Every day there are many comments left on each post I make and most I immediately delete.

Why?

Because they are spam.  See this blog post for a discussion on spam.
Spam seems to fall into 3 categories on this particular blog:

• A blatant unsubtle list of URLs - usually linking to online ph*rm*c**s or p*rn sites. (Sorry for the asterisks.  They are there to prevent this blog post itself being classed as unwanted.)
• A comment that is of such a general nature that it could be applicable anywhere. Usually these are accompanied by unwanted URLs as well.
• A very subtle form of spam which seems to have some sort of relevance to the post, but doesn’t really add any value. Such posts are really designed merely to create a link to the sender’s side and thereby increase the sender’s ratings.

Whatever form they take, this is comment spam - unwanted irrelevant comments - and I delete them immediately. There is a Wordpress plugin called “Akismet” which automates this process and I will probably start using it once I get tired of manually deleting the spam after having a good laugh at some of those attempts to be classed as legitimate.

Then comes a comment from WP eCommerce showing the way that it should be done.

Please take a look at the comment placed by Dan Milward. I have come across his name in connection with the WP eCommerce plugin discussed in yesterday’s post, but I have not yet corresponded with him directly. Dan works for the company that creates the WP e-Commerce plugin. Either he has been following this blog (unlikely), or he created a Google Alert for any new posts that feature the word “WP e-Commerce” (more likely). Google Alerts send you a daily digest of the latest web pages that Google catalogues which have a particular word or phrase in it.

Dan’s post typifies the real usefulness/business-aspect-trade-off that makes the Internet great.

• The comment is relevant to the blog post.
• It offers value to any blog reader who is also looking at e-commerce plugins for Wordpress.
• It gets his company’s URL onto my blog which the search engine takes notice of and he scores another inbound link.
• It provides a link to Wordpress’ plugin download site.
• His response immediately indicates to me that his company offers other services as well and is on the ball, which impresses me. As a result, I am very likely to do business with them one way or another.

All in all, a very effective win-win situation whereby his services are publicised without spamming and gives me a good feeling about them. You want to know how to publicise your site on the Internet?  That’s how it’s done!

The next method of finding customers is to build an e-mail list and to send out regular newsletters. Since most existing and potential customers would not normally return to the Fundisi main site on a regular basis all by themselves, monthly newsletters are an ideal way to keep our customers informed about new courses that have just been published. That way, they get continually reminded about the site and enticed to nibble at new courses. The same principle can apply to your business as well.

Spam and Permissions

Spam is simply defined as unwanted, unasked-for email.  If you send someone a newsletter, it is very important to do this on a permission basis - no one likes unsolicited spam, and some countries have even made spam illegal. In fact, it’s simply discourteous. Don’t even think about it.

But how does one build up such an email list of willing recipients for a newsletter?

By the way, if you are just jumping in to this blog here, please understand that this entire blog details the trials and tribulations that we encountered (and still are encountering) in setting up an e-commerce educational web site from scratch. The purpose of this blog is to help others who are also trying to set up an e-commerce site - pointing out many of the mistakes that we made - and offering hard-won nuggets of useful information. Click here to read the beginning of the story which is documented in the very first posts of this blog. Subsequent posts keep to a “sort of” chronological order, so you need to read from ‘the bottom up’. If possible, I try to blog on this topic each and every weekday.

How to Build an Email Newsletter List from Scratch?

First off, it’s not easy and you have to get creative. It’s the old story of the chicken and the egg - which came first? How does one keep contact with past customers and get new addresses without an existing list to work from?

What doesn’t work IMHO (in my humble opinion)

• There are companies that sell huge databases of e-mail addresses all neatly categorized according to perceived interests and demographics. You could buy such a list and add it to your existing addresses (if any). I don’t believe in this method, because the density of potentially interested people represented by such lists is likely to be very low. In addition, they didn’t give you permission to e-mail them. So I feel this is not really a viable option.
• You can go through trade directories or the telephone yellow pages (like Germany’s braunchenbuch - insert your country’s equivalent) and look up companies who seem to fall into a particular category. This is as bad an option as the previous one.
• You can ask colleagues and even competitors in the same kind of business to share their lists with you. Or you could exchange lists. This is nearly as bad an option as the previous ones.
• You could visit a trade-show and collect business cards from exhibitors. At first glance this seems a better idea, but the problem here is that the e-mail recipient is usually not the person that you spoke to on the trade-show stand. So once again, you are a stranger sending mail without permission. It doesn’t build a respectable image.

Tomorrow, I’ll deal with what works better…