Commentary [21]
Atlas OnePoint (formerly Go Toast) hasn't paid affiliates in 6 months
I haven't received a commission check from Atlas OnePoint (formerly Go Toast) since February of this year. I've repeatedly asked for sales stats and a commission check, but all I get are excuses. I've been told the reason is because Go Toast was acquired by a public company earlier this year and they have yet to revamped their affiliate management system. Shouldn't such an event improve the operations of a company? After 6 months of waiting for a check and no end in sight to the problem, my patience has finally run out. Can you imagine not being paid by your employer for 6 months?!
You cannot build a world class company by ignoring your customers
After 2 years of uninterupted service, the domain name I used to point to my Yahoo! Store which sells my SEO ebook suddenly stopped working.
Over the course of 2 weeks, I went through some 6 Yahoo! Store customer service reps and 4 supervisors. Each person gave me different advice and promises, but none fixed my problem.
But just as soon as I had given up all hope as the last rep told me the Yahoo! Store system can no longer have domain names point to a store, the problem "magically" fixed itself.
Lesson #1: You cannot trust even the biggest internet companies with your business -- they do not care. Because if they did, they could have warned me about the impending changes to their system and train their staff on how to handle the transition as smoothly as possible for its' customers.
Lesson #2: Yahoo! does not have a customer complaints department. I complained to the the Yahoo! Store customer support center to try to get an explanation as to why they didn't warn me of the changes. They said email in your complaint. I did. A few days later a rep in the same department responded but completely ignored my complaint. I complained to the last supervisor I spoke to, who promised to forward my complaint to the "proper" department.
That was 2 weeks ago. Do I expect to hear from Yahoo!? What do you think? Maybe Yahoo! should set aside a tiny percentage of its big fat profits into setting up a department to handle customer complaints. You simply cannot build a world class company by ignoring your paying customers, Mr Semel.
Time for a change...
I've decided it's time to change the format of my blog... From now on I will share more of my thoughts with you by offering more commentary and opinions on all kinds of topics that interests me, in and outside of internet marketing. I hope you enjoy my thoughts...
Mike's Ecommerce Software Launches Ecommerce & Web Design Forum Aggregator
Ecommerce Forum Watch has just been added to my Mike's Ecommerce Software web site. It's a free, online service that offers constantly updated, searchable, customizable headlines from the most popular ecommerce and web design discussion forums and message boards. Ecommerce Forum Watch uses the same technology that powers Marketing Forum Watch.
Web Host Praised For Taking Decisive Action Against Pagejacker
A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine, Alice Seba of InternetBasedMoms.com, kindly informed me that another web site had hijacked my web pages. I did some digging and found two more pagejackers. I sent cease and desist letters to all three perpetrators and CCd the email to their web hosts. Of the three hosts, only Glenn Vinar of LynxWebHosting.com had the courtesy to respond. Glen's decisive action against the pacgejacker certainly did the trick - they removed my content within 24 hours. Now if only all web hosts were as professional as Glen... I give credit where credit is due, which is why this posts exists. My special thanks to Alice and Glen.
Review: Affiliates Alert, A Free ClickBank Product Search Program
I've just added a full review of Affiliates Alert, by Maayan Marzan, to my Mike's Marketing Tools web site. Affiliates Alert is a free ClickBank product search engine software program, that sorts by keywords, categories, subcategories, rankings, and commission rates. The rebranded edition lets you earn commissions by adding your ClickBank nickname to all product links. All you have to do is give away the software program to your site visitors, customers, subscribers, etc.
AdWords Wrapper Rescues Google AdWords Advertisers
I've just added another free marketing tool to my Mike's Marketing Tools web site. AdWords Wrapper is a time saving tool that wraps keyword phrases in 'quotation marks' (phrase match) and [square brackets] (exact match) for use in Google AdWords campaigns.
CNET Networks Terminates Duplicate Listings Without Warning
Warning: If you submit a listing to the CNET or ZDNet Network, make sure there are no other listings of the product that may have been submitted by someone else, such as another affiliate or reseller. They pulled a listing of mine that I have had in their directory for over a year, because they suddenly decided or realized that it's against their policy to have duplicate listings in their directory. What's worse is that they didn't even tell me they were going to terminate my listing until I noticed it was missing and contacted them asking where my listing went. If you have a listing in the CNET or ZDNet Network directory, it may be a good idea to check that your listing is still there. Personally I don't understand this anticompetitive policy that shoots themselves in the foot. Imagine if Overture or Google decided to remove all duplicate ads, or only allow one ad per product--Overture wouldn't have been worth $1.6B and Google wouldn't have a valuation of $15-20B. It beats me what they're thinking. OK, that's enough ranting from me... I feel better now. ;o)
Mike's Marketing Tools Introduces Improved Tools Guide
I have created a more comprehensive version of my Tools Guide at my Mike's Marketing Tools review site. This is in response to the many people who have written to me asking for advice on what the best marketing and ecommerce software tools are for their needs. The guide is broken down into 3 categories; Build a Web Site, Increase Web Site Traffic, and Make Money.
New Trends & Business Ideas From Around the World
I don't normally mention newsletters that I come across, but my friend Peter Cooper just referred me to two newsletters I think every marketer and entrepreneur should find useful. I just spent a couple of hours reading all the back issues. Springwise offers new business ideas, while TrendWatching reports the hottest, emerging consumer and marketing trends from around the world. If you're smart, you could profit from the emerging trends and business ideas offered by these two newsletters. Oh, did I say the newsletters are free!?
Search Engine Relationship Charts Show Who's Powering Who
I've just added two Search Engine Charts to my Mike's Marketing Tools web site. The first chart shows the major search engines and the search engines that power their main, pay per click, web directory and backup search results. A second chart shows the most popular or influential search engines and the part they play in other search engines.
How An Affiliate Manager Profits by Bucking The Trend
Shawn Collins, the author of the AffStat 2003 Report, is one affiliate manager I respect. His philosophy of keeping his three and a half year old ClubMom affiliate program to fewer than 1,000 affiliates is smart. This concept allows Shawn to better support his affiliates. He tries to offer top service and help teach affiliates how to succeed. The payoff is in affiliates’ loyalty to ClubMom’s program. Though Collins concentrates on a smaller group within the affiliate pool, he tries to have at least some personal contact with every ClubMom affiliate. Amazon.com on the other hand claim to have a whopping 900,000 affiliates. When was the last time you had any direct contact with the Amazon.com affiliate manager? So is Shawn's concept working? You bet! ClubMom currently has more than 3 million registered members and hopes to hit 10 million over the next year. If you're an affiliate manager, do yourself a favor and visits Shawn's ClubMom affiliate site to find out how he runs his program. You may also like to read my Affiliate Managers: Your Top Five Biggest Affiliate Program Mistakes article.
Google Sends Sobig Virus To Its Media Email List
Google sent me an early surprise birthday gift today, but I immediately threw it into the trash bin! As a subscriber to Google's media email list, I received an email infected with the "Sobig" virus. Seven hours later Google sent an apologetic follow up email that ended with, "...please do not open the attachment." Oops! Too late! Just kidding. ;o) It begs the question that if a tech-savvy company like Google can't even keep their computer's virus-free, what hope do the rest of us have?
Should Google Deter Reciprocal Linking?
Yes, in my opinion. Why? Well, the fact is reciprocal linking adds little, if any, value to the relevancy of search results.
Five years ago few people exchanged links. Now virtually everyone is exchanging links because they've been told they need to get other sites to link to theirs in order to get higher search engine rankings.
It all started when people realized that Google generally ranks web pages with incoming links higher than those without. The whole Google PageRank system works on the principle that a link to a web page is a "vote" for the page. In an ideal world that would work. Sadly the system has been abused with web sites "voting" for each others site.
Even though I am a professional search engine optimizer, I'm not fond of the practice of reciprocal linking, and have rarely used it. I believe that site creators should link to content that adds value to their content, not solely to improve rankings.
Think of it this way. Which would you trust more? A recommendation where the person gets a payback, or one where they don't (all things being equal)?
So how can a search engine, such as Google, deter reciprocal linking? I think the answer is simple--give one way links a much greater importance in the ranking algorithms than sites with two way links.
The difference could be made so great that it would make reciprocal linking a waste of time. In fact, I would propose giving negative points to sites that have a disproportionate number of two-way links.
What about web directories you may ask? Well, you would obviously exclude web sites that are designed to link to other sites. Building a list of such sites wouldn't be too difficult either. You could probably find most of them in the Open Directory index.
Aren't the search engines already using it? Possibly, but not in the manner I propose. AltaVista do publicly state that they ignore links only pages.
Is this idea feasible? Absolutely! With all the smart PhDs they have at Google, this would be a walk in the park for them I think.
There's a long way to go to building the perfect search engine. Let's hope we get there sooner than later.
Beware of 'Cheap' Web Hosting
Another case of "you get what you pay for" I think--On 23 May many of the estimated 5,000 sites hosted by bargainhosts.co.uk 'disappeared' only to be replaced days later with default Apache installation pages. Many site owners are without any ftp, pop, or control panel access they can't even restore their sites from their own backups." The latest problems follow the defacement of an estimated 1,500 sites hosted by baraginhosts.co.uk in April. Criticisms voiced in April about inadequate response to customer support queries have grown with the latest problem--The moral of the story? Choose a high quality web hosting service, even if it costs a little bit more. You will receive better customer service and more reliable connections. When you consider how much you would spend on rent for a real-world store, the cost of renting web space for your cyberspace business is pretty cheap by anyone's standards! Oh, don't forget to always back up your web site on a regular basis. [Full story: Bargain Hosts 'disappears' thousands of sites - The Register]
World's Largest JavaScript Index Created in A Day
The other day, an idea for a JavaScript code search engine popped into my head. There are quite a few JavaScript directories. But I couldn't find a search engine that specifically searches for JavaScript codes. So I decided to create one. It only took a day. The result is JavaScript 2. It searches over 8,000 JavaScript codes, which makes it the largest index of its kind in the World. I hope you find it useful.
Overture's Deal with Gator Causes Uproar Amongst Webmasters & Search Engine Marketers
An earlier story, Overture Signs Deal with Gator, is causing an uproar amongst webmasters and the search engine community, with many marketers claiming they will be boycotting Overture from now on. What's the big fuss about, you may ask? Well, Gator is a new class of advertising software products, known as Scumware, which typically installs on your PC as part of a software download, without you requesting it. Another well known scumware product is eZula. Once it's there, the software does tricks like putting commercial links by highlighting words on every web page, inserting a yellow background behind keywords that have been purchased by advertisers -- without the site's consent. They can also trigger a pop-under window when a scumware user searches on a site such as Google and Yahoo. If a web user clicks on one of those yellow highlighted words on a web page, the user is whisked away to the site of the company paying the most that day for each click-through. What this basically means is that scumware "steals" traffic and customers from web sites, without compensating the site owners. Commercial web sites that sells products or services, advertising, or refer visitors to products and services via affiliate programs lose out, as scumware companies are effectively "stealing" these sources of income right from under the web site owners' noses. Jim Wilson of Scumware.com has classified this type of advertising software as a "virus" -- since you didn't ask for it, it takes control of your browser, and makes changes to everything you read on the Internet. Other major search engines that advertise in the Gator network include LookSmart, Terra Lycos, FindWhat, and Espotting. For more information on this topic follow this heated discussion at WebmasterWorld. There are also links to press coverage on Scumware and the effects of these programs under these categories, Allegedly Unethical Firms: Gator and Allegedly Unethical Firms: Ezula, in the Open Directory.
Yahoo! Planning to Acquire Overture?
In a posting yesterday, I posed the question, "Is Overture Ripe for Takeover?" [post no longer available] Today, TheStreet.com asked the question, "Is Yahoo! making an overture for Overture Services?" This came about after Yahoo!'s late-night announcement Thursday that it had priced $750 million in convertible bonds. Yahoo! has $1.5 billion in cash on hand and generated $221 million in free cash flow in 2002. They wouldn't appear to require more cash unless it were about to make a major acquisition. And that scenario has led some to speculate that the likeliest suspect for Yahoo! to acquire is Overture. The mystery deepens... [Full story: Overture Jumps as Yahoo! Grabs Cash - TheStreet.com]
Alfi Knives Converts 18% of Overture Clicks
Here's a more comprehensive story on the Amazon.com and Google tie-up. What I found particularly interesting in the story was the conversion stats, and I quote, "Alfi Knives is paying 68 cents on average per click at Overture, for 80 percent of its traffic, with 18 percent of the traffic generating roughly $29,000 in sales per month." [Full story: Amazon.com taps paid search - CBS MarketWatch]
Marketing Guru Mark Joyner Quitting the Internet Business?
Mark Joyner of Aesop and StartBlaze fame claims to be retiring from the internet business. He's only 34 years old. His exit plan is to sell resale rights and the source code for most of the products he's ever created, and share his best-kept success secrets, with 2,000 'lucky' people who are willing to fork out almost a thousand bucks. Is this for real? Who knows. I do know that Mark is a genuine dot-com success story. This guy knows his stuff and has made a small fortune with his knowledge. But I've also read how he apparently spammed thousands of people on his mailing list to get his last book into the Amazon.com Best-Sellers list. Hey, I was one of those spammed. But I'm not 100% sold on the notion that he's quitting altogether. Unless I am mistaken, he appears to be holding back some of his best selling products. So I think this could be another one of Mark's brilliant marketing stunts. But if he does go, $2 million (2,000 x $997) is a nice good-bye present. Happy retirement Mark... or is it? [Sales letter: Shocking Announcement from Mark Joyner - No longer available]
Click Monkeys Click Ads for a Fee
Click Monkeys are an off shore click farm that can click your sponsors' ads for you. They offer 1000 ad clicks for just a buck. Apparently, one leading internet portal that asked to remain anonymous (MSN, ahem, cough) doubled their traffic and trippled their revenue thanks to Click Monkey. Another testimonial by a former CEO of Pets.com on the site says, "If Click Monkeys hadn't been there in the early days of Pets.com, we never would have become the site we are today!" This has got to be one of the most unusual and unbelievable internet marketing services I've ever come across. My thanks to my friend Peter Cooper of BigBold.com for informing me of this unbelievable service.