Disqus - Latest Comments for John W. Furst

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

John W. Furst — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 21:26:10 -0000

Hello Andy!
Great info. Indeed it takes many registrations at different community sites, a lot of action and time ("legwork") before you find out what works best for your site AND which community (people and tools) you like. So far StumbleUpon does not work too bad for me (but it's not really blog centric), I dropped Digg, because I just did not like their handling, and I might register with Sphinn, BumpZee next to give it a try. But I need to limit my engagement (time) to no more than two or probably three communities, bookmarking sites. Quality before quantity.

When you wrote about your traffic from MyBlogLog, you mentioned that you had your own page request in the Analytics stats. (no IP blocking). If this is still a problem, you can block yourself from the stats with cookies. Let me know and I can post the trick. -- Adios John

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

John W. Furst — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 21:26:10 -0000

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

John W. Furst — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 22:56:02 -0000

I am not sure, if Cookie blocking in G.Analytics is what you need/want. You put a Cookie in your browser for a specific domain and no matter how you click through to your site, it won't show up in the stats. It's browser dependent not IP or network dependent. Great solution for dynamic IPs. I got it from support in May, but its online in English (not German!) on the Help site now.

All you need to do is to create a new page for setting the cookie, and request it. Then you need to set up a filter as well.

https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.p...
"How do I exclude my internal traffic from reports?"

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

John W. Furst — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 22:56:02 -0000

Re: Why Blogs Suck

John W. Furst — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 11:43:17 -0000

My stats: September: 987 new unique visitors, 14 new RSS subscribers => 1.4%

"If blogging is to be promoted as a core requirement for business of any kind, it has to be combined with a better measurable lead acquisition system." Agreed! A "business" needs a $$$ value in the metric. How much can I spend to acquire a new RSS subscriber? Is a RSS subscriber valuable more or less than an email subscriber or a regular Web visitor? Where does it fit in?

The problem starts with the fact that RSS-blog-feeds are a form of exactly duplicate content which can be retrieved more anonymously than the content of your Web page itself. Tracking this is horribly complicated or impossible because of aggregators.

Secondly one doesn't market in a targeted fashion to those RSS subscribers. Users that only read the RSS feed don't get any advertising at all, unless it is in the article.

Thirdly RSS subscription is anonymous.

All that said, doesn't that make an RSS subscriber less valuable than an email subscriber.

Somewhere you have to draw the line between what is anonymously accessibly, what is accessible for free and what information you are selling. Where is the big question? My 2 cents -- John

Re: Why Blogs Suck

John W. Furst — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 11:43:17 -0000

Re: Taxation on Geothermal Energy

John W. Furst — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 21:34:07 -0000

Here on the Canary Islands, you can swim in the sea, lie on the beach and play in snow on the same day. It is just a matter of driving some tens of kilometers. But, this paradox situation lets forget everyone about heat insulation. It is simply not existing. Even in new buildings. What a waste of energy. I tried a couple of days without heating at all last winter. The average temperature in the apartment during the day did hardly exceed 13 C, which is not comfortable and makes it colder inside than outside. Most people help themselves with energy wasting electric heaters during the day. My computers substitute some of those heaters. That kind of heating is at least "intelligent". You see solar panels mostly on hotels and houses of immigrants not much elsewhere.

Huge wind power plants in the south are probably the most prominent sign of renewable energy production (but they are so ugly).

Re: Taxation on Geothermal Energy

John W. Furst — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 21:34:07 -0000

Re: Digg Favorites Slapped By Google

John W. Furst — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 10:58:19 -0000

That definitely degrades the meaning of PageRank to an even more arbitrary number. Google is not exactly a non-profit organization, is it. They are probably prelaunching a new commercial product:

Google AdWords -> AdSense -> Ad(d)PageRank

That won't be cheap, I guess.
Just my humble 2 cents. --John

Re: Digg Favorites Slapped By Google

John W. Furst — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 10:58:19 -0000

Re: BlogRoll Circle Jerk? – If You Encourage Junk Comments That Is What You Get

John W. Furst — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 10:32:36 -0000

Aren't most comments (on average) either too long or too short. I tend to write fairly long comments myself, too. It's not easy than to come up with a concise to the point small piece of text. On the other side writing a valuable, complete article that stands on its own as source for a trackback is not always possible (time wise or line of the blog).

Did everyone every try to limit the comments to, e.g. 300 characters ? Did it hurt the quality or #Reader-to-#Comments ratio?

Bottom line: Quality blogging, commenting and trackbacking requires more time than most people are willing to put into.
--John
P.S.: Some say, you shouldn't ask questions in a comment. I say, why not. It can add value.

Re: BlogRoll Circle Jerk? – If You Encourage Junk Comments That Is What You Get

John W. Furst — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 10:32:36 -0000

Re: Exclusive: Gmail – Scandalous Email Filtering At Source

John W. Furst — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 13:26:42 -0000

The ultimate choice of what is spam should lie in the users hand. I actually wrote an article about that, too (inspired by yours).
What is more important? Email Deliverability or Spam Free Inboxes? I guess, the answer depends on what side of the fence you are sitting. --John

Re: Exclusive: Gmail – Scandalous Email Filtering At Source

John W. Furst — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 13:26:42 -0000

Re: Exclusive: Gmail – Scandalous Email Filtering At Source

John W. Furst — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 10:56:58 -0000

Hi Semmy, I agree. Once you own your domain you have a real choice of who is handling your emails.

I "love" advertisment like this: "Go to www.mystore.com or write to mystore_4637XYU[at]googlemail.com". Very professional. I don't get it, what those people are thinking about.

Re: Exclusive: Gmail – Scandalous Email Filtering At Source

John W. Furst — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 10:56:58 -0000

Re: Do You Trust My Advice?

John W. Furst — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 09:59:30 -0000

Hi Andy!

I knew about "Rich Schefren" before I got to "know" you. Actually I gave you credit for promoting Rich. His face on your blog gave me a good feeling about you, before I even had read a single post.

About responsiveness: You know about the 66 second video contest of Rich. When I got to the page days after it was launched. I was amazed that I still was the first one who discovered that page on StumbleUpon. Yes, that's how lazy readers are.

As Alex Mandossian puts it: ~~ "Moving the 'free line' is essential, but everything has to move towards asking them for the money on a consistent basis. His business model with teleseminars is just incredibly compelling as well as the way he captures the demand of the market. Check out this guy, if you haven't already.

Yours John

Re: Do You Trust My Advice?

John W. Furst — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 09:59:30 -0000

Re: Clickbank XACH Bank Transfers & Blog

John W. Furst — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 11:07:03 -0000

Thanks for the great tips with XACH.

Getting paid by cheque in US$ is probably the worst form of getting paid, when you live outside the US.

Re: Clickbank XACH Bank Transfers & Blog

John W. Furst — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 11:07:03 -0000

Thanks for the great tips with XACH.

Getting paid by cheque in US$ is probably the worst form of getting paid, when you live outside the US.

Re: Optin Accelerator Closed – Too Risky?

John W. Furst — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:06:48 -0000

I never would share any of my account data with any third party service. Not a big Web2.0 platform nor an unknown provider.

Your notion about that this referred traffic will be most likely not targeted is a very good one.

Regards to AWeber: After having correspondence with AWeber support about a specific tell-a-friend service (TAF) I got the subjective impression, one can do much more with AWeber, IF one is a very profitable affiliate of theirs (more than the published terms allow). That's all I can tell as an outsider.

Thanks for your post.

Re: Optin Accelerator Closed – Too Risky?

John W. Furst — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:06:48 -0000

Re: Viral Optin Generator Warning

John W. Furst — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 19:01:50 -0000

# Andy Beard: It is still against the published ToS of Aweber.

# Ken Reno: Viral Optin Generator has no interaction with aWeber.com, and aWeber.com, nor any autoresponder is used for this script.

Ken,
so what? Did you read Aweber's ToS, policies, and comments from their top level executives on their Blog? I personally did, and I had correspondence with AWeber in that matter.

Bottom line: Everybody, who uses TAF in any way to drive visitors to an AWeber opt-in form bears the risk of loosing the AWeber account. It's not YOUR definition Ken, it's AWeber's.

It drives me mad that so many TAF script/service providers claim, "This works with AWeber...", and herein put their users in a potentially dangerous situation. That sucks, sorry.

On the other hand I have to blame AWeber for not stating their TAF terms precisely enough! There is indeed some room for speculation and interpretation. --John

Re: Viral Optin Generator Warning

John W. Furst — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 19:01:50 -0000

Re: Amazon vs New York – Affiliate Can of Worms

John W. Furst — Sat, 03 May 2008 20:49:18 -0000

Hi Andy!

Let me say upfront that sales tax is not value-added-tax (VAT) as we know it in Europe! It's a different tax system. They both have in common that the consumer pays it, but collection is different.

Sales tax has many loopholes for tax evasion, which have been closed by French economist Maurice LaurÃ©, who invented the VAT system in 1954 at the cost of high administrative burden.

NY will fail (hopefully), because it cannot fix a federal problem (sales tax principle) with local state law.
Go for it Amazon, sue the hell out of them!

By the way: Is 50 millions out of a 122 billion budget worth so much fuzz. I doubt it. It's the declaration of bankruptcy by politicians, who don't have a clue about economics. It's greed. Not good!

Andy, what you observe with Clickbank and Godaddy is those 2 giants rushed to comply with EU VAT laws quickly out of fear. Probably after watching what the EU did to Microsoft. For those who don't know, European resident consumers are charged an extra 15-25% VAT by those vendors and they pay this back to the European governments. Crazy, isn't it. There are no 97$ ebooks, they start at 111$. Now US companies have to deal with European tax authorities directly. What's next??

Do you see the similarity Clickbank :: EU == Amazon :: NY ??

1984 - Big Brother - George Orwell was a Genius

Yours
John

Re: Amazon vs New York – Affiliate Can of Worms

John W. Furst — Sat, 03 May 2008 20:49:18 -0000

Re: Amazon vs New York – Affiliate Can of Worms

John W. Furst — Tue, 06 May 2008 07:42:52 -0000

Obviously a controversial subject. 'NY' says it's not a new tax, just the attempt to collect an existing one. Whoever expected consumers to do bookkeeping on out-of-state in the first place , e.g. 3.77, 10.59, 45.23, 1.23, ... $ and alike purchases was a fool. It's certainly in a whole different dimension in the X0,000.00 $ jewelry business, but people are people and will always look for some 'savings' unless they are stopped systematically. Even before the Internet people bought in 47th Street in Manhatten and had their diamonds shipped to an out-of-state address, hadn't they. As mentioned earlier, I think this calls for a federal solution applicable in each and every state in the same fashion otherwise it just is not fair to some residents and unfair to businesses, who will be forced to comply with a myriad of different standard.

The second issue I 'hear' is obviously that more and more folks disagree with government misspending. For sure that's true everywhere all over the globe. I join your outcry, too.

Re: Amazon vs New York – Affiliate Can of Worms

John W. Furst — Tue, 06 May 2008 07:42:52 -0000

Re: How To Screw Up Your Internet Business

John W. Furst — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 05:15:00 -0000

Thanks for the "Security Alert!", Andy.

I'm not a fan of any sort of "Tell-A-Friend" promotion, but asking for account credentials to import contacts is even somewhat more intrusive, isn't it. A while ago I added a line to my personal email's signature "This is an unlisted, private email address. You must not share it with anybody!" Well, my friends are 'smart' and I never had problems,... but just in case.

My advice to programmers, marketers, and service providers:

* Give the user a choice of creating a login ID, which does not show up anywhere (different from screen name, different from email address). I say "choice" in reference to Guy Kawasaki who said on his Blog, "I don't use services that don't allow me to use my email address as login." Okay, if you want to (dear user, you can). I guess you could be proud, if someone like Guy uses your service ... no need to lock him out.

* Don't store passwords in plain text. Therefore you cannot send them via email as well! But don't forget to implement a password recovery procedure.

* Continuing with what you wrote, Andy. Don't ask for too much information anyway. At first earn the users trust and respect, then an kind of 'tell-a-friend' will work much better for you.

Yours John

P.S. I hope that was not too long Andy, but I think security (technical) and ethics (marketing,promotion) is very important for the Internet marketplace. As you do.

Re: How To Screw Up Your Internet Business

John W. Furst — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 05:15:00 -0000

Re: Is Digg Spamming You?

John W. Furst — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 07:10:50 -0000

They banned *a friend of mine* , too. Even though that friend had very good reason to believe that he's complying to the rules.

Several attempts to get feedback fro digg failed. No response, of course. Kind of the opposite problem. This friends account page is still up and says. This user has been banned due to misuse. He asked for re-opening or removing it altogether. Acyually I think you have a right that your data is being removed. However, no response.

As always, they act up because of nothing, but still there is so much garbage dugg.

Cheers.

Re: Is Digg Spamming You?

John W. Furst — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 07:10:50 -0000

Re: Your Grammar & Spelling Is Going To Ruin Your Career

John W. Furst — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 13:08:38 -0000

Hi Jim,

Just watched your Flip for the first time and liked it. Very good point that Shoe's readers might
need to be fit for a job and get the thing with the "l", "e", "t", "t", "e", "r", "s" right.

Yours
John

P.S.: I am not a native English speaker. The hardest part for me is, "comma or no comma"

Re: Promiscuous Posting = Video Spamming?

John W. Furst — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 10:54:11 -0000

Hi Jim!

Good topic! Here's my humble opinion:

(1) The most important ingredient for spammy content is crappy, non authentic content and duplications of it. I see some 99% lack of that crappy part in your videos (1% goes to the fact that there is always someone complaining;). No need to worry about that part.

(2) Web2.0 lives from duplicate content! News sites around the globe publish duplicate content. Google itself IS duplicate content. ...this is about content aggregation and making it accessible to different tribes.

(3)...You might want to think harder about submitting each and every video to places like sclipo, howtovideos, ... , and stupidvideos, ... but most sites are pretty broad in terms of topics and possible target group. Just obey the terms of those sites and they will be more than happy to get good content from you.

(4) Remember the non cross posting rule in the usenet/newsgroups. That basically was/is one system -- a distributed system -- but still one system. Those video sites are competing with each other. The situation is quite different today.

P.S. I had to reload the page in order to get the blip player playing

P.P.S. I guess you could check the stats and concentrate on those sites that work best for you.

Re: Is BlogRush Really Rush Traffic Towards Your Blog

John W. Furst — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 10:46:25 -0000

Well, I just wrote a post myself saying, "BlogRush Is Not So Hot!"
Yours John.

Re: Using Social Media for Social Good: Other Side’s contribution

John W. Furst — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 21:44:28 -0000

http://www.JustLikeMyChild.org

Why them?

I know the people running this non-profit organization. I trust them. Their goal is to help families especially children in rural Uganda to become self-sufficient.

Re: Becky “Bunko” Blanton

John W. Furst — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:51:52 -0000

Was so much fun working on this with you. Only a shame that I had to drop 95% of Marty's awesome illustrations and 99% of Becky's words.

Yours John

Re: Lesson - Patience for Webmasters

John W. Furst — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 12:12:30 -0000

Thanks you for submitting your article to my latest edition of "Webmaster Articles" Blog Carnival. It was my pleasure to include it.

Yours John
E-Biz Booster Blog
at http://blog.fcon21.biz/

Re: Get More Done Faster With These 6 Tips

John W. Furst — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 10:50:49 -0000

Great timing Michel.
Shortly after finishing a post of my own about time management on my blog, I got your blog announcement. Your article was a perfect fit for my readers and I appended it with a quick review. (I am not sure, if you received the trackback, or what your policy is. So I let you know 'manually'.)

Thanks.
John

Re: Niches Suck And Other Heresies

John W. Furst — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 16:31:14 -0000

Good evening everybody!

Much misunderstanding in this whole debate stems from the fact that many talk, preach, praise, or condemn targeting "niche markets" down to a very emotional level, but who actually defines the term objectively?Almost nobody.

My favorite definition of the term "niche market" is a market sector (a part of the main market) with demand that is currently not covered to its full capacity by mainstream providers. Period. There are solid opportunities that comply with this definition. It does not imply that the demand, the market in this "niche", is small nor does it imply that it is easy to go for. I'd say that's the more academic definition, which I prefer. Those kind of niche markets might have the full potential to grow beyond our wildest dreams.

Marketing via SMS once was such a "niche market". The small text messages that you can send with your GMS/UTMS mobile phone. Probably still more popular in Europe than in the US. The big telcos did not care, did not envision its potential, left it out. They thought the revenue potential is not worth it. A couple of years later small companies with proactive CEOs are controlling that portion of what has become a major market.

Well, that's my understanding. How does this relate to the Internet Marketing Discussion? Stay tuned. I'll write a second comment in a couple of minutes. -- Yours John W. Furst

Re: Niches Suck And Other Heresies

John W. Furst — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 17:05:06 -0000

Part 2:
In context with Internet Marketing -- from my limited personal experience -- the term "niche" mostly is related to "low competition". That seems to be the primary acceptation. Better "gurus" or info products add another word. You probably have heard it many times, "profitable nice". It has become the synonym or a mixed up synonym for higher organic search engine rankings, lower AdWords bid prices, "long tail", and high conversion rates. Well, the term is sold that way. Is it true?

What I have learned in my very first internet marketing affiliate venture in the German market was that it also means very low traffic volume. I mean traffic that is that low in volume that you cannot even split test your Ads in a reasonable time frame. This example might not be a representative one, because the German market as such has additional shortcomings that diminish your potential earnings. Anyway, I have learned my lesson and abandoned that market altogether after three month and have not written any "German language" on the Internet since.

A "niche" in that sense might be profitable, but you could starve, while you are watching the dimes rolling in. -- Yours John W. Furst and greeting from the Canary Islands/Spain.

P.S.: Forgive me for the long comments, but I was kind of in a flow. Good night.

Re: Copywriting the 80/20 Way

John W. Furst — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 18:44:25 -0000

Thanks for this very readable article Ryan.

@Michel,
I have the feeling that large corporations are the sloppiest ones, when it comes to testing their sales messages on their Web sites. Especially, if "Internet" is not their core business. They rather spend big bucks $$$$ on "Web Design" agencies before the launch, launch it and forget it. If the sales are not high enough, they are likely to throw some extra money into all sorts of advertising channels. If they get a better targeted "crowd" to their Web site by that means, it might improve the conversion rate, but the potential of improving the copywriting by testing is left out almost completely. Corporate culture is one part of the problem.

I have to confess that you "Americans" are ahead, when it comes to selling. You probably have heard the rather "old joke" about what a Japanese, a German, and an American guy would do with a great product. I save your blog from this one. :-)

Have a nice weekend.

Re: How to Improve Your Email Open Rates

John W. Furst — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 17:56:04 -0000

Hi Michel!

When you write, "most people check email first", you are right. I see it in Internet cafes, ... , and every weekend guest visiting us wants at least to check their email from my home office.

Would you share your opinion and experience on personalization in the subject line?

Some marketers use the 'first name' and a welcome phrase. I have seen dates as well, and you begin the subject line with '[Michel Fortin]' (for your Blog announcements).

In 25, 30, 40 characters there is not much room? Would you rather use it for personalization (probably not) or to create the much needed urgency, curiosity, or controversy.

Yours
John
P.S. Happy and successful new year.

Re: How to Improve Your Email Open Rates

John W. Furst — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 19:15:32 -0000

@Michel Fortin:
Thanks. I mistook your link list of headlines for the related posts section, jumped all the way down to the comment form, and skipped your text on personalization totally. Uups! Sorry.

Re: How to Negotiate Better Copywriting Fees

John W. Furst — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:31:29 -0000

Great post Michel.

The harder you negotiate to maintain the perceived value of your service, the more respect your clients will have for you, and the more likely you will get profitable orders from them in the future. The penny counters are not worth it anyway. I think you are right Michel, when stating it might be more worthwhile to spend your time marketing your service rather than adding a low profile project to your portefeuille.

Wasn't it Gary Halbert, who coined the term "Players With Money", and who taught you should aim for those? They are ultimately easier to sell to, they recognize value, they can make decisions, and they have the money to spend.

Have a nice weekend.