Re: Going Beyond The Question (and Search Engine Spamming)

I'm responding to this because a lot of what you're saying is exactly what I'm trying to be all about.

> In a nutshell: UCE (or spam) works, so it won't go away by forcing the
> spammers out of business.

I believe educating potential victims is more effective than targeting victimizers.

> What it comes down to is a question of ethics. What may be
> "legal" may not be the best thing for you and your business.

I'm having a hard time getting people interested in ethics. It's much more boring than money. I'm finding that people do get excited about scams, so I'm trying to subtly open people up to thinking about exactly why something is a scam. For example, I just wrote something about how Charles Ponzi had nothing but satisfied customers when he got busted for mail fraud. Maybe this will change someone's mind somewhere down the line.

> Many of you know what I think of frequent e-mails, even when they are sent
> only to those who have requested to be on a mailing list. Is it UCE? Not
> really. Is it ethical? I can't tell you that; only you can. If I sign up
> for a newsletter and get an ad from you in my Inbox every day, I still
> maintain that it's spam because I asked for a specific item -- not a daily
> commercial soliciation.

The way around this is to have separate lists for your newsletter, sales (special offers, etc), affiliates, and every other aspect of your business. If a person opts into all of these things it's hard for them to complain about getting too much email. Of course, most companies don't do this. My Web host, ItsYourNet, does.

> So you have to decide how you want to run your business, and in the
> process, perhaps decide whom you want to be.

Many successful people have started by earning respect before they sold a single thing. This is even considered a proven strategy in quite a few Internet marketing courses. It suits my personality so that's what I'm doing.

> As far as I'm concerned, anyone that talks about search engine spamming as
> a legitimate online marketing technique is lacking integrity. All it
> really does is give you an unfair advantage. Nothing wrong with a
> "fair" advantage, like hard work, study, experience, and
> investing in your business, but the casualness with which this
> "unfair" advantage is being promoted recently is just plain
> wrong.

I'm not sure "search engine spamming" is possible. Maybe you're talking about ridiculous amounts of link exchanges and things like that. I recently wrote an article about a site selling an ebook about basset hounds. This site has 30 pages full of links, and a lot of the links are to stuff like "Angela Basset" and "Basset Furniture". My final conclusion in the article was that yes, this is somewhat sleazy, but not more than any other form of advertising.

Another interesting tidbit of info is that Search Engine News, the #1 source of SEO info (that I know of), has their own ebook, the title of which is "Unfair Advantage". The only reason it's unfair is that people who don't pay for the research don't get the advantage.