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Category: spam

Are Filters Important? Ask Sarah Palin


Monday November 3, 2008

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Spam comes at us from many directions. It is estimated that on any given day 88% to 98% of emails sent across the internets are spam or virus laden. That begs the question, how good are your filters? Do you get 1 bad email a day? an hour? a week? Or has email become such a wasteland of spam that you no longer bother to read it and go directly to instant messaging or Facebook and Twitter. It looks to me like Sarah Palin needs to check her filters, as no “Flapper” should have ever let that kind of call thru. (a Flapper being the human equivalent of a filter.)

As Sarah found out, it is a good idea to check your filter regularly. Like your car, not just to see what has been caught, but also to decide if too much junk is getting thru.

Here at Webconsuls we use GMail for our domain email. Today I bet Palin wishes Google had a service that could filter her calls, perhaps when Grand Central comes outa beta.
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Reading Time: 2 minutes

Did you get an invite to Quechup? DELETE IT!!! Just wanted to send a note out to everyone to let them be aware of a new social network that is spamming everyone in your gmail address book. If you get an invite from Quechup ignore it. I sign up for these sites all the time. I was sent an invitation from a customer and joined to check it out. When Quechup asked me to invite my friends I did, making sure only to invite Lisa McClure. However, everyone in my gmail address book was sent an invitation. The amount of bad press that can be found with a Google search on Quechup is amazing. Please disregard, trash, destroy, delete, remove, any and all invites from Quechup. and advise your friends to do the same. From now on I will google every invite I get prior to joining any new site. We advise you to do the same. and to contact us directly if you have any questions.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Conscientious web users need to protect themselves from spam scams that can waste their time, steal personal information, and turn their computers into “zombies” spewing more spam throughout the Internet.

Spam methods change quickly and what was popular last month may be outdated next month. A popular one today is “greeting card spam” when someone you do not know sends you an e-greeting card. To read it you have to download a special program which could contain code would compromise your system. An insidious version of this spam scam is to use information on the web, such as at MySpace.com, to find your friends and use their name to send the card. Be very careful before downloading any program.

Stock market “pump and dump” schemes are also popular today. A spammer will buy a penny stock and then send millions of emails “pumping” the stock. If only a few people buy the stock then it will go up and the spammer will “dump” and take a profit. If you get unsolicited information that seems too good to be true, then it probably is.

To protect yourself you use up up to date anti-virus software that has the latest virus information. You should avoid clicking on links in emails but rather type in the complete URL since what you see in the email may not be where you end up. Keep your financial and other confidential information on a flash drive and only connect it when you need to access the information. Do not fall for schemes. Use common sense.

Reading Time: 11 minutes

It has been a while since we have written our clients.

We are going to discuss promoting your site “off of the Internet,” basic search engine positioning and what you can do to help your site, some features you may want to add to your site, and review the pay per click situation. We also discuss changes to your site, a “spam fighter” program and another web site business that we run.

Off the Internet Promotion

We know that many of our clients do a great job of this, but have seen others that do not. You should review your business cards, brochures, point of sale advertising and other media that you use to promote your business. Do you include your URL (for example, www.webconsuls.com) in your promotion? Your potential customers may not even be aware of your web site.

Your Email is another source of potential advertising. Most email programs have a signature option that will be included in new Emails. You should have a signature file and it should include your URL.

Search Engine Positioning

Currently search engines rank web pages by they two R’s – Relevance and Reputation. Relevance is measured by the content on the page and the content on the pages linking to the page. Reputation is measured by the number of links to the page and quality of the links.

Notice how important it is to get links to your site. Most important is to get links from sites related to your site.

You should pursue all opportunities to get people to link your site. If you see sites that link to your competitors, then you should try to get them to link to you. If you are in an organization that lists its members on a web site, then your listing should link to your site.

We work on improving your relevance and reputation. We can only do so much and you can certainly help.

INKTOMI

Before a search engine can rank your site, it must know that it exists. Inktomi is an Internet database that indexes for many of the major search engines, i.e. MSN, Looksmart, HotBot, Looksmart and about 50 other Partners; it continues to be listed among the Internet’s most important Internet marketing resources. If you are not registered with Inktomi, you are probably already several steps behind your immediate competition. Annual registration is only $30.00 for a page and in many cases, it is only necessary to register your Home Page! Contact Dennis or Dick for information and get registered.

Features

We have developed some dynamic features that some of our clients have found very useful. We think you might want to consider them for your site.

Contact Form and Email List

We will either add a contact form to your site or enhance the one on the site to capture the contact information in a database. We will then give you the capability to send an email to everyone in the database. This will allow you to keep a record of those who filled out the contact form and can notify them of new products, pricing, or other changes in your business.

Dynamic Links Page

Many people will want you to reciprocate a link to you with a link to them. We don’t have the time to add links like this for our clients without charging a fee each time. We can add a Links Page to your site and give you the capability of adding the link.

Events Calendar of News Page

We will give you the ability to add and delete information about an event or news item related to your site. The cost to add these features depends somewhat on how your site is constructed. The minimum is $100 per feature. We can only add these features to sites hosted at Millennium. You should expect a $10 per month increase in your hosting fees from Millennium. For many clients these are small costs for what could be a great benefit. If you would like to see a demo on how these enhancements will add to your marketing reach, please contact Dennis or Dick and they can take you through a Demo.

Pay Per Click

Pay Per Click programs have several positive elements. They allow you to get listed quickly – and you only pay when someone clicks to your site. Overture is the best known and most successful Per Per Click Program (PPC), and also the most expensive. We think that our clients have received value from FindWhat, a less well known and less expensive program. Other popular opportunities, with PPC variations, exist with Google Adwords and Looksmart.com.

OVERTURE

Overture recently instituted a price increase, raising the required minimum bid from $0.05 to $0.10.

All existing listings with bids between $0.05 and $0.09 will be “grand fathered” at their current max bid for the foreseeable future. Going forward, if you or we make any bid changes to these grand fathered listings, the new bid must be at least $0.10. However, anyone can continue to update titles, descriptions and URL’s for grand fathered listings without affecting the bids. All new listings must meet the $0.10 minimum bid.

Overture announced plans to acquire Alta Vista, a major Search Engine. The integration into Overture is expected to take several months and we will keep you posted on how this change will impact those of you that participate in either or both of Webconsuls’ Overture/Alta vista’s Internet marketing programs.

FINDWHAT

FindWhat.com will raise its minimum bid to $.05/click effective July 1, 2003.

Web Site Changes

We often get requests to make changes to our clients’ web site. Obviously we can not maintain sites without compensation. We charge $75 per hour. The minimum charge is $25.

Spam

We all get way too many junk emails. There are several spam fighting programs. We like one that can be found at http://www.cloudmark.com/products/spamnet/ There is a free 30 trial period. We have been on trial for months and have not been asked to pay anything. This product can only used with Microsoft Outlook.

Helfand-enterprises.com – Do you have a resort, Inn Motel, Cottage for sale? Did you know that Webconsuls operates a subsidiary company that markets hospitality properties for sale across North America, the Caribbean and most recently, our first property in Isla Margarita, Venezuela, South America? Check out . If you know of some one who is interested in selling a hospitality property or if you know of someone looking for an interesting and rewarding lifestyle career change, have them get in touch with us.