virtual or digital libraries and copyrights protection

Make 'em Buy or Make 'em Miserable!

by Mike Banks Valentine

This weekend I watched a program on television called - I kid

you not - "Buyology". This show is about marketing and sales

of products in the free world. I found the show utterly and

completely fascinating -- not because I'm a web marketer, but

because it seemed entirely like science fiction, or just

plain fiction.

It seems there are people out there who spend their workdays

studying "consumer behavior" and how to influence that behavior

without our conscious participation and knowledge! As a search

engine optimizer, my job is to make small business web sites

rank well in search results at the major search engines. The

goal of that activity is to attract online buyers of my clients'

products to their web site. Fortunately, that's where my job

ends and the web site takes over. I generate traffic and the

site supposedly generates sales.

In the real world though, there are people dedicating their

professional lives to making certain that consumers not only

purchase specific brands, but fall in love with those brands,

entice them to buy those brands next time, and indeed to feel

they can't survive without those products! The program showed

a "marketing anthropologist" following a woman through the

grocery store observing her buying habits and asking questions

about the purchases made.

This woman bought Cascade dishwashing detergent exclusively in

a specific size package. When she discovered that size of the

product missing from the shelf in the supermarket, she couldn't

bring herself to buy the larger box, or -- GASP! -- to switch

brands so she could get that same size box! Asked why, she said,

"I've always bought that brand in that size, I grew up with it!"

This is the ultimate customer as long as Cascade doesn't change

the size of that box or alter their packaging. Maybe it's a guy

thing, but I honestly don't get it! SudsyDish liquid works too.

Now I'll be the first to recommend changes to a web site if I

believe it unlikely to sell products once I generate sufficient

traffic for a client because the "buy now" button is misplaced

or because the site seems unprofessional. Thank goodness though

that I don't find myself studying consumer behavior to determine

brand awareness or loyalty! I admit that server log files and

traffic analysis software serve similar purposes online and can

be used to determine visitor paths through the site and tell how

they searched keywords to make their way to a client web site.

CRM software makes similar attempts to categorize and study

consumer behavior but I find it creepy that there are consumer

spies viewing my shopping behavior in the department store via

security cameras as the Buyology TV program showed me. Session

cookies do the same thing online but I can tell my browser not

to accept them. My favorite online humor site is called

futurefeedforward and they offered a wonderful column this

week, "Wal-mart Tags Shoppers with Subcutaneous Cookies" from

the year 2009. View the story at http://futurefeedforward.com

There's another article, "Ad Pox Cured by Branded Products"

at FutureFeedForward that suggests a solution for branded

product loyalty guarantees. Consumers will become ill if they

can't get their beloved brands and are rapidly cured once the

product is purchased again. In other words, "Make Them Buy It

or Make Them Miserable!" This comes to us in the year 2064.

Gaining search engine visibility for small business web sites

seems so much nobler, (ahem!) than selling cigarettes to teens

with cartoony camels and determining consumer behavior while

spying on them with video cameras in the isles of supermarkets.

I think we actually enjoy far more privacy online than we do

in the real world. My job is to get people to visit client

web sites. I'll leave it to the consumer anthropologists to

figure out how to make them buy once they get there. Sheesh!

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Mike Valentine does Search Engine Placement for the Small

Business http://website101.com/Search_Engine_Positioning

WebSite101 "Reading List" Weekly Netrepreneur Tip Sheet

Weekly Ezine emphasizing small business on the Internet

http://website101.com/arch/

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Do You Know Who Owns Your Words?

by Mike Banks Valentine

Writing for the web creates a lot of new questions about who

owns all those words circulating out there on web sites, in

ezines and in ebooks. What about the CD's created from many

of those words in all those digital forms all over the web?

Instead of books or articles or columns, it's all being re-

named "Content".

In a 2nd Circuit Court decision last year, six freelance

writers won a case against the New York Times, Newsday and

Time for copyright infringement. Their work was re-sold as

digital content on a CDROM and later published on the web.

Their claim that they did NOT relicense their work for use

on the web or in digital compilations and were entitled to

compensation when that content was re-sold was accepted by

the court in a judgement against the original publishers of

that content.

That decision was upheld by the Supreme Court in June of

2001 by a 7-2 vote. But what about articles offered free by

by writers online?

Many writers online offer their articles "Free" for use on

the web, in ezines or in ebooks available online. But in fact

are being paid by the publishers by requiring that "resource

boxes" be used, such as the four line blurb following this

article. This is, in fact, a form of payment and is agreed

to by those writers in exchange for the traffic, publicity,

subscriptions and exposure gained when readers visit the

authors web site, subscribe to their ezine or see advertise-

ments run for a fee on their web site.

"Content" is proliferating, professional "paid" writers

work is becoming less valuable online and some professionals

are shouting, "ENOUGH! We want to be paid for our work!"

An article this week at "Ezine-Tips.com" discusses how to

raise the ire of any professional writer by asking them to

write for free.

http://ezine-tips.com/articles/management/20010316.shtml

In an earlier article by the same author, (Janet Roberts,

associate editor of "List-Universe.com") many articles by

online writers are labeled "advertising in disguise".

I'll buy that definition in many cases. I'll buy it in this

case. I'm advertising my weekly newsletter and my web site

by offering opinion and insight on the web. And it works!

I've writteny and widely that content I provide is

just like an ad for my web site and my business.

http://www.workz.com/content/1680.asp

Advertisers pay to have their ads appear in my newsletter

and on my web site. You might say that my "advertising in

disguise" attracts advertising to support my advertising

if you want to see that advertising as inherently wrong.

But I'll also ask then why is it that my articles are well

read and syndicated across many networks of web sites and

ezines. Those web sites and ezines WANT that content and

believe it benefits their visitors and subscribers.

I run a business content distribution service called

"Free-Content" at:

http://yahoogroups.com/group/Free-Content

Over 500 well respected writers and publishers subscribe to

that list and publish articles distributed there. I'm about

to expand that service into additional topics and expect all

to be just as successful as the business content list.

It's not advertising, it's content, it's free and I am a

professional. What does that all mean? I leave it to you to

decide.

And now for a word from our sponsor.

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WebSite101 "Reading List" Weekly Netrepreneur Tip Sheet

Ezine emphasizing small business online http://website101.com/arch/

e-tutorial online at: http://website101.com/shortcourse.html

By week's end you're ready expand your business to the web!

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