Anyone who has ever seen a movie where aliens come to Earth and begin taking over knows that the only way to stop the invasion is to destroy the brain, the core, the queen, or whatever the individual case may be for that particular species.

This is also the case with Spammers, as it turns out. 

Who would have guessed that such a large percentage of spam email would have originated from a single source?

http://government.zdnet.com/?p=4186

Apparently, a little known silicon valley company called McColo “unknowingly” rented their servers to spammers that were used to control vast networks of hijacked (drone) computers.  When the company finally agreed to shut these servers down, an estimated 75% of email spam went down with them.  That’s right, 75%. 

While this is a victory in the battle against spam, it isn’t realistic to think it will take very long before the attackers will regroup.  75% is great, and I for one appreciate any difference in the size of my junk mail folder.  But, until average folks stop believing that a pill will grow their member, their PayPal password needs to be changed (yet again), or an deposed African prince wants to launder $10,000,000,000 through their US bank account, the attack will probably continue.  It won’t take long before spammers find another willing or unknowing server farm from which to base their invasion.  Then, spam will return to 100%.

I’ve had a Twitter account for a long time without ever seeing the real use for it.  But, since it has managed to stick around for so long I figured I owe it to myself to really give it an honest try. 

I have been hesitant to take up other things that just seemed trendy and without substance.  My past hesitation has caused me to unfairly and needlessly avoid:

• LinkedIn (took me at least 6 months to catch on that this was essential for keeping business contacts)
• Facebook (I always assumed it was just like MySpace, simply for the kids)
• Digg (turns out I really enjoy reading the homepage, just like nearly everyone else)

So, I’m going to try Twitter.  Trouble is, I only have like 3 followers.  Any other Twitterheads (Tweets?  What do you call yourselves) want to follow me to make it worth the while?  I added a link to my navigation, just in case.

 

Two things caught my eye in the news today:

1) Yahoo is reporting that man has eaten a 15 pound hamburger:

A related search turned up some interesting facts.  A regular 100 gram hamburger patty has 259 calories and 16.3 grams of fat.  Now, I’m no math expert, but it seems to me that 15 pounds of the stuff contains roughly 17,612 calories and 1,108 grams of fat.  That’s more than a large movie theater popcorn.

 2) Google has launched a new WYSIWYG Display Ad Builder:

Yes, this is far more on topic for this blog.  But, come on, that hamburger was pretty impressive, wasn’t it? 

The new Display Ad Builder comes at an interesting time when the perceived value of online display inventory is on a huge upswing.  Typically a branding move with expected low rates of directly resulting conversions, banner ads are nevertheless coming back into vogue. 

In my opinion, this is only further evidence of the declining value of vanity websites for commerce.  Let’s face it, most internet users are past falling for a fancy web design, a flashy animation, or a sparkling logo.  They want information.  For small businesses in particular, the more concise that information is displayed the better.  Look at Google/Yahoo to see that this is true.  Up to 50% of a search results page for most every local business search is occupied by local business ads.  That’s because this is primo inventory.  It gets clicked (makes the search engines money) and converts (makes the advertiser money, too).  That’s partially because it is so local in nature, and specific to the search query.  But, it is also because the resulting pages are well formatted for conversion— prominently featuring the phone number, email address, etc.  Vanity websites typically aren’t so well formatted for conversion, that’s for sure.

So, with less emphasis being put on developing fancy websites, more budget is becoming available for other marketing.  There are only so many explicit searches happening for “Seattle Electrician”, but there are literally thousands of contextually relevant sites where a banner ad might display to get some extra eyes on your business.  It may not convert all that well, but it may have long term benefits including driving up your CTR and conversion rates from other media.

And, don’t forget, Google has long been looking for ways to better utilize all of this available inventory.  Content match has had a terrible reputation— mostly because advertisers failed to understand the idea of it being “CPC-priced CPM inventory” rather than more typical click-to-conversion trackable traffic. 

So, what do you think?  Would you use it?  Google’s betting on it and will do everything in their power to help you get around any roadblocks preventing you from trying.  Too cheap to pay a graphic designer?  Try the banner builder.  I did, and it is pretty cool.

Google Display Ad Builder

So, I just got done relocating across the country for a new job.  Things moved fast and the situation required that I move from Chicago to Los Angeles in a matter of weeks.  While already a daunting task to undertake, the fact that we have a 14 month-old daughter at home made it necessary to outsource heavily.

For the first time ever, I hired a moving company.  I went with one of the largest, most reputable, full-service movers.  Before the smooth-talking salesman visited our home, I did some research online.  The biggest compaints that people have about any moving company are:

• The company added on charges after the job started
• The delivery didn’t occur on time
• Things were broken and the coverage was inadequate

  So, when the salesman showed up I told him:

“I’ve read all about moving companies and the problems people have.  I want you to promise me that you’ll be honest upfront and not try to sugarcoat anything just to make the sale.  I would rather your quote is accurate than the lowest price, I’d rather know what day my things will arrive than you tell me something you can’t achieve”

The salesman was good.  He gave me a “guaranteed price”, and even came out twice to recalculate the estimated weight.  He gave me a 3 day window for the delivery, which seemed very realistic to me.  The size of the company he represented offered other benefits, like online GPS tracking of the shipment, and additional available insurance to cover valuables.  Bottom line was, I thought paying extra was going to protect us from the problems people have with movers.

Boy, was I wrong.

The first thing that happened was the packers showed up and told my wife

“wow, you have a lot of things”

Although dreadfully underprepared and shorthanded, that’s the only thing I’ll say about the packers because they turned out to be the best thing this company had to offer (although, to be fair, these folks were subcontractors and didn’t work for the moving company).

With our things packed, and a young child in tote, we stayed at my sister’s house nearby.  I showed up at the house at 8am on move-day, and the truck was already there.  The truck wasn’t just there, though, the driver was pissed (for the rest of this story, I’ll just call him ‘Ponytail’ .  As it turns out, our move coordinator (I’ll call her “The Uncoordinator“) didn’t ask my wife until the day before our move that we might want to get a permit from the city to block off parking for the 60 foot semi they sent.  Even though city hall on a Friday afternoon is a really fun place, my wife thought (as the uncoordinator suggested) that there was nothing to worry about.  The truck could just pull into the alley if there weren’t spots available.

Wrong again.

Ponytail was livid.  He was clearly mad at the uncoordinator for not having us get the permit.  He was mad that he was behind schedule.  He was mad at me, I thought.  We yelled for a little while and then he left.  Just left.  I called the salesman and the uncoordinator and told them what happened.  They called the truck back, and I negotiated with ponytail to put the truck around the corner and charge us for a long-haul (200 extra feet or so).  I signed an addendum, and then it started raining (doesn’t really impact the story, but added to the fun).  I took all the furniture apart so that ponytail and the hired muscle (2 kids) could work on carrying things.  I figured, anything to get us out of town tonight, only 8 hours behind schedule, at this point.

Everything on the truck, I signed the final paperwork and said “I’ll see you on Tuesday, then” (the last day the were contracted to arrive).  Ponytail said,

“there’s no way I’ll make it there by Tuesday, my boss wants me to move his kid. Looks like Thursday at the earliest.”

Again, I called the uncoordinator and the salesman.  The salesman told called me back an hour or so later to tell me that everything was cleared up and it had been a miscommunication.  My stuff would get there on Tuesday.

So, we took off in the car for California.  We had a great, slow drive across the country.  We arrived on Saturday and moved into our empty house with just an air mattress and one pillow for the three of us.

Tuesday, ponytail called me.  He said “my truck broke down in Cheyenne, Wyoming for the entire weekend and I’m not going to be there until Thursday”.  I tried to check the GPS on the company website, and it said “couldn’t find your account, please contact your coordinator.”  I called the uncoordinator, and again the salesman, and told them “this is total BS.  Your driver told me he wouldn’t be there until Thursday when he left.  Why are you lying to me?”.  They all claimed that they weren’t lying.  But, of course they were.  I’m not stupid.  Still, what was two extra days on the air mattress?  We were told we’d get $125/day for the late fees (woo, what a deal).

Then Thursday came.  From this point forward, Thursday will be referred to as “Hellday“.  I went to work on Hellday, figuring “we’d see” if ponytail was actually going to show up before I committed to an entire day of waiting around.  Surprisingly, he showed up at a reasonable time.  Not surprisingly, something was wrong.  Ponytail couldn’t navigate the truck around our cul-de-sac close enough to unload our things directly on the walkway.  He was pissed, yet again.

Calls with the uncoordinator, calls with salesman.  Cell phone pictures of the 28 paced steps he refused to carry our stuff.  He was asking for a “shuttle” (a small truck to move our things the extra ~75 feet).  The Chicago company didn’t think he needed one.  All in all, as with everything, it was our job as the customer’s to try and get the job done.

Then, he left.

Ponytail drove off with our stuff.  We had no idea what was going on.  The uncoordinator said “we can’t reach him right now”.  At that point, I was forced to unleash the full power of an internet marketer.  I told the Chicago company

“You don’t want to mess with me.  I will make sure that anyone who ever searches for your company sees a detailed story of my experience before anything else.  You will lose so much business you won’t even know what hit you.” 

Their website was a PR2.  It’d be easy.

Hours went by, then someone new called and said “he’ll be back at 6pm” (apparently a direct result of the threat).  Ponytail came back, with 3 new hired hands, and finished loading our stuff into the house by 11:30 on hellday by shuttling to a small truck a block away.  The whole thing seemed kind of silly.  The Chicago company told us there would be no extra charge and that ponytail was being investigated.  I don’t believe any of it, by the way, as I’m certain the whole experience happens all the time to people who feel bullied into paying extra without raising an eyebrow.  Customer service for the moving company called us to tell us we would be getting a $500 check for our troubles.

So, at the end of the day, we have our things.  I have a few new gray hairs to show for it.  It’ll take some time before we feel like we are over the events of the last few weeks.  But, the experience reminded me of something:

Internet marketing can be powerful stuff, as not many people understand it.  People that do understand it should treat it like a loaded weapon, not to be abused or brandished in unwarranted aggression, but certainly to defend yourself and your family from schmucks like this moving company. 

I’m only going to use ‘the moving company’, ‘ponytail’, ‘the salesman’, and ‘the uncoordinator’ because at the end of the day, I got all I could expect.  But, without wielding the threat of internet marketing, who knows what would have happened?

Anyone following this blog may have noticed my lack of updates over the last month or so.  The reason is that I have been totally consumed with some pretty major life changes:

1) I have accepted a new job with ReachLocal, and have already started

2) I am living in corporate housing for now, and will move the wife and daughter here at the end of September.  That’s right— we are moving to California!

After much searching, I have found what I think it going to be a great house to rent.  It is in Oak Park, CA, the irony of which is not lost on me at all.  It is in the mountains and is very remote (see map).  It certainly isn’t what you think of when you think of LA.

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