Archive for March, 2008

In times past, the PayPal website was a highly targeted in email Phishing scams where emails were randomly sent to people that may of may not have a PayPal account. More often than not, the person who recognized PayPal would ofter respond not noting the actual URL they were being directed to and give up critical information which made them victims of identity theft of some cases.

Other organizations such as banks have been targeted, and apparently I have accounts at lots of back that are trying verify my account ownership. Recently, I have started to receive a few of those related targeting Google AdWords account holders. Even worse, to the untrained user (or if you have your guard down even just a little), this one could fool you. Why? The redirect address incorporates a sub domain string that initially leads you to think you are going to google.adwords.com, but if you looks closely, this is the actual URL you are being directed to: http://adwords.google.com.frefo9.cn/select/Login/ instead of http://adwords.google.com/select/login which is pointing to a Chinese (.cn) domain.

Here is the message in it’s entirety as emailed to me sent from “Google AdWords [adwords-noreply@google.com]“:

This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does
not accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message.
——————————————————————————–

Dear Google AdWords Customer,

Please sign in to your account at http://adwords.google.com/select/login , and update your billing information.
Your account will be reactivated as soon as you update your payment information.
Your ads will show immediately if you decide to pay for clicks via credit
or debit card. If you decide to pay by direct debit, we may need to receive
your signed debit authorization before your ads start running,
depending on your location.
If you choose bank transfer, your ads will show as soon as we receive your
first payment.

We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.

Sincerely,

———————————————————————————-

The Google AdWords Team

Take a little extra time to verify any and all URL’s from anyone allegedly trying to validate your accounts. These scam artists are getting more and more clever.

I was recently asked by someone trying to build their business what I would suggest. It’s not everyday that you find someone helping their colleagues build their business although it is seen much more in the Search Marketing community. I rarely see others in the industry it as a threat; if I am destined to have certain clients, then I will. I can’t have them all, don’t need (or want) them all, and I am focusing more on serving a niche market in which few people compete with me successfully. So for those trying to build an Internet Marketing practice, here are my suggestions. Of course, they are business development principles that can apply to any industry.

1. Have a website from where you offer such services and spell out what you offer.

2. Make your website a resource so that people will see you as an expert. If they need help, they may ask you for it and become a client.

3. Have a blog to continue to establish yourself as an authority in the field.

4. Pick a specialty within the field. Back in the day an SEO expert did everything related to promoting a site. Today, we have people who specialize in paid search, usability, social media marketing, etc.

5. Write an ebook and offer it from your website. This is also known as viral marketing, and it works.

6. Join local business networking groups and offer to do a presentation on Web Marketing.

7. Join your local Chamber of Commerce and offer to do a presentation on Web Marketing.

8. Choose a niche market to provide Web Marketing expertise for. This will open up opportunites for writing in industry magazines or speaking at conferences for that industry.

9. Get LinkedIn to other business professionals and answer their questions about Internet Marketing.

10. Set your prices according to the market you serve. Whatever you do, don’t try and cheapen the business by prostituting it at rates that make dollar stores look more profitable. I understand if you are just starting out and need the money, but you will rarely if ever be able to raise your prices fast enough to make what you deserve (assuming you know what you are doing and aren’t doing more hard than good to your client site). My recommendation is to charge based on the location and size of the company. A small client in Idaho just may not have the $250 per hour that you are trying to convince them you are worth, but they may turn into a great client or an even better referral source.

For those that are subscribed, please note that the new feedburner feed address for the blog is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/OldSchoolSeo. It will be updated after this is sent.

Please update your reader accordingly.

Thanks,

Anthony

StumbleUpon is one of my favorite sites and a great way to network with those in your industry, meet others who share your interests, discover very interesting sites, and find the latest “interesting” news. One of the sites flaws is that it limits you to having only 200 “friends” or people that you can network with directly. Keeping this in mind, you need to be selective in who you “make friends” with. Here are some pointers to help you along the way when considering adding a member to your friends network.

1. Make sure you’ve got a great profile. People will reciprocate a friendship if they visit your profile and like what they see. A picture is preferable, and an avatar is acceptable, but not having anything just won’t cut it. Also, make sure to write something about yourself in the narrative, and do go through all of the “interest” tabs and select not just your interests, but the interests that you want to connect with people about.

2.See how long they have been a member. Every profile has a “member since “x” date on it right under the name and stats. Why is this important? If they are just learning the rules and just “checking it out” they may not be much help in getting content that you submit additional exposure.

3. See how long it’s been since they have logged in. This is listed in green to the upper right of the narrative portion of the profile and just to the left of the “mail” indicator. I recently went to add a “super stumbler” (i.e. very high stats, etc), but then I noticed she hadn’t logged in for 6 weeks. To me this is a sign of someone who is no longer really active in the community (for whatever reason). Best thing to do is to bookmark the profile and check back if you really want to connect with this person.

4. Find those who share your interests. You can do a simple search on the site and then view those profiles. You will get far better results by sending pages to people that they are actually interested in. If someone is there to look at “baby related websites” and you send them a cool “affiliate marketing site”, that’s akin to Social Media spam.

5. Look at their stats. If they only have 10 favorite websites, chances are they won’t look at what you send them or thumb it. On the other hand if they have 25,000 favorites, they may be hard to connect with. Don’t let that stop you though because such a Stumbler could have a huge impact on you getting your content voted for and get some pretty good exposure within StumbleUpon. They key here is to promote quality content because many serious Stumblers will ignore self promoting, ad laden, or seeming commercial posts.

6. How many friends / fans do they have? Similar to #5, if the Stumbler isn’t connected with many other Stumblers, then they will have less of an influence on the community. Consider adding top Stumblers as friends but don’t be discouraged if they don’t reciprocate. Many times they will already have their 200 friends and even if they like you, your SU site, or content you submit, they will not be able to add you as a mutual friend.

One other thing to consider to enhance your SU experience and success is to conduct a “friend audit”. Perhaps when you joined SU, you weren’t aware of some of the items listed above and just picked random friends. Now it’s time to make room for quality, relevant SU friends by removing some of the friends that you may have. This isn’t about being cruel, but simply about networking. In the “real world” you only have so much time and you would not network with people in a one-way relationship before moving on. This is no different because in StumbleUpon, you only have so many slots for friends. Use the 6 criteria above to analyze who you are connected to, and then take action. The second time around, you will likely meet more people that sincerely want to network with you, and you might just be amazed at the results.

So, most of you thought I was a prude according to my “foul language” survey. That’s ok, you have to live with your convictions, and I have to live with mine. Apparently, the company at fault agreed with me. Here is the follow up email I received after my email went from the web hosting provider, to the developer of the software, to the management team at Smarter Tools.

“Thank you for your concern. With a little more investigation we found a few other offensive words that we have removed. We have modified our standard English dictionary and have sent a copy to (web hosting provider name removed) for them to implement if they so choose.

Best Regards”

I commend Smarter Tools for being responsible and having integrity. Without integrity, you’ve got nothing.