I browse all the internet-related jobs in Utah almost daily. I have never seen a blogging job. Today I found one. Clearlink is hiring bloggers to write 50 word posts for five dollars. It’s about mainstream TV shows (which, I admit I’m too geeky to watch - I mostly watch the news - if any television). This would be a great job if you’re already into these shows and could write a decent post in about 10 mins. Read about the blogging job here.
This is a guest post by Paul Wilson who recently started a new blog about internet marketing at www.eckko.com. Paul has been helping me with the redesign of Newspapergirl. Look for more guest posts from Paul and let me know if you’re interested in writing one (through the contact form).
Recently, I have been using the web to do a lot of outsourcing, and it seems it is rather difficult to do this unless you have a PayPal account. Anyone who has used PayPal knows that this company will do anything to get you to use your bank account, instead of your credit card. I believe PayPal does this because their margins are higher with the bank than with credit card companies.
Whether this is the situation or not doesn’t really matter to me as a user. What matters to me as a user is that I am able to pay my creditors the way I want to. I remember back when PayPal allowed us to select the primary source of funding, whether it be our credit card or bank account.
If you have noticed, this is no longer the case. Now PayPal uses by default your bank account, and if you don’t want to use this option you have to manually change it every time you make a payment. Not too difficult of a task to do, but definitely annoying.
I was sharing my PayPal frustration with my friend who runs an online camping store. He told me how he ordered $5,000 worth of merchandise for his store through PayPal. Unfortunately, he was unaware that his bank account was automatically selected as the primary funding source, and instead of $5,000 being taken from his credit card, it was taken straight from his bank account.
With PayPal’s largest demographic making between $5,000 to $8,000 a month, this sort of mistake could seriously hurt. It takes just one small, but legally savvy, company to be hit like this and I can see a lawsuit being drafted and served straight to PayPal’s President Rajiv Dutta’s desk.
A good example of this being a viable possibility is the current lawsuit against Time Warner by Matthew Meeds. Meeds, an angry customer, sued Time Warner because he was forced to rent a cable box when he could easily purchase a box on the open market for less. Make no mistake, I am not advocating suing PayPal, but they do leave themselves wide open to these sort of negative actions. Especially, when their customers are told exactly what they can and cannot do with their own hard earned money.
Interestingly enough, as corporations are becoming more and more aware of the consumer’s voice, they are reluctantly bowing to it. This is obvious when you see corporations like MSN, Yahoo, and Walmart reversing their decisions to no longer issue keys to DRM songs, when their mass customer base begins rumbling.
I actually called PayPal on two different occasions to complain about this minor, but annoying, glitch in their service. Both times the customer service representative told me that they receive several calls a day with unhappy customers complaining about the exact same thing. Hopefully, if enough customers complain, PayPal will listen to their consumers. If not, PayPal might painfully be forced to realize that long gone are the days of greedy corporations force-feeding their customers what they don’t want because it is to the company’s advantage. ~Paul W.
The Traditional Press Release Is Dead! The Made-for-the-Internet Release is News Now. NEW Expanded Edition
This is part of the introduction to a guide I bought on MarketingSherpa. I like to keep up on online PR so I’ve had my eye on it for some time. I finally bought it two days ago. I hesitated to give an honest review because right before I read it I happened to go to the author’s blog. Then she commented one of my posts. I wish I had something more positive to say.
The MarketingSherpa’s guides I’ve read are very good quality. This one was misleading. It should’ve been titled or subtitled as “How to Write Press Releases and Email Pitches for the Internet.” Essentially this is about writing clearly for a web audience. No case studies or actual results, just re-writes of press releases and samples of email pitches.
For example, I could tell you that my press release for Shoemoney actually resulted in calls and appearances on the radio and with news stations. If I took the time I could give real results/data. Of course my press releases are intended to get you visibility online, but who’s going to turn down traditional media? As a sidenote it was about press release #4 that resulted in calls for one of my long term clients.
I’ve found that besides online optimization, your press release should contribute in some way - and is not just all take. You can link to other sources, and make the story rather than the company more prominent. This is in social networking style (sharing, starting conversations).
Top 5 reasons I’m returning this online PR guide:
To sum up, MarketingSherpa should carry my guide (when it’s done!) or B.L. Ochman should do a real revision or lower the price and sell it as a writing style guide. I hope she does and I’ll be the first to review it.
Seth Godin wrote that if you want to make something seem real, you need to make it closer (or more tangible). For example, if you say you’re taking a trip to Europe next year it seems far away. If you say the you’re going to London on February 8, it is suddenly much more real.
He says make it closer - I say make it specific. This is what you need for SEO too. A search engine can’t necessarily tell the difference between “glassses” that you drink out of and “glasses” that you see out of. How do search engines decide which web sites will come up first for a search term? One factor is in specific related words. So if you sell eye glasses then use related words like the brand names of glasses you sell, types of glasses (like sunglasses, or reading glasses), etc. Use the specific terms on your web site and in your links. Then you’re marketing better because you’ll come up for the right kind of glasses.
So my point is: it’s important to be SPECIFIC in your marketing - not only in real life - but in your online marketing.
It looks like I haven’t been blogging, but this week has been very productive. I’ve posted on Marketing Pilgrim and several posts on OrangeSoda’s blog (some scheduled). Plus my my favorite - Twittering. I wish like Twitter, I could have automatically post a weekly roundup of my posts on other sites.
I’m writing and thinking a lot about social media and at the same time trying to expand my offline network to other communities besides bloggers and geeks. You know, having people to dinner and friends to go to movies or shows with. Going out with my husband. Going to the park with my son. Things like that.
Today Justin Hackworth - a wedding photographer - took headshots which will become part of my long overdue blog redesign. I have a new logo and once I get the pictures I’ll get my first customized theme and fresh look. Geeks tend to care more about functionality than design. I tend to care more about getting my thoughts down than about functionality or design (I am a geek too!). But it’s time I practice what I preech. Which is, that all of those elements are important.
