Domain Names and Hostage Negotiations

October 29th, 2010

It amazes me the number of webmasters or hosting companies that register their client’s domain names in their own company name. There are only a few reasons to do that.

  • You suck at life so you need to hold them hostage
  • You have no idea what you are doing
  • You suck at life and plan on charging clients crazy $$ to leave your sorry company

Let’s be serious, if your company offers reliable hosting or professional web design and you make requested changes or answer support questions in a timely manner then most of your customers will never leave you. A small percentage will move around because a salesman convinces them they need “their” service or maybe you don’t offer a specialized application the client needs, but for the most part if you just stop sucking as a webmaster you can maintain your hosting and web design clients.

The only reason a webmaster or web host needs to hold a domain name hostage is because he knows he has nothing to offer of value. It’s really not difficult to please small business owners. Make sure their email and website are online and update their website when they ask you too. Answer emails and the phone in a timely manner. Is that really too complicated?

Understand your limitations and when you know you can’t meet your customer’s expectations then admit it, help them move somewhere that can. Think I’m crazy? Trust me, the next time they need something they might just call you again, you know why? Because you were helpful. For some reason that’s uncommon in the small business web world. Some of you act like losing $15 or $20 per month in hosting fees is going to bankrupt you.

Some of you are so offended by losing a client that you turn into an evil crook and you take hostages (domain names). I can’t keep track of the number of times I have been put in the position of hostage negotiator so some poor old lady can have *her* domain name transferred to *her*.

Time to face the facts. If your only chance of customer retention is stealing domain names (taking hostages) then you are going to fail.

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Posted in Web Hosting | 1 Comment »

Valid Flash Embed and Preloaders in Internet Explorer

June 18th, 2010

Hello once again, web friends. Today I bring tidings of Flash preloaders and validity.

You may have noticed that with the embed code from my YouTube article that Flash movie preloaders don’t work in Internet Explorer, and the movie has to load entirely before it even displays at all. This is because Internet Explorer requires a different attribute and the removal of another in the object tag to let preloaders work properly. However, with different attributes, the Flash movie will not display at all in Firefox, so we must use Internet Explorer’s conditional comments to utilize two different opening object tags. Behold:

<!--[if !IE]>--><object data="yourmovie.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
	width="320" height="240"><!--<![endif]-->
<!--[if IE]><object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000"
	width="320" height="240"><![endif]-->
	<param name="movie" value="yourmovie.swf" />
	<param name="quality" value="high" />
</object>

The first line is the original that works in both IE and Firefox but doesn’t allow preloaders in IE. The second is the IE-only method that works with preloaders. Note the lack of a data attribute and the addition of a classid attribute.

Well, there you have it. Venture forth and embed Flash validly with preload animations!

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Posted in Web Standards | 1 Comment »

Trouble-”Shooting” A Malfunctioning Printer – Solves Privacy Issues Too!

May 18th, 2010

Update! This is the new method to prevent privacy and security issues related to the copier salvage industry.

Let me tell you a tale. For the longest time, we used a Xerox WorkCentre PE16 multi-function printer/scanner/copier/fax here in the office. It was an utter nightmare, and every time we tried to use it, the people next door could hear the screams of frustration.

For some reason, we lived with the thing for months–maybe years. The simple solution would have been to just replace it, but we just wouldn’t. Perhaps we were stubborn, perhaps we just never got around to it. We would always eventually get it to do what we wanted it to do and then get back to work.

Tensions mounted. The printer would ruin entire days and make the air of the office thick with anger. Finally, we couldn’t take it anymore, so yesterday, we finally did some troubleshooting.

We’d like to share this quick how-to with you.

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Posted in Entertainment | 1 Comment »

Internet Marketing – Recipe For Failure

April 10th, 2010

internet recipeSome ideas have no chance of succeeding, or should I say profiting since that is measurable. Success, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Profit is a measurable result. Some people will say they are successful because they quit their job and started baking cookies at home and sell them on Sunday at church.

Let’s call the cookie lady Betty. Betty has no ambition, at least not anymore. Her husband makes a hefty income, she finally quit her crappy job and she likes to bake cookies. Betty is done, take her out of the oven, that’s everything she wanted.

Friends and Family – Betty’s brother-in-law, Eddie, comes along and woofs down a dozen of her sugar cookies. High on the sugar, he tells her she could sell these cookies on the Internet and make a fortune. Betty asks Eddie if he really thinks she can sell them on the net. Eddie says his “Worm Farming in a Box” pyramid site is really taking off (Lie) so he is sure she can do it too. Now the rest of the friends and family join in cheering Betty on, telling her how much money she could make on the Internet (It’s Magic). So now Betty is pumped, all she has to do is almost nothing and she can get rich on the Internet. “Almost nothing” is a little more ambition than she has, but maybe she can muster up the strength.

Web Designer – Betty finds out her cousin Cindy’s kid just graduated high school and he has the most popular website on the planet, and he built it from scratch. Right away they hit it off because Betty builds cookies from scratch (box). Plus this kid knows more about the internet than Al Gore. So for $200 bucks, Betty is hooked up with a website to sell cookies. Her cousin’s kid used all the latest technology, including those cascading tables, so it is going to be a surefire success.

Social Media Expert – Someone tells Betty that the Pastor’s sister is a big deal on Twitter and Facebook. She gets the story about how she can have tens of thousands of followers in a month and followers are better than pixie dust. So she pays the Twit $60 for a 2 hour lesson on “how to use Twitter” and away she goes. Next week, for $75 she can find out how to share her high school and wedding photos with thousands of strangers on Facebook.

Pay-Per-Click – It’s been 4 months and no sales. Betty is discouraged, but brother-in-law Eddie is back to the rescue. His worm sales had “slowed” last month after he got banned from Twitter, so he set up a Google AdWords account and he has never looked back. Betty whips out the credit card, and she and Eddie set up an AdWords account. Eddie hooks her up with all the best keywords: “cookies”, “sugar cookies”, “baked goods”, “recipes”, “housewife”… They start the budget at $200 per day as Eddie quotes from memory the PPC website he read, “You get every PPC dime you spend back in sales.”

Reality Check – The $6000 credit card bill comes in. Lucky for Betty, the ads have stopped on their own because of the expiration date on the card. Betty’s husband gets involved because he now has an investment in a sugar cookie website. He calls and talks to some Internet Marketing companies. Company #1 tells him they are sure they can turn this disaster around for $3000 per month with their awesome directory submission and secret link building service. Company #2 tells him he has nothing they can work with. He will need a business plan and a niche because he isn’t going to sell Betty’s sugar cookies unless he can make them unique. He argues that the congregation loves them. Company #2 continues “unless you have time lapse photos of the cookies transforming into images of Mary or Jesus then we can’t help you. Even if they are miracle cookies you would be better off on eBay than hiring us.” He swears at them, slams down the phone and hires company #1.

The End – Three months later Betty calls Internet Company #2 and says they are all out of money, in serious debt, and they really need help. She then asks if she can pay for their services after they turn her cookie business around…

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Posted in Internet Marketing | 3 Comments »

Web SPAM – Should We All Snitch For Google?

March 14th, 2010

To snitch or not to snitch, that is the question.

Should we report our competition or sites we come across for Web SPAM, or is it Taboo? Does it make you a snitch or a rat? Is it OK to publicly point it out but not in a private report?

I think everyone would have a somewhat different opinion of what the Utopian Web would be like. Ask 100 people the question, “What is Web SPAM?” and see how many answers you get. Some will tell you it’s the ocean of scraper sites that steal data for content so they can run ads. Others say it’s the numerous sites that come up top 10 for unrelated content or that come up top ten but have little or no content, just a big funnel towards AdSense. Just like we won’t all agree on that question we also don’t agree on how to police the web and whose job it is to fight webspam. This is another example of  how SEO and search mirrors politics.

What are SPAM reports?

Matt Cutts recently asked for SPAM reports but what are they? Are they reports that show people buying links? Is Web SPAM really sites that buy or sell links? Maybe indirectly, because people buying links can, in many cases, have their sites rank higher than those that don’t. I’m sure by now you have heard some stories about what kind of links you can buy for the price of a MacBook Air :)

SPAM is not just those buying links and in many cases a purchased link should not be considered a bad thing, in my opinion. I’m sure there are a lot of people who paid to be in Best of the Web that don’t actually use the site or expect others to, they just wanted the link.

Should content scraping and 100% pure funnel to AdSense type SPAM sites be included and addressed in SPAM reports too? Is Google’s AdSense partly responsible for creating the Web SPAM they claim they want to get rid of?

Can the community police itself?

If Microsoft’s Bing Team and Google’s Web SPAM team listen then I think so. When the MacBook issue hit TechCrunch the pages that may have benefited were pulled down (as far as I know), and I think this can be credited to the web community and peer pressure, partly. Score one for the community. Now there is a ton of talk about Mahalo and SPAM. Some claim that something is being done, others say no. I like to think that Google has acted as Big Daddy and contacted Mahalo and we are in a holding pattern, just waiting to see the response. This is speculation on my part and many will argue that this isn’t fair because their little $500 per month MFA site would just get burned down without warning if they violated the terms of service. Let’s not be naive, you aren’t Mahalo, you don’t count and the big boys always play by different rules. That said, we do expect after numerous warnings have not been addressed that action will be taken. If not, the community will not be capable of policing itself. Bing and Google must listen and take action for that to work. If they don’t, the top 10 search positions for all but the smallest niche markets will eventually be filled with corporate built, Made-For-Adsense or advertising websites. Don’t get me wrong, not all MFA sites are SPAM. There are some bright people building useful sites and their original intention was to make money from AdSense or other ads; they chose to do it by providing “real” content.

Let me know, should we snitch publicly, privately, or not at all? Tell me what you consider to be the worst type of Web SPAM or at least what your definition is.

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Posted in Search Engine News | 3 Comments »