Disqus - Latest Comments for Carsten Cumbrowski

Re: SEM Tools and Techniques for Examining Websites

Carsten Cumbrowski — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 13:58:58 -0000

CrazyEgg just sent me an Email with an Invitation to create an account that day when you did the presentation. I signed up a while ago with the request to be notified. You must have gotten access also just recently.

Thanks for looking at my Internet Marketing Resources site http://www.cumbrowski.com. You are right about the Logo. I did that years back for the private homepage and was so used to it, I did not even think about it. I have some Ideas for a new Logo already, but need somebody else to help me with it. My old skool pixel art talents will not do for what I have in mind.

Now a shameless self promotion if you don't mind :)
You can find a lot more relevant tools, information and resources at the SEO Section of my Site here: http://www.cumbrowski.com/CarstenC/searchengine...

Cheers,
Carsten

Re: The Affiliate Marketing Road Less Traveled

Carsten Cumbrowski — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 16:33:31 -0000

iPassport sound like a similar tool like roboform. I bought me dad roboform2go and usb stick along with it. He was one one those people who wrote sticky notes with password hints to then replace them or being unable to figure out the password based on the cryptic hints :) Well, its better than those people who write the actual passport on sticky notes :)

Same here with the Links and Data. That allows you to create new mash ups = unique content and implement new ideas. Something that helps you to avoid issues with Search Engines, allows you to tap into new markets where the Advertiser is currently not represented, not to mention the ability to provide something useful to the user :).

I haven't looked at the encrypted links at Linkshare yet. Is there something developing I should keep an eye on or did this die with CJ LMI?

Re: Performics Releases OrangeLinksSM

Carsten Cumbrowski — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 02:54:44 -0000

Michael, CJ offers a Links feed for Links that are categorized by the Merchant as promotional btw.

They have that feature for a while now but as always never mentioned anything anywhere, including the online help (you have to ask haha ... happy fortune telling).

That's CJ policy as it seems. Don't tell anybody about the good and useful features implemented secretly, because partners might get the idea to want and use it. Not to mention that this could result into positive feedback.

I wonder what will happen to it after LMI.

I hope I did not make CJ mad, because I mentioned the feature, but honestly, I don't believe it to survive the LMI (Do you hear me CJ?).

Re: New JavaScript Link Types at Commission Junction

Carsten Cumbrowski — Wed, 24 May 2006 21:41:24 -0000

The only thing that comes close is CJ's change to their Market Place or Product Catalog at the end of 2002.

That was the change where they canned their Category Structure and individual Product Links (and Tracking).

The new Feed was a piece of junk. The feed did only improve a bit since then. You have more choices as publisher about how you would like to get the junk from CJ :).

See my Rand here:
http://forum.abestweb.com/showthread.php?t=9182
and continued
http://forum.abestweb.com/showthread.php?t=1377

Leading eventually to this
http://www.cumbrowski.com/CarstenC/scraps/20060...

I am not superstitious, but why did GoogleAlert (search for my Name) pickup this thread (the first) yesterday and sent me a lonely email about it, 1 hour before I got the CJ email about the planned link changes. That is so odd. Like something tried to tell me "get ready, because you are not going to like what's coming".

Regarding Digg, my pleasure.

p.s.
I am not sure, if you were part of its development, but I think the BeFree Datafeed System was pretty much the best from all the Network Feeds.

There were only some minor problems with the daily feeds that had the date in the file name which made it hard to impossible for some merchants to guess what the file name today might be.

You probably know what I am talking about. ;)

Carsten

Re: New JavaScript Link Types at Commission Junction

Carsten Cumbrowski — Wed, 24 May 2006 18:44:25 -0000

If they force us to use the JavaScript Code instead of the traditional Links, we will get some major problems.

All Links are stored in our Database. We coded Ad/link locations across our Websites, Blog, RSS Feeds, Email Alerts, Email Newsletters and PPC Campaigns. 99.9% of our Affiliate Links are NOT visible to the user (We use Linkshares DRM in some cases where it makes sense for us).

A Link to a Tracking Script with the "link location" and "target id's" as parameters is visible instead.

All Clicks are first send to the tracking script that logs various information, such as the "Location ID" from where the click occurred among other things.

It also pulls the destination URL (Affiliate Link) or to be correct, the destination URL "template", from the Database; adjusts the URL based on Link Destination and Click Source. Information such as the Advertiser / Network "Link ID" and/or "SID" are changed or added.

It always depends the type of destination URL. Different networks and In-House Programs have different link structures and features available.

All that would not work anymore. Starting from our Website manager Pages, the logic to render the public website to our Tracking and Logging System which forms the basis for our Analytics and Statistics.

We also have content that is "border line" or changes "state". We syndicate a lot of our content. The content contains our tracking link and not the affiliate link. RSS can not deal with JavaScript as "Link" value.

People can subscribe to Feeds via Reader or Email Service. We encourage our customers to use FeedBlitz because we then have some control over the look of the email (branding). So the Ad on our Website becomes RSS and the RSS becomes an Email.

Based on CJ, 3 different Links are required for this, which need to change depending on what the Customer is doing.

The JS Link for our Website, a direct (Product Feed like Link) for the RSS and the specific "Email" Link in case the User aggregates the Feed via an Email Service and a Direct Link to JavaScript Link transformer, if the Customer decides to use an online or desktop RSS Reader which renders a Webpage (kind of). Is CJ going to provide morphing links for this?

Hello Web 2.0, does it ring a bell? No, not the AJAX part of it, the custom content. Empower the user: Get what you want, when you want it and in the format you want it.

There is no way that they can force publishers to use the JS Link only with the special Email and PPC Links which are probably working in the way, that you don't get commission if "misused".

It has to be optional, like Linkshare's DRM which is the right way of applying the new technologies.
BeFree had/has something similar like the LS DRM.

If CJ proceeds on that route, a lot of publishers (especially the medium size ones) will say bye bye to most CJ Merchants (or switch the links to the merchants program at Performics or wherever else the Merchant opened a Program parallel to CJ).

The remaining affiliates can cancel their Google Analytics account and ask to get the Data from CJ instead (with detailed Conversion Information please).

Something Affiliates can not get with Google Analytics. Hey, I found something positive (if CJ would provide the Data it can (and will) collect, without or with the knowledge of their Joe Anybody Affiliates). CJ JS Code will be on pretty much every relevant page anyway so why have CJ JS and Google JS code in all pages. Just one of the two will do.

Did I mention that we would have to change thousands of links manually which we added over the years?

Carsten

Re: Cost Per News Special: Affiliate Networks vs CPA Networks

Carsten Cumbrowski — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 11:25:31 -0000

Gee, if I wouldn't know better, I would believe to be in the middle of a schoolyard brawl between young teens and not grown adults. Adults that consider themselves higher educated and smarter than the average Joe and leaders in an industry. If such attitudes would have been found in the governments of the world powers during the cold war, nobody would be here to talk about it.

Having different opinions is normal and good, because that sparks discussions and debates with everybody getting something out of it at the end and a compromise if the involved parties have at least a little bit interest to come to a consensus.

Regarding to the original discussion:
Are CPA Networks are a Threat to Affiliate Networks?

I don't think so. Are they taking a bite out Affiliate Networks business? They certainly do, but so did AdSense or YPN etc. This is not the end of Affiliate Networks at all, because they lost and lose only who was a "poor" or "bad" Advertiser or Publisher in the first place and an ill fit for them.

They only got them because there was nothing better out there, something that is designed to fit their needs. They leave the Affiliate Network when something comes along that does work for them.

Affiliate Networks benefit from it, if they want to or not. They can focus more on what they are good at, their core competency, being a platform to build long term partnerships that are beneficial for everybody involved.

Some Advertisers and Publishers can leverage the benefits of both types of Networks as some publishers can leverage the benefits of Affiliate Marketing and AdSense.

That's my opinion to this..

Note:
Regarding the k...ed.com site. Jeff, if it is yours, then I have two recommendations for you. 1) Take it down a.s.a.p. 2) Apologize for it in public (no excuses!) to prevent the loss of face. Everybody makes mistakes and people can forgive mistakes, but only if they are admitted.

If it is not your site, then I would work hard to find out who did it. The evidence is pretty strong though which makes it tough to believe that it was done by somebody who wants to harm you AND the person referred to by that profanity site.

Re: Google Checkout Affecting CJ Program Commissions

Carsten Cumbrowski — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 01:47:30 -0000

To the question is SAS and LS are affected:

ShareASale: yes, they also use the 1pixel image in the confirmation page for tracking

LinkShare: no, since Linkshare requires Merchant to implement their own tracking from the start and does not rely on a1pixel image or similar for tracking

The Solution needed is the option to pass a custom block of text to Google with the notification-acknowledgment message as response to the new-order-notification from Google, which is then displayed at the order confirmation page to the user.

This Solution would only work for Merchants that use the API.

The "Buy Now" and "e-commerce partners" Options require more work on Google's end. The Merchant must be able to specify in the account pages a custom block of code (html, javascript or what not) which will be displayed to the user at the confirmation page. The problem is, that some information, such as the Order # and Order Total (for the CJ Tracking Pixel) must be dynamic so the merchant can only provide a place holder that is know to Google and is being replaced in real-time with data from the current order before being shown at the confirmation page.

This would work for the API too, but the suggested solution for the API from above gives the merchant much more flexibility and not rely on Google supporting a needed "place holder" or not.

The Issue remains for Merchants with multiple CJ "Actions" because the choice of the correct action for the order would require that Google knows what the products in the Shopping Cart are and the rules for what action to use for each of the merchants products. This can only be solved if the Merchant uses the API only and if Google Supports the solution I suggested for the API.

I hope this makes sense. It's a bit technical, but the issue itself is also very technical to begin with.

Re: Google Checkout Affecting CJ Program Commissions

Carsten Cumbrowski — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 02:17:41 -0000

"How many merchants/advertisers do you think will actually take the time to put things like this into practice?"

If those options are available and not used by the merchant, then you know how the merchant thinks about his affiliate program. Earch solution adds minimal time and effort to what the merchant has to do to implement Google Checkout anyway. The only reason not to do it is to have a loop hole to get around paying some of the due commission.

"Could Google Checkout really be the end of affiliate marketing? "

hehe.. nope, like a lot of other things that didn't put an end to it either

Re: Google Checkout Affecting CJ Program Commissions

Carsten Cumbrowski — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 02:19:26 -0000

small correction of my previous comment: "if those optione WILL BECOME available..." instead of "ARE"

Re: Google Checkout Affecting CJ Program Commissions

Carsten Cumbrowski — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 16:07:29 -0000

Hi Brian,

If you get involved hands-on with integrating solutions for one or the other merchant, it would be great, if you could collect those experiences and put them in a guide of some sort for AM's AND their Web Development team. A lot of Merchants across all Networks would benefit from that.

Cheers

Re: Google Checkout Affecting CJ Program Commissions

Carsten Cumbrowski — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 18:47:42 -0000

Hi Kyle,

Thanks for your feedback. Matt Cutts posted a comment about this feature at my SEJ post on Friday (http://www.searchenginejournal.com/?p=4059).

I responded to him that this solution does only work for merchants that use the API of Google Checkout. Google Checkout offers 2 additional options which are easier for the merchant because little to no programming is required on the Merchant side.

The options I am referring to are the "Buy Now button" and "the e-commerce partner" option (Google checkout shopping cart).

I can imagine that larger merchants prefer using the API to be able to use their existing order processing system to fulfill the order instead of the Google Checkout Merchant Center. Smaller merchants probably do not mind as much when it comes to the decision to use 2 systems for order processing instead of one to get around the API implementation (which is not possible for some merchants that use "out of the box" e-commerce solutions and software.

I made some recommendations for those in my blog post at SEJ. You might want to have a look. Thanks for your help though. I am sure that I can speak for everybody here that we really appreciate your efforts to solve the existing problems as soon as possible. Cheers.

Re: Are Affiliate Bloggers Worth Their Salt?

Carsten Cumbrowski — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 22:27:44 -0000

1. yes, there is a place for blogging in every "world" :)
2. all of them
3. No, but if a post is too specific the reader either does not care and ignores it or is doing some research himself. There are great tools for that out there, Google for example is one of them :)

Re: Blasphemy Challenge Falls Flat Because of Reliance on History

Carsten Cumbrowski — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 19:54:47 -0000

History is a funny thing. If I hear about the history of east Germany, I get the funny feeling that I do not remember correctly how live was behind the iron curtain. It makes me almost feel guilty that I did not feel as oppressed as historians (from the west) try to make me believe.

Don't get me wrong, I am believing that the change of east Germany was to my personal advantage. I am also believing that a lot of people ended up loosing in this "deal". History is (re)written by the successors to their liking.

This rewriting is less a change of factual events, but the removal of unpleasant events and things that would make some other known event make look a bit different than the events all bit itself. Plus a little tweak on the emphasis of some aspects of the same event and even the event with its proven facts will look completely different.

People that are actually witnesses of the events tend to start believing into parallel universes, because their personal experiences does often not fit the official description of what happened.

This little problem solves itself over time very naturally, because eyewitnesses tend to die eventually and allow much more severe manipulation of the descriptions and interpretations (I think that word is used when it comes to history) of old historic events.

If you take that into account when reviewing historic material (considering who wrote it and when) you will find yourself looking at events quite differently. They don't seem to be as black or white as they used to. They start looking almost real. The problem is, that this "real" differs from person to person, because everybody makes up the missing stuff depending on his character and personality. Not much to debate on, correction, not much to debate on and reach a consensus.

Now you can take this comment and make out of it what you want. :)
You will be right and so will I, even if we disagree. That's the beauty of it.

Re: Blasphemy Challenge Falls Flat Because of Reliance on History

Carsten Cumbrowski — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 19:55:38 -0000

This is me, Carsten btw.

Re: Wikipedia NoFollow Plugin? WikiDigg?

Carsten Cumbrowski — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 05:51:44 -0000

In other words, Search Engines are doing their job again and forget about this whole NOFOLLOW attribute crap and ignore it.

Good. It's about time to fix the broken system instead of using patches that create a lot more issues that are even worse than the issue tried to patch.

Re: Wikipedia NoFollow Plugin? WikiDigg?

Carsten Cumbrowski — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 05:51:44 -0000

Re: Wikipedia NoFollow Plugin? WikiDigg?

Carsten Cumbrowski — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 05:58:17 -0000

Humans can still follow the link in the articles itself. They perform their intended function. The function where the PageRank algorithm is based on and USED TO DO a good job, until it was abused to death. Yeah, it's about who is voting. Not which SITE. A link by one person on an authority site is still ONE PERSONS opinion only and biased. If it is backed by multiple people its a much stronger vote. But that alone is also not enough. Who is voting and how trustworthy is he or them?

It's tricky to figure that out, but also a huge opportunity to evolve Search to something much better than it is today.

Re: Wikipedia NoFollow Plugin? WikiDigg?

Carsten Cumbrowski — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 05:58:17 -0000

Re: Wikipedia NoFollow Plugin? WikiDigg?

Carsten Cumbrowski — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 09:17:46 -0000

Andy,

Sorry for the delayed response. Mmhh.. Email notification for comments would be nice. Just a little bit user feedback :)

"If you have a system that ultimately creates some numerical data for each link, based on how long it has been there, then you can selectively have the link followable or not."

Yes, the search engines have to determine that. If it is an on site attribute, then it will be gamed. Hello Meta Tags 1990

"I have a Wikipedia account, but have only done a few edits.
Some might argue that because I am not dedicated editor, I have no right to an opinion."

I believe you did not grasp the concept yet. What you CAN gain by your activities is trust, which is not unimportant in a community, isn't it?

"Relevance
By not passing on link equity to other sites, Wikipedia themselves becomeâ€¦ irrelevant"

I don't understand that statement. Does it fall into the category like this one? : "The code is full of bugs, which is no surprise, because it was written in basic and not c++"

"Why link to Wikipedia with a followable link? They donâ€™t share the link equity back out"

Answer: your headline for the paragraph

I completely agree that if the search engines will obey the nofollow attribute, an imbalance due to unrealistic PageRank distribution caused by the "black hole" effect wikipedia creates by absorbing all the votes without distributing it back to the outside world, will be the result of this.

I am also sure that the search engines had somebody crunching some numbers and simulating it. I hope that the result would be disastrous, because that will trigger something else that is much overdue. You guess what that might be. I mentioned it already several time.

What is unfortunate is the fact that all the good reasons why I support the nofollow at wikipedia (until it will hopefully not matter anymore if there is a nofollow or not), is not the reason why it was enabled (again).

I hope that a lot of people followed the arguments and adopted the good reasons now too. The SEO contest thingy is no reason IMO. If it would be just that I would say "remove the nofollow NOW".

Cheers!
Carsten

Re: Wikipedia NoFollow Plugin? WikiDigg?

Carsten Cumbrowski — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 09:17:46 -0000

Re: Sphinn – SEM Attention Wars

Carsten Cumbrowski — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 07:50:40 -0000

Hi Andy,
Interesting post. BUMPZee! got a lot of attention in the affilaite marketing space and Scotts deep roots in that industry was helping him to get the needed attention to get the project off the ground.

You can compare it to what Danny did in the seo/sem space with Sphinn. Both used their status in their respected industries. Okay, Scott would be more like a Aaron or Rand, but if either of those two would have launched a site like this, the results would have been similar.

To open up BUMPzee to create any type of niche community was a good thing and a bad thing. Opening it up allowed the access to other verticals, but it also added problems of separation and duplications due to over diversification. Have a look at the amount and types of communities that were created at BUMPzee over the past months and you will know what I mean.

Re: Sphinn – SEM Attention Wars

Carsten Cumbrowski — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 07:50:40 -0000

Re: Sphinn – SEM Attention Wars

Carsten Cumbrowski — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 14:51:05 -0000

Danny Sullivan said: "Carsten, why not launch with everything we could think of? Because we had enough to start with, and at some point, you want a real site with real users to give you real feedback. I don't consider it half done at all. I consider it a solid foundation that will grow."

Danny, I believe you misunderstood my comment.

I said that opening BUMPzee! up, to allow the creation of any type of community, is a blessing and a curse at the same time.

A blessing, because it allows to expand into other verticals and a curse because it also deludes stronger communities within BUMPzee! and reduces the growth of them.

It is much harder now to promote BUMPZee to a specific vertical. Go to the homepage of BUMPzee! and tell me about the strong communities within the site. Do you see what I mean? You can't tell?

I don't mind having another platform out there. As I said in my comment at SEOMoz Andy was referring to: "The more the merrier I guess, at least does it provide choice and will cause each platform to develop further to the excitement of us users."

I also said that you will use your position in the industry to promote your new service of course. Scott did so too with BUMPzee! There is nothing wrong with that I would have been surprised if you wouldn't do it.

Not everybody here is agreeing with Andy's assessment. You are not the only one :)

Re: Sphinn – SEM Attention Wars

Carsten Cumbrowski — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 14:51:05 -0000

Re: Sphinn – SEM Attention Wars

Carsten Cumbrowski — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 18:30:05 -0000

What is your problem Andy?

Danny mentioned BUMPzee! and a number of other similar services on the Daily SearchCast on 7/12 when Sphinn was launched. It's not like he ignores the existing services completely in is coverage of search marketing news.

He mentions Sphinn (his baby) more frequent; of course he does. He also mentions SMX more often than SES, especially right before a SMX event. He will still cover SES and PubCon etc.

That he does self promotion is completely natural. They over at SEL also have bills to pay.

I never heart him talking bad about BUMPZee or making claims like "Sphinn" is much better than xyz. It would be inappropriate, if he did.

That friends of SEL and Danny are more likely to post about something they do and probably also in a more forgiving and favorable manner is also normal.

David Naylor and Rand etc. are Danny's friends. David for example posted about Sphinn the same day Danny announced it on Daily SearchCast, as he said during the show, without Danny asking him to do so.

Am I missing something?

Re: Sphinn – SEM Attention Wars

Carsten Cumbrowski — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 18:30:05 -0000

Re: Paid Comments – They Can Be 100% Ethical

Carsten Cumbrowski — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 06:41:39 -0000

I see nothing overly controversial with your post, sorry :). I agree with your statements and also don't make a big fuzz out of the "paid for blog comments" thing. It is very simple.

If the posted comments are just a new form of spam to circumvent spam filters, you as advertiser paying for those comments will not gain business from this type of advertisement, probably the opposite instead. The comments will also have a low chance of remaining active at the blog and will most likely be deleted like any other spam that might gets passed the filters. You will loose reputation and eventually customers and will have a harder time to find new ones.

The low cost of the service makes me assume that it will be outsourced to some low cost country half way around the world (from you or me :) ). At least did you advertising dollars help to support an evolving economy somewhere else and get the bread on the family table for somebody.

If the comments are good and you gain business as a result of it without a loss in reputation or even gain from it, reputation or authority, great, go for it. There is nothing wrong with that.

You see, the problem solves itself very naturally.

p.s. this comment is a "paid comment", because it is business related and any time I spent for it is working time, (which hopefully gets compensated via one way or another = paid. :)

If we want to make it unpaid, lets talk about text art or Cirque Du Soleil hehe.

Re: Paid Comments – They Can Be 100% Ethical

Carsten Cumbrowski — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 06:41:39 -0000

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

Carsten Cumbrowski — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 04:51:48 -0000

Links to posts strongly related to the subject of the post should be okay in comments, not just for other readers, but for the writer of the post as well. I have hundreds of blog feeds in my feed reader and still not ALL good and relevant blogs about subjects I care about.

The ones I do have in the reader are impossible to read entirely. You miss stuff and if your subject is recent (a few days old), don't expect Google to show it near the top of the search results yet (with some exception with posts at very strong authority blogs).

De-linking a reference would not make sense, if the post that is referred to is on topic and adds value to the post itself. If it does not provide anything different or new to what you just wrote then it does not make much sense to keep the link to it intact. It would be like a "me too" reply to a forum post. Some blog comments (with and without links) are having not much more quality to it than those kind of replies, which annoys the heck out of me, if it is a post where a lot of people re engaged in a conversation.

I don't mind if those would be suppressed or deleted, even if their was no bad intent by the poster. It will not help the guys who signed up for email notification, but the guys that read the post at a later time. The exceptions are polls or similar posts that ask for this kind of feedback. That's my opinion which is probably not one of the popular ones.

p.s. I like the edit comment feature. Which plug-in is that? English is my second language and I see myself making errors pretty often. It's hard to read and double check in the relatively small text box where you enter your comment (the p.s. was added to my comment using this edit comment feature hehe).

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

Carsten Cumbrowski — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 04:51:48 -0000

Re: Best Wordpress Plugins – Nominations and Results

Carsten Cumbrowski — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 04:58:11 -0000

Add the "edit your comment" plug-in to the list next time. It's a god-send hehe.

Re: Best Wordpress Plugins – Nominations and Results

Carsten Cumbrowski — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 04:58:11 -0000

Add the "edit your comment" plug-in to the list next time. It's a god-send hehe.

Re: SEO Linking Gotchas Even The Pros Make

Carsten Cumbrowski — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 02:18:46 -0000

"Extensive use of Nofollow and other forms of dynamic linking are the only way to effectively prevent duplicate content pages in some way having a effect on your internal linking structure and juice flow. The Wikipedia page on Nofollow really isn't correct."

Hi Andy,

I contributed a substantial part of the article to nofollow at Wikipedia and have it on my watch list and keep it updated as much as I can and time permits me to do so.

Please elaborate what exactly is not correct in the current article. From what I take away from your post, could you argue that the article does not explain additional uses of nofollow, like the control of flow of linkjuice within your own website.

This could be mentioned and makes sense IMO. It would at least provide some positive aspects to the whole thing and that webmasters seem to make the best possible thing out of this new tool (in contradiction to search engines who's repurpose of the nofollow attribute causes more problems than anything else).

Thanks

Re: BumpZee, Follow, Nofollow And What You Can Do About It.

Carsten Cumbrowski — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 06:05:02 -0000

Hello! The Bumpzee links that have your blog post title in the anchor text are links to your blog post = good.

The Title of the Detail Page has your post title in it, yeah, but no link with the keywords in the anchor point to it.

Accept the Link Love from Bumpzee, send Scott a nice thank you email and get over it :).

Re: BumpZee, Follow, Nofollow And What You Can Do About It.

Carsten Cumbrowski — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 09:56:14 -0000

Andy, and you are talking about syndicated content, whole articles. We are talking here about the same title only, because that's all there is to it.

45n5: Bumpzee will outrank you for a search for your post title, if you have a new site in Google's Sandbox. That should change once Google counts your site 100% without any "penalties".

Your post title is hopefully backed up by the post content. If your Title is unrelated and the only place where you have your keywords on the page, yeah, Bumpzee will outrank you among a lot of other sites. Pretty much everybody with content relevant to the Keywords. Pretty much.

Re: BumpZee, Follow, Nofollow And What You Can Do About It.

Carsten Cumbrowski — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 11:01:45 -0000

And the traffic from Bumpzee will come nicely your way, pre-sold, if the comments are nice :) I have some squidoo lenses myself which I created a year ago. The Lens ranks in the top 10, so does the page the lens refers to as source. Great, two spots for me, instead of one. The lens has content that matches (but is not the same). Other lenses don't rank like that. So if bumpzee ranks together with your page, be glad.

Re: Do You Squidoo?

Carsten Cumbrowski — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 12:12:36 -0000

my 2 cents

1. yes
2. no
3. no
4. cover more spots in the SERPS

Don't give it too much, only a little bit, but make sure to attach the lens to many RELEVANT keywords. That will boost the lens and a link from the lens boosts your site.

I created my first lens over a year ago. I have only 4 lenses and it took me a while to outrank my own lenses with my new site, but now are they working together in tandem :)

Re: Do You Squidoo?

Carsten Cumbrowski — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 12:39:49 -0000

your feed has complete posts. no wonder. I hope you stopped that, because Google might filter you out for good. Your site and the lens were basically identical with SQUIDOO as a domain out powering you and probably even considered the source of the content and not your blog.

"Don't give it too much, only a little bit" content I should have added :).

Re: Do You Squidoo?

Carsten Cumbrowski — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 13:19:05 -0000

I don't think that the fb noindex flag will help with squidoo. The setting is for the browsable version of the feed , the smart feed that renders HTML.

With Squidoo is it the same as with wordpress blogs at wordpress.com. You use it to your advantage without being spamming.

Re: Do You Squidoo?

Carsten Cumbrowski — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 13:22:56 -0000

YOu benefit from the huge amount of inbound links to the main domain. Google still puts a lot of value on the overall trust and rank of the general domain.

If you start a site and a lense, the lens will outrank you for a long time. If your site grows further, you will outrank the lens. Simple as that. But even if you don't, make sure that visitors will find your site through the Lens as well. Win Win.

Re: Do You Squidoo?

Carsten Cumbrowski — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 01:06:19 -0000

They would not have made fun of the movie if they did not like it at least a little bit.

Right Mark? .. and what are you saying to that Mark? ;)

Re: Do You Squidoo?

Carsten Cumbrowski — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 03:40:51 -0000

My first lens.. or second.. can't remember.
http://www.squidoo.com/Affiliate-Marketing/

Vlad, I added your Aff.Mkt. lens to my lensroll for that lens.

http://www.squidoo.com/Datafeed/

This lens used to outrank me for anything datafeed related. Its still on mt tail ;). I had the datafeed article stub up there for over half a year, before I finished it and moved to my site. It still beats me for "datafeeds" though, but that's not tragic. Two spots on page 1 are better than 1 hehe.

I forgot about this one. I played there with some of those fancy plug ins that allow ratings and stuff. http://www.squidoo.com/Internet_Marketing_Resou...

http://www.squidoo.com/ascii/

My most "successful" lens was this one. Not commercial unfortunately. Made it to the top 25 in the arts category. I removed a lot of content since I have a site just for text art all by myself since last summer. No need to put the cream de la cream on squidoo ;)

http://www.squidoo.com/bbs/
Remind me when they start selling 3 character lens names for a million bucks hehe... kidding.. another non-commercial lens of mine.

I get some traffic from the Datafeed Lens and negligible one from the Affiliate Marketing Lens.

That wraps up my old lens showcase. I let them just sit there and do whatever lenses do. The advertising within the lenses generated, I don't know, $5 ?! revenue over the course of 1 year. Or was it about $3?! ... mmmh.. don't know, never cashed the check. hehe.

Cheers!

Re: Commission Junction releases new APIs

Carsten Cumbrowski — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 12:41:46 -0000

Horray! That's good news and about time. It took them almost a year. Well, better late than never, right?

Re: BumpZee, Follow, Nofollow And What You Can Do About It.

Carsten Cumbrowski — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 06:05:02 -0000

Re: I Am No Longer an Affiliate

Carsten Cumbrowski — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 01:48:44 -0000

It's funny, this just happened to me.

A page was mine was rejected for this very reason. I started a new page at Mahalo and recommened a bunch of links across the whole internet, because I happen to be interested in the subject.

One referrence was to a primer about the subject at my personal blog and include affiliate links. I got an email that it was rejected, because I did not disclose the links.

First of all is it not clear to me how I would be able to disclose the links in a way that it is clear and that it does not hurt the usability of the main content, but I added a page to my site where I link to from every other page that includes a disclosure. I send an email back to the editor, but never got an answer back.

Okay, my tone was a little bit sarcastic, but I said and asked basically the same as you did.

If the content is great, does it matter how it is monetized? Should I rather add less targeted AdSense ads instead of the highly targeted and specific affiliate links?

Re: Voices Carry. Watch the F-bomb!

Carsten Cumbrowski — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 01:07:37 -0000

Hi Scott,

Since my personal blog was provided as second example (next to Jim's). I was thinking quite a bit before I used the F-word in the post and even in the title. I don't know if I ever spelled it out even in a post before. I am sure that I used "WTF" or F*ck or "F**k etc. a few times, but I am almost certain that I never spelled it out in any of my 300 blog posts.

A 5 1/2 years ordeal came to a very sudden and surprising end (good end) that cost me a lot of money, time, energy, got a congress man involved, forced my to leave house and home unvoluntarily without knowing if I can come back, forced me to let opportunities go by and a bunch of other things.
Everybody has a handful moments in life where "clean" language can simply not express the feelings.
Anybody who read the F-word and at least checked the post did probably understand and forgive me.

I hear you regarding the general problem, especially with bloggers who use this type of language in every other post (diminishing its power IMO, but that is a different story). They should be at least considerate enough to avoid it in the title. So I agree with your message, but not with the examples used. I know that those happened to be the ones at hand and probably the triggers for this post, because they happened right one after another.

Cheers!
Carsten aka der boese Roy/SAC :)

Re: What are Affiliate Network Responsibilities as a “Trusted Third Party”?

Carsten Cumbrowski — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 01:34:56 -0000

JP, if you mention a related post, please provide a link also. No, that is not comment spam. The deactivated nofollow is not meant to deter people to post useful links. :)
Correct me, if I am wrong Scott.

Okay, here is the link to JP's post
http://bluetent.typepad.com/onlinemarketing/200...

I can only find the beginning of your original post, but what you described sounded familiar. I saw enough to get my suspicion confirmed, that it is who I thought it was. If it would have been January/February and the merchant would not be inactive, then I would have had a good theory for what happened. It would be interesting to know who that merchant is, is it a big brand? Did their bail out of affiliate marketing or completely out of business, or only out of the network? If thinks turned bad and the merchant has no contact information of its affiliates, how would he be able to communicate with his (former) affiliates, if he did not collect the information outside of the network somehow?

I agree with you that networks are like credit card companies who state that their responsibility is like the one of a phone company. That could be seen in the past and it only gets worse. It does not make sense at all and only creates more issues and pain for everybody (in different ways) and makes you think why that is... What is the intention? There are more than one answer to that question and I don't like any of them.

JP has a point and it is also hard to ignore that there is some major consolidation going on (beyond affiliate networks). I don't believe that affiliate networks will become history. There will always be the need for a solution provider and there will always be somebody like an affiliate who promotes another business and needs the means to do the tracking and reporting. The details will probably look different than they do today and you might not even recognize them at first glance, but they will be there.

For me does it look like a movement back to the roots of affiliate marketing. Some of the larger players who call themselves affiliates, were/are not real "affiliates", compared to classic Amazon.com and CDNow affiliate partners, in the first place. They use the affiliate tracking technology and that is were the similarities end. Those guys can (and will) be perfectly integrated into old school direct marketing etc.

Affiliate marketing as in getting an incentive for referrals of business existed for ages before the internet and will continue to exist unless the world turns into something fictitious that could be described as the wildest dream of a grass root communist.

The old networks sit kind of in between the "chairs" right now. I agree with JP that the big three are probably going down the route that has nothing to do with affiliate marketing, or at least they will try to first. It's the most lucrative one, the low hanging fruit so to speak.

Re: Linkshare Interface Updates

Carsten Cumbrowski — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 06:38:36 -0000

AffTrack by RevTrends was sued and implemented a manual workaround for Linkshare affiliates after the implementation of the CAPTCHA CHECK which allows the upload of reports downloaded by the affiliate from it's Linkshare account into AffTrack.

Linkshare reacted swiftly and took legal action once again, prohibiting AffTrack to even do that (= have the data) which Linkshare claims to own.

I believe that the Affiliate owns that data too and I was utterly disgusted about Linkshare's legal action against AffTrack. I had an AffTrack account at the time and they worked hard to integrate more and more programs into their service.

At the moment when we were not able anymore to get all relevant data consolidated via AffTrack, did the fee for the service not outweigh its benefits anymore and we cancelled it.

I am arguing for ages that access to statistics and reports is vital. This becomes more true as the industry evolves and becomes more professional and larger.

I unified reporting standard is something I can dream about until I die without becoming a reality, but at least enable access to the existing information via automated fashion. I am not even picky about the technology used, Web services, no problem, feed via ftp or http, no problem, XML, CSV, pipe, tilde, tab delimited fine, gzip compressed afterwards, if you have to.

What I am not okay with is the need to either waste a lot of precious time on manually making sense of the data via manual downloads, re-entering numbers etc. Time is a commodity non of us affiliates has to spare. It is sometimes more efficient to become a hacker and obtain access to the data, my data, via brute force instead.

I don't know about you, but I don't have any children slave workers doing the manual job for me in a cost effective manner and I also do not intend to consider this as an option.

Here is my rant. But you can see that I also offer suggestions and not just scream and yell about it.

I scream and yell not just at Linkshare, but also other old networks. I know they started listening recently which might have to do with the emerging thread of new and foreign networks that show that it helps to listen to hand that does feed the hand of the hand that feeds you.

Cheers!
Carsten

Re: The Affiliate Blog List V2

Carsten Cumbrowski — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 00:52:10 -0000

Let's kick this around at the summit. It's a good time for something like that.

Re: Cooliris Preview: Just Too Cool

Carsten Cumbrowski — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 04:20:15 -0000

The SNAP Plug in does not trigger a click from the client side. It probably does from the snap.com server. I would think that their script that pulls the content from the destination to the snap.com server is identifiable like a Search Engine Spider that PPC Services can exclude Clicks triggered by it.

Snap is doing a Get Request for an Image on the SNAP.com server and passes the Ad URL along as parameter


GET 200	image/jpeg	

http://spa.snap.com/preview/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fa......

The Cooliris Tool for IE under Windows on the other hand triggered a click to get the preview. The HTTP Requests for clicking the Ad directly and using Cooliris to just hover over it are virtually the same. Both triggered a 302 redirect (I tested AdWords Ads in the Google Serps).
So I would be careful with this tool. It might cause problems. It does not work with AdSense Ads that's good so you avoid getting your account banned for "clicking" your own Ads. :)

Scott, how does it look like in FireFox or on the Mac?

Re: Reflections on CJU

Carsten Cumbrowski — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 13:51:21 -0000

Hi Scott,
It was nice to meet you and so many others the first time in person. I missed Beth, but I kept her updated about what happened..... and I still owe you the beer. I guess we stick to the original plan and take care of it at Affiliate Summit 2007 West in Las Vegas ;)
Cheers,
Carsten

Re: BumpZee, Follow, Nofollow And What You Can Do About It.

Carsten Cumbrowski — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 09:56:14 -0000

Re: BumpZee, Follow, Nofollow And What You Can Do About It.

Carsten Cumbrowski — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 11:01:45 -0000

Re: Do You Squidoo?

Carsten Cumbrowski — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 12:12:36 -0000

Re: Do You Squidoo?

Carsten Cumbrowski — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 12:39:49 -0000

Re: Do You Squidoo?

Carsten Cumbrowski — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 13:19:05 -0000

Re: Do You Squidoo?

Carsten Cumbrowski — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 13:22:56 -0000

Re: Do You Squidoo?

Carsten Cumbrowski — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 01:06:19 -0000

They would not have made fun of the movie if they did not like it at least a little bit.

Right Mark? .. and what are you saying to that Mark? ;)

Re: Do You Squidoo?

Carsten Cumbrowski — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 03:40:51 -0000

Re: User Generated Video Is Going To Change Things

Carsten Cumbrowski — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 11:45:48 -0000

Hehe.. looks like people are having fun. I just don't get what happened (stupid European). They party like on New Year because of ONE home run?

I get the picture of what you are saying in your post though, regardless if I don't understand whats up with those people in the video :)

Cheers!
Carsten

Re: Do Not Fuck With Blogrush! Hackers Beware!

Carsten Cumbrowski — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 01:25:41 -0000

I suggest he checks out some of the session videos from DefCon to get his head straight. Somebody is living in a bubble far far away from reality.

The people who can really exploit it badly that it will hurt the network are the people he will not get regardless how much money he throws at it to "get" them (unless he spends the money on a guerilla army and starts invading some independent nations with them).

The only thing this email did is
a) damages his reputation (for example I think now that he is an idiot. I didn't think that before that email)
b) provoked some guys (in addition to the guys who might abuse or want to abuse the network) who might feel compelled now to show him that he is an idiot and wrong

tsts...

Re: Elevator Pitch: Cumbrowski.com

Carsten Cumbrowski — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:58:37 -0000

Hi Adelaide,

thank you for your kind words. Regarding your question how it does distinguish itself from others.

Cumbrowski.com is not my business as in providing the means for my income to make a living. I do not rely on the site to pay my bills. This means that I do not have to do or don't do things that would hurt the site financially. I don't have to pitch something to make a buck or leave out something because it would make sponsors unhappy.

There is of course also a flip side to this. The site is less professional as a site that is the means for somebody to make his living. The depth in coverage of the various subjects heavily depends on my own knowledge and understanding of each subject.

Areas where I am not as much knowledgeable are not as well covered as areas where I have deep knowledge and extensive experience. I try to refer to my site as "my personal branded del.icio.us" and that is how it actually started. I got tired of sending out the same information in emails etc. over and over again. I got almost identical questions again and again and putting stuff on a website allowed me to simply email back a link.

I hope this longer answer is satisfactory for you. ;)

p.s. You have no idea how little time 15 seconds are. Jim seemed to have noticed it too, because he removed the time limitation. I was wondering what elevators are that fast or who would use an elevator just for 1-2 floors to cover to only give you 15 seconds for your message. :)

"Just doing it" is the way to go (in most cases). You almost always progress a step forward by doing something. You do that 10 times and one of that 10 times does it cause you to take a step backwards (or two). You still are 8-9 steps ahead of the guy who thinks 10 times about doing something, but never does, because of fear of the possible step backwards. :)

Cheers!

Re: Elevator Pitch: Cumbrowski.com

Carsten Cumbrowski — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 07:06:45 -0000

Hi Adelaide,

"Just do it!â€ Reading your post has inspired me already my friend. Iâ€™m getting closer to presenting my video now."

Good, where is the video? Stop talking and just do it :)

"How you tech-eases keep doing this so well amazes me"

It's a mix of stupidity and the incapability of giving up and admit failure if it is something where we are supposed to be good at... and of course luck .
It's called stubbornness I believe, or simply being a man. ;) aehm I meant being persistent of course. aehm, ja. hehe

Cheers!
Carsten

Re: CJU 2006 Session : Web Services

Carsten Cumbrowski — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 21:58:05 -0000

This was long overdue, but better late then never. Linkshare and Zanox are also "cooking". Linkshare has already a Web Service for Links and Zanox's Web Service is still in non-public beta. I hope the other networks will provide Web Services soon as well.

Data Feeds are not practical for most usage of the Data and a lot of resources are wasted today. RSS does not cut it either, not just because it's structural limitations (due to its original purpose) and RSS is also not for bi-directional communication.

There is a long list of things you can do better with Web Services (replacing old ways of doing things) and an even longer list of new things you can do which were completely impractical or impossible without.

I blogged about my excitement over at ReveNews.

http://www.revenews.com/carstencumbrowski/2006/...

p.s. Good CJU Session coverage Vinny. Also good comments during the Search Session. Cheers,

Carsten

Re: Special Report : Profit Sharing - The Performance Marketing Model of the Future

Carsten Cumbrowski — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 22:21:10 -0000

Hi Vinny,

thanks for your comment at my blog at ReveNews. Very good post regarding the problem. I wrote actually a series of posts related to the issue.

I addressed several of the ulcers that grew in this industry creating problems for merchants and affiliates in the various marketing channels.that shouldn't be there.

I don't like the phrase Affiliate Marketing either. The meaning in the offline world is quite different than online . How did Beth Kirsch put it so nicely (repeated in my own words): A lot of smart people in the internet marketing industry are not getting it, what affiliate marketing is really about and how it works.

A lot of issues are caused by dangerous "half/incomplete" knowledge or complete misunderstanding of the matter altogether (without realizing or admitting it).

I agree that Performance Marketing is the better term. It is for years the "tag line" for Affiliate Marketing already so lets make the tag line to the headline ;)

Affiliate, excuse me, Performance Marketing works only well and long term, if a strong relationship between Advertiser and Publisher was established which gets continuously reinforced and strengthened.
A relationship that is profitable and beneficial for both parties alike and not just one-sided. Clear defined goals that are openly addressed and discussed between affiliate and advertiser is important and the establishment of trust is absolutely vital.

Everything else is predatorily business practice or competitive marketing, which brings two parties together that are actually enemies, only to fight a mutual (and bigger) enemy of both of them.

This does not make them friends. Both sides are secretly waiting and preparing for the day that the mutual enemy is defeated in the hope to be able to then turn around to the previous "partner" to slaughter him in cold blood, while he is the least expecting it.

Well, the one thing we can do about this issue is educating the one that want to be educated and to seek open dialog and discussion like done here via Blogging about it and not leaving things sitting and rotting in the back of the closet until it becomes a problem that is not solvable anymore.

Cheers,

Re: Special Report : Profit Sharing - The Performance Marketing Model of the Future

Carsten Cumbrowski — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 04:19:12 -0000

Hey Vinny. I guess my long comment to this post ended up in the trash bin. I have my comment saved on my computer in the case it got lost. :Let me know and I will repost it. Thanks.

Re: The Future of Search Engines?

Carsten Cumbrowski — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 03:31:43 -0000

Hi Vinny,

I stumbled upon this post of yours. Its almost 1 year old, but I see that I am not the only person that comments late :).

I was talking about the same thing for a different reason in a post of mine at ReveNews back in August.

http://www.revenews.com/carstencumbrowski/2006/...

Cheers,
Carsten

Re: The Future of Search Engines?

Carsten Cumbrowski — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 03:41:44 -0000

And just another interesting article by the Washington Post on Saturday about Click Fraud. It bugs me that they call the publisher networks (AdSense, YPN etc,) Affiliate Network, what they are not .. at least not really

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/ar...

Re: incuBeta Wins Technology Top 100 Awards

Carsten Cumbrowski — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 06:06:54 -0000

Congratulations Vinny, you and your team deserve the honor. It must be very exciting for you considering all the (good) stuff that happened just in a period of only a few years.

My sister has been in South Africa for a few weeks to do some volunteer work organized by a German labor union just a few years ago and loved the attitude and spirit of the people over there.

Coming from a country that was also turned upside down (East Germany) I know how it affects people and how their attitude changes when everything around you changes and things believed to be impossible and unthinkable become suddenly reality. It opens the mind and spirit and seems to make the word "impossible" sound like an artifact of an bygone era.

I hope you will be able to continue with what you are doing and that people, not just in South Africa, will look at you as a role model for taking things into their own hands to improve not only their own lifes but the life of everybody in their community as well.

Keep it up.
Cheers,
Carsten

Re: Paid Search Best Practice Guide from e-Consultancy

Carsten Cumbrowski — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 09:54:07 -0000

Its funny I just put a whole page up at my site for e-consultancy at the same time you wrote this. I didn't see that report though. I was going over the buyers guides they offer (for the UK market).

They seem to be the UK "counterpart" to MarketingSherpa here in the US.

The thought to get a subscription for a year crossed my mind, but I did not check further.

Now I am reading your post and believe that I should hold on to my original thought and spend the 149 british pounds for the subscription. Thanks for the info.

Cheers,
Carsten

Re: Downtime

Carsten Cumbrowski — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 06:04:45 -0000

Enjoy the break and see you at the summit at the end of January.
I submit the beta tester form at synthasite.com just to be able to have a look if you don't mind. I came across something that could be of interest for you.

If you feel like kicking some higher level ideas around, let me know. Stuff like that do I consider "fun" and recreation, since you don't move a leg to get anything going (=work), but simply play with ideas and concepts in your head, like how to clone yourself (the "easy" part, in theory) and how to get your clone up to speed in the shortest amount of time possible without taking any of your time that he can take over half your responsibilities (that's the hard part hehe)... stuff like that

The ideas that stick and seem to be doable without requiring a budget of the size of the united states and larger, end of on the "really something to check out" (= work) list for after the vacation.

Well, that's just me, but I have the feeling that you have a similar understanding of what you consider "fun" and what you consider "work".

Cheers

Re: How to tell when your developers are bored…

Carsten Cumbrowski — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 06:58:54 -0000

Hehe... Yep, wasn't the designer who was bored, because a designer would have done that in a cigarette break. A developer on the other hand needs 1-2 hours for the same result. I know what I am talking about ;)

Re: Special Offer: 3 Free Full Conference Tickets - Las Vegas Affiliate Summit Jan 2007

Carsten Cumbrowski — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 00:50:50 -0000

I met Scott, the winner of your contest. I hope he was able to meet you to thank you in person after I was holding him back and chatted with him. Well, you were also hard to find at the summit, but it was good to see you and run through the tryst night club without a destination in mind :)

See you around! Cheers!

Re: Ticket for the Affiliate Summit

Carsten Cumbrowski — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 16:45:44 -0000

Who won?

Re: Affiliate Blogging: Getting Started

Carsten Cumbrowski — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 03:33:15 -0000

Also go see Affiliate Marketing Beginners Checklist - Part 1 from January 31, 2008 at ReveNews.com.

Cheers! Carsten

Re: How Cirque Du Soleil Shows Social Media Love

Carsten Cumbrowski — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 08:29:56 -0000

I stumbled across this post because of a link in a post at Lee Odden's blog from a few weeks ago. Now I know why I couldn't get a hold of Jessica during Blog World Expo :)

Anyway, yeah, I am kind of a fan, you could say hehe. It's a personal passion and has nothing to do with online marketing really. Proof:

http://www.youtube.com/CirqueDuSoleilGuru
http://www.roysac.com/cirque
http://www.roysac.com/blog/labels/Cirque%20Du%2...

Regarding the shows that I saw.. mmhh.. could we rephrase the question and ask which show I have seen more than once, just to keep the list shorter? ;)

There are running now six Cirque shows in Las Vegas, Mystere at the Treasure Island, "O" at the Bellagio, "Zumanity" at the New York, New York, "KA" at the MGM Grand, "The Beatles - Love" at the Mirage and "Criss Angel's Believe" at the Luxur. There will be soon a 7th show at the newly built "CityCenter", which has "Elvis Presley" as the main theme. There are rumors about another show for the Mandalay Bay, but those are just rumors at the moment.

If all that is still now enough, check out "Le Reve" at the Wynn. The show is similar in style and design as Cirque du Soleil shows, which should not surprise anymore once you leaned that the creator is former Cirque Du Soleil Director "Franco Dragone", who directed a large chunk of Cirque shows in the past (including "O" and "Mystere").

Soo.. that should be enough, even for the more frequent visitors to Las Vegas ;) For some sneak peeks of the shows, check out my YouTube channel that I referred to above.

Cheers!
Carsten

Re: Google Launches Brainwashing Video Series

Carsten Cumbrowski — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 12:14:56 -0000

Did you watch the movie? The part where they explain and demonstrate what they do to the data after 18 months to protect the users privacy? They X-out only the D-block of the IP address and keep the Class-C Subnet information intact.

That means that there are only 255 possible IP-Addresses the user could have had and the Class-C Subnet information, which they keep, are enough to know the ISP or Company the user was using.

From the Cookie was also not much removed, except for the preferences. What they remove from the logs is nothing and only good for PR, no more and no less.

Re: Google Launches Brainwashing Video Series

Carsten Cumbrowski — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 16:21:52 -0000

Steven, that's exactly what I am saying. And even if you want to narrow things down to identify a specific person, it's not too hard to do either. What are the odds that multiple people with the same Class-C subnet IP range can not be distinguished by looking at the logs?

Almost the same as if the full IP was provided and then of course who the provider of the IP is. If the class-C subnet shows that the user comes from AOL, then the class-c information are as good as the full IP (or not good in this scenario).

Different story when it comes to Class-C subnets that belong to smaller companies with not too many people accessing the internet.

Re: Google Launches Brainwashing Video Series

Carsten Cumbrowski — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 23:03:32 -0000

Ed, I hear you and I am also not so naive to believe otherwise, however, I think that the video tries to convince people, that their privacy is protected and that is not the case.

I am not a privacy evangelist, but I don't like deceptions.

Re: Five Steps for Recovering from an Online Reputation Crisis

Carsten Cumbrowski — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 22:45:52 -0000

Nice post and I agree with Matt about the point of hosting the conversation, something many companies are too afraid of to do, because of the "brighter spotlight" this will be one result of doing so.

What is often overlooked is the flip side of it.

It shows to your existing and potential customers several crucial things about your company.

1) You admit mistakes rather than blaming others for everything (= try to steal yourself out of any responsibility)

2) You don't fear to make mistakes and take them as an opportunity to enhance on your companies services, products and/or procedures

3) You are open for communication and do not hide behind automated 800 numbers and auto responder emails that prevent anybody with an issue to get a hold of somebody at your company

4) You actively and seriously try to resolve problems and are transparent about it

5) You are honest

NO Sales letter can accomplish this and no referral by a happy customer who admits that he never encountered a problem with your company and hence don't know how you deal with them, if they occur, something that is IMO critical knowledge, if not the most important knowledge about a company you could possibly get. All is peachy if everything is in order. The real tests of any relationship happens if there is a problem that must be resolved or results in a break of that relationship as a consequence.

I just had my own severe problem with a company called Google and are looking forward to see how they are going to deal with it. See my post at Search Engine Journal, which illustrates a vital issue that should be of interest for anybody who has accounts at Google properties.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-accou...

Re: Five Steps for Recovering from an Online Reputation Crisis

Carsten Cumbrowski — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 23:48:45 -0000

Boy did my grammar suck :) That's what you get, if you trust the Google Toolbar spell checker and don't read your comment before you submit it, because you are in a rush. I leave this example of admitting an error on your site though hehe.

Re: Using Search Engines Instead of the Address Bar to Navigate

Carsten Cumbrowski — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 19:37:43 -0000

I have seen an AOL user a few years ago and it was an experience for me. That user did NOT know the difference between SEARCH BOX and ADDRESS bar.

The address bar was pretty much ignored like the status bar. It changes values when you browse, but it looks often cryptic and technical that you rather don't touch (and "break").

I asked that use to type a specific URL into the ADDRESS bar. The user started typing it into the search box. I said "Please enter it into the address bar and not into the search box"... The response that I got was "What do you mean?".

People click on links and follow them, they click on the back button and use a search box, if present and prominent, especially dial-up users or users with a browser that was customized by the ISP/Cable or DSL provider. The Address bar shows usually some URL, the users homepage at the ISP, which is still in most cases very cryptic to non-tech/inexperienced computer users. The search box is always empty or pre-filled with an inviting text that invites the user to enter something.

However, there is also the type of user that does use it as you describe it, but those are often users on an intermediate level of understanding of the Internet and the web browser.

Cheers!

Re: BlogRush, You’re Kidding Me

Carsten Cumbrowski — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 07:36:56 -0000

Seems to be an epidemic. I got tons of posts like yours in my feed reader. Anyhow, your initial feeling is usually the right one. Also think about it for a second. Do you remember banner exchange networks? Do you know what they are doing now? Remember how they worked? Remember why they worked for a brief period of time and then just sucked and then only tried to get clueless newbies to spend money on them for credz etc.? Mhhh..I will say no more.

Re: What Not To Do With Your Business Blog

Carsten Cumbrowski — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 02:26:11 -0000

Hi Lee,

Well spoken and my two cents to this list.

1. Register or login
I hate that too, especially if they send an email that contains a randomly generated password or activation link. It takes time, usually the time it would take to write the comment itself, if not longer. Makes you think sometimes, if you "have to" comment or better take off without going through all that. The account management got easier for me since I use RoboForm.

2. Publish content in PDF of MS Word format
Sorry, never encountered that yet.

3. difficult to subscribe
Yep, in some cases are you lucky, if they kept the tiny standard link to the RSS in the footer (WordPress), but I had cases, where there was no link anywhere on the page and no auto-discovery tag either. I had to guess the feed URL (e.g. /atom.xml, /rss.xml, /index.rdf, /feed/ etc.)

4. Contextual ads
Agreed, even worse, if the content surrounds the ad

5. Being gracious, respond to comments
The people, who do not respond, even if the person who comments directly addresses them, are arrogant assholes who do not want to communicate and engage in a discussion. They use a blog for their ego trip.

6. Who the hell are you?
Hehe, it also helps to address the person who wrote the post "Hey Blogger Dude (Gal?!), I think...." :)

7. Date or the name of the author
Name, see 6), Date, I see your point, but in some cases is the blog used as just a publishing platform and the content published are actually well crafted articles that might not be that time-specific and somewhat timeless. However, I also prefer to see a date, even if it is not a "news" post.

8. Archive architecture
You are right, but it does sometimes require a bit more technical knowledge than some folks possess. The default settings of some blogging platforms are IMO insufficient and provide poor usability

9. Bland looking blog
Tells me that the person is not serious about it, because it takes either time or money = something of value. Not providing/investing this value tells me how much you value your own blog. ($0 <= Value <= $1)

10. What can OMG do?
Just continue to write what you have on your mind rather than thinking about what you should write about and what readers want to hear, unless you want to get around 5) and write stuff that provides no reason why anybody should comment.

Cheers
Carsten

Re: What Do You Think About Aaron Wall's SEO Book?

Carsten Cumbrowski — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 21:32:18 -0000

I also purchased Aarons eBook a couple years back and have to say that the high price tag made me think about it a while before I went and purchased it. I did not regret the purchase at all to this day, quite the opposite, I recommend it to people. I know a lot more about SEO today, in part thanks to Aaron and his book.

If you expect "a" book, you will be surprised, it's like with the original "Lord of the Rings", which was also "a" book, before it was broken down into three parts for commercial reasons. You get the idea.

The updates are still treasures for me today. Some of the resources Aaron found make a good addition to my own collection of Internet marketing resources on my site at cumbrowski.com.

If you are serious about SEO (which takes time and energy and is not done in one afternoon via a quick fix), I suggest to buy the ebook. If you regret the purchase, let me know and I will refund the money to you myself. I am not kidding.

Re: What Do You Think About Aaron Wall’s SEO Book?

Carsten Cumbrowski — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 21:32:18 -0000