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Firefox The IE Killer
posted by Insight for Authors at 11:45 PM
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Business Blog Writing: Just Ask The Blog Squad
Written by 1000awesomethings
Munch lunch at a Chinese restaurant, brunch at a Holiday Inn, or dinner at a wedding reception, and chances are good you will come face to face with the The All-You-Can-Eat Buffet.
If you’re a Buffet Amateur like me, your pupils dilate and your mouth starts watering as soon as you spot the long table full of steam trays and criss-crossed table cloths. Soon it’s game on, and you grab a plate and pile it high with some bread, a few salads, and a couple rolled-up salamis or a bowl of Won Ton soup. For plate number two you tackle the entrees, scooping up sticky heaps of Kung Pao chicken, soggy French Toast, or paper-thin slices of roast beef soaking in dark mushroom gravy. Then you go back for a third plate, this one featuring a tipsy mountain of desserts - maybe some assorted squares, a thick, gummy slice of cheesecake, or some fluorescent pink, freezer-burned ice cream sliding around your plate.
Then as you lay bloated on your chair, your buttons bursting, your eyelids drooping, you face a final decision: Do you go back for The Fourth Plate?
The Fourth Plate is almost always a good idea before you do it and a bad idea afterwards. It’s the helping after the helping after. It’s the Greatest Hits Plate, a star-studded collection featuring the most popular items from Plate 1, 2, and 3, coming together for the reunion tour, the last hurrah, the final dance at the dinner table.
The Fourth Plate is also a famous mark of a Buffet Amateur, because it can be the sign of someone who realizes that Plate 2 was the best plate and they really just want more of Plate 2. For years, I scarfed down The Fourth Plate at the Indian buffet near my college. Buttery, pillowy-soft naans piled high, thick and creamy Butter Chicken, and spicy, simmering lamb in a hearty broth. It was just too much. I caved in every time and walked away with a curry-busting gut and a samosa hangover.
Since then I’ve been tutored on the art of mastering the all-you-can-eat buffet. Everybody’s got their own techniques, but here’s what I’ve learned over the years:
1. The Walk-Through. Don’t do what I used to do and blindly take a spoonful of everything. No, you’ve got to do your Walk-Through First. You’re a detective, popping open steam tray after steam tray, looking for recent fill-ups, traffic around popular items, and sure winners like omelet stations or a guy in a chef’s hat slicing big slabs of meat. Now’s also time for some Belly Space Analysis, where every item’s Tasty Deliciousness is weighed against it’s Projected Stomach Volume. Bread, soup, and salad rarely pass the Belly Space Analysis test. Skipping those means you just gained an extra plate and are on your way.
2. Drink Later. Sugary drinks just fill you up with carbs and cost extra. If you can postpone your Pepsi, then you’ll save belly space for the hot goods.
3. The Sampler. My dad is famous for the sampler plate. Within minutes of arriving he’ll dot a big white plate with small portions of every entree and proceed to say “Hmmm,” a lot while scooping up tiny forkfuls of each to see what will make the cut. You have to have willpower to pull off The Sampler, but it can be very rewarding. You know you aced it when your next plate is just piles of your two favorites. Good on ya.
4. Staggered Trips. If you’re with friends, don’t wait until everybody is done their first plate before uniformly filing up for a second trip together. No, go separately and act as each others eyes and ears out there - whats new, what’s hot, what’s fresh, what’s not. Your friends are doing their job when you see them running back to table to scream “They just brought out more coconut shrimp!” Also, be sure to designate someone at your table to be The Lookout. They should be seated with a clear view of the buffet and raise alarm whenever they see someone coming from the back with a new steam tray.
5. Big Plates Always. Be watchful of the small salad and dessert plates lurking about. Find your secret stash of full-size dinner plates and use them, know them, love them lots. The big plates will let you spread your meal around, and avoid piling things high, which generally results in meat gravy getting all over your salad.
6. One More Egg Roll. When the check arrives, take your time. Slow it right down now and see who still has room. Since you’ve been so busy scarfing your food and staggering trips, now really is the best chance to catch up with your friends. Then after ten or fifteen minutes, someone will likely cave in and say “Okay, one more egg roll.” This is buffet victory.
With these tips plus your personal experiences, you too can master the art of the all-you-can-eat buffet. After that, there’s really no stopping you. So eat all you can, my friend.
Eat all you can.
AWESOME!
Photos from: here, here, here, here, here, and here
posted by Insight for Authors at 2:15 AM
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Blogging is Publishing
I’ve used both BANS and phpBay for my niche affiliate websites for a quite a while and I’ve experienced ups and downs of both scripts. Both scripts are excellent money makers, no doubt on that. I know that because both made money for me.
Because BANS and phpBay basically work similar to each other, I want to spend some time over the next few weeks to compare the two eBay affiliate scripts. In this post, I want to compare how both scripts deal with international traffic to your site.
Both BANS and phpBay were designed to work with international eBay sites. But the main difference is that BANS doesn’t have the capability to provide the international auction listings by Geo-targeting automatically. What I mean by this is that if you want to display Canadian auctions listings for Canadian visitors, you will have to build a separate BANS website just for that traffic.
With phpBay, you can build one affiliate website and make it display the international auction listings to the particular international traffic. In other words, if someone from United Kingdom visits your phpBay website, it automatically matches the Geo-IP and displays the auctions listings from eBay.co.uk instead of eBay.com.
This is a true advantage of phpBay over BANS. This translates more revenue from your eBay affiliate website. But in order to use this feature, you have to go through some steps describe on Brewsterware’s “Optimising your ebay affiliate profits” post.
Now, it took me a while to make it work right because the instruction was somewhat vague. The download file provided on that post didn’t work for me. Instead, when I used the default geo.php that came with phpBay, it worked. So use the downloaded file for country.php but use geo.php that comes with phpBay. Also, they should be placed inside “includes” folder. I don’t think that was mentioned in the post. If you have problems getting it to work, just let me know. I will help you setup correctly.
Matt Cutts said on his blog that we should see a new Google Toolbar PageRank update over the next few days. He also mentioned that Google will be lifting some old penalties on websites. I’m not quite sure which one he’s referring to, but I think we will see some happy faces soon.
To check your PageRank, you can use one of the online PageRank tools, but there’s a PageRank checker that I want to recommend to you. It’s called PaRaMeter. It is a free desktop software that tracks PageRanks on your websites. Instead of typing out a URL at a time, you can store all your domain information and have PaRaMeter update PageRank. It’s a neat software.
Download PaRaMeter and check your PageRank.
A number of Build a Niche Store forum members suggest that one should target niches that can’t be found anywhere but at auction.
But I disagree with this.
The majority of my BANS (Build a Niche Store) sites sell things that can be purchased in any retail stores, but I also have vintage auctions that sell only the things that can be bought through auctions.
What I learned from my EPN transaction stats is that people who buy stuff from auction sites already are likely to have an eBay account already. I have more ACRUs generated from a kitchenware BANS site than anything else. That kitchenware I’m talking about averages $20 and it can be purchased at any local stores like Walmart and Target.
The advice given by the BANS members is good, but ignoring the other half of the market isn’t a good idea. I suggest that you build BANS sites for both, because both work well.
Just a quick thought.
EPN (eBay Partner Network) has been actively sending out account termination letters to the publishers. The termination looks something like this…
“After reviewing your account transactions, we determined that your account has been generating non-bona fide transactions related to new registered users. This violates our Code of Conduct and breaches the agreement between us. Your account will be terminated immediately and no pending commissions will be paid to you. You are not permitted to rejoin the eBay Partner Network.
Almost all of the publishers who was banned claim that they’ve done nothing wrong, but I found a pattern from their explanation. People who got banned from EPN usually purchased traffic from unknown sources. I don’t know if this triggered a flag, but I think this is why their account was banned; Not from purchasing the traffic, but from the quality of traffic generate from these traffic brokers.
Like I said, I don’t know the definite answer, but it seems like purchasing traffic to your EPN affiliate website is a big risk. Don’t do it. If you really want to do it, you should filter purchased traffic with a landing page. I think that should be safe.
Please share your thoughts. Why these people are getting banned from EPN without an apparent reason? I hope EPN gives out a warning first before closing an account.
I’ve been blogging about niche marketing since 2005. After a few years, I’ve expanded my blog with several other blogs in subdomains because there was too much information to share in too many different categories. Since the move, I’ve lost my focus and got sidetracked. It was a big mistake.
Before it gets worse, I’m merging all my marketing-related blogs into a single blog. Everything’s imported to MarketingSyndrome.com, but all posts need to be reorganized into right categories. It might take me a few weeks to finish it. Everything’s in mess right now, so please use the search tool to find information on this blog.
I’m even bringing back the old design I’ve used last year to refresh my memory. :)
WordPress 2.6 was released today. I thought it was going to be released in August, but the developers really pushed it. WordPress 2.6 comes with a number of new features such as post revision tracking, live theme preview, Shift Gears, and Press This!
Watch the WordPress 2.6 release video to learn more about it.
As of today, .ME domains are open for public registrations. .ME has been the talk of the town because of its potential for internet users. .ME domains are just perfect for blogs. Just think about it, with a .ME domain you can register YOURNAME.ME.
.ME domains are not just limited to personal websites. It can be used as a catchy marketing tool. For example, verb-oriented domain names such as Contact.me, Drive.me, Date.me, Help.me, Love.me make perfect sense to visitors.
Well, you can purchase those premium domains only through the auction that’s coming up, but you can still get good .ME domain names if you hurry up.
It is little bit expensive and requires 2 years of contract, but it will be well worth your investment. I was going to register “Prayfor.me” but as I thought.. it’s gone. But I’ve found a couple of really nice domain names already. So register a .ME domain name now!
Another phpBay update. PhpBay 3.0.7 is released today and it’s available for download in your member’s area. It is a maintenance release so unless you need to use the new features, you don’t need to upgrade.
phpBay 3.0.7 release includes:
1) Fix on items displayed by country.
2) Added “free shipping” as a parameter.
3) Fixes a minor issue with the sidebar widget where the closing tag was not working correctly.
To update, upload all files and overwrite all existing files. Auction.php is not affected by this update.
posted by Insight for Authors at 4:45 AM
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Tips for a New Website
Written by Ernesto
2008 is nearing its end, time to make a list of the top 10 BitTorrent sites that got the most traffic this year. The Pirate Bay is out in the lead followed by Mininova and isoHunt. TorrentSpy shut down earlier this year and is the most notable absentee.
The list is based on traffic rank reports from Compete and Alexa, backed up by visitor reports from some of the site admins.
It has been a good year for The Pirate Bay. The number of visitors spiked, despite efforts in Denmark and Italy to block access the site. Last month, The site celebrated its 5th anniversary, just after it broke the 25 million peers mark. At any given point in time, more than 25 million peers actively trade files thought the Pirate Bay tracker.
Mininova has seen a steady rise in visitors in 2008, and more than 3 billion torrents were downloaded from the site in the past 12 months. In addition to user uploaded content, the Mininova team has started to focus more on premium publishers with their content distribution platform.
Despite being ensnared in legal proceedings with the MPAA and CRIA, isoHunt is continuing to grow. This year they partnered with the Creative Commons music distribution site Jamendo, and just like The Pirate Bay, isoHunt added SSL encryption to the site, making it impossible for your ISP or the authorities to monitor users’ activities.
Torrentz.com, one of the oldest torrent sites around, celebrated its 5th anniversary in July. The site added a “verified torrents” feature this year, and inspired many other meta-search engines to do the same. Last month a “hacker” caused some problems after it took over the torrentz domain, but luckily this issue was resolved in a few hours.
TorrentReactor redesigned and optimized the site throughout 2008, which resulted in a significant increase in visitors. In addition, the TorrentReactor launched TorrentPrivacy, a service that allows BitTorrent users to download torrents anonymously.
After being forced to go offline following threats from the CRIA, Demonoid returned this April after 6 months of downtime. Since then it is business as usual, and most of the members returned quickly.
In December 2007 BTjunkie was forced to leave their ISP following a takedown notice from the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN. This year there were no troubles, and the site continues to go strong.
In 2007, SumoTorrent quickly settled itself among the top torrent sites, and traffic continued to increase this year. The pop-ups and redirects are new though, and don’t make it one of the most convenient sites to browse.
BitTorrentMonster, BTmon for short, debuted in 10th place last year, and managed to climb a spot. Other than that, there is not much news surrounding the site.
Not much news about TorrentPortal this year either, but for BitTorrent sites that is usually a good thing. Traffic seems to be stable, although the site is not growing as fast as the other BitTorrent sites in this list.
In 2006 TorrentSpy was more popular than any other BitTorrent site, but this changed quickly in August 2007, when a federal judge ordered TorrentSpy to log all user data. The judge ruled that TorrentSpy had to monitor its users in order to create detailed logs of their activities, and hand these over to the MPAA.
In a response to this decision - and to ensure the privacy of their users - TorrentSpy decided that it was best to block access to all users from the US. This led to a huge decrease in traffic, but still, it managed to make out top 10 list last year. March 2008 TorrentSpy owner Justin decided to shut down completely, and in May his company was ordered to pay a $110 million fine, which it will appeal.
posted by Insight for Authors at 9:18 AM
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Reading speed on computer screens
As I'm pulling together materials for the fourth edition of Writing for the Web, I'm finding it hard to update one important issue.
For decades, it's been a given that reading text on a computer screen is harder than reading it on paper. The effect is that we read online text 25% more slowly than text on paper.
Jakob Nielsen made that critical point back in the 1990s, and said it was a problem with screen resolution. By 2009, he predicted, resolution would be equivalent to print on paper.
But Nielsen hasn't addressed the issue recently, and when I search for other studies, I find little or nothing published since about 2003. Can anyone point me to recent studies that indicate how quickly people read onscreen, using recent computers, compared to reading text on print?
Via The Korea Herald: Court fines two for Web libel against Lee. Excerpt:
An appeals court has found two people guilty of libel against Lee Myung-bak when he was a presidential candidate last year, overturning lower-court rulings.A Seoul High Court judge has fined a defendant, surnamed Sohn, 500,000 won ($477) for posting messages denouncing Lee and his Grand National Party 17 times in September, the court said yesterday.
In one message, he called Lee a "criminal" and described the GNP as a "department store of corruption."
In March, a lower court in Suwon acquitted Sohn on the grounds that he had never engaged in any political activities and that the internet has become a common means for citizens to express political opinions freely.
But the higher court ruled that he violated the election law, saying his messages go beyond a simple expression of opinions.
"The messages are clearly against Lee. The defendant is thought to have done so purposely considering he posted them 17 times. He appears to have been aware that his behavior could influence the result of the election," the court said.
Current law forbids the act of distributing documents, photographs and other materials aimed at influencing election results by supporting or opposing particular candidates and political parties 180 days prior to election day.
Civic groups criticize the law for restricting freedom of expression and political participation.
In a separate case, another high-court judge fined a defendant 800,000 won for criticizing Lee 30 times in messages on an internet message board, the court said yesterday.
Granted, the fines aren't serious—at least by North American and European standards. But if the same laws were applied to political blogs in the West, most countries could pay off their deficits with the fines extracted from bloggers.
Here's a site I've just discovered: The Global Language Monitor. It deals, among many other topics, with the language of the US presidential campaign just concluded.
For webwriters, this looks like an important site.
I recently ran across a useful little book, The Elements of Visual Style: The Basics of Print Design for Every PC and Mac User, by Robert W. Harris. While it's aimed at print-based writing, webwriters can also draw some lessons from it.
Harris gives us a quick guide to typography, layout, and the use of art in print documents. The illustrations show bad and good examples, and the book itself is pretty well designed. I wish it were more "hypertextual": We get no references to other books on document design, and no links to sites dealing with this and related issues.
Still, it's a compact, concise, and inexpensive handbook. Even if you find most of the advice very familiar, the book could help you back up the points you're trying to make to your clients.
Via The Guardian, an optimistic argument by Vint Cerf, one of the architects of the original internet: A founding father of the web says it's come a long way, but its potential for worldwide change can and will be greater still. Excerpt:
It's amazing how quickly those of us with internet access have come to take for granted the remarkable amounts of information we have at our disposal, but we're only seeing the beginnings. The bulk of human knowledge remains offline. As more of us get access to the internet, more of the world's information will find its way online.
The web is already making strides toward becoming truly global. While I was chairman of ICANN, one of the organisations that helps ensure that the internet works uniformly around the world, we adopted rules to allow the system of domain names to accommodate non-Roman characters, making the web more accessible to people whose languages use other scripts, such as Arabic, Korean or Cyrillic.
There are improvements in automatic language translation tools and, in particular, the field that we call machine learning. It is already possible to do a Google search and explore the results in English across web content in 23 different languages, from Czech to Hindi to Korean. Speakers of any of those languages can now explore content on the web written in any of the others.
The technology isn't perfect yet, but it's rapidly improving. Even in its present form, it's easy to imagine a not-too-distant future in which automatic translation will allow two people in the world to message one another in real time, each experiencing the chat in his or her tongue. Just imagine what a significant step that will be.
Cerf predicts that even space probes will be built to use the internet. I predict that such probes will need major spam filters.
More seriously, webwriters should begin to think about writing effectively in more languages than just English. Some languages are "wordier" than English; others are more concise. Do readers of Chinese or Arabic scan a computer screen the way English readers do? I wish I knew.
I haven't visited Web Pages That Suck in a long time, but I did so this evening. Not sure it was a good idea.
I clicked on the button for Contenders for worst web site of 2008 group 1, and no, it was not an exaggeration. I looked at the first ten, and decided not to go further.
While HavenWorks.com ranks just #3, it was the only site that made me cry out in horror.
Here we are, well into the web's second decade, and people are still creating sites like this?
Not only that, people are still providing Websites That Suck with plenty of new material.
A fascinating article in The New York Times: The Mundaneum Museum Honors the First Concept of the World Wide Web. Excerpt:
On a fog-drizzled Monday afternoon, this fading medieval city feels like a forgotten place. Apart from the obligatory Gothic cathedral, there is not much to see here except for a tiny storefront museum called the Mundaneum, tucked down a narrow street in the northeast corner of town. It feels like a fittingly secluded home for the legacy of one of technology’s lost pioneers: Paul Otlet.
In 1934, Otlet sketched out plans for a global network of computers (or “electric telescopes,” as he called them) that would allow people to search and browse through millions of interlinked documents, images, audio and video files.
He described how people would use the devices to send messages to one another, share files and even congregate in online social networks. He called the whole thing a “réseau,” which might be translated as “network” — or arguably, “web.”
Historians typically trace the origins of the World Wide Web through a lineage of Anglo-American inventors like Vannevar Bush, Doug Engelbart and Ted Nelson. But more than half a century before Tim Berners-Lee released the first Web browser in 1991, Otlet (pronounced ot-LAY) described a networked world where “anyone in his armchair would be able to contemplate the whole of creation.”
Although Otlet’s proto-Web relied on a patchwork of analog technologies like index cards and telegraph machines, it nonetheless anticipated the hyperlinked structure of today’s Web. “This was a Steampunk version of hypertext,” said Kevin Kelly, former editor of Wired, who is writing a book about the future of technology.
Otlet’s vision hinged on the idea of a networked machine that joined documents using symbolic links. While that notion may seem obvious today, in 1934 it marked a conceptual breakthrough.
“The hyperlink is one of the most underappreciated inventions of the last century,” Mr. Kelly said. “It will go down with radio in the pantheon of great inventions.”
For more about Paul Otlet, visit Wikipedia.
But I still insist that the true father of the internet was none other than Mark Twain.
I can still recall the day I first logged on to Google, then just the latest of a host of search engines. This morning I heard a news item about a new search engine: Cuil.
After a very quick inspection, I'm impressed. It's fast and it's pretty—you get graphics as well as links. I'd welcome your comments about it and how well it meets your needs.
Update, July 30: David Olive, a columnist for The Star in Toronto, is not impressed.
A few months ago I got a review copy of Blogwars, by David D. Perlmutter. Of course I was delighted, and I started to read it at once.
Then I put it down.
Today, facing a serious reading shortage, I picked it up again and made a real effort to get into it. It hadn't improved, but these stupid machines have taught me that we learn more from our mistakes than our successes.
So what's wrong with a book by a highly successful writer and professor of journalism, on the subject of political blogs and their growing impact on American life?
Put briefly, it's a print-on-paper document that needs to be more like web text.
A major design problem
I can't blame Perlmutter for the design of his book, but design is a major problem. The body text appears in a reasonably legible serif font. But the paragraphs are absurdly long, and subheads appear rarely. When they do, they're cramped boldface, barely legible—with underlines.
Now, I've been telling my students since the mid-1990s that you don't underline boldface text. Robin Williams made that simple point in 1995 in The Mac is Not a Typewriter.
Worse yet, the book includes excerpts from blogs using vast swathes of sans serif text, much of it in italics (see pages 144-147 for a really bad example).
You can get away with sans serif in short paragraphs with short lines, but not in lines of 17 to 20 words—not on screen, and not on paper.
Much of Perlmutter's text offers some interesting observations on the effect of political blogging in the 2004 US presidential election. But by failing to exploit the style of effective web text, he effectively muffles himself and undercuts whatever he's trying to say about this medium.
How web text is changing print text
When I started to teach webwriting in the late 1990s, I tried to draw a distinction between the habits of print readers and those of online readers. As one who started reading print on paper in 1947, I'm very habituated to it indeed.
But Perlmutter's book has taught me that the web is actually changing all our reading habits. Short, concise web text, well laid out, has an impact we don't get over. When we go back to print on paper, we're too impatient to put up with long sentences and long paragraphs.
Some of my favourite political bloggers, like Glenn Greenwald, still haven't learned that. His posts are long, with endless paragraphs and tedious patches of italic quotations.
A blog like Power Line, whose politics I find regrettable, at least presents itself in short, well-designed paragraphs. (But Power Line should keep its text columns narrower, and use a serif font for body text.)
Greenwald is influential despite his print-oriented text. But he'd more influential if he turned his long-winded paragraphs into short, punchy statements.
Power Line doesn't persuade me, but at least I get its point in a hurry. And I recognize that its authors are trying to make their text readable.
I hope David Perlmutter does a new edition of Blogwars, preferably in time for the fall election. But I hope he gets an editor and a designer who know how to create a print analog of a website, so his readers will understand what he's trying to tell us.
In Webwriting Resources, over on the left, I've removed some sites that hadn't been updated in several months. Other old sites are still there. Even though inactive, they offer some useful materials.
It's striking to see that most of the sites are lively and very up to date. If you're running a site of interest to webwriters, and you're not on the list, drop me a line.
Via Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox: How Little Do Users Read? His summary:
On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely.
The conclusion he draws: Unless you're writing for really dedicated readers with a strong interest in your subject, you should keep your text to no more than 100 words per page. I'd be interested in your reactions to his argument.
This morning I took part in a panel on webwriting, part of the Internet Marketing Conference. It was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot. One thing I learned: Miss 604, also known as Rebecca Bollwitt, is a very speedy blogger. She summed up my presentation (on concise text) with admirable concision and accuracy.
posted by Insight for Authors at 12:45 PM
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WordPress 2.6 Released
WordPress 2.6 was released today. I thought it was going to be released in August, but the developers really pushed it. WordPress 2.6 comes with a number of new features such as post revision tracking, live theme preview, Shift Gears, and Press This!
Watch the WordPress 2.6 release video to learn more about it.
As of today, .ME domains are open for public registrations. .ME has been the talk of the town because of its potential for internet users. .ME domains are just perfect for blogs. Just think about it, with a .ME domain you can register YOURNAME.ME.
.ME domains are not just limited to personal websites. It can be used as a catchy marketing tool. For example, verb-oriented domain names such as Contact.me, Drive.me, Date.me, Help.me, Love.me make perfect sense to visitors.
Well, you can purchase those premium domains only through the auction that’s coming up, but you can still get good .ME domain names if you hurry up.
It is little bit expensive and requires 2 years of contract, but it will be well worth your investment. I was going to register “Prayfor.me” but as I thought.. it’s gone. But I’ve found a couple of really nice domain names already. So register a .ME domain name now!
A number of Build a Niche Store forum members suggest that one should target niches that can’t be found anywhere but at auction.
But I disagree with this.
The majority of my BANS (Build a Niche Store) sites sell things that can be purchased in any retail stores, but I also have vintage auctions that sell only the things that can be bought through auctions.
What I learned from my EPN transaction stats is that people who buy stuff from auction sites already are likely to have an eBay account already. I have more ACRUs generated from a kitchenware BANS site than anything else. That kitchenware I’m talking about averages $20 and it can be purchased at any local stores like Walmart and Target.
The advice given by the BANS members is good, but ignoring the other half of the market isn’t a good idea. I suggest that you build BANS sites for both, because both work well.
Just a quick thought.
EPN (eBay Partner Network) has been actively sending out account termination letters to the publishers. The termination looks something like this…
“After reviewing your account transactions, we determined that your account has been generating non-bona fide transactions related to new registered users. This violates our Code of Conduct and breaches the agreement between us. Your account will be terminated immediately and no pending commissions will be paid to you. You are not permitted to rejoin the eBay Partner Network.
Almost all of the publishers who was banned claim that they’ve done nothing wrong, but I found a pattern from their explanation. People who got banned from EPN usually purchased traffic from unknown sources. I don’t know if this triggered a flag, but I think this is why their account was banned; Not from purchasing the traffic, but from the quality of traffic generate from these traffic brokers.
Like I said, I don’t know the definite answer, but it seems like purchasing traffic to your EPN affiliate website is a big risk. Don’t do it. If you really want to do it, you should filter purchased traffic with a landing page. I think that should be safe.
Please share your thoughts. Why these people are getting banned from EPN without an apparent reason? I hope EPN gives out a warning first before closing an account.
I’ve been blogging about niche marketing since 2005. After a few years, I’ve expanded my blog with several other blogs in subdomains because there was too much information to share in too many different categories. Since the move, I’ve lost my focus and got sidetracked. It was a big mistake.
Before it gets worse, I’m merging all my marketing-related blogs into a single blog. Everything’s imported to MarketingSyndrome.com, but all posts need to be reorganized into right categories. It might take me a few weeks to finish it. Everything’s in mess right now, so please use the search tool to find information on this blog.
I’m even bringing back the old design I’ve used last year to refresh my memory. :)
posted by Insight for Authors at 4:45 PM
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My Happy Crazy Life
posted by Insight for Authors at 5:03 PM
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Magnetic Sponsoring Made Simple