Okay, gang…

If you have a website (and a blog is a website for those of you with a blog that don’t think you have a website because, yes, you do in fact have a website) and you are interested in website marketing, then I have a new Skype chatroom to discuss website marketing.

We’ll (probably) talk about all sorts of website marketing, from driving traffic to your website, monetizing your website with advertising, and even selling products.

So, whatever you’re into, we’ll probably be talking about it.

There’s already a good group of people in there, so we’re just waiting on you to hop on in and join.

Mind you, this is a Skype chat, so you’ll need to have Skype installed in order to participate.

Click here to join my Website Marketing chat.

EDIT: If the above link doesn’t work, just contact me on Skype (dcrinnert) and I can add you to the chatroom.

As some of you know, I have a site I’ve been working on and several of you are “pioneers” on the site, helping me with testing and whatnot, for which I am extremely grateful.

In a discussion with some friends on Skype, the question arose of what my site was about and why someone would want to be a member.

That’s a question I’ve been struggling with quite some time. Sometimes, you know you have a good idea on your hands, but you’re not entirely sure how to express it. I think that’s a reason why some really good ideas never go anywhere. How often do you see a crummy product overtake the market place while a truly excellent product ends up in the margins, and sometimes the parent company folds? Sometimes, I think it’s because they weren’t as able to convince people of the value of their product while the junk peddlers were.

But, I did answer the question by way of a bit of a rant, which goes something like what follows…

Content plus discussions is the very basic thing of my site.  But, more like a casual newspaper, where you get the information you need and can comment on it, discuss it with other users and so forth.  Basically, the typical forum.

The main thing is the content and discussion forums, both of which are admittedly light at the moment.  You have to be registered on the site in order to participate in the forums or leave comments on articles.

I like Twitter.  I’ve met great people on Twitter.  But then hack-marketers went loose on it and largely ruined it.  For the most part, DMs are essentially useless because it’s just abused with spammers.  You had people giving advice like “Send a thank you for following and include your sales pitch and link” and so you’d follow someone that seemed interesting and, right away, you’d get a junk DM.

Twitter does a fairly decent job of getting rid of the blatant spammers, but there are so many borderline ones that clutter things up.  People set up fake profiles and whatnot and it’s just a mess.

I remember one blatant spammer that had this pyramid scam for gaining followers.  The only one that really gained followers was himself and his loyal cadre of his initial participants.  But, like everything else MLM, the people at the bottom levels got squat.  Meanwhile, he’s DMing each new follower with some eBook he’s selling–probably on making money on Twitter or something–and making hundreds (or maybe thousands) of dollars.

He still has a Twitter account too.  If I were Twitter, I would have kicked him out.

Similarly with Facebook, that’s just getting crowded with hack-marketers too.  ”Friend me and like my page so I can send you tons of garbage offers on a regular basis in the hopes that you’ll buy my stinking pile of doggy doo.”

And don’t forget about MySpace.  Ugh.

I’m tired of it.  Way back when, way back when Bulletin Board Systems and FreeNets were the norm, if you had users like that, you kicked them to the curb!  Nowadays, there are no mods or administrators.  It’s only the blatant, en masse spammers that get kicked out.

Just look in the Internet Marketing sphere.  There’s a big name so-called “guru” that was fined nearly a quarter of a million dollars for making income claims that weren’t sustainable for most buyers.  Yet, he’s still out there peddling his stuff and has a loyal following of people.

So, I like to think of my site as a bit of a throwback to the old days.  When you had someone come through town selling snake oil, you chased him out.  Or, the sheriff caught him on his way in, and told him he best be peddling his trinkets elsewhere.

The only marketers I really want around are the ones that understand relationship marketing and not the hack-marketers that think they can earn their millions by blasting their link each and every place they can.

There’ll be ads and stuff for sale and the like, but I want to cut out a lot of the noise.  I’ll do my best to cut off the spammers at the pass and readily kick them out if they do sneak in.

So, if you look for content on something you’re interested in, you’re going to find it.  You’re not going to have to sift through a bunch of junk to do so.  You’re not going to have to sort through a bunch of “buy my eBook” sales pitches masquerading as answers to do so.  And, if you can’t find it, you can ask other people for help.  And those people are going to give you direction and not a sales pitch to buy their eBook.

The Internet is sort of like the Big City.  You’ve got lots of stuff there, but you also have scammers and slick salespeople trying to sell you something on every corner and in every alley.

My site would be the Suburbs.  A lot of the benefits of the Big City but with fewer of the drawbacks.

Often, people tend to think of the small details as unimportant.

They’re just little things, after all.

But, sometimes, getting them wrong can really derail you.

I remember a dating site ad or splash screen from years ago.

Of course, they always try to sell you on the attractive people you’re going to meet and all that. And, probably many of the photos you see (at least in the ads or header images and the like) are going to be that of models and not actual singles on the site.

What doesn’t help the selling point is if one of the supposed singles in the photos is wearing a wedding ring.

Mind you, under a heading of “X percentage of our members get married” or something like that, a wedding ring is not a bad thing.

Under a heading of “meet available singles” then it’s not a good thing.

Of course, some sites are like that, where married people go for “casual” encounters or whatnot, but this was not one of those sites.

The bottom line is that that should never have gotten past whoever it was that designed and approved the ad copy. This site was big enough that I bet it was more than just one guy slapping things together and putting them up. This was a professional site. Someone should have caught that.

But, evidently, no one did.

And, that’s why it’s important to pay attention to small details. Overlooking them might give people the wrong impression. It may lose you potential customers… or attract the wrong ones!

Well, some good news on my other site–the one with the forums that some of you are “pioneers” (i.e., beta testers) on.

It’s doing fairly well in the search engines.

And that is something I expected and hoped for.

Of course, it has negatives as well, and that is one reason I have made it a bit more complex to get an account on than your typical forum.

You see, a lot of people like to build what are referred to as “backlinks” to their sites. The more backlinks, the better, presumably. Google, for example, uses the number of incoming backlinks as well as the value of the site containing the backlink in ranking a site. So, if a high-ranking site links to your site, that’s considered good.

So, some of these people will do whatever they can to get those backlinks. As a blogger, you’ll typically see this in the form of comment spam. You’ll have people with keywords as their names, and they’ll make some generic comment on your blog, and have a link to their website. That’s a backlink. If you’re like me, most of those get deleted or blocked by something like Akismet.

Well, the same thing happens on forums. And it happens on any site where you might have a profile that can be seen by the public and search engines.

So, there are profile spammers. What they do is look for high-ranking sites that have offer their users public profiles, and they’ll go in, register on the site, put up their links and move on to the next site.

Which, of course, clutters the site with a bunch of useless profiles of people that don’t use the site, don’t participate in the community and never had any intention of doing so. So, that means the webmaster needs to go in a purge those profiles.

So, I am endeavoring to try to keep those spammers out. And, that’s why I’ve made it a bit difficult to obtain an account on my system, using a manual approval process rather than an automated system. They’ll probably still try to set up accounts, but there should be fewer than there otherwise would have been, so it should result in a reduced workload from what I would otherwise have had.

Also, for those of you who are “pioneers,” you should be reading between the lines here. As you may recall, you have the option of having your profile private (viewable only by logged in users) or public (viewable by everyone… and search engines). If your profile, for example, contains something like a link to your blog, you might want to consider making your profile public because i’ll be a little bit of extra link juice to your blog, which could help your search engine rankings, which could help you get more readers.

And, you know, right now it’s free, so you may wish to take advantage of that.

Westward, Oh, Pioneers?

Anyway, it may look like I’ve been doing nothing with my forums, but that’s not quite right.

I have been doing work on the forums, but it’s been on the backend–the stuff that you cannot see.

Tonight, I did some things that you can see.

Well, sort of. I fixed a problem that’s been around for a while. Still more tweaking to do, but I’ve been working on bigger things. Then, I’ll go back into clean up.

I would really like to get all the coding done, so that I can focus on content. But, I still have a list of things to do.

Anyway, those of you who are “pioneers”, you’ll be getting an eMail from me soon. There’s a forthcoming change that I don’t want to mention publicly here. It is posted in the forum, but it might be easier for me to just eMail you.

And I will have something new for you to test–hopefully soon. The base code is done; it just needs to be integrated into the forum so that you can use it.

Thanks again!

Usually, when people talk about workplace safety, you usually think of industrial settings.

You think of machines and equipment that, if you’re not careful, could crush your hand, slice off a finger or possibly kill you.

By comparison, most people think of an office as far less treacherous. And, for those most part, it is. However, safety is not assured and, if you run around with an illusion of safety, you may find yourself hurt or injured by something that could just as easily been avoided.

Since the office environment isn’t completely free of workplace hazards, today’s article (on my other site) covers “Workplace Safety in the Office“.

Your safety is important and you should be aware of potential hazards in your office, whether you work at home or at a business location.

Please check the article out and be safe at work!

These days, we all need to save money where ever we can.

So, with the relaunch of my website (you know, the one with the forums on it), one of the focuses is going to be on tips for saving money.

Today, we started off the week with an article on saving money on groceries. Author Anne Verville presents several opportunities to save money on your next grocery trip. Please check it out.

In forthcoming weeks, more articles will begin appearing on the site. Not everything will be about saving money. There will also be articles on making money as well. Plus, there are general interest articles, educational articles and interesting stuff, so you don’t want to miss out on what we have coming. I may not write about each of them here, so be sure to visit the site to see all the latest content.

Plus, we can post pictures there. So, that’s always a good thing.

And, no, it won’t be like this blog has become. You’ll read good stuff over there.

So, the week before last I joined a discussion forum in a niche I’m in.

And I can’t really participate in it.

At first, I had problems finding the rules. I thought the rules might be in the FAQ section, which they weren’t. I could not submit to the Help area because you had to have a minimum of 1 post before you could post in the Help area.

In the meantime, I found the rules.

I sell stuff in that niche so, unless I’m one of their advertisers, I cannot do anything to promote myself. Okay, fine.

The only place I can post is in an introductory area. So, I cannot ask for help without first introducing myself, which would give me my one post which would then allow me to ask for help. However, since I cannot mention what I do, I cannot honestly introduce myself, can I? It feels deceptive to identify myself as a user rather than a seller and saying I sell stuff might be a form of advertising, which I’m not allowed to do. Of course, I could ask in the Help section if it would be okay for me to say I’m a seller without mentioning my website or company name or anything, but I cannot post for help because I don’t have enough posts.

It’s a bit of a catch-22.

So, I found a contact link and requested information there. Asked about advertising prices too. Over a week later and I’ve still not heard back.

Maybe they don’t want any new advertisers.

I didn’t get a lot done as far as coding goes yesterday. I did a little bit, mostly in the wee hours of the morning, but I think I was mostly burned out on coding after the day I had on Sunday where things that I thought would be fairly simple turned out not to be.

Again, thanks to all the pioneers. Two of you have already been exploring.

For all those who have been there, or will be going, please be sure to check out the Village Center. In there, I have started a thread entitled “Functionality Status Thread” which is something I should have done before letting anyone in!

In it, I explain the navigation system and what is and is not working. Also, there is a logout button, so that’s explained. Beyond the navigation system, it also details the other things left to do. Assuming, of course, I haven’t forgotten any!

So, once you check in for the first time or again, please check out that thread. You can also post questions or suggestions there.

I cannot wait until I get all the coding done so that I can concentrate on content rather than all the code…

Okay, stagecoach pass applications have been sent out, although I referred to them as backstage passes in the eMail…

Anyway, I’ve sent them to (I think) everybody that requested them, except Speedy because I’m not sure if he actually requested one or not. His response was in the form of a question, so I don’t know. So, Speedy, if you want one, just ask… clearly. Don’t confuse me, which is too easy these days.

And one of you has replied already, so I’m going to finish this blog post and then respond…

So, here is where I am at. There are nine things left to do on the To Do list. Three of them are things I needed to get done before letting people in and another is one I wanted to get done before I let people in. Two of the needed ones are halfway done. They are not completely done, but they are done enough that I can let people in. The other one is not critical to have done, but I really wanted to get it done, but I also want people to be able to start exploring the site. So, I can let people in and work on it in the meantime. On the wanted item, it goes along with the last needed item. Hand-in-hand, as it were. So, I’ll work on that as well while people explore.

The other big thing I need to finish is the navigation system. Parts don’t work. But, I can explain to people what parts so they know how to find their way around without it.

So, that is where I am at. I don’t think I’ll work on anymore tonight. The last couple things–that I thought would be easy–ended up taking a lot more time than I thought.