Saturday, September 02, 2006

Spam: Where it Came From, and How to Escape It

[By: Beka Ruse] In 1936, long before the rise of the personal computer, Hormel Foods created SPAM. In 2002, the company will produce it's six billionth can of the processed food product. But that mark was passed long ago in the world of Internet spam.
Who Cooked This!? (How did it all start?)
Why Does Bad Spam Happen to Good People?
Stop The Flood to Your Inbox
Stay Off Spammed Lists in the Future
Think You're Not a Spammer? Be Sure.
The Final Blow

Who Cooked This!? (How did it all start?)

The modern meaning of the word "spam" has nothing to do with spiced ham. In the early 1990's, a skit by British comedy group Monty Python led to the word's common usage. "The SPAM Skit" follows a couple struggling to order dinner from a menu consisting entirely of Hormel's canned ham. Repetition is key to the skit's hilarity. The actors cram the word "SPAM" into the 2.5 minute skit more than 104 times! This flood prompted Usenet readers to call unwanted newsgroup postings "spam." The name stuck. Spammers soon focused on e-mail, and the terminology moved with them. Today, the word has come out of technical obscurity. Now, "spam" is the common term for "Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail", or "UCE."
Why Does Bad Spam Happen to Good People?

Chances are, you've been spammed before. Somehow, your e-mail address has found it's way into the hands of a spammer, and your inbox is suffering the consequences. How does this happen? There are several possibilities. Backstabbing BusinessesBusinesses often keep lists of their customers' e-mail addresses. This is a completely legitimate practice and, usually, nothing bad comes of it. Sometimes though, the temptation to make a quick buck is too great, and these lists are sold or rented to outside advertisers. The result? A lot of unsolicited e-mail, and a serious breach of trust. Random Address Generation Computer programs called random address generators simply "guess" e-mail addresses. Over 100 million hotmail addresses exist - howhard could it be to guess some of them? Unfortunately for many unsuspecting netizens - not too hard. Many spammers also guess at "standard" addresses, like "support@yourdomain.com", "info@yourdomain.com", and "billing@yourdomain.com." Web Spiders Today's most insidious list-gathering tools are web spiders. All of the major search engines spider the web, saving information about each page. Spammers use tools that also spider the web, but save any e-mail address they come across. Your personal web page lists your e-mail address? Prepare for an onslaught! Chat Room Harvesting ISP's offer vastly popular chat rooms where users are known only by their screen names. Of course, spammers know that your screen name is the first part of your e-mail address. Why waste time guessing e-mail addresses when a few hours of lurking in a chat room can net a list of actively-used addresses? The Poor Man's Bad Marketing Idea It didn't work for the phone companies, and it won't work for e-mail marketers. But, some spammers still keep their own friends-and-family-style e-mail lists. Compiled from the addresses of other known spammers, and people or businesses that the owner has come across in the past, these lists are still illegitimate. Why? Only you can give someone permission to send you e-mail. A friend-of-a-friend's permission won't cut it.
Stop The Flood to Your Inbox

Already drowning in spam? Try using your e-mail client's filters - many provide a way to block specific e-mail addresses. Each time you're spammed, block the sender's address. Spammers skip from address to address, and you may be on many lists, but this method will at least slow the flow. Also, use more than one e-mail address, and keep one "clean." Many netizens find that this technique turns the spam flood into a trickle. Use one address for only spam-safe activities like e-mailing your friends, or signing on with trustworthy businesses. Never use your clean address on the web! Get a free address to use on the web and in chat rooms. If nothing else helps, consider changing screen names, or opening an entirely new e-mail account. When you do, you'll start with a clean, spam-free slate. This time, protect your e-mail address!
Stay Off Spammed Lists in the Future

Want to surf the web without getting sucked into the spam-flood? Prevention is your best policy. Don't use an easy-to-guess e-mail address. Keep your address clean by not using it for spam-centric activities. Don't post it on any web pages, and don't use it in chat rooms or newsgroups. Before giving your clean e-mail address to a business, check the company out. Are sections of its user agreement dedicated to anti-spam rules? Does a privacy policy explain exactly what will be done with your address? The most considerate companies also post an anti-spam policy written in plain English, so you can be absolutely sure of what you're getting into.
Think You're Not a Spammer? Be Sure.

Many a first-time marketer has inadvertently spammed his audience. The first several hundred complaints and some nasty phone messages usually stop him in his tracks. But by then, the spammer may be faced with cleanup bills from his ISP, and a bad reputation that it's not easy to overcome. The best way to avoid this situation is to have a clear understanding of what spam is: If anyone who receives your mass e-mails did not specifically ask to hear from you, then you are spamming them. Stick with your gut. Don't buy a million addresses for $10, no matter how much the seller swears by them! If something sounds fishy, just say no. You'll save yourself a lot in the end.
The Final Blow

The online world is turning the tide on spam. In the end, people will stop sending spam because it stops working. Do your part: never buy from a spammer. When your business seeks out technology companies with which to work, only choose those with a staunch anti-spam stance. Spam has a long history in both the food and e-mail sectors. This year, Hormel Foods opened a real-world museum dedicated to SPAM. While the museum does feature the Monty Python SPAM Skit, there's no word yet on an unsolicited commercial e-mail exhibit. But, if all upstanding netizens work together, Hormel's ham in a can will far outlive the Internet plague that is UCE.

Beka Ruse fights spam as the Business Development Manager at AWeber Communications. Ad tracking, live stats, and a strict anti-spam policy: Automated E-Mail Follow Up From AWeber. http://www.aweber.com/lsp.htm

References:Hormel Foods, Virtual Press Kit, www.hormelfoods.comMicrosoft Corporation, MSN Hotmail Fun Facts, www.microsoft.com

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Friday, April 07, 2006

Selling Products Online

Selling Products Online
For very little cost, you can sell a product online that hasn’t been selling well offline. Once it is set up, it takes virtually no work to maintain and monitor. Even if you only get a few sales a month, it is money that you wouldn’t have otherwise!
Let me give an example from my own experience. Back before I took my first business online, I advertised my book, “Secrets of Buying and Building Your Specialty Car on a Small Budget,” in “kit car” magazines (there were only two) for three years, and made a full-time income doing so. After a while, the ad rates jumped too high and the market was getting saturated with my product, (I was the only person writing a book on such a subject) so it just wasn’t worth running the ads anymore.
I put the same book on a simple web page, did a few reciprocal links with related kit car sites, and announced my presence on the two kit car e-mail discussion lists. The result? It still brings in over $1,000 per month automatically. I don’t do anything to maintain it (I haven’t touched it or even paid attention to it in over 2 years), and it still generates $1,000 in profit every month. It’s not much, but I don’t do any real work for it.
It is an old book that was not profitable, and not being advertised anymore offline, but because I put it on the Net, it now earns me $1,000 on autopilot each and every month. It’s not a lot of money, but it is icing on the cake. If you can get a few products like this, you can generate a full-time income very easily.
Be prepared to change your advertising concept a little and adapt it to the Internet. For example, in the kit car business, the customers are what marketers call “picture people.” In magazines, using pictures in your ads increases the cost of the advertising. On the Internet, though, because there is basically unlimited space, you can really take advantage of images. In fact, when I advertise in newsgroups, I let everyone know that there are a ton of pictures on my site. Just having images at your site is a way of getting traffic.
This pitch enticed kit car enthusiasts to come and check my site out. The philosophy is to give the target market what they want.

Marketing Myths



Marketing Myths
Your online marketing battle will include a number of different methods in different areas of the Internet. You may have a web site, use an auto responder, post classified ads, post articles, place banner advertisements, sponsor lists and newsletters, distribute press releases, and much more. Keep in mind, though, that when you are first starting out, it is critical that you focus on one aspect of your marketing campaign at a time and promote it to its fullest extent before moving on to the next.
It is better to slowly become profitable by focusing on one issue at a time, than to barely be profitable because you are attacking all of the issues half-heartedly.
Diversify and spend small amounts on advertising at first. If you use a cautious approach, you will not be wiped out financially if an ad doesn’t generate the sales you were hoping for. Just keep testing ads as your budget allows until you find the one that works best; then you can roll it out and be confident that you are going to make money rather than lose it!
If you have a lot of competition, state that you will honor all of your competitors’ coupons and/or discounts; use “their” advertising to your advantage.
An age-old problem in business is collecting final payment for services rendered. As a business owner, you need to be prepared for “difficult” clients and “mooches” by doing such things as…
1. In your contract or sales agreements, state the interest rates and late fees that will be assessed if payment is not received within 30 days of completion.
2. Write form letters to be used for collecting the balance. There should be three letters in total -- one after the payment is ten days late, another after twenty days, and a third that lets the client know that you’ll be turning their account over to a collection agency (or taking them to small claims court). The third letter should not be sent until 45 days after the payment is late. And of course, never bluff. If you say you will turn it over to a collection agency, do so.
3. The best way to protect yourself is to take payment via credit card. State to your client that you will bill their credit card one third of the total price as an initial down payment, another third just after you have passed the 50% completion point, and the final third on delivery. Or use the two-payment system -- half at the initiation of the job and the remainder upon completion.

About Me

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Minister, Educator, Call to make a difference, Community Organizer, Activist, Internet Marketer