When email becomes overwhelming

September 29, 2010 by John Dilbeck · 10 Comments
Filed under: Advertising and Marketing, Musings, email marketing 

When email becomes overwhelming, it becomes a time waster and an obstacle to doing anything productive.

Normally, the most productive time in my whole day for writing and accomplishing a marketing goal is the first two or three hours of my day. Most days, I wake up around 4 or 5 am and work for two or three hours while I drink a pot of coffee. Then, it’s time for breakfast and dealing with the daily chores, such as checking the social networks I manage and moderate, responding to comments on my blogs, playing on Facebook for awhile, making sure none of my major sites have been hacked (by looking at their home pages), and dealing with email.

I’ve tried for over a decade to make it easy to find me and contact me via email. I’ve put my email address all over the web, in more places than I’ll ever remember, and now it’s coming back to bite me in the butt.

I started with email on the old ARPA network, before the Internet, before the Web, before Google, before most of the things we take for granted now. I remember when I knew (personally) only three people with email addresses besides myself. It wasn’t unusual back in those almost-prehistoric days to send an email and then call them on the phone to see if they got it.

I remember being happy when I got an email from a friend. It was a joy that was almost like receiving a birthday or Christmas card in the mail.

Those days are long gone, however.

As useful as email is, now it has become an anchor around my neck. A weight I pull uphill every morning. A cool drink of water just out of my reach. A chore to be endured rather than enjoyed.

This morning, I waded through 2286 emails (that is not an exaggeration — it’s the actual count) and deleted all but 66 of them.

I have all sorts of spam blocking rules in place, I’m using two spam blocking services, and I still manually go through all the subject lines on my email account in my browser to delete all the ones that are of no interest, are spam, or otherwise just clutter my inbox.

It took over two and a half hours just to scan all the subject lines and pull the gold nuggets out of the mud hole. (I was going to say something else a lot more gross, but I went back and edited it before publishing.)

Then I deleted and purged all those I didn’t want.

From that point, it took less than 30 seconds to download all the little gold nuggets into Eudora, my business email client of choice. Later today, I’ll work through those emails. Some I’ll read and discard. Others I’ll read and save. Others I’ll skim and save for later.

I’ve already responded to the three that needed a response and replied to a friend with a personal email.

Without all the damned spam and garbage, I could have done this task in less than five minutes and enjoyed it.

So, the time has come to get this millstone off of my neck.

Before the end of the year, I’ll be closing my public email account and I’ve already switched to two new email services. One will be a strictly private address for good friends and family, only. If I tell you that email address, it’s because I like corresponding with you and I trust you not to give it to anyone else. Not many will ever know that address. I’ll check it a couple of times a day and respond as quickly as possible.

I’ve set up a new business email address and I’m not sure how I’m going to use it yet. One thing I know, I’m never going to make it public, in an effort to avoid the spam harvesters out there and the lowlifes who use them.

I will go through my contact list and I’ll be sending some of you one or both of my new email addresses. Before the end of the year, I’ll change my old address and put an autoresponder on it saying that the account is closed and referring someone to my Contact Us page on AYearFromNow.com.

I’m hoping that this will slow down the torrent of unwanted email to a trickle, but I don’t believe it will stop all the spam.

When I first set up my public email address, it was a real status symbol to have not only your name as a domain, but your name as the email account on that domain. Now, everyone who has thought ahead has their name as a domain, even if they do nothing with it other than to keep it out of the hands of those who would pretend to be someone they aren’t.

I’ll be unsubscribing from all lists and RSS feeds and resubscribing with my new address. I’ll go through the 1,314 online accounts I have and either close them or change my contact address. (Now, you know why it probably won’t get done until near the end of the year.)

I narrowed my focus earlier this year, and I’m going to narrow it again over the next few months.

I may never get all of this back under control, but I intend to do my best.

What about you?

How do you manage your email?

Do you have multiple accounts for different purposes? Do you use one good client and filter incoming email into multiple inboxes based on subject and/or priority?

Do you fight the spam you receive or endure and ignore it?

I’m looking for real advice here.

I’ll continue using Eudora for my business email and I’m using Apple’s Mail program for my private friends and family account. So, don’t suggest that I switch desktop clients. It ain’t agonna happen.

I’ll be using gmail.com as part of my business email solution and another service I won’t mention for my private email.

So, what works for you? Do you have something that works, or are you as overwhelmed as I am right now?

What’s your story?

Act on your dream!

JD

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One more reason to use SBI to build my sites

September 6, 2010 by John Dilbeck · 8 Comments
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Sitesell and Site Build It 

A couple of days ago, I came across another reason to like SBI so much.

I received an email from the security department at HostGator that one of my oldest websites had been compromised and several phishing scripts had been installed. They found and deleted them and then I had to take several hours and look through the whole site, delete several sections, update scripts, remove some I was no longer using, change passwords, and generally wasted half a day because of someone messing with my site.

At one time, that site was my biggest money-maker, but life intervened, North Carolina passed their new tax nexus laws, I was dropped by several large affiliate programs, and now the site earns practically nothing.

Still, it’s one of my oldest and favorite sites, so I keep it around.

I used to be one of those people who didn’t really like it that SBI didn’t allow us to use PHP, PERL, and other scripts on our sites. Now, I’m one of those who is happy that they don’t. It makes it much harder for someone to compromise our sites.

Over the last 13 years, I’ve built dozens of websites, blogs, communities, and forums, most using publicly available scripts. I’m one of those people who has to test everything and come to my own conclusions based on my experience and not what someone tells me.

I’ve wasted several of those years, as a result.

In almost every case, when one of my sites became popular and started producing some real income, it was hacked and destroyed. I would fix the problem, rebuild the site, and go on. Eventually, each of them became more trouble than they were worth and I let them die.

Now, I’m down to a few sites and the only ones that have NEVER given me even a minute of trouble are my sites powered by SBI. Not once.

Because of the changes in my affiliate status with several companies, I’ve been earning only a fraction of what I used to earn, but most of my attention has been focused on surviving and conquering this cancer that tried to kill me earlier this year. I’m making progress and we’re kicking that cancer’s butt. I’m getting stronger every week.

In the future, I’ll be deleting most of my sites that no longer perform as they once did. My brother is also having health problems and I’ll be taking down a large site I built for him, too.

I’m no longer enamored with blogs, forums, and communities built with commonly available scripts.

So, now I’m rethinking everything I learned and I’m going to apply what does work to reorganizing and building my SBI sites and planning new niche sites for the future.

I’ve always been a huge fan of SBI and all my big sites worked well for about ten years because I applied what I learned from Make Your Site Sell! to them.

Times have changed, though, and I’m tired of experimenting with everything to see for myself what works and what doesn’t.

I’ll be redoubling my efforts to use SBI the way it is intended.

I’ve started going through the new video action guide and it’s helping me relearn how to use SBI effectively.

I’m tired of hackers, malicious scripts, rebuilding sites, upgrading scripts, and all the other tasks that I don’t have to deal with on SBI-powered sites.

Yes, I’m a propeller-headed geek and I love programming and learning new things. I’ve enjoyed all my experiments. I’ve learned lots of things that don’t work and some that do.

Now, it’s time to focus on doing more of what really works and leaving all the red shiny balls that keep bouncing across my path for someone else to play with.

Or you can just do what I’m doing now — switch to SBI and not have to deal with all the headaches.

Compare SBI with traditional hosting. Decide for yourself.

I know what works for me.

What do you think?

Act on your dream!

JD

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Site Build It! is changing its name to SBI

September 3, 2010 by John Dilbeck · 5 Comments
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Sitesell and Site Build It 

Ken Evoy, founder of Sitesell, announced recently that they are in the process of changing the name of their primary product from Site Build It! to SBI. This is not going to happen all at once, but will be a gradual transition over a period of months.

Personally, I think this is a good idea. I’ve been calling it SBI for some time now, because I think the name “Site Build It!” gives an erroneous impression of what the product offers — and I think the site builder is now the weakest part of the service in some ways.

SBI offers a whole lot of functionality that occurs behind the scenes and is taken care of for us without any direct actions on our part.

I think that the Brainstormer, Master Keyword List, Site Blueprint, and other tools are more important than the site builder part.

If I wanted a great site builder tool, I’d look into something like Weebly.com, Yola.com, or WordPress. They make it easy to build a site and update information.

But, and this is very important, neither of them offers any tools to help you research your niche and to provide information that your readers want to find. That is the main focus and primary competitive advantage that SBI offers.

To be fair, Sitesell has announced that their site builder will get a significant update this year and the projected time of delivery is in the December 2010 time frame.

We’ve already seen some significant advances in the use of themes and CSS in building SBI sites this year, and the new site builder could be a very important part of the innovation that helps new webmasters build sites that rank well in the search engines — and look good, too.

I’m not all that sold on the idea that a site has to be “modern” looking to be effective. I still have sites that are two-column, low in graphics, load quickly, and rank well for the keywords I’m targeting. Why would I want to change them?

Well, there is one thing I do want to change on my MurphyGold.com site. Site sponsorship is an important part of the monetization of that site, and I’ve been too sick to really take advantage of it over the last year.

I could do it now, if I were physically able, by uploading my own HTML files and I know how to program HTML in my sleep. In fact, I changed my AYearFromNow.com site from SBI’s site builder (also known as the block by block builder) and uploaded my own HTML for awhile, but I switched it back for a variety of reasons that were more personal in nature and don’t really pertain to this post.

I know all about the power of includes in building websites and the use of CSS, and make use of them in my other sites.

When the new site builder is introduced later this year, I’ll continue using CSS and I’ll start using includes. Hopefully, I’ll be feeling better by then and will be able to seriously focus my mind on what I want to accomplish, again.

But most of that is beside the point. I’m not a beginner, and I have lots of ways to build websites that look good enough and — more importantly — get the click and make the sale.

On most of my pages, I want the reader to focus on one of two things. My Most Wanted Response (MWR) is usually for the reader to click on an affiliate link or a Google Adsense Ad. Preferably an affiliate link, because they generally pay better.

On most pages, my secondary response or fall-back response is to click on an Adsense Ad. They’re going to leave my page anyway, so I might as well make something from it when they do.

This is not always true, however. I’ll be removing Adsense ads from some of the pages that don’t earn much and I’ll probably be removing the Adsense ads from the bottom of the pages, because they earn only a fraction of what the ads at the top of the page earn.

And, on some of my pages, I don’t even try to monetize visits. They are there purely for inspiration, motivation, or information. Not every page has to be a money maker.

So, why am I talking about all of this?

I think that what is important in a website (if we’re using it to earn a living) is to give the reader good information (as good as we’re able to prepare and present), and then only one or two choices for further actions. When there are too many choices, it leads to confusion, and confusion leads to inaction, or clicking the back button on the browser.

So, I’m all for simple, fast-loading designs that offer a couple of choices for actions on the page.

The exception is site sponsorship, as I mentioned earlier. When it comes to a business owner deciding to sponsor my site, then I want their link to be presented on every page of the site, and a third right column is a good place to put that. The use of includes makes it much easier to maintain.

JD, what does all that have to do with Sitesell changing the name from Site Build It! to SBI?

It may not mean much to you, but it is very important to me.

SBI is much more than a tool for building a page on a website, or even an interlinking group of pages. The actual building of the site is much less important than the tools that make it so easy to brainstorm topics, to prioritize those topics, and to design a site blue print so that we can present the information that is important in our niche in the best way possible so that we’ll rank highly in the search engine results and get lots of free visitors from the search engines.

SBI offers those tools and more, and all at the low price of only $300 per year per site.

Even though I’m not physically able to make use of all of this right now, I’m happy to pay the fee, because my sites continue to get thousands of page views every month, and generate some income while I’m recovering — all with little effort on my part.

I think the emphasis on the site builder in SBI was a good thing a few years ago, but not so much now. As the tools built into SBI continue to grow, expand, and mature, I believe the totality of the product is much more important than any part of it.

I would never again consider trying to build a website in a niche without doing the research and brainstorming that SBI makes so easy. And, it’s not only in the initial brainstorming and planning phase that this is important. We continually revise our approach as we find changes in the topics and keywords that are important to our readers. This means that it is easier to keep on top of the subject with SBI than it is without it.

I think that’s what is important.

What do you think?

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