I collect a list of all the email submissions from the comments field in the comments admin section. I then make the response url a page where I measure the traffic and check who is coming by IP address. This is a rainy day project but one that can build an appreciation for real users versus those who view yourwebsite as a seo portal for their spam.
Those repeat spam posters who never respond the email blast get deleted.
In my endless slog of deleting emails that are useless and distracting in my inbox, I was shocked to see Paypal email that usually signals a banking transaction or some other communication that begs my notice. Paypal wanted me to know about international services possibilities and some urls they wanted to visit on their site. Are you f-ing kidding me?
I know for a fact I am one of the Paypal customers who have selected opt-out when their pointless self-publicizing emails are concerned. There is no justifiable reason I should be receiving anything from email at Paypal or that url and its origins that is not connected to my personal banking. Paypal is abusing its position as a trusted email sender at this point.
Spam is not banking. It’s advertising. And since they’ve already collected their slice of my earnings, I’d prefer it if they not waste my time.
Be advised this is a full-blown rant from a domainer who is offended that their bank sees fit to use its status as a must-read email source to flog their services. Hint: I am already a customer.
Paypal has no business using their connection to me an an electronic customer to wave their shingle and beg for more fees. Paypal takes a slice of whatever I earn and I have long gotten accustomed to accepting this as a cost of doing business with them. Apparently they are greedy for more fees and this is the communication they have sent to me, using my email address and name, url links on their site that neither apply to be or my services.
That’s a greedy bank.
Paypal should know better. One of the last things I need to spend my time doing right now is weeding through their pointless “communications” unless they are regarding critical financial transactions and money issues. That’s why I open an email from Paypal. Not because I’m lonely and just can’t seem to find a single site online to look at.
Paypal is getting like Ebay now, where they fill your inbox with things you’d rather not see and daily weigh the utility of still being a customer. I would like Paypal to be a bank and operate like a bank, and not be weighted down by its need for attention and traffic. Paypal is a site which should wait for when it is convenient for me to go there, and not distract me in the meantime.
Everybody wants a blog comment with an inbound link back to their site. I see hundreds of them here and elsewhere. Link exchanges generally work to the benefit of both sites, since only the webmasters of relevant sites with SEO value need apply. Search engines denigrate the value of unrelated links. Lots of spam and lots of erroneous commenting needs to be addressed.
SEO bots scrub down the blogosphere daily. But the reality is few can keep a blog going. The number one issue with administrating a blog domain is that the blog engine needs effort and attention. Admittedly it sometimes needs more time some days than others, but administration of the blog domain that is a domain blog can absorb more minutes than observers might suspect.
One of the most surprising aspects to curating a blog is administering approval of the comments users and visitors leave at the site. Various articles should have different users with varying home urls and different email addresses. But with the effort some domainers and online contractors are making these days to promote their domain urls, some spam comes along.
Here are some notes for those reading this who attempt to comment here or spread the url word about their domain or website online. Whether it is a FaceBook page, Myspace address, subdomain, or Squidoo link, these rules for commenting apply. Links and comments promoting links will be deleted meeting the following criteria.
1. A comment with a home page name that does not relate in either subject value or keyword association with my domain or blog is probably not going to be approved. These are obvious spam.
2. A blog comment that is misspelled is probably not going to be approved. This shows the writer is not a native speaker and too careless to spellcheck. Grammar errors mean a scripted posting machine did the commenting.
3. A blog comment abusing the administrator of this site is probably not going to be approved. Comment administration decisions are final.
4. A blog comment repeated word for word across a half dozen articles with identical commentary text is probably not going to be approved.
5. A blog comment flogging an unrelated service or site is probably not going to be approved.
6. A blog comment uniformly unconnected to the content of the article AND misspelled AND promoting warez AND to a topic-unrelated site domain name url is probably not going be approved.
7. A blog comment that is in a foreign character set and thus unreadable is probably not going to be approved.
8. A blog comment that is too long (a page or more, 700 characters plus, ) probably not going to be approved.
9. A blog comment that is relating to an adult name or mature content site when the posted site is completely unrelated to such material is probably not going to be approved.
10. Asking for free publishing of this site’s content elsewhere on a site with advertising and affiliates, and for free writing services on your site’s behalf will probably get deleted. Appropriate communications along these lines happen via email, not in the public comment area.
Bonus Round:
Your link will probably get deleted if it is one in series of exactly similar posts on various stories under different email addresses and site names.
The Domain name offer can come in from the cold with the new era of blog databases and instant websites. A template or open source application used for an existing domain’s website means that any buyer can take advantage of premium content original to that domain name as part of the purchase price. This can be termed a “domain sweetener”.
Adding sweetener to your domain can be as simple as allowing the buyer to utilize the current hosting where the domain is lodged. Server information is generally given with the WHOIS record. The WHOIS record must always be accurate for this reason. Unless a Privacy option is purchased at the time of the domain name creation, the registrant’s name phone number address and fax number is visible to the public. And even Privacy entailed records have bid or offer links at the lookup point.
What functions as a sweetener? Bundled domains with other sub-TLD’s, Emails with the domain or a free renewal might be other domain sweeteners. The ability to transform a nibble of interest into a successfully executed domain sale may take some sweetening on the seller’s part. The trick is knowing when to add the sweetener. Only the seller knows how motivated they really are to get some cash out of the deal.
Domains will attract lookups and type in interest form time to time. the record of these lookups can be tracked by referrer traffic form the WHOIS. This can be viewed from the statistics utility in the web hosting menu. The concept of the WHOIS lookup concedes that a likely buyer is checking out who owns the domain name, how long they have owned it, where it is hosted, and what the owner is doing with the domain.
A domain buyer will check out whether or not the current owner has a lot of time or investment put into the name. The theory is that a domainer will sell a name more cheaply if they haven’t developed it themselves. Or the prospective buyer may want to see if the domain name is parked and thus assess its potential value as a parked revenue generator. The offer for the domain name may include the content seen online.
Existing content in the form of databases or text files can also function as a domain sweetener. If the domainer has invested in domain development at all, these files can be furnished with the domain name sale as a sweetener. The incentive should be communicated that valuable planning and effort are attached with the domain purchase price. The sweetener should be signalled when the buyer has had enough time to consider an offer.
For this reason, domain name offers to buy should have a deadline and a “window of opportunity” attached. This way the prospective buyer has to evaluate how motivated they are. The domain name price will not be a given with a horizon of forever, but an opportunity to buy the domain name at the stated price within a secured period of time. The communication regarding the sweetener should come from a motivated seller near the end of the offer period.
One of the most overlooked sales tools for website traffic is the direct micro-marketing campaign. Yet many company owners and domain investors will say only bulk tools and promotional methods will work for their domain. Many site owners completely ignore the domain marketing functionality and focus on the site,as if the two were separate entities. They are, but not where SEO is concerned.
For the website designer and site author, the goal is the same: to communicate the core message to the target demographic, multiple target markets, or a broad expanse of the Internet browsing public. This should be done with an amplitude to impact as many media types as possible. Your website message could find its way into a blog entry, a review, a magazine article, a research paper, a book, or even legal documents.
Surgical website marketing involves traditional sales aspects like qualifying a lead and preparing marketing material fashioned for that lead. A qualified lead in url marketing is a website with a page rank equal or above yours and with keywords and domain name associations consistent with at least some of your website domain name and keywords. Congruent ‘vibes” from that other website or site author will likewise help migrate readers and new fans.
Domain marketing leads can come from author email addresses, domain name registrar data, forum username or member profiles, and social network contacts. These can be gathered in lists for future use. Traversing the forums of any topic will yield multiple email addresses for this purpose. Since most people put a link to their website in their signature, if the email is not in their profile lookup the domain name owner via WHOIS and add the email address to your chosen list.
The idea is not to write spam but purpose built cover letters expressing consideration and appreciation for the reader’s time and contributions. Everybody wants to get an email praising their observations or astute writing, or cheering them on in their chosen cause. Some writers and website contributors live to discover new sites to add to their web link directory. Some just like a personal heads-up on new sites dear to the causes close to their heart.
Site owners and webmasters will make good email lists for selling the domain or notifying of new feeds or articles. Contributors might be open to guest blogs. Inviting a few new writers to review your site gives you topical new contnt material and a new user base for fresh clicks. Contributors to a site will likely energize their own social network to look it over.
The art of conversation dead, and this a boon to many site authors and webmasters. New websites and their content give people something to talk about over lunch, during dinner, and while commercials last. if the domain name is catchy and easy to remember, they’ll be able to recall it and share it with a fast food dinner party. Three people will overhear this. They’ll tell five people. And so on. And so on.
One of the best emails I got recently spurring me to click and visit was one form Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibraryTV.com. The apology to take 5 minutes of my time was in the subject line. The departure from the spam motif was obvious.Vaynerchuk has a formidable fanbase he can tap at any time, and he did so surgically. Receivers of these emails like me clicked and took due note.
The Vaynerchuk email was a lesson in marketing restraint. This was practically the only email message I had ever got, versus the daily run of some idiot sites that can’t suppress anything and stuff your inbox with spam. Vaynerchuk’s content is so appealing he is almost known for his branding and Internet savvy before his liquor and wine business success.
Looking for likely users and visitors online for surgical domain marketing is less flashy than bulk promotion tools and webcasts, but can drill down to more precise user feedback and site participation. Surgical email campaigns for site and domain promotion will consume time and resources, but so will bulk spam thrown out into the online universe. There are many different ways to scrape likely user data online, each webmaster must decide their own ethical line in the sand.
Mining data from career and job hunting databases is risky. The possibility is very strong that the recipient is no longer in that line of work and your email could alienate them. Look and see if they have left the site or forum. Review the date of the last entry and check to see whether they still participate in online discussions. Discount claims that every entry is recent. Make sure active prospects are the focus of any marketing campaign.
Regardless of the mining venue chosen, the email and surgical marketing campaign for any site will leave the recipient feeling special and want to return the favor by visiting the website. Online promotion of a website or domain name involves personal and consistent follow through via email or marketing efforts to accomplish target impact.
