Let’s call a duck a duck, okay? By duck I mean spammer. If you spam me via email, Twitter, Facebook, direct mail or any other medium don’t be upset when I do my darnedest to block you from my community, my world, my time. I get it, spammers are people too, but you and I get to choose which people we associate with don’t we. That doesn’t mean I’m condoning being an asshole to people, but in a way I am.

If you spam me I will block you. If you mass spam me and I will probably snarkily comment about it and then block you. Let’s call it my own personal primal instinct. So, when you randomly message me and 20 of your closest strangers, whom you’ve never met, and ask me to follow you on Twitter and I ask you why I should follow you if the majority of your tweets are asking other people to follow you en mass, don’t be mad at me when I directly ask you why I should follow you. It’s a valid comment, a simple question and I think it’s a fair one. What would you bring to my world when the last 20 things I see when I skim through your Twitter life appear spammy? You can respond calling me an asshole, but really who does that reflect on, me or you?

I stand by my comment and I frankly don’t think I was much of an arse to this person (yes, this really happened). If you randomly found me and want to offer me something of value, like a question, a comment on my blog, actually read one of my tweets and reply to it and then ask me to follow that’s one thing, but it’s clearly another to follow 20 people and retweet their blog posts and then ask me to do follow you just because. I’m not that picky in who I follow, clearly, all I ask for is authenticity and I’ll be damned if I’ll apologize for asking someone why I should follow you. It’s not a snarky question, it’s not rude, it may be aloof but at least it’s not spammy.

Happy Spamming. If you quack like a duck, act like a duck but call yourself a horse makes no difference when I say I hate ducks.

Are you new online? Here are a few tips I put together for a potential client and larger ministry.

Perhaps you can use this information to get your own projects started.

Tools for your project & Strategy tips:

• Facebook – Make sure you use a business page. There are 4 types of accounts you can setup but make sure you choose the right one. A group will make it hard for anyone to join who has too many groups, business pages you can never cap out on. A profile is technically against Facebook rules and if you are caught with a business account as a personal profile they block your address. A community page is more like a wiki page and has less management tools and can’t be customized the way a business page can. See Facebook.com/AgencyCouture for an example of custom tabs. In the end the tabs could be customized with FBML (a type of code) to add your events, store, membership sign up and automate pulling in your blog. Use the side bar under the photo to enter contact information, other social networks and your site and a little tagline about the ministry. This NEEDS to be updates a min. of once a week and no more then 3 times a day. Too much you annoy people and too little they forget about you.
• Twitter – Choose wisely on your name, this can be changed but you want to make sure people remember it. Be sure to fill out the information in the profile completely, this will help you be found. Add your site address to it and on your background (image) add any other relevant information on contacting you or other social networks. You can automate pulling in you blog here, find other ministries, and connect with patrons. This is a great relationship tool, but beware of using it too much like a broadcast channel. People resent being talked “at” on Twitter rather then being talked with. Use tools like Tweet deck to find other users and manage lists and chatting.
• YouTube – technically YouTube boasts being the second largest search engine around, knowing that anyone would be a fool to be online and not utilize this as a free channel for connecting with people. Again, fill out your profile completely, and make sure you have a nice photo for the profile. You only get to choose your username once so choose wisely. Use a background to tell more of your story, but also make sure it matches your site and other social networks. This is a big part of branding. When you upload your videos, time of day is important. Think: will more people be online at 2 am or 10am? You’ll get a hang of when people watch your videos the most by watching analytics, in YouTube analytics are called insights. If you use a tool like TubeMogul you can get even more analytics and auto-upload your video to multiple sites saving you energy and time. Descriptions and titles are as important as anything in this process. Be sure to use keywords that describe your videos and descriptions that have keywords, links to your other social profiles, and links to your website. If one video is a follow up to another, make it a video reply. At the end of every video ask people to subscribe, it helps to remind them that they have not yet. At the beginning and end mention your site and use YouTube tools to add a link on your video to the site. Ask viewers to like your video, the more comments and likes the more popular your video is, the better it ranks on YouTube. You can use the embed tools to add your video to your site.
• Feedburner – is another great FREE tool that will allow you to auto send posts to followers via email, track readers, and promote the site.
• Mail chimp is another great newsletter tool, very affordable. Many people love constant contact but it costs 5 times as much.
• If you don’t have it already added, use google analytics on your site.
• Make sure all the pages of your site have a common template with a global navigation – meaning it looks the same on every page. This is important so you don’t confuse new comers and make it easy for them to find what they are looking for.
• Submit your sitemap to Google Webmaster tools. Add the sitemap as an auto xml to your site, you’ll need WordPress to do this.
• Build your site on WordPress. This should only take 8-10 hours to transfer the current template into WordPress. It will also make setting up new pages and a blog a hundred times easier. Make membership sign up part of your blog. You can bill people but you should also give them an option to pay online via Google Checkout and Paypal so you get money instantly. WordPress will also make it easy for multiple writers to contribute to your site and you can restrict access to certain parts of the site, like pages or publishing protocols.
• You can also let people subscribe to your Google events via your site (add your events to their Google account).

Dear Spam,

Why do you think I need a web designer? Hi, There is the least professional starter for any email right along with sir/ma’am spelled incorrectly (I’m a Miss if you you must never been a Mrs.). I receive enough of these types of emails that you are going to be the special recipient of my critiquing.

If your company has a website, get custom email addresses even if it is just ONE email address that looks like [email protected] and forward all return mail back to your gmail addresses. It’s super cheap to do this. You can get 100 for around 5 USD.

Speeeeeelling and grammar doesn’t have to be perfect, no one but a copy writer needs to be that perfect, but at least re-read through your letter and make sure it makes some semblance of sense.

I’m not impossible to find online, and neither is my company. So maybe you could look up some useful information about me and be more specific on how you want to ‘help’ me rather then using a template that you clearly send to millions of people every day. I prefer emails that have bullets on them for the important parts so if I want to I can skim down to that point and just read those. Any important links to your own work is REALLY helpful-if I ever where to make it to the point of thinking you are not spam.

You look forward to working with me? Why? Do you expect a solicited response. I’ll give you a hint. I am a web design, marketing, interactive strategy, SEO and social media consultant. It would take more then cheap prices to get me to offshore my work. Their isn’t enough work to go around and I don’t want to associate my name or company’s brand with cheap marketing titillation, that by now I would hope even the least technologically savvy business owner could spot. Outside of potentially off shoring my work- many ads, like yours, seem to think I need your services but you never mention why. Which of my sites did you stumble on because it’s never mentioned in any emails. I rather like most of my work, if you think something is wrong with it by all means lay it on me.

Best of luck in your endeavors. I will not be needing you $10/hour web design services. I have two quotes that possibly say best why:

- “If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” -RED ADAIR
- Beware of cheap work, it often is as it sounds. You get what you pay for.

No, really. The fastest horse DOESN’T always win. In dressage, jumping and eventing horses and riders win on points based on if they are too fast, too slow, perfect riding, looks, and if they knock over some kind of stick the horse must jump over. This is also a great analogy for life, because many people believe the early bird get the worm, the fastest horse wins and la de da. It’s not always true. Yes, life has rules but every sport is different.

Entrepreneurs have different life rules compared to corporate lawyers, labor workers and farmers. If you are a sales person your day is run by when you can get your appointments, if you can make a living off of only taking your clients to late night drinks more power to you. Let not ye be judged until something something something. I’m not here to preach but I’m pretty sure that verse ends with something about you not judging other people over little sticks or sties in their eye (small faults) before checking out the giant one in your own eye. How many people on Twitter are quick to judge me because I frequently screw up the terms There/their or than/then? I’m not asking anyone to hire me as their personal editors. I’m a designer and yes I do social media strategy, customization and management. For the most part that management doesn’t involve me doing any copy writing for my clients. So why do you care? I appreciate the criticism and I thank those who keep me on track. I’m not mad about it by any means because comments and feedback are my bread and butter. They keep me on track. I jump for joy every time I notice even a troll sending me a rude tweet because I know they cared enough to both listen and I got to them enough that they cared about me to give me feedback. I worry less when I’m getting feedback of any kind then when no one is talking to me or telling me I’m doing right or wrong. When that stops, worry, because it means no one cares any more (and I don’t just mean a week or two of silence especially if you only blog once a week).

On a similar note I have people tease, bitch, complain or telling me I’m doing wrong by when I wake up or go to bed. Whose business is that but my own? My parents don’t even complain about when I go to bed, they didn’t even when I was a kid. Why? Not because they don’t care but because I’m a work o holic. Not compared to many of my ex boyfriends but still in my own way I get the job done. Yes, if I don’t get the job done by all means complain if not shut up (and I mean that in the kindest way possible). It’s a pain and benefit of working for myself. I work sometimes until 8am. Yes, I’ve done that at least three times a month since I started working for myself (when I wasn’t living with my ex). In turn I vary on my wake up time. You want me up at 6-8 am? I have to go to bed at 9-11pm. No later then 11 or I wont be up until 9-1pm. I’m not kidding, this girl likes her sleep. I also work all day though, even while I’m watching tv at night. Even when I didn’t work for myself. Part of it is I like my work and part is that I’m not good at not always feeling semi-productive. My mind is always on a roll and needs an outlet. Probably why I always have 1-5 test projects on the side or 2-3 hobbies. So if I’m doing something awesome at 10am-3pm on a typical ‘work day’ feel what I want you to feel, jealous because I don’t feel at all bad for enjoying my little free time.

I work on a computer. Travel a lot. Live on a Ranch, and 300 years ago the majority of people didn’t even carry watches. There might be one big clock in a city center. Time only has the power we give it. Real time is the amount of energy you have to give to the day, the amount of motivation you give to the world, and the moments from sun up to sun down that we have to enjoy the great outdoors before we either need lights or country folk just head indoors and I tremble from the creepy howling sounds of the local coyote pack.

So when I say the fastest horse doesn’t always win I’m referring to efficiency, great -quality work and quality customer service. Just because you get things done fast and half assed doesn’t mean you win. Just because you came up with a faster way to reach more potential customers that may steer on the edge of spammy and you may get one in a million clients, why do it when you know making calls you will get 99 percent of the clients? That is if you aren’t a telemarketer who is also underpaid and working just like a spam bot. I mean call, know who they are ahead of time- not just buy a list (YES DO RESEARCH), know their name and do your darnedest to pronounce their name, talk like a friend, communicate not sell. Just because you know what to do, doesn’t mean you have to do it by the book or doesn’t mean you’re doing it right/wrong.

Learn by what works not by what an “expert” says is correct. I read the Tipping Point recently by Malcomn Gladwell, along with Outliers. Listen or read it. It will give you some perspective on success. Those who are successful, don’t jump steps or skip ahead. They practice and become the best part out of luck of being in the perfect situation and partially from a shit ton of practice. In fact he says research shows those who are considered all stars or the top of their field generally have had 3 hours a week for ten years or the equivalient of 10,000 hours of practice. He noted stats and convincing information regarding hockey players, Bill Gates and many other top of the line people. Read, learn, practice and remember just because you are the fastest – well you could be getting docked points for not being incontrol of yourself, the game and your horse. Literally if you are into equine sports. Speaking of those, if you know anyone with a horse for sale I recently built a classifieds site just for them: horse-stallions.com if you check it out and comment on this post I’ll give you a month free.

Happy New Year.

When someone offers to pay you for advertising on your site, it’s most likely a competitor or similar non-competing services. Keep that in mind when negotiating how much they will pay for the ad space monthly.

How much should an advertiser pay you?

I always consider the other person’s services first. How much would that person make off of just one referral from my site? How many views is that page currently averaging? If a particular page is currently averaging 100 people per month (which is easy to figure out if you use Google Analytics) then you know that person has a chance to receive 100 referrals per month from you. If that person’s services they want to advertise on your site is worth $20 per customer that means if one in a hundred people purchases their services after being referred from your site they will make $20/month.

Next I determine if those are services or product I sell, or ever intend to sell. If I don’t then no big deal, but I also consider how much I could make if I where to be an affiliate for another site. How much would I make off one referral from that person’s competitor? Taking these two factors into account consider that the service to me is worth $30/month. That means if someone who was considering using my services leaves because I mentioned a competitor I’m losing out on that money. Most of my services are based on an ongoing retainer so I have to consider the possibility of losing a long term relationship, not just a one time sale. These numbers are just based off one sale, but even there I’m losing $10/month. What if that was ten people or all one hundred people? I have significantly more then 100 people who view my site and posts monthly. This is why I offer my advertising pricing individually per each of my sites (I have somewhere around 30-50 sites and no desire to go counting them just for this post).

A few other factors I consider in pricing:

• Where do they want the ad on my site? The index page? A subpage? Every page?
• How do they want to advertise? A giant link? A BIG banner? A little ad? A BIG banner at the top/bottom of the page?
• What is their goal? Sales, branding or SEO? If SEO they are probably going to expect me not to put a rel=”nofollow” on all of their links because that wouldn’t help them.
• Do they want me to write a review of their services in a blog post?
• Do they also want me to mention them in social media? Or advertise on my social media?
• Are they willing to pay all upfront for 6 months to a year or do they want me to invoice them monthly?
• How do they want to pay me: check, Paypal, Google Checkout, other?

Other Considerations if you’re new to Interactive Promotions:

• How many links do they want- should I discount for multiple links? (that is up to you)
• Don’t sound spammy or deceitful. Don’t let someone push you around for $6/month. It’s better to not accept an advertiser then to compromise yourself, your site, or because someone wanted you to write something you don’t agree with.
• Make sure to review sites and advertisers before promoting them.
• Remember the new FTC rules for bloggers that you need to disclose if you are getting paid to promote another product or service. Make sure this is obvious and does not blend in with your own.