Marketing
MyBlogLog – Community for Your Blog
Last night, I was surfing around, making the usual rounds to keep up with what’s going on. I have noticed on other sites (and never thought much of it) this table of mug shots from a service called MyBlogLog. So, finally, I went ahead and checked it out. Very cool! Essentially, it is a community service where you sign up, get a profile, then as you surf around other blogs who are signed up with the service, you show up as a person who recently visited that blog. You’re in their blog log, so to speak. When I signed up for a profile, I set up WebbyOnline as one of my blog sites. I set up an avatar for myself and snapped a screenshot of this site for upload. This morning, I installed one of their “widgets” to the sidebar which will list out MyBlogLog members which visit WebbyOnline.
Its basically another networking opportunity, and one geared specifically to bloggers.
What is a bit intriguing to me is exactly how the hell they are tracking me. For example, I head on over to ProBlogger because I know they are using MyBlogLog. Sure enough, my mug shot appears in the widget on the left side. Now, I am not bothered by this because I signed up for it, but how exactly are they tracking my web surfing like that? I can only assume they are using a tracking cookie. I checked out my cookies list in Firefox and I do see cookies for “.mybloglog.com”. That period in front of the domain is for a sub-domain. My guess is that their widget/tracking javascript (the code I put into my website) is programmed to detect that cookie and it knows who I am.
You definitely wouldn’t want to sign up with MyBlogLog if you are a privacy freak. That said, most bloggers are not worried about protecting their identity otherwise they wouldn’t be blogging. 
Plunge into Deep MySpace
As we all know, Myspace.com is one of the most popular names in social media today. However, it has a reputation amongst professionals of being basically a big teen hangout and not worth time for anybody with serious motives. The age breakdown might be a bit of a surprise, though. Interestingly, in this article on MSNBC, Myspace responded to a question about age breakdown by saying they don’t discuss the age breakdown (weird response). In this post by ZDNET, we see that there is a drop in the usage by younger people and a marked increase in use by adults. In fact, teenager use of Myspace, according to that survey, is now sitting just under 12% of the total community while 40-50% of the community is over 35.
What does this mean? It means that, as web publisher, most likely much of our potential public is on Myspace. More importantly, as a provider of a service on the internet, many of your potential customers are on Myspace. And, as you might expect then, more and more businesses are now setting up profiles on Myspace. And that is what I just did, as you can see here. I have stayed clear of creating a profile on Myspace for the longest time mainly because I saw no point. But, its so easy that I might as well set up shop there.
Now, using Myspace for business purposes is not easy, and truth be told, I don’t exactly plan to use Myspace as some kind of involved promotional medium. Myspace is a networking site, and thus, can be used to network your business. It will take a lot of work, because like any networking site, the only ways to make lots of contacts is to proactively be out on the site, posting to other’s profiles, getting friends, etc. And you can’t be overt about commercializing your presence because it can be seen as the equivalent of spam and nobody will pay any attention to you. But, used properly, a Myspace profile can be used to:
- Network with others of similar interest
- Promote your business through your friends network
- Monitor market trends and interests
- Use your friends to gauge interest in new products and services
I should also mention here that, in my opinion, most Myspace profiles are horribly ugly. Some people keep the default Myspace profile design which is quite clean, but also very boring. Most customize their profile. Myspace does not provide any built-in way to design your profile. Instead, people do it by pasting CSS code directly into their “About Me” sections and essentially overriding Myspace’s CSS with their own. In short, you’re basically jerry-rigging your profile. If you view source on my Myspace profile, you’ll see that there’s a HUGE block of CSS code mid-way in the code and it is that code which makes my profile look different. I have made an effort to make my profile fairly professional looking, but most users’ profiles are like a blast from the 90’s, complete with HORRIBLE background images, embedded music, you name it. If you are going to create a profile for your business or as a professional, definitely DON’T create an ugly profile that makes you look like an amateur.
Lastly, if you are conducting business on the internet or have a fairly noticeable presence online, if you don’t have a Myspace profile, I think you should create one if for no other reason than to protect your own identity. The last thing you need is somebody creating a profile with your name and then making a mess of your reputation.
AdBrite InVideo Is Launching
I got a notification in my inbox this afternoon that AdBrite is launching their InVideo product. AdBrite is, of course, the ad marketplace founded by Philip Kaplan, famous for F-ckedCompany.com fame. A few weeks ago, I posted here about this new service which got mysteriously leaked to the blog community and no doubt generated some nice buzz for AdBrite. I signed up for their invite and I guess now they are opening it up. So, what do I think after giving it a try?
Not bad. Not bad at all. The player is clean and functional and the code looks to be easy to integrate. There are a few kickers, though, in my view:
- The ad coverage doesn’t yet seem to be that good because I got no ads to show up in my test. Perhaps its a little too dependent on my keywords I enter in the video title and description?
- The player is a little cumbersome to use in dynamic environments such as PCMechTV, where I use Wordpress and the podPress plug-in to show our videos and podcasts. In order to use a video on AdBrite, you have to go enter the details of that video in your AdBrite account, then the code uses an ID number to reference the video. This is not very friendly in dynamic environments where it would be much eaiser to use PHP code (or some other language) to dynamically insert a path to an FLV file directly. So, really, the way this is now, this service is only good if you are manually copy/pasting code into a text field to insert your movies. Many of us use dynamic environments.
Other than that, this looks to be really nice. If they could simply provide a plug-and-play SWF player that I could dynamically point to different FLVs, that would be perfect. Not sure how feasible that is, though.
On a related note, I just did a quick test of ValueClick’s In-Stream video ads. Not very good. They use a huge mess of javascript code to embed a video. Loading the video is slow because its pulling all that javascript content. At times you think it is failing to load at all, then it magically appears after a few seconds. In addition, the size dimensions seem to be totally ignored because it seemed to pick its own dimensions for my videos, totally cutting off the outer edges. I know this service is very new for ValueClick so we need to give them time to get it right, but the current version just isn’t very good.
FeedBlitz’s Position on SPAM
I recently announced to my Tip of the Day mailing list that I was going to be converting the list over to FeedBlitz. I had one of my subscribers email me saying I was violating my privacy policy and that FeedBlitz is a “known spammer”. I have found nothing indicating FeedBlitz was a known spammer, and all indications have been to the contrary. In fact, a few days prior, here is part of a message sent to me from the CEO of FeedBlitz in response to a question on the topic of email deliverablity:
OK, to deliverability. We’re in the feedback loops for major ISPs like AOL, excite and United. Our hotmail / MSN / Live application is in process. So we track directly with major ISPs for any issues and immediately respond to unsubscribes / spam notifications from these channels. We also maintain the correct DNS entries for our servers and maintain the appropriate information at places like abuse.net. We have also placed our servers on various ISP white lists, including Yahoo and Verizon.
In addition, more formally, we use Return Path to monitor deliverability to major US and international ISPs. As part of the services we buy from them, we track our standing with the major anti-spam services to ensure our emails go to the inbox and not the bulk folders. Finally, we use Return Path to monitor several hundred major and minor SPAM RBLs (Real-time Black Lists) daily, to make sure our servers are not listed, and if they are to remove them. Since inception we’ve been only one RBL (twice), and the block was taken down in a day.
Ultimately, the only way to ultimately guarantee good delivery is to be a well-behaved sender that follows industry best practices. That’s why we require 2 phase opt in, we use image verification, we have properly formatted SMTP and HTML messages, we always provide text alternatives of the messages, we always have our sender in the header, we always and immediately honor unsubscribes .. you get the idea. Our reputation is ultimately at the core of how we work, and by combining best practice with 3rd party monitoring and ISP feedback loops our deliverability is excellent.
Which is not to say we aren’t working to get to the next level, however. We have issues with some Chinese ISPs that need work, and we’re working with Return Path on getting FeedBlitz into their “Sender Score / Bonded Sender” program, which will further improve deliverability. It’s an ongoing (and relatively expensive) process, but it’s worth it for us and for our publishers.
I have some issues with FeedBlitz, but all having to do with the design and user interface. But, I see nothing indicating they are spamming anybody. My suspicion is that what we have here is a case of a few stupid web users reporting FeedBlitz as a spammer when, in reality, they signed up for somebody’s feed and forgot they did so. Folks, there is a thing called an UNSUBSCRIBE button. For any legit emailer, those things work.
Mailing List Solution – Follow Up
OK, I have decided to purchase 1-2-All, from Active Campaign. After comparing to oemPro, I decided against it. oemPro is pretty good, but in the end, price made the difference for me. Today, I sent my first email with the new software. It’s very slick and the more I play around with it the more I am convinced I made a good move. So far, the only drawbacks I have found are:
- You cannot import past messages. I would have liked to easily import my past newsletters into the archive for consistency sake, even if I did not use 1-2-All to send them.
- There doesn’t appear to be an RSS feed built-in for people to get the archives. I would like to see an RSS feed for each mailing list, along with an option on each message to include or exclude it from the RSS feed.
Tomorrow, I will bring these items to the attention of ActiveCampaign and we’ll see what comes of it.
Lastly, I have begun working with FeedBlitz. I am still getting used to it and I have gone ahead and signed on for their Pro account for $4.95/month. All in all, the service appears to be pretty good. However, as I brought up to the owner of the company, the interface is simply horrible. The control panel area is awkward to use and I really don’t like the java pop-down menus. The top menus don’t even work for me in Firefox 2. The other thing is that the interface is cheesy and very amateur. I really think the company should invest in a professional designer. The service is pretty good (and I love the fact that I can email them and get a quick response from the actual owner of the company), but this service warrants a much better interface.
Another Good PHP Email Application
As a quick followup to the last post, I have since come across another PHP-powered software package for running an email list locally from my server. That package is oemPro, from octeth Technologies. It runs a little more expensive than 1-2-All ($268 versus $189). It seems to have all the capability I would need, however. I have tried the 1-2-All Trial locally and it is robust. The database synch (ability to connect directly with a separate database to import email addresses) is included with oemPro and not with 1-2-All (it is available as an add-on), however the add-on capability for 1-2-All allows running those synchs on a cron schedule, which is certainly convenient. Interface is important to me with good software, and both packages have a nice user interface. I like the large icons in oemPro, so interface-wise, oemPro comes across as a little more user-friendly. Capability-wise, it is on par. I like the fact that it has survey/poll add-ons available (1-2-All) does not, however 1-2-All has plug-ins (such as the EmailCheck plug-in to evaluate spam scores) that oemPro does not.
Overall, the price difference between the two is enough that you could grab 1-2-All and one of their plug-ins for about the same amount as you would pay for oemPro itself. But, I thought I would mention oemPro. It looks to be quite good. They don’t offer a trial version, unfortunately.
As I was about to post this, I got a phone call from ActiveCampaign (the folks behind 1-2-All) just asking if I had any questions on the trial, etc. Impressive. Aweber did the same thing.
Search For Email Mailing List Solution
I have spent several hours last night and this morning investigating email list services. Since one of the founding philosophies of this site is that you can learn by what I am doing, I thought I would post where this search stands. My situation is this: I have a large mailing list over on PCMech. The tip of the day is around 31,000 subscribers and the newsletter is higher than that. And, of course, I have the newsletter here at WebbyOnline. These email lists have been managed in house. I want to move away from the in-house system to a more dependable system. Either a third-party software solution to run locally on my server, or a hosted solution. I have not made up my mind on what to do yet, however here’s where I’m at.
The major software solution I am looking at is 1-2-All, from Active Campaign. They have been advertising in the Sitepoint forums for a little while now and they offer a free trial, so I checked it out. Good, solid software. I have not yet tried it in a production setting (sending any emails), but it looks to be pretty robust. It also has autoresponder capability, which is something I am looking for. The base license install is $189, and they offer some valuable add-ons for additional coin.
There are a lot of hosted solutions out there. I am looking at two types: (1) your standard email list service, and (2) the RSS feed-to-email services. I have two weekly newsletters (currently) and am seriously considering siwtching our Tip of the Day over to a blog format. So, the RSS-to-email services would be a great way to switch to a blog while still offering the daily tip in the email inbox. The hosted solutions I looked at so far are:
- Aweber – Comes in highly recommended. They offer auto-responder service and solid delivery rate. They do not offer a free trial, so I had to actually charge my card to get an account for trial purposes (however, they offer a no-hassle refund within 30 days). The interface is not very polished and is a little hard to figure out for me, but I can tell this is a solid service. It’s also very affordable. The real kick in the groin here, though, is that they are very limiting when it comes to importing an existing list. They limit the import to 2,000 addresses per day. After 5 days, if the imports go well, they will allow you to import the rest without restriction. However, during those imports, if they find a bunch of undeliverables, they will reject the whole list. Additionally, they will send an email to every subscriber, forcing them to re-confirm in order to stay on your mailing list. So, essentially, this is like handing your whole list over to Aweber and then having them likely throw away half of it. Even if your list is pretty clean, people are people and you’re very likely to have alot of subscribers fail to re-confirm themselves for one reason or the other.
- Constant Contact. Another solid service. Very nice interface, and a free 60-day trial. However, it’s coming in as pretty expensive for a list of the size I have. I am in the “call for prices” range, but judging by the published rates, it’ll probably run me $250-$300 monthly to operate this list. Considering I’m paying nothing now (its all in-house), that’s a large chunk to chew.
- IntelliContact
- GetResponse
- Campaign Monitor – Expensive, in my view. $5 + 1 cent per subscriber. That means every tip I send would cost me over $300. I don’t think so, scooter.
- NetAtlantic – Uses Lyris software. Solid service. I actually used to use these guys and, in retrospect, probably should have stayed. In looking at their rates now, they have apparently gone up for a list my size. But, they do offer an ODBC connection option in their Enterprise accounts for synching with an external database. That would make the job easier, for sure.
- Vertical Response
Now, the RSS-to-email options are a LOT cheaper, many even free. Since my feeds are all managed using Feedburner, there are a few services which Feedburner offers right in their own interface.
- Feedburner. That’s right, they have their own service. Unfortunately, the only way to get a list imported is to email it to them and they do it themselves. Not very helpful.
- FeedBlitz – Looks to be very robust and they do offer list importing. I exchanged emails with Phil over there and they seem to be friendly and would be able to handle my tip list. They just apparently imported a list of 100K addresses for another account. They offer some paid services which I would probably use, however they are cheap compared to the options above.
- Zookoda – Nice, Web 2.0-ish looking company offering a free service. Their system looks a little simplistic, but it would probably work.
- Aweber – already mentioned, but they actually also offer an RSS-to-email option in their accounts.
So, I will post a followup when I finalize on this. As of now, I am leaning toward the tip blog with FeedBlitz, then perhaps either Aweber or the in-house hosted 1-2-All software for the weekly newsletters and auto-responder. Aweber is attractive, however having to re-confirm every subscriber again is a major drag I may not be able to get over.
Increase Online Sales by Reducing Customer Anxiety – The Scientific Approach
This afternoon I attended the web seminar mentioned in the previous blog post. The seminar was put on by Marketing Experiments Journal, a very professional outfit that takes the science of online marketing to levels you would normally expect from a college course. The subject of the seminar was how to decrease customer anxiety levels and thus increase the conversion rate of a website. In other words, how do you alleviate any fears a customer might have and get them to click on the “Buy” button? Well, one of the things I am most impressed with from these guys is the degree of statistical analysis they put into these things. Most website owners simply guess at what will work on a website, usually from what THEY would want to see. The thing is that the science of raising website conversion is not a matter of guesswork, and it is certainly a matter of knowing your audience. Let’s get right to the 7 tips which formed the basis of this whole talk. And, for each, I will interject my own view and advice on the matter.
Use testimonials
More specifically, use testimonials which address specific points of customer anxiety. For example, if you know that speed of shipping is a concern, post a testimonial that talks about how fast your shipping was. If support is a concern, post a testimonial which talks about how great your after-sale support is. Really pay attention to the purpose of each testimonial rather than simply posting anything that says good things about you.
Use language and tone in your copy
Pay close attention to your audience and what their state of mind is. Use language on your website that specifically caters to your audience. For example, if your intended audience is a younger one, your typical corporate speak is probably not going to sell anything. The presenter of the seminar also alluded to the importance of matching the tone of the customer and said a future report of their journal would discuss how to make a site actually cater to the particular mood of the customer. Now that will be very interesting, if it is some kind of real-time thing.
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Using Lynx for SEO
Rich’s latest video for PCMechTV had to do with using Lynx for SEO. Why would one be interested in this? Because Lynx is a text-only web browser, which means it looks at your website exactly the same way a search engine spider would. Does your site make sense and show a lot of the keywords you want in Lynx? If so, you’re get to go with the search engines. Or are you seeing TONS of javascript code and nested table HTML that makes it hard to find where your content is? Well, then your site is that much harder to spider.
Here’s the vid:
Uniblue Announces SpyEraser
Uniblue is today announcing the release of SpyEraser as well as a PowerSuite that groups the utility with their existing Registry Booster and SpeedUpMyPC titles. I have not yet tried the utility, but I have tried and marketed other Uniblue products in the past and have found them to be fine options. The reason I bring it up is because Uniblue is fairly well known for their affiliate program and they do put quite a bit of effort into their affiliate marketing. As the owner of PCMech, I have worked with Uniblue many times in the past and have made good money with them. And they support their affiliates more than most, providing a wealth of marketing materials, ideas, etc. So, for those of you doing affiliate marketing on the internet, I’m sure SpyEraser and the new PowerSuite are going to be available for affiliates to sell.
A word of advice, too, for you affiliate marketers – choose your programs wisely. Uniblue is a good company to work with. In the past, I have worked with Inkline Global on PCMech, advertising their PCShowBuzz software. Marketing that program brought in more complaints than any other campaign I have ever run on PCMech. And I got a lot of complaints about returns not being honored by the company. So, in the interest of my visitors, I have made a policy not to advertise for Inkline anymore. Inkline is perfectly professional dealing with directly, but I can’t get around the fact that I got so many complaints. I don’t desire to have my reputation affected by association, and as an affiliate marketer, you need to keep those considerations in mind as well.
I'm David Risley. I've been making my living as a blogger for over a decade. Blogging is my business and how I support my family. With this blog, I'm just gettin' REAL and telling you how this business works. 
