or too many notes in a week.

In my opinion, more than one email marketing message a day is too many.  I’m also of the opinion that more than a couple (3 or more) email marketing messages a week is too much volume, particularly prior to conversion.  Setting up your campaigns to send email every 4th day, or so, keeps your offer on the prospect’s mind without seeming overly aggressive.  That is the whole idea, right?

If all of your all of your email marketing messages are pitching something, people will learn to ignore you.  Keep your email marketing messages relevant and brief.  Most folks are dealing with information overload when they peruse their email inbox so your subjects must stand out if you expect your email to get opened.  Using fantastic email marketing titles that compel people to open may work according to some people but it also can make you seem less trustworthy.    To earn and keep the confidence of your list members, stick to actual facts about your offer and try writing messages that DON’T require disclaimers in tiny print at the bottom of the note. 

Email Marketing Can Have a Dark Side

Some companies collect email addresses of people illegally and send irrelevant mails to them, which can be very annoying.  To get past spam filters, these messages will often have many lines of irrelevant text below the offer with “safe” words in them.

Some hackers intentionally design an email that looks like an advertisement but, when the ads are clicked, malicious software is downloaded that creates headaches for an unsuspecting or naive end user.  I will never understand why smart people, like hackers must be, use their creativity and talent to wreak havoc on people!  Even though your email marketing message is not malicious, you need to understand that everyone with a computer and email has heard one or more horror story and this will affect the success of your campaigns … especially if you have purchased or rented a  list.

In my previous post, I discussed the highlights of the CAN-SPAM act of 2003.  Caution is recommended for any list you choose to join but this does not keep you from receiving unsolicited email marketing, just as postal regulations do not restrict sending demographic based mail to your home.

Since the CAN-SPAM act only applies to US businesses, it is legal to initiate an email marketing campaign from a purchased or rented list as long as a physical address and a functional opt-out is included in the message, and email marketers are allowed up to 10 days following the request to remove people, the CAN-SPAM act seems to protects marketers more than consumers.  Sadly, my single voice isn’t loud enough to get these laws changed anytime soon and corporate entities with much more influence than me are working hard to loosen SPAM regulations, not tighten them.

Most email clients and webmail systems have spam filtering capabilities that can help to keep your inbox clean but those algorithms aren’t perfect.  How many times have you found a legitimate messages in your spam folder?  How many legitimate messages have you accidentally deleted?

Email Marketing is Only ONE Marketing Channel

As the saying goes, don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.  This is especially true for marketing and advertising expenses.  Email marketing is a great tool for building your business out there but you should also be testing other marketing methods and you should always be tracking the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Go forth and prosper, and make sure you use this marketing method wisely.

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Are You Email Marketing or Spamming?

Email marketing is a proven method of developing a relationship with your customers and, if that relationship is properly developed and nurtured, a way to generate affiliate cash flow when you need it.  All that is well and good, but when your opt-out doesn’t result in being opted out, email marketing campaigns can result in driving business away.

One of the inboxes that I own began receiving email from Elizabeth Jackson.  Since I used to know an Elizabeth Jackson, I was enthused to see her name.  It was disappointing to find an advertisement for Work At Home jobs when I opened the email.

I used the option to unsubscribe, more than a dozen times during the past 3 months, and I continued to get email from Elizabeth Jackson from different email addresses.  Each time, I opted out again.  Further research today helped me deduce that Elizabeth Jackson is a fictitious name used to “protect the affiliates” who are promoting a certain CPA campaign offered by Clickbooth, to get income.  Clickbooth advertises themselves as the “exclusive CPA Network” who is ranked #1 by Website Magazine.

Ok, that is all legal but my question today is, who is protecting me, or others who didn’t invite these CPA email offers?

SPAM and the Consumer

Prior to the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, I was forced to close a business email account that was being overwhelmed by no less than 50+ messages an hour in a language I couldn’t even read!  Things have gotten better, for sure, but it is possible to be in compliance of that act and still be doing nothing other than irritating customers or prospects.  Case in Point:  Elizabeth Jackson.

Here are some CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 cliff notes:

1. It is an opt-out law and, for most purposes, permission of the e-mail recipient is not required.  If a recipient wants to unsubscribe or opt-out, however, you’d better stop sending e-mails you are at risk of being subject to severe civil and criminal penalties.
2. Fraudulent or deceptive subjects, headers, return addresses, etc., are prohibited.
3. Sending sexually explicit email without clear markings is a criminal act.
4. Email marketers must have a functional opt-out system that is easy for consumers to use and is operational for at least 30-days following each mailing.
5. Email messages should include a physical address of the company in the email.
6. Spammers AND those who procure their services are culpable and both can be prosecuted.
7. Personal emails, and perhaps non-profit emails, are not addressed by the act.  It applies to all US businesses who are sending commercial email of a transactional nature.

SPAM and the Business Owner

Looking over the guidelines again, a smile came to my face.  I do feel that some of the earnings claims in subject lines from a few of the internet marketing lists that I’ve joined are nothing other than deceptive, in spite of their disclaimers.  This is especially true when the click through leads to a product or service that was not developed by the sender.  But I am a perpetual student of marketing methods and completely understand that this is how affiliate programs work. 

Email marketing is a good business strategy, especially for affiliate marketers.  At Flippa, sites with lists are worth more than other sites at the time of sale.  Thus, whether your motivation in launching a site is to build a Niche Empire or develop a site to later sell for profit, building an email marketing list is very important!

CAN-SPAM Loopholes

An apparent loophole in the CAN-SPAM Act, which is always exploited by senders of unsolicited email, allows email marketers have up to 10-days to complete an unsubscribe request.  Although those business owners are adhering to the letter of the law, I find it absurd.  All the autoresponders that I have ever used or recommended facilitate immediate removal from a list.

Pick Up The Phone!

In my desperation to stop getting three more months of unsolicited email from Elizabeth Jackson, whom I now know is a fake person, I was prepared to send a snail mail letter but I dug deep enough to find a phone number to call.  I did allude to the CAN-SPAM act during my call, which may have inspired them to be more attentive, but that remains to be seen.  Regardless, it was comforting to actually speak with someone who listened to my concerns and gathered up the email addresses that I wanted to eradicate from their lists.

The phone seems to have gone out of fashion but the truth remains that consumers sometimes need a phone number to call.  Business owners might conclude that including a phone number on your primary sales page footers or within the terms and conditions page at your site is a good idea for owners of affiliate programs.  After all, the program owner is equally exposed to the fines and penalties outlined in the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, and they are legally obligated to manage the affiliates who are issuing email marketing messages on their behalf.

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