How to Create Blog Content that Attracts Subscribers

The goal for any blog is to build a following. There are many different ways to attract new visitors to your blog, but convincing them to become repeat readers and subscribers requires one thing – great content.

Some of the results of more subscribers are:

· More profitability. Whether you are selling your own products and services, promoting affiliate products, or selling advertising, regular readers are more likely to buy from you.

· More social sharing. Your subscribers will be the first to Tweet, Like, and +1 your posts.

· More social proof. It’s natural for people to follow the crowd and the more followers you have the more follow worthy you become.

· A built-in audience. There’s something particularly satisfying about knowing that when you’ve taken the time and effort to produce a quality post, there are subscribers waiting to read it.

Here are some tips on creating subscribe-worthy content.

Find Your Voice and Communicate it Consistently

Articles that reflect your personality will connect with your audience. They’ll enjoy reading your content because it reflects who you are and what you’re about. People who feel a more personal connection and who can relate to you and your writing will be more likely to subscribe.

If you outsource any of your content, be careful not to give up your voice. Carefully select a ghostwriter who can write in your voice. Alternatively you can have your writer do the research and provide just an outline so you can finish the post yourself, in your own voice. And of course, when using PLR modify the articles to fit your personality and writing style.

Pay Attention to the Numbers

As you’re writing content for your blog pay attention to the blog posts that get the most traffic. Look at which blog posts are linked to most often and also how many comments they receive. Finally, use analytics to determine which keywords are bringing visitors to your site. The numbers indicated which content fits your audience and will help you gain subscribers.

Provide Value

Try to create content that provides consistent value. Value can be in the form of entertainment, information and education, or resources. For example, if your website is about organization and time management, checklists and how-to videos might provide excellent value to your readers. The more you can become a constant source of value, the more people will subscribe to your blog. They want to have immediate and easy access to all the information you create and share.

Present Yourself as a Credible Authority

Think about the blogs that you subscribe to. Chances are you subscribe to them at least in part because you trust the information they’re providing you. You consider the authors to be experts in their topic. As a blogger you can gain the same credibility and following by establishing yourself as an expert in your chosen field. Build authority by:

· Speaking confidently about your topic.

· Connecting with experts in your industry.

· Quoting relevant data and resources when appropriate.

· Recommending quality products and services.

· Creating an easy to use and read blog.

· Providing thoughtful responses to your commenters.

· Showing how much you enjoy your blog, topic, readers and audience.

Creating content that readers will subscribe to is part science, part passion, and part attention to detail. Create a content plan that reflects your audience’s needs and interests, pay attention to their feedback and the data, and most of all put your whole self into your blog. The subscribers will follow.

Guest Author

Linda Stacy offers blogging and PLR tips and resources at LindaStacy.com.

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Mixing Friendship and Business is a Bad for Business

For the past two years, I’ve been in a business relationship with a client whom I felt had also become my friend.  After extracting more than twice the amount of labor than was allocated under the terms of our monthly retainer agreement for WordPress Website Development services over several months, these local clients have reminded me that mixing friendship with business is a bad idea.

In an effort to overcome my disappointment about their denial about what is owed for my services … or even discuss a compromise, I decided to write a post to advise and educate small business owners on better ways to structure contracts with clients who expect to receive benefits prior to payment.

Qualifying Business Prospects

As a former Realtor, one of the refrains that they drilled into my head during training was that Buyers were Liars.  We were taught to qualify people for mortgages prior to investing time and energy in setting up showings or writing contracts.  This is easy to do when you can “spin” your request for qualification as a service that will benefit the Buyer but it is not so easy to do in other service businesses.

The difficulty may lie in the fact that most small business owners cannot afford to use expensive credit checking services.  Thus, the qualification process involves interpersonal communication that almost seems intrusive while qualifying a prospect for their ability to pay.

In a perfect world, you would take 100% of the payment up-front but that is a hard sell.  In lieu of that, insist on a retainer of no less than 50% of the total contract price and establish milestones that pay the remaining 50% for each deliverable at the time of acceptance.  You may want to consider using an escrow service to ensure that you will be paid as tasks are completed.  If you are in the middle of their project and they begin to tell you they are having trouble paying their bills, stop working on their project.  Retainers are non-refundable.  You cannot recover the time you’ve spent once it is gone.

Get it in Writing!

If there is no written contract to enforce a business agreement, things can easily go wrong.  At the very least, put the request into an email message after you’ve agreed to deliverables and pricing.  Don’t begin work on the project until you have an email reply that acknowledges the agreement.

Stick to Business

Since time is the commodity that service providers trade, don’t allow yourself to get engaged in personal discussions with your clients during the project.  Clients will act friendly and they will say anything to get what they want.  Inevitably, they will try to gain your sympathy and convince you that they will pay you later when they want more than they can afford.  In my experience, this never happens when the bill comes due and the friendship that you felt was merely the tool they used to get what they wanted.

Negotiate Before You Do the Work

If a services client requests work that you know will take more time than the payment arrangement allows for, take notes about their request and tell them that you’ll have to get back to them with a price.  Regardless of their insistence, don’t lift a finger to get the work done until you have reached an agreement about compensation and received an additional retainer payment.  This is business and you are delivering value.

I repeat:  Don’t budge if they say they will pay you later.  They won’t.

Don’t be Afraid to Walk Away

As the saying goes, when one door closes another is opened.  If you feel that your client is difficult to work with and they are exhibiting signs of ambivalence about your requests for payment, this is a sign that you need to move on to another client who understands that this is your business.  You are not their employee and you owe them nothing.  You are an independent business owner and it isn’t your job to save them at your expense, no matter how nice they seem.

Don’t Get Distracted by the Noise

When a client knows they are wrong, they will endeavor to assign blame to you for their irresponsibility.  If you get caught up in their accusations, you’ll get distracted from the goal of being compensated for the work that you’ve done.  Acknowledge that you have heard what they are saying but do not engage in a debate about why you are demanding to be paid and do not involve yourself with explanations about your actions as you pursue payment.  You did the work.  In a business relationship, you deserve to be paid.

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Free Programs and Fine Print

Yep! It happened again today. I was invited by a Skype friend to look into a free program. Their claim was that it was free to join and I would not have to pay anything to earn money. I’ve been around the internet long enough to not believe claims of overnight wealth and to distrust “free” joins but I indulged their request to click on the link anyway.

Non-English Landing Page

The first thing that I noticed was that the page was in German. I have a toolbar installed that allows me to instantly translate to English so this wasn’t a huge issue.

Analyzing the Offer

The first sentence on the landing page was a disclaimer:

This is no joke and no dream … You get paid money, because investors want to distribute funds.

If you have to begin by telling stressing the fact that your incredible program is really incredible and go on to suggest that investors want to give away their money, I’m immediately suspicious. Investors want to leverage their money by investing in things which will earn them money. At least that is what I’ve learned…

The landing page encouraged me to read the terms and conditions, although I would have done that anyway before filling in any forms. It’s called due diligence.

Free Isn’t Always Free

The second paragraph on the Terms and Conditions page said this:

Once you receive the gift, you have to pay into this program.

I didn’t need to read any further. Clearly, if payment is required to benefit from the program, it isn’t free.

I responded to my Skype pal by copying and pasting that text into our chat window. I added that I was a conscientious objector of cash gifting programs and that having to pay into it made it clear to mea that it wasn’t free. I thought that would be the end of it but they replied that I had misunderstood.

I re-copied and pasted the same text into our chat window and told them, in addition, that there was nothing ambiguous about the phrase: YOU have to pay into this program.

Denial of the Facts in Front of You

My Skype pal protested by saying that “no one had explained this” to them. I suggested that reading the fine print before joining anything, free or not, is a personal responsibility … and it is!

Are you entitled to a do-over if you sign a contract that binds you to a commitment you didn’t understand just because you expected it to be explained to you? If you are of legal age, the answer to that question is no.

I’ve worked in a business where contracts were necessary to proceed. I would spend no less than an hour going over the terms and conditions that my clients would be obligated to once they put pen to paper. I took pains to explain what their obligations were, as well as the authority they were granting to me as their agent. I never put paperwork in front of someone who might later claim diminished capacity because they had had a few drinks. I scheduled the meeting for another time and instructed them to hold off on the beers until after we were finished.

Not everyone will do this … especially if they are promoting a get-rich-quick-and-easy internet program.

Money for Nothing?

Call me old fashioned or jaded, but I’m not of the mindset that money will flow into your bank accounts without applying some effort.

When I was new to online marketing tactics, I got suckered into things. We all do. Once I abandoned the belief that the hype was more than it was and began to focus on things that I enjoyed doing anyway, which could earn income for me, my life has been simplified and I’m having a lot more fun too.

Many of the people whom I used to communicate with on a daily basis are still chasing the dream of instant wealth and fly-by-night programs. For them, and for those of you who pursue similar things, I wish you the best of luck and encourage you to return and post your results to my blog.

There are no Magic Wealth Pills. The recipe for business success is the same:

1. List the things that you are interested in doing
2. Analyze those things to determine if their might be a market for you to leverage
3. Construct a plan for pursuing that business
4. Devise a list of measurements you can use to validate your success
5. Determine the best approach for marketing and promotion
6. Follow your plan and monitor results
7. Know when to revise or abandon the plan and try the next thing on YOUR list

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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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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.

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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