EMA Podcast 002: “6 Ways to Avoid Sabotaging Your Online Business”
Hello, readers and listeners!
EMA Podcast 002 is here: “6 Ways to Avoid Sabotaging Your Online Business”.
For anyone who was waiting for it to be released yesterday, please accept my sincerest apologies. I was having some audio difficulties and I didn’t get everything finished until around 5:00 this morning, at which point I just had to get to bed!
So, albeit a day late, here’s my latest podcast. I intend to try to get my podcasts on iTunes very soon, in fact they may well already be up there by the time you read this. If they’re not, please keep checking back and please be patient with me, bearing in mind that this stuff is all completely new to me.
“6 Ways to Avoid Sabotaging Your Online Business”
In this podcast I do cover some areas that I have written about before. However, I thought it would be good to expand on some of these points as they are still very, very relevant and the problems I highlight are still very evident in the industry. If I can draw your attention to these and help to prevent even one person from falling into the trap of making any of these mistakes, then that will be a job well done.
So click that “Play” button, sit back and enjoy the podcast!
[powerpress]
Brilliant podcast Glenn. Thank you.
You mentioned lots of points that I have, indeed, experienced first hand. I’ve lost count of the times that I purchased ‘life-time’ access to a product, only to find that they had vanished after just a few short months.
I released a WSO some time ago and have to agree with you that good communication is essential. I had one particlular buyer who was extremely rude when communicating with me at first (But I get it… he had obviously been burned so many times by other vendors). After I addressed his issues in a polite manner, we were able to iron out the misunderstanding. He has continued to be a loyal follower.
Thanks again – Best wishes, Kevin
Kevin Barham recently posted…Don’t Be Afraid to Fail – Quick Start Challenge
Hi Kevin,
Thanks for stopping by and for your great comment! I’m glad you enjoyed the podcast, the points I mentioned are ones I feel very strongly about and feel that need to be highlighted.
Yes indeed, I very, very rarely buy anything now that is web-based for fear of it just disappearing overnight. Also, with any courses that I get, I always rip the videos to my hard drive. It’s sad that I should feel this way but, as I mentioned in the podcast, there is far too much casual behaviour in the IM space.
I’m glad that you were able to get things sorted out with your customer and, in turn, have him become a loyal follower. If you had chosen to behave in the way that many do then he could well have turned his back on you and alerted others to stay away too.
Thanks again for stopping by, Kevin. I have actually just had a look at your blog and it looks great! One piece of advice, though, is to enable the default WordPress commenting. You’ll find that you will get a lot more comments that way, it will encourage interactivity and it helps to create backlinks between blogs. Facebook is all well and good, but not everyone wants to use Facebook to comment on blogs and, furthermore, not everyone uses Facebook, so for those people, there is no way to comment.
If you choose to, you could have Facebook as an additional means of commenting. I’ve seen other bloggers do this and it seems to work for them, but as an either/or scenario I would always advise using the WordPress system in favour of any third-party commenting systems.
»Glenn«
Glenn Shepherd recently posted…EMA Podcast 004: “5 Top Tips for a Successful Blog”
Hi Glenn
Thank you for your suggestion. I have been ‘umming and ahhing’ about whether to use WP comments or FB comments. I had heard arguments for both.
I totally get your reasoning and I like it. I have now switched to WP comments. One big concern was Spam comments but I have added a plugin: “WP-SpamShield Anti-Spam” and I’ll see how I get on. I really appreciate you mentioning this to me.
I wonder, do you suffer with Spam Comments much?
All the best
Kevin
Kevin Barham recently posted…Don’t Be Afraid to Fail – Quick Start Challenge
Hey Kevin,
I have never had a big problem with spam. If you have a good plugin, such as the one you mentioned, it should do a good job of nuking any obvious spam before it gets near.
As for the cleverer kind of spam, I sussed how to spot it a while back, so I never find it to be an issue. The thing is, people often go all gung-ho with regards to spam and actually end up creating far more work for themselves by setting things up to manually approve all comments, thinking that this is the best way to combat it. It isn’t.
All you should need to do, in addition to having a good plugin, is set up commenting so that all first-time commenters will require their first comment to be approved. Only once that has happened will their comments be published automatically. In fact, you don’t even need a plugin at all to prevent spam being published if you do things this way. But what a good plugin will do is automatically delete obvious spam before you even see it, or it will flag suspect messages so that you can check them for approval.
With both those aspects in place, there should be absolutely no reason why any spam comments should end up being published on your blog. By having things set up this way, you will obviously still have to manually approve some comments and there will also be some occasions when your spam plugin may act over-zealously and mark a legitimate comment as spam. But all this is about as much work as you will have to take on. Far, far better than having to approve each and every comment each and every time!
What you need to look out for is the first-time comments that appear natural. They will usually have one or more of the following tell-tale signs, some more obvious than others:
1) The ‘commenter’ doesn’t have a Gravatar (this doesn’t necessarily mean anything on its own, though. Spammers sometimes use Gravatars and legitimate commenters sometimes don’t).
2) The comment is too generic and doesn’t mention anything specifically about your post.
3) The website URL is either not relevant to your niche and/or appears to be a generic, off-the-shelf type of website running on automatic.
4) The e-mail address is a series of apparently random letters and numbers.
There could be other tell-tale signs that would ring alarm bells to me if I saw them, but the above points are the main ones that spring to mind. Just to give you an example of the type of seemingly genuine comment that you might receive (I’ve seen many bloggers approve these and reply to them, but I can spot them as spam a mile off):
“Wow! I have been looking for information about this for a long time! I am so glad that I found your blog. I will definitely share this wonderful post and will recommend your blog to my friends”.
The reason a comment like that may fool someone is because they are expecting something that is blatantly advertising something, or some auto-generated nonsense. But spammers are getting much more crafty. In the above example, the big warning sign is that there is no reference at all to anything specific. One check of the website that they are linking back to will confirm that it is spam. Another thing to bear in mind is that these type of comments are very often all variations of the same type of message, so the more you see them, the more you will become attuned to spot them.
One cautionary note about this, though, is that you will, of course, sometimes get visitors to your blog whose native language isn’t English. Because of this, it can be easy to mistake their less-than-perfect English as a spam comment. Again, a check on the website they are linking back to will usually confirm whether they are genuine or not, especially if they link back to a blog where it has a picture of the same person as in the Gravatar and the style of language in their blog posts matches that of the comment left for your blog.
It’s a learning curve, but so long as you have a good anti-spam plugin and manually approve all first-time commenters, it’s one that shouldn’t be difficult to master. 🙂
»Glenn«
Glenn Shepherd recently posted…Not Getting Results? Focus on the NEGATIVE!
Thanks for your detailed response Glenn.
The tips that you mention for being able to ‘spot’ a spam comment makes perfect sense. This is something that I do, almost without thinking, when it comes to email spam so it’s not going to be a stretch to apply that same logic.
I appreciate what you say with regards to commenters who do not have English as their first language. I am targeting a global audience so really appreciate that tip 🙂
Talk soon
Kevin
Kevin Barham recently posted…Don’t Be Afraid to Fail – Quick Start Challenge
Hi Glenn,
Very intense podcast. I had no knowledge that the six methods of how to behave with your customers in business. This is all new knowledge to me with the exception of giving value to your customers.
It’s just like the real world. People being dishonest, scamming other people, being misleading, when they need to be upfront. These types of behaviors I have not come across yet, perhaps because I’m fairly new to the Online world.
I have not come across people venting to hurt other people yet, but this is not a good way to treat your customers. We should at all times treat our customers with respect Online, no matter what.
Misleading people is not a good thing to do and you are right, legal action can be taken.
Poor support, I have not come across but in time I probably will. It’s hard for me to understand how people can behave in such a manner.
Thank you for the six tips to sabotaging my business!
You have a wonderful day,
Linda.
Linda Schrier recently posted…Learning Through Adversity
Hi Linda,
Yes, it’s a little hard-hitting but it needs to be. I don’t pull any punches when it comes to business ethics.
I think things have cleaned up a lot over the last couple of years compared to how they used to be, but the amount of sheer trash that was out there made things extremely difficult for newbies.
With regards to venting, I don’t think people do it in order to hurt anyone, they simply feel annoyed and frustrated about whatever it is that’s bugged them. But I have seen it more than once when someone I’m subscribed to has written an angry e-mail to their list to voice how annoyed they are at whatever the situation is. I think they just do it because they need an outlet, but your e-mail list is not it! Can you imagine the Managing Director of, say, Walmart, standing on a box in the middle of the store, shouting expletives through a megaphone and complaining about how hard done to he’s been? That’s pretty much what a Marketer is doing when they vent to their list.
As you say, quite rightly, treating customers with respect at all times is essential.
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts, Linda. I hope you’re keeping well. 🙂
»Glenn«
Glenn Shepherd recently posted…EMA 001: The Number One Newbie Traffic Mistake That Could Cost You Thousands (And Your Sanity!)