REDESIGN TIME!

Also…yes, I found a job….and yes, its all happy happy joy joy!

We are, as a species, more interested in whether it worked or didn’t work. We tend to be too inclined to just say, “Give me the results.”

But, over the past half-decade, working for a company that is very highly driven by analytics, I’ve learned how useful, and yes, even cool tracking the details of results can be!

Earlier this week, I sent out my first “Hire Me Please” email blast, drawing on things I have learned in email marketing over the years. I used MailChimp to send my comic book ad promo out, so let me take a few minutes to give them some free marketing. MailChimp is a great service, and its absolutely FREE provided your email list is less than 2,000 subscribers and you send less than 12k of emails a month. Go beyond those numbers and its still hella affordable. (Nope. I don’t make a dime by telling you this….I just LOVE the service)

In return, they give you ready made templates, or allow you to create your own mailers. You can schedule your sends, manage your email list, and all of the things the larger more expensive services offer…for FREE. Forever. Really.

On top of that, they give you a pretty robust tracking feature.

So here is what I learned about my own promo this week:

It was pretty successful, even if I haven’t gotten a job from it yet (although I have gotten a small amount of interest).

Of the entire send, 46.6% were opened and 10.8% were clicked. Really good numbers for a first send. MailChimp compares your results to the average for your industry (mine being “Arts and Artists “), and I am 20.2% higher than the industry average. I will also in future be able to see how I rank against this list, so I will be able to see what different promos do when pitted against each other.

“So what?” I hear you say.

Well, these numbers not only allow me to see how many of my target addresses view my emails, but they allow me to try different subject lines to see how that affects the open rate. I’ll get to see which style of email gets better clicks. And if this were a long-term email marketing plan, I could fine-tune the promotional campaigns to achieve the best rate of conversion.

Although, once I find a job, that’s the only conversion rate I need.

I’m already hard at work planning my next promo…hopefully this info will help you plan yours.

The issue was (to sum it up), Panda was meant to cull all the “bad” site, thereby improving the listings for all the “good” sites. But in the end, loads of good sites got hurt, and loads of bad sites remained unscathed. I even wrote a little post about the subject, and about how angry people were. Now, Aaron Wall and the folks over at SEOBook.com can give you far more info (and opinion) on Google than I ever could…but no matter where you opinion on the matter falls, one thing remains clear:

Google said Panda would punish bad practices.

There is no opinion, or spin on that. Panda was supposed to make SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) more relevant.

Now, as I say more than 999 times a day, I am actively seeking a new job as a web designer. One of the things I do is search for web design, marketing and advertising agencies in my area, and basically “cold call” them with emails that have my resume attached.

One town near here is Linwood, NJ. So I go to Google and search “Web design Linwood NJ”. And this site comes up 4th in my results. It came up again for “web design new jersey”. And again for “Web design Northfield NJ”. And again and again.

This site is the definition of “black hat SEO practices”. The kind of thing that is supposed to be BAD for our industry. The kind of thing that Google and their “Panda” were supposed to cure. And it comes up in the top 10 of my searches.

Again.

And again.

And again.

This is what the site has done:
They have a page that list every state in the USA. (image below)
Every state name is linked to a page that has every city in that state listed. (image below)
Every city name links to a page “about” that city. (image below)

There’s only one problem….

There is NO CONTENT on these pages. This is simply a bunch of empty pages to get people to bring their business to some company that isn’t sure if they do web design, SEO or auto-glass repair. (Seriously)

This kind of thing gives all the rest of us in the business a bad name.

Now back in the Wild West days of the interwebs, we used to create “doorway pages”, sites that had content on them, but always linked back to the real site. But nowadays that sort of thing is frowned upon as well.

But at least, even in those bad instances, the sites and pages had CONTENT. They were relevant to what the user had been searching for.

Even if they were “black hat” they didnt really waste the user’s time.

I work hard to stay abreast of what is going on in SEO, reading articles, blogs, white papers and the like in an effort to bring the best SEO practices to the freelance clients I have (and to whatever company I am working for).

And garbage like this floats to the top of the Google SERPs?

I have an idea for Google.

Instead of coming up with really cute names for each algorithm update, how about making it easier for guys like me, who are IN THE BUSINESS to tell them of culprits like this? Make it easier to report misuse of a tool we are ALL trying to use?

That would be a load more useful than any old Panda.

BAD SEO EXAMPLES:

State Listings (in footer):

City Names (long scrolling list):

City page:

Pretty good news for folks like me, who build those ads.
(Even if I AM still looking for work at a place where I can build the aforementioned ads)

But, I think its good news for the industry as a whole really.

..online advertising is expected to generate $39.5 billion in sales this year — a 23.3% increase from 2011 — compared to a spend of $33.8 billion on print.

That’s impressive growth, especially since 2011 also witnessed a 23% jump in online ad spending, according to eMarketer’s calculations. Online ad revenues should continue to grow over the next half-decade, albeit at a more modest rate, as shown in the chart below. Total online ad investment is projected to hit $62 billion by that time.

from Mashable article by Lauren Indvik

It took a long while, but I think the advertising world is coming around to the idea that the internet, and social media, offer the ability to target your audiences in a much more fine tuned way, rather than the scatter-shot approach that print media affords. The ROI is just better online.

Hopefully this bodes well for the US economy as a whole, and job seekers (like me and you) as well!

Sadly, NONE are in Philadelphia, and the closest is Novo Nordisk in Princeton, NJ.

The rest are North Jersey or New York.

(on a side note…guess who is getting a copy of my resume in the next 5 minutes?)

Thank you.

The Wikipedia blackout is over — and you have spoken.

More than 162 million people saw our message asking if you could imagine a world without free knowledge. You said no. You shut down Congress’s switchboards. You melted their servers. Your voice was loud and strong. Millions of people have spoken in defense of a free and open Internet.

For us, this is not about money. It’s about knowledge. As a community of authors, editors, photographers, and programmers, we invite everyone to share and build upon our work.

Our mission is to empower and engage people to document the sum of all human knowledge, and to make it available to all humanity, in perpetuity. We care passionately about the rights of authors, because we are authors.

SOPA and PIPA are not dead: they are waiting in the shadows. What’s happened in the last 24 hours, though, is extraordinary. The Internet has enabled creativity, knowledge, and innovation to shine, and as Wikipedia went dark, you’ve directed your energy to protecting it.

We’re turning the lights back on. Help us keep them shining brightly.

Read more

Take a few moments out of your day and go to Wikipedia and look up your congress members and let them know what you think of SOPA and PIPA.

For now, we still HAVE freedom to speak our minds.

Use it.

Related articles

• Sopa & Pipa (pureandsimpleliving.wordpress.com)
• A day against SOPA/PIPA (lifemash.wordpress.com)
• Wikipedia “Blackouts” To Protests Against PIPA and SOPA (techpluto.com)
• Wikipedia is Not SOPA Proof, Neither Are You (mediumjoe.wordpress.com)

I’ll be honest, when my fiancee turned to me last night and said, “That Estelle lady you follow on Twitter is saying you should make your blog black to protest SOPA…” I had no clue what she was talking about. At first.

I quickly realized that SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), was the House version of PIPA (PROTECT IP Act)…are both simply the culmination of all the internet “piracy” rumblings that have been going on in Washington for many years. (by the way…the “PROTECT IP” in PIPA is an acronym itself…PROTECT IP = “Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property“. Really? An acronym inside of an acronym? Alphabet soup anyone?)

Yeah? So what?

Although well intentioned, these laws are too far reaching to be effective, and will do more harm than good. The laws were created to protect the owners of “intellectual property” from having that property stolen. It also has sub-sets that protect consumers from having counterfeit drugs sold to them under false pretenses. On the surface, this appears to be a good thing…it protects bloggers like you and me from having our writings put up on other sites without our knowledge, it protects software companies from piracy, and it protects companies like Pfizer, who put millions into drugs like Viagra, only to have sub-standard (and often dangerous) knockoffs of their drugs sold online, thereby ruining their reputations and sales. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) said, “Millions of American jobs hang in the balance”, and in this economy, that is a potent argument. Especially for folks like me who are out of work.

The problem here is, 99% of the perpetrators that these laws target are off-shore. They aren’t American. So, will this law affect them? Nope.

So what does it do? How will it work? How will it be effective?

Since the lawmakers cannot go after the law-breakers, they will go after the next best thing, the companies providing access to the lawbreakers. That means Comcast, because they gave you access to that website. Or Google, because they had a link to that illegal pharmaceutical. Or Facebook, because they allowed your friend to post that link to that anti-government speech.

We all know what that’s called.

CENSORSHIP.

Welcome to 1984. Because not only will Big Brother be watching you, they will be forced to watch you.

Or else.

ISPs and website owners will be forced to monitor everything YOU do in an effort to make sure you aren’t doing anything wrong. And the way the law is written, you have to prove your innocence, which goes against the American ideal of “innocent until proven guilty”. Key word being PROVEN.

Are all of us web geeks simply being reactionary? Judge for yourself: Many companies, including Google, Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, eBay, Mozilla, Yahoo, AOL, and LinkedIn have already come out against SOPA and PIPA.

Imagine a doctor writes an article that says a naturally occurring herb provides the same value as Tylenol, and can be bought cheaply in any store in America. You read the article, become intrigued and post it on your Facebook. Your friends post it. And their friends. It goes “viral”. Facebook would be required to tell you (and your friends and their friends) to cease and desist…or face injunction in a court of law. Worse yet, Johnson & Johnson, if they feel their rights have been infringed upon, can sue you, your friends, their friends AND Facebook.

So, in the end, Facebook is forced to watch over your shoulder.

Now, thats simply a layman’s example, and is probably flawed. But do the research. You will find I am not far off the mark.

I’m a big defender of free speech. Open dialogue. I’ll even go as far as saying Stormfront has a right to exist. Every single member of Stormfront hates my guts, simply because of my ethnic background (they probably hate YOU too). But, our US Constitution guarantees the right to free expression. Even for idiot racists.

And even for folks on the internet.

So although I am still torn over the idea of taking my blog to black, like Estelle, I am wholly behind the protest along with her. (Full disclosure: I have loads of respect for Estelle Weyl, and am one of her biggest fans)

So, while I make my own decision on HOW to protest, I will do all I can to spread the word.

More Info:

• CNET: How SOPA would affect you FAQ
• TechCrunch – Stanford Law Review: SOPA Unconstitutional, Would Break The Internet
• Stop American Censorship
• Infographic about SOPA/PIPA
• Estelle’s Code for taking your site black
]]> http://graveshow.com/blog/news/protest-pipa-sopa/feed 0 http://graveshow.com/blog/inspiration/where-ya-fro http://graveshow.com/blog/inspiration/where-ya-fro#comments Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:56:12 +0000 Graveshow http://graveshow.com/blog/?p=2003

While watching one of the latest Geico gecko commercials, I was hit with a thought..completely apropos of nothing…when asked, where do you say YOU are from?

Follow my line of reasoning here…

The commercial made me think of the saying “Don’t mess with Texas”. And as I thought of it, I realized, no matter if you are from Dallas, Houston, San Antonio or even way down south in Victoria (my grandfather’s home town), you say you are from Texas. And damn proud of it. Not, “I’m from Victoria”. The PRIDE of ownership is in the word “Texas”.

But folks from Philly don’t say they are from Pennsylvania…they say “I’m from Philly.” That is answer enough. I’m sure its the same for people from Pittsburgh…although it might be different if you’e from Allentown or Altoona.

I’ve lived in New Jersey for the past 25 years or so, and even though I am originally from Colorado (I don’t say “from Colorado Springs” for some reason…), I consider myself as being “from Jersey”. Ask me, while I am away somewhere, “Where ya from?” and I’ll respond without thinking, “I’m from Jersey.” And damn proud of it.

Now I will grant you, North Jersey folks identify more with New York City, South Jersey folks (like me) more with Philly, and Central Jersey folks pick one or the other to avoid saying they live anywhere near Trenton. But we all say, “I’m from Jersey.”

Then again, if you say, “I’m from New York.” no one ever says, “Near Buffalo?”. Because “New York” means the 5 boroughs of New York City. Anywhere else is “I’m from Long Island” or “I’m from Upstate New York”.

What makes us self-identify with a certain place-name over any others do you think? People from both sides of the Virginia / Maryland line may say, “I’m from DC” even if they don’t live in the city limits, or even work there…

So what do YOU think?

And by the way….

Where ya from?

]]> http://graveshow.com/blog/inspiration/where-ya-fro/feed 1 http://graveshow.com/blog/advertising/words-engrish http://graveshow.com/blog/advertising/words-engrish#comments Sun, 08 Jan 2012 19:24:27 +0000 Graveshow http://graveshow.com/blog/?p=1997 Someone in Japan needs to bone up on their profanity a bit…

As if to prove the point of my previous post: “Remember: Words MEAN things” from 1/3/12, the photos below are all the rage on the interwebs.

Now THATS what I call a sale…


Source: Japanese Sub-culture Research Center


Source: SuperHappyAwesome

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