John Reel’s Blog

While my previous post on banning “Is this a scam?” marketing got a lot of positive feedback, and I hope it will get people thinking and changing their affiliate agreements to stop people from using those tactics, it also brought up the topic of this post.  Who am I to be suggesting that other people change, when I’ve done some questionable things myself?

I’ll start with an aside:

I’ve been vegan for 21 years.  As anyone else who has pursued this alternative lifestyle can attest, people often get defensive just at the mention that you are vegan or vegetarian.  They seem to feel that my choice is an attack against their choice to eat meat, and they attack back.  I strongly suspect that they know that there is a lot of merit to my lifestyle choice, and they feel the need to defend their choice because they know it has ethical, environmental, and health implications that they aren’t comfortable with and don’t want to think about.  My existence makes them think about it.  (Personally, I don’t care one bit what they eat.)

When they ask why I’m vegan, I answer that I don’t like eating animal products.  It grosses me out, and that is the real reason I became vegan.  If they ask for other reasons, and they really want to know, I tell them about the way animals are factory farmed, the way they are treated, the chemicals that are put into them, the health ramifications of that way of farming on us, how the environmental impact of our species eating animal products is worse than the environmental impact of cars, how eating meat is not sustainable with our population growth, how rain forests are cut down to make room for grazing cattle, etc.  I guess I haven’t figured out how to answer their questions in a way they like, because this can really get them on the defensive, despite all the research that backs this up.

One of the arguments that people tend to give when attacking me for being vegan is that I’m the pot calling the kettle black.  They’ll start asking me questions like, “do you drive a car?” to catch me in an ethical conundrum, to make me into a hypocrite, and thus negate all of my reasons that being vegan is a better lifestyle for the planet.  If I don’t use a car, then they’ll search for something else, until they find something that makes them feel that they have put me in my place.  The look of relief that I see on their faces when they find something is profound.

If you don’t agree with me about being vegan, then fine.  I really don’t care.  But, we can choose to do something positive for our world, or we can choose to justify a lifestyle by saying, if you can’t live in perfect harmony with the world, then there is no point in trying.  To make a difference, some people may choose to be vegan, some may choose to telecommute instead of driving to work, some may choose to give money to charity, some may run for office, vote for the green party, or choose one of a hundred other things.  I made my choices in ways that I can reduce my impact on the planet, and continually try to reduce my impact and improve the world in small ways.  Your choices are probably different than mine and I’m okay with that.  I don’t judge even if you have no causes or beliefs that I can identify with.

Back to my previous post:

I find a lot of people cross lines in this industry of Internet marketing.  It encourages and rewards corruption, dirty tactics, and unethical behavior. I’m looking at the lines I’ve crossed, am not happy with it, and have changed. This particular rant on “scam” marketing is the first of many to come in an attempt to challenge other people to help us all clean up our acts and show people that Internet marketing can be done better, and more profitably - without resorting to these tactics.  You may agree or disagree, and that is fine.  All I hope you’ll do is consider and take action if something I suggest resonates with you.

What I hope you will not do, is to say that because I’ve crossed lines in the past, I have no right to grow, change for what I think is the better, or to put ideas out there on what we can do differently.  If that were the case, nobody could reflect and change.

Thank you,

John.

One of the things I dislike about Internet marketing are the association that some Internet marketers have created between legitimate products and scams… in order to make affiliate commissions. 

People create adword ads or e-mail subjects with titles like, ”Is product Y a scam?” or some other variant.  These purposefully induce fear of getting scammed to get people to click on a link that is actually promoting the very same product, or a similar competing product, for affiliate commissions. 

Whenever I see ads like that that, which point to an affiliate link for my products, I inform the affiliate that we will disable their account unless they remove or change the advertisement.  It simply isn’t acceptable to allow them to tarnish my reputation or the reputations of my peers, just to make some money.   I encourage all of us to ban any affiliate who does this!

For a current example, try doing a search for Internet marketer John Reese, and you will see ads like,

“John Reese Fraud?
91% of Them are Scams
There is Only 3 That Really Work.”

and 

“Gurus Suck
Don’t buy anything from
John Reese until you read this.”

Both promote competing products, and I suspect both are affiliate links, as opposed to ads created by the product owners.  Worse, both make John Reese look like a potential criminal, even though neither landing page makes any reference to him!  Yet, the first thing anyone doing research on John Reese would assume is that he’s an evil scammer, and that they should not get involved with him in any way.

Because this is done on pretty much every product name and every guru name, anything to do with Internet marketing looks like a scam, and therefore anyone involved with Internet marketing looks like scum.  While there are a lot of shady things going on this industry, there is no reason to take people down who are doing good stuff, just to make a few bucks. 

Let’s stop this behaviour, ban affiliates who use these tactics, and raise the bar for Internet marketing, thank you very much!

Now, here are some real Internet scams to avoid.  Please don’t use them for inspiration!!!  ;-)

http://www.cracked.com/article_16648_5-retarded-get-rick-quick-scams-people-still-fall.html

Why the heck didn’t I think of this?

Last week I reached a milestone of 30,000 unread e-mails.  Beat that!

Over the years, I’ve come up with various methods to deal with all the lists I sign up to.  For instance, since I had my own server, I setup a catch-all e-mail account for lists, and then I would sign up with ListName@MyDomain.com for each list.  Then if I got spam email going to one of those addresses, I knew who the culprit was, and could just redirect that email address to null and void.

That got tedious so I eventually just made up a single e-mail address for all the lists I’m on and all the products I buy and just let it collect there.  For a while I would setup rules to collate those emails into separate folders, but that was too much work so they now all end up in one big-ass folder.  Sometimes I glance at the subjects for something interesting, but I hardly ever read them.  

Well, someone took those two approaches and combined them into a new service called OtherInbox.  I just nabbed one of the 500 beta invites from TechCrunch, and boy am I happy!

This beautiful service lets me create email addresses at their domain, one for each list, just like I used to do.  Then it automatically removes any emails coming to that address that don’t belong, meaning I don’t have to bother with the spam or redirecting those emails to null.  Then it goes a step further and organizes all that email by each list.  

It’s everything I wanted for dealing with lists, rolled up into one, and automated!

Now, I just need to setup something on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to get 1,000 workers to move my 30,000 unread e-mails into there, unsubscribe me from all my lists, and resubscribe me with the my new OtherInbox email address.  lol.

I figured I will start off with a somewhat interesting post to the marketers who might still read this blog, and for any startup people who tune in.

First, a back story & update:

A year ago, I made a video post (since deleted) asking people if they wanted me to review a software outsourcing product that had been mailed to me.  (I never found out how they got my real address.)

That was the most commented post I’ve ever had.  I didn’t follow up on it because:

1. Much of it was an out-of-date repackaged product.
2. The people behind it were using fake names.
3. They lied to me when I confronted them on these counts.
4. It took a long while to sort all that out.
5. As far as I know, they never sold the product, making it all irrelevant.

I could have given a comprehensive review (though not favorable), as I have a great deal of experience in this area.  I have been a high-end professional software designer since I was 18.  In the last six years I have worked with about ten different outsourcing providers from India, China, The Ukraine, and elsewhere, all found on www.elance.com.  Budgets for these projects have ranged from $200 to $200,000.

Pitfalls of outsourcing:

On the surface, it sure seems to makes sense.  Many North American companies consider outsourcing, lured by the low cost for developers in other countries. Rates range from $8 to $15 per hour, with the majority at just $10/hour.  (Rates in USD.)

Here are seven things to consider before going down this route:

1. Language Barriers: Oh, sure they can read/write English, but the subtle things can be lost in translation, which means you spend a lot of time explaining things to them on Instant Messaging.
2. Sleepless Nights: Since all of these companies are on the other side of the planet, you’re doing all that explaining at night, which leaves you tired and much more likely to make mistakes.
3. Too Literal: Most of these providers try to do exactly what you say like little coding drones.  It is rare to find someone who can see the big picture and will check in with you before doing something “stupid”, even if you asked for it.
4. No Continuation: It is very hard for these outsourcing companies to keep their staff.  The competition is fierce for programmers.  Their rates have doubled in the last year and many programmers switch jobs frequently, using the demand to continually increase their rates.  Even if they can keep their staff, if you’re not keeping them busy full-time, the people working on your projects naturally get reassigned to other clients, and you might not be able to get them back when you need them.  Long projects and outsourcing don’t mix very well.
5. Undocumented: Good luck getting well documented code that someone else can easily take over.  So, when you lose your programmer, there is often a long delay while someone else gets up to speed.  Make sure to ask for excellent documentation as part of the quote and get examples.
6. Bad Quotes: Many providers have no idea how to quote.  One guy quoted me $200 for every project, no matter how big or small.  Unless I want something really small done quickly, I work with teams with project leaders and testers, etc.  They have an idea how to quote.
7. Dishonesty: When I first started searching for providers I would ask for samples of their code.  I would then search the Internet for any identifiable bits from that code, and usually I would find it was part of some open-source project.  I would then check if the developer(s) were part of that project, which of course they were not.  I then got in the habit of hiring them for small projects and split-testing two teams against each other to see which provided the best results before going on to bigger projects.

Disasters of Outsourcing:

While I’ve had some success with this route, I’ve also had two massive disasters, amongst all the regular day-to-day challenges of outsourcing.

1. Company Vanished: I worked with one Indian company for a year who seemed awesome.  Then they vanished one day, when the project was about 95% complete and paid for.  I had no way of getting hold of them.  About five months later, they reappeared, asking if I needed any work done.  The project was abandoned by then.
2. Abandonment: After spending about $75,000 with one company, they shut me down with no notice, redistributed my team, and almost put me out of business.  Why?  They had invoiced me 10 days ago and not heard from me.  I had never missed a payment, and when they invoiced me I was on my first vacation in years and returned with a flu.  By the time they got paid, my staff had been reassigned to other projects and that project got delayed by a year and counting.  (It’s almost done now.)

Conclusion and recommendations:

I started outsourcing because it seemed so inexpensive, but I have my doubts that it is the best answer in the long run.  For future projects, I will try hiring well recommended, extremely talented, experienced, high-end local programmers. I’ll give them shares in the company to keep them around.

The theory is that they will produce better, more transferable code, and I’ll get more sleep.

Of course, I’m still working with an outsourcing team for now.   The code is good and the project leader is very competent.  It’s just a matter of keeping staff on board.

If you are considering creating software and have a limited budget, I recommend hiring someone experienced in your field to design/manage the project and to manage the outsourced developers.  It probably will save you money.  If you’re planning on a big project, I would be very wary of outsourcing.

What are your experiences?