The other day I introduced a new shopping cart to you called E-Junkie. Since then, I’ve spoken to a few people who use the site and wanted to share their thoughts. I did register to give the technology a try, as it really looked intresting to me . . . while I haven’t gotten anything set up yet, I am pleased with what I see. Navigating the back end is easy, and setting up a product is equally as easy. It seems like these guys have thought of almost everything. While the site began as a solution for processing payments for downloads, it has emerged as a viable solution for people selling tangable goods.

Each of the three people I spoke with who sell tangable goods were extremely pleased with the technology and customer service from the company, and none of them had any complaints themselves or had heard any from their customers. (click on thumbnail for larger image):

A Look at 3 Sites Using The E-Junkie Shopping Cart

Brendan Gill - Repeater Store

The Repeater Store has their own custom designed website, yet has implemented the E-Junkie ecommerce system into their site. They use small snippets of code for the View Cart and Add to Shopping Cart buttons, which are strategically placed on their site. The E-Junkie technology takes care of the rest. There is no need for a complicated system hosted on your site to do this.

Brendan tells me that he is extremely happy with E-Junkie, and would highly recommend it to anyone. In addition, he mentioned how responsive the company is to suggestions for improvement, which is a major plus! Finally, he talked about how good the customer service was, which is also a huge plus.

Craig - The Hamptons Honey Company

The Hamptons Honey Company website was apparently built completely on a platform offered by E-Junkie. I was told that Craig just uploaded his logo and images, edited the sidebar, footer, and header, added product descriptions, and his site was up and running.

According to Craig, setting up his store was “a joke!” He was enthusiastic about how easy it was to do, and told me that the support that E-Junkie offers is nothing but excellent. His site has been around for close to 8 months now, and he has had no issues or problems whatsoever. His only issue was in the reporting system, which he said needed some improvement, however he said that this should not disuade anyone from using the company.

Mike Cosman - Sweet ‘n Heat

Mike over at Sweet ‘n Heat has only been around for a few months now, but he is happy with E-Junkie overall. For now, he is only selling one product on his site, but this stands as a testament to the adaptability of the technology. All that his designers needed to do was place 2 buttons on a page that had his product’s description, and the shop was up and running. He actually told me that his designers have also used the cart and are also quite happy with it. He plans on adding new products soon, and I’m sure it will be a snap!

Closing Thoughts

I just wanted to end by saying that so far, this looks to be very promising to me. The few people I’ve told about the site have also said that it looks very promising. With nothing but positive reviews so far, I’m thinking that I might give it a shot for real. I’ve got a call in to Robin who is one of the company’s founders to discuss things a bit more, and will hopefully share anything new with you. He did respond very quickly to my comments/thoughts on the previous post about the company, and seems to be very much interested in getting the word out about his company. BTW - I did ask if he’d be interested in an interview . . . I hope he agrees so I can share more with you all.

Introducing Technorati’s WTF aka Where’s The Fire

I don’t think it has quite caught on yet, but Technorati has built it’s own answer to Digg, Reddit and the rest of the social news and bookmarking sites. It’s called Where’s The Fire or WTF and covers “What’s Hot, and Why.” Considering the popularity and resources of Technorati, it seems like this should be more popular than it already is . . .

WTF Manipulation

Unfortunately, it seems like people are already manipulating the system. I was just looking and there were 4 stories on the front page of the site all promoting some blog (that is a huge POS). Each story had 15 votes and they were all in different categories for added exposure. WTF’s competition already has methods for dealing with situations like these, and if Technorati doesn’t handle the problem FAST, then it is likely that this application will turn out to be a complete flop.

User Manipulating Technorati’s WTF

If Technorati hopes to gain any ground on the competition for social bookmarking/social news, then they need to get a grip on this ASAP. In addition, publicity is going to be key . . . if no one knows about WTF, then it will never become popular (pretty obvious, I know).

Meanwhile, feel free to vote on and support some of the articles I’ve posted to WTF, or just submit some yourself!

I am!

I actually expected to be in the online encyclopedia for something else, but I guess I’ll take what I can get. It seems that someone felt that my post, the Real 2008 Political Internet Sensation: Ron Paul, about how Ron Paul is making strides in the 2008 Presidential Election by grassroots online support, was worth more then just a Digg. The post is referenced in the Ron Paul Wikipedia Entry, under the heading “2008 Presidential Campaign,” and the entry quotes me:

According to Joshua Dorkin at TimeForBlogging.com[26], “As you can see, this candidate (Ron Paul) is fast becoming a real internet sensation, not a manufactured one. He generated passion and curiousity and the people took over from there. I don’t really foresee this guy ripping off his supporters by stealing their MySpace support page (really stupid move for Obama).”

26 ^ “The Real 2008 Political Internet Sensation: Ron Paul” TimeForBlogging.com

I have seen a fair amount of traffic from this new link, but more than anything else, it is a bit flattering (seems like I’m using that word a lot lately . . . see my other post today). I’ve even been contacted by volunteers working on the campaign to get involved more. Seems that my neutral post about the emergence of a candidate has been taken as an endorsement, despite my disclaimer that I am not a supporter.

Back to Wikipedia . . .

Of course, Wikipedia is one of the most trafficked websites in the world, and getting a link on the site is good for anyone’s website. People try gaming the site to put up irrelevant information, but the editors are quite good at catching SPAM. I wonder what it takes for the site to feel that a person, company, brand, or website is worthy of addition. Anyone know?

I do hope to someday soon have an entry in Wikipedia for the website I founded, BiggerPockets® Real Estate Investing Community. The site, I believe, is deserving of being listed. If there are any Wikipedia editors hanging around here . . . please think about it!

Are You in Wikipedia? What for?

I’m not sure whether to be annoyed or pleased . . . I’ll go with flattered, yet bothered.

Someone Plagerized and Translated My Post!

It seems that someone has decided to plagerize my Top 77 Mistakes That New Bloggers Make Post. The catch is that they didn’t simply copy it, but translated the entire thing into Spanish.

Copying anyone’s content without their permission is simply violating their copyright. While it seems that taking a post and translating it would also constitute a copyright violation, I’m left thinking that this is somewhat of a grey area. Normally, when someone steals my content, I go after them with a vengeance, however I’m not exactly sure how to handle this situation. Had the author simply asked my permission to translate my post, I would have probably told him it was okay to do, but he should have asked me.

What Would You Do?
I feel very torn in this situation and would love your feedback here! For now, I’m not going to link back to his post, but I will send a trackback so he knows I’m aware that he took it. What are your feelings on the matter? Should I ask him to take the post down or just let it go? What do you think?

With that in mind, since he was so kind to do the translation, I think it is a must that I share the translated version of my post (which took many hours to write) with my fellow Spanish speaking bloggers.

Los 77 errores que un blogger no debe cometer

Dominios y Alojamiento
1. No tener tu blog alojado como Dios manda ( servidor propio o compartido, pero nada de free hostings)
2. Registrar un dominio para tu blog que tiene copyright o riesgo de entrar en conflicto con marcas establecidas
3. Registrar un dominio largo e imposible de recordar, y sobretodo de teclear.
4. No tener un dominio propio para tu blog

   Estilo, Diseño y elementos basicos de un blog

5. Mantener el diseño original que venia por defecto con el blog
6. Usar un fondo negro, que brilla, tiene lucecitas, se mueve o molesta a la vista de alguna forma
7. Usar musica de fondo
8. No actualizar el blogroll que viene por defecto con el blog
9. No usar correctamente los permalinks
10. No protegerte del spam usando alguno de las decenas de plugins disponibles
11. Desaprovechar el potencial de los plugins que tienes instalados
12. No incluir informacion de contacto del blogger ( si te quiero hacer una donacion millonaria, ¿como te lo digo? )
13. No incluir informacion basica sobre el autor ( a todos nos gusta ponerle un perfil a quien leemos )
14. No crear el sitemap para buscadores ( la de visitas que te puedes perder por ello! :-))

    Comentarios del blog

15. Mantener el primer comentario de prueba que viene con el blog (hay que ser cutre… )
16. Forzar a tus lectores a que se registren de alguna forma para poder dejar comentarios
17. Comentar en otros blogs diciendo solo “que guay!”, “me gusta lo que has escrito” u otras tonterias que no aportan nada
18. Comentar en otros blogs generando spam y llenando el texto con las urls de tus paginas
19. No molestarse en comentar en otros blogs lo suficiente
20. No estar al tanto ni seguir que es lo que se comenta en otros sites o blogs
21. No responder a los comentarios en tu blog
22. Pedir directamente a otros bloggers por enlaces hacia tu blog en los comentarios
23. Recoger direcciones de email a saco e introducirlas en una lista que usaras para spamear a todos (violacion de la privacidad)
24. Usar enlaces de afiliados cuando comentas en otros blogs

    Enlaces

25. Contactar a todo el mundo pidiendo intercambio de enlaces
26. No enlazar hacia otros blogs /fuentes de informacion suficientemente
27. Usar enlaces incorrectos o rotos ( que no llevan a ningun sitio)
28. No usar los trackbacks para saber quien te enlaza y desde donde

    Contenido del Blog

29. Crear SPLOGS ( spam!)
30. Crear falsas expectativas respecto al contenido y calidad del blog y luego no llegar ni a la mitad de los esperado
31. No aprender un poco de la cultura y el lenguaje de los blogs antes de lanzarse a la blogosfera
32. No escoger un buen tema y audiencia antes de ponerse a escribir
33. No mantener el blog enfocado en ese tema y desvariar
34. Copiar el estilo y la filosofia de otro blog ( para eso me leo el otro blog )
35. Bloggear sobre absolutamente nada interesante
36. No revisar la ortografia de nuestras entradas
37. No hacerse un hueco en la red y experimentar el “blogger burnout” ( toy quemao !)
38. Robar contenido de otros blogs
39. Bloggear sobre algo que no tenemos ni idea
40. Copiar posts enteros de otros sitios y pensar que con un simple enlace de vuelta quedamos bien ( eso es robar! :-))
41. No atribuir el credito necesario a las fuentes de donde sacamos nuestras ideas y contenidos
42. Ocultar o modificar nuestra personalidad haciendonos pasar por quienes no somos en nuestro blog
43. Escribir titulos que no tienen ningun interes
44. Escribir interminables bloques de texto sin espacios, orden, negrita, etc.
45. Escribir de forma demasiado irregular
46. Olvidar que escribes para tus lectores, no para ti mismo
47. Escribir cosas en el blog que pueden perjudicarte en el futuro (sobretodo si pones a parir a tu jefe :-))
48. Ser poco profesional
49. Atacar a otros bloggers a destajo solo para ganar atencion
50. Compartir informacion confidencial o privada en tu blog
51. Compartir EXCESIVA informacion personal ( puede ser peligroso)
52. No tener propio criterio y propio lenguaje al escribir
53. No motivar al lector a que participe en los comentarios
54. Escribir mucho blablabla sin llegar a decir nada
55. Escribir sobre lo que todo el mundo escribe ( a no ser que seas el primero en hacerlo :))
56. Crear concursos con premios y no proporcionarlos

    Promocion de blogs y generar trafico

57. Hacer publicidad del blog en cualquier sitio ( hay que saber escoger )
58. Promover un blog que no llega a los 10 posts
59. Usar aplicaciones de trafico (software) para incrementar tus rankings
60. Usar otros metodos dudosos para incrementar tu trafico
61. Enviar tu blog una y otra vez a sitios sociales ( tu blog hasta en la sopa vaya…)
62. Enviar entradas pesimas a estos sitios sociales ( meneame, promoting blogs, etc….)
63. No hacer publicidad de tus mejores posts
64. No participar en Blog Carnivals para atraer mas trafico
65. No incluir un enlace hacia tu blog en firmas de mails, forums, etc
66. No responder a emails y comentarios de otros bloggers

    Generando ingresos con el blog

67. Preocuparte de como generar ingresos antes de tener un contenido de calidad
68. Poner tantos anuncios como se pueda de cualquier estilo, clase, red de anuncios, etc
69. Hacer click en tus propios anuncios
70. Permitir que cualquiera se anuncie en tu sitio ( un poco de criterio hombre! :-))
71. Escribir entradas patrocinadas de cualquier forma ( esta genial sacar dinero escribiendo para ReviewMe o PPP o el que sea, pero hay que hacerlo bien! )

    Feeds

72. Infra utilizar las posibilidades de tu feed
73. No disponer de un link claro desde el cual subscribirse a tu feed en el blog
74. No usar feedburner para optimizar y hacer publicidad de tu blog ( tiene cientos de posibilidades para ello)
75. No uses el contador de lectores de Feedburner si no tienes al menos 50 lectores
76. No sindicar el contenido total de tu blog en las feeds
77. Saturar tu feed de anuncios

I’ve been a fan of many of the things that John Chow has done on his blog, however I do have a bone to pick. It seems that at least 1 out of every 2 times I visit his site, my browser (Firefox) crashes on me. If I were just reading his blog it wouldn’t bother me, but it always happens when I’ve got around 5-10 other tabs open in my browser.

At this point, I’ve given up! I’ll read the site, but only through my feedreader.

John - If you’re reading this, please look into this situation. If it is happening to me, then it is happening to others as well. I’m sure it is something you want to fix.

As for the rest of you, are there any sites that do this to you?

I don’t think people truly understand the power of the internet in politics these days. Thanks to social networks, forums, and blogs, everyday people have the opportunity to build up any political candidate. The voice of the common man is now as important as that of the broadcasters, and we’re seeing that especially amongst 1 candidate who would likely have been never-known a mere decade ago: Ron Paul. With little money and a slim chance at getting an ounce of exposure outside of a few minutes on a “debate” on cable news, this candidate has become the talk of the internet.

In the past, people may have been interested in what they had to say, but there wouldn’t have been a medium to hear more about them, from them, and to discuss them on. With modern internet technology, things have changed. After their respective “debates” both of these candidates have seen a huge groundswell of support online and we can measure that fairly easily:

Ron Paul - Republican Candidate

Official Website: http://www.ronpaul2008.com/
Google: 2,050,000 Results
Alexa:

It is hard to miss the bounce, isn’t it!

Notice the rankings yesterday: 21,775 (and climbing) vs. Rudy Giuliani 96,446 (and steady) vs. Hillary Clinton 61,358 (and falling) vs. Barack Obama 15,019 (and falling) vs. Mitt Romney 63,856 (and climbing).

Here is a graph of his website vs. the major competition. Notice the blue line that keeps climbing? That’s Ron Paul.

Technorati: It appears that Ron Paul is the most popular search.

Digg: Stories about Ron Paul are getting thousands of Diggs. One has even broken 6,000 Diggs.

As you can see, this candidate is fast becoming a real internet sensation, not a manufactured one. He generated passion and curiousity and the people took over from there. I don’t really foresee this guy ripping off his supporters by stealing their MySpace support page (really stupid move for Obama)..

Read more about the Ron Paul Effect (ABCNews)

NOTE: Someone apparently added this article to the Ron Paul Wikipedia entry. Very cool!

Ready for another rant? Seems like I’ve been doing quite a lot of that lately. This time, it is about something that I’m sure all the bloggers can relate to: Corporate Comment Spam. It seems that the corporations have indeed resorted to non other than comment SPAM to promote themselves

In the past 3 days, I’ve had to deal with comments from the flunkies of two large corporations: AOL and the The E.W. Scripps Company, which owns HGTV. I’ve chosen to leave out the identities of the perpetrators as the purpose of this post is to to expose what corporations are up to, not to call specific people out.

• HGTV Comment Spam

  I at least give a tiny bit of credit to the guy who has SPAMMED our Real Estate Investing for Real blog comments twice in the past 3 days. It seems that he tries to relate his spammy commercials to the topic at hand. Here’s the latest (I’ve colored the acceptable part in green and the SPAMMY Crap in red):

  Its funny that you should mention Los Angeles, I live there and you are right on. Since the average price of houses is so expensive the take for an agent is ridiculous. Btw, a $350,000 in LA will get you a fixer-upper. I wanted to ask anybody who is reading this…have you seen the show Bought & Sold on HGTV? I work with them and have been alerting people of the show because I think its worth seeing, if you’re into real estate at all…It basically shows 12 different agents trying to show houses and close the deal. It gives you huge insight into the way homes are marketed and how price levels are decided upon in the Northern New Jersey market - which is one of the toughest markets in the country. You can check out a preview - [VIDEO LINK REMOVED] - It’s on Sundays at 10PM e/p time on HGTV. Definitely worth checking out. It’d be funny to see them do one here in LA.

  I actually erased the first one he did, otherwise I’d also share it with you as well. I sent him an email asking him to immediately stop wasting both of our time (his writing and my deleting) and explained what netiquette was. We’ll see if he comes back for more!

• AOL Comment Spam

  AOL is also guilty of dishing out Hawaii’s favorite meat concoction. First I received a form email from someone at AOL trying to get me to blog about their new real estate section. It was impersonal, badly formatted, and poorly written (formatted as received):

  Dear Bloggers,

  I’m a Promotions Manager for AOL Real Estate, and have read your real estate
  blog. Your insights are thought provoking and often times right on the money.
  I
  would love to get your opinion about an “Inside Stories of…” series we are
  currently running. We interviewed various players in the real estate process
  for
  candid (some harsh) realities of the business. I know you’ve posted about such
  subjects, and thought you could take a look at what we’ve done, and offer a
  fascinating perspective; good, bad, or ugly.

  I’ve included our entire lineup for this original series below. If you decide
  to blog and need more info from me, please feel free to contact me anytime.
  Thanks for your time.

  We’d love to be involved on your site if you’d like to link to our home page,
  [LINK REMOVED] we have a lot to offer in exciting original
  content,
  listings, investing information, and staging/home improvement.

  Thanks,
  ~Name Removed

  After going through my daily SPAM scan, I noticed a message that my filters caught written by the same person, as a comment on my most popular post on the blog.

  Check out Unstructured, the official editor’s blog, AOL Real Estate.

  [URL REMOVED]

  Had I gotten the email or the blog SPAM, I would have just ignored it. In conjunction, the campaign to plug AOL’s new real estate site just hit a bad nerve. I decided to write the author back:

  Name Removed-
  A few things. First, It would be great if you had actually personalized the email you sent me instead of sending a form email that probably went to every other real estate blogger around. I’m surprised that a company of AOL’s financial backing couldn’t consider such an obvious move. It looks poorly upon you and your company.

  While the site you are looking to promote is good, your tactics are nothing but amateurish. I was quite shocked to look through my blog’s comments to see that you’ve also gone and SPAMMED us with your site’s link.

  I’ve had bloggers with 2 weeks of experience conduct themselves with more netiquette and web professionalism. I have no intention of supporting your site thanks to your tactics.

  I hope you reconsider how you’re approaching people in the future.

  Sincerely,

  A few of my friends and fellow bloggers recommended that I CC the email to her bosses at AOL. Sometimes I’m a jerk, but not that big of one. I’m not trying to get her fired; I just want people to learn what is and is not okay online these days.

Conclusion

We all know that people are spending more time online these days, corporations included. Apparently the online marketing teams for large corporations want eyeballs at any cost! I think the “street teams” of old, who kept busy handing out promo items on street corners, have given way to a group of young hired SPAM teams. They’re hitting the social networks, forums, and now, the blogs.

Apparently corporations still don’t understand online netiquette. Way to go! Piss off the whole online blogging community while you’re at it! Little do they know that the backlash from the internet can be fast and relentless (we all saw what Digg went through last week), and by ignoring the established “rules” of order online they are setting themselves for a fall.

Anyone think I’ll help promote HGTV or AOL Real Estate now?

5/11/07 UPDATE: Not a day after I wrote this post, HGTV has gone and sent a different person to once again SPAM our blog. From our comments:

May 11th, 2007 at 8:38 am
It seems more and more people are getting into the real estate business these days, without a clear understanding of how the biz really works. For those of you looking for a better understanding, I suggest checking out the new reality show Bought & Sold on HGTV. It’s a great show about the inner workings of the real estate and the lengths brokers will go to just to get the deal. Check it out: [LINK REMOVED]. I work with HGTV and you won’t believe what happens this season. Good luck, and enjoy the show! Don’t forget, the show airs Sundays at 10pm. I’m sure you’ll find it beneficial! Have any of you seen it yet?