SEO is a huge business. But you don't have to get suckered by the scammers.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a huge business today. People understand that Google and the other search engines are huge sources of traffic. Ranking prominently for the right keywords can bring in tons of revenue for your business.

Because SEO is such a huge business there are some pretty slimy marketing practices out there being used by unscrupulous people. Many of these “offers” may result in actually damaging your website’s rankings in the long run because of they often implement “black hat” approaches.

With these approaches the unsuspecting business owner may see some quick results with their pages starting to rank well. But then, after the shady SEO consultant is long gone with their money they can find their website gets banned completely from Google. And Google doesn’t really care that the company you hired did unethical things without your knowledge.

Wide Range of SEO Providers

Now folks who offer SEO services fall across a wide spectrum. There are folks who do excellent search engine optimization work and will help your business bring in far more revenue than their fees. And then there are outright shysters who prey on folks who don’t know a search engine from a web browser.

And there is a ton of space in between full of folks who will provide some benefits.

The big question is this. How do you tell them apart?

One big way to evaluate an SEO firm is by their marketing methods. If a search engine optimization firm is using spammy tactics to generate their own business, then let’s just say they probably aren’t someone you want to do business with.

Contact Form SEO Scam

If you have a website, and if your website has a contact form then chances are you’ve received a message from one someone promising to improve your search rankings.

You can save a ton of money and avoid these scams by simply hitting the delete button in your email.

Seriously. Just delete them. An organization that would spam your inbox is not one that you want to partner with for something as important as search optimization.

Like many website owners I get several of these emails every month. Usually they are horribly written by someone who appears to not have English as their first language. It’s obvious they just copy and paste their pitch into your contact form and don’t have a clue about your business.

They tend to make outlandish claims and usually give you cryptic contact info to get back in touch with them. By cryptic I mean they don’t list the website of the company they work for – mainly because they don’t want you to see who they really are.

Usually I just hit the delete button and move on.

An Example

However last night I got one that was written a little better than most. (Actually they sent it to me twice just to make sure I got it.) It read well enough that I thought perhaps folks who don’t really understand this whole internet thing might appreciate the warning.

On the surface this email looks a little better than most. But when you look a little closer it’s pretty bad.

Take a look and then I’ll break it down for you.

Name: Maria wilson
Email: topseo.webmarketing@gmail.com
Website:
Message: Successcreeations.com Team,

I thought you might like to know some of the reasons why you are not getting enough Social Media and Organic search engine traffic for Successcreeations.com

1. Social profile is not available in top Social Media websites.

2. Your site has 81 Google back links, this can be improved further.

There are many additional improvements that could be made to your website, and if you would like to learn about them, and are curious to know what our working together would involve, then I would be glad to provide you with a detailed analysis in the form of a WEBSITE AUDIT REPORT for FREE.

Our clients consistently tell us that their customers find them because they are at the top of the Google search rankings. Being at the top left of Google (#1- #3 organic positions) is the best thing you can do for your company’s website traffic and online reputation.

Sounds interesting? Feel free to email us or alternatively you can provide me with your phone number and the best time to call you.

—————————————————————–
Best Regards,
Maria Wilson
SEO Consultant
(347) 329-2976
——————————————————————
PS1: This is onetime email and you may ask us to “REMOVE” you from our mailing list.
PS2: I found your site from online advertising but did not click.
PS3: We operate 24 x7. I will be happy to send you links to price list, money back guarantee, client rankings, client testimonials, “How we are different from others?”, and “Why should you choose us?” on receiving a response from you.
Phone Number: (347) 329-2976

Time: Wednesday January 4, 2012 at 12:01 am
IP Address: 203.129.198.51
Contact Form URL: http://successcreeations.com/contact/

Sent by an unverified visitor to your site.

SEO Scam Warning Signs

Here are some of the obvious red flags that I see with this email which seem to indicate that this is a total scam.

1. No website given

I like to research things before I decide to do business with someone. If I want to do business with a company for their expertise on the internet then I absolutely want to see their website before I’d even consider it.

2. No Company Email Address

By itself this isn’t a show stopper. Gmail is a great service and I get why small business people use it sometimes. However, when coupled with number 1 above, using Gmail is simply a way to hide who they really are.

3. Assuming Traffic Levels

It’s obvious they have no idea how much traffic my website gets, or where it comes from. I guess they figure that no one has “enough” traffic. But they aren’t talking about general traffic. They are specifically talking about social media and search engines. (Actually I get a bunch from both.) Fortunately they know the top two reasons why I’m not getting more. (Except they aren’t.) Which brings us to #3.

3. Social Profiles, I Have

The first “reason” they list is that I don’t have social profiles.

It's kinda hard to miss all those links right next to my contact form.

I’ve got profiles on a ton of social media websites. For starters:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Google+
• YouTube

And it’s not like the links to those profiles are obscure. They show up in my sidebar right beside the contact form!

Obviously this email is a cut and past job and whoever submitted it didn’t read what they were pasting in.

4. Bogus Google Backlinks Number

My Google Webmaster Tools shows a few more than 81 inbound links.

Looking at my Google Webmaster Tools I see 41,825 inbound links. That seems a bit higher than 81. At least to me.

Heck, if you look at SuccessCREEations.com on Website Grader you see that there are 528 domains linking to my site. So really I have 6.5 times the number of domains linking to me than they claim total links and over 516 times the total number of links than they claim.

Unfortunately folks who don’t know how to look for these things may fall for false claims like this and decide to call them out of fear.

5. Pitch That Says Nothing

Then they go on with some boiler plate stuff that very carefully avoids actually saying what they will actually do to help my business. Sure it’s good to be in the first 3 search results. They say their clients tell them that.

But they don’t say that they had anything to do with those rankings.

6. Bogus Name?

A quick Google search of the phone number shows that number associated with some other names. So either Maria Wilson is a bogus name (my guess) or the company has some turn over.

Either way, that’s probably not a good sign of someone we would want to work with.

7. Intending to Spam

The first PS says that they fully intend to spam me unless I tell them to remove me from their list. I’m sorry, but spamming is not the right way to get me to do business with you.

Instead, offer something worth receiving and I might very well opt into your list on my own.

8. Outright Lie

The second PS is an outright lie. First I’m not actively advertising online. So they couldn’t have possibly seen an ad for my site.

Plus I have their IP address. My stats tell me how they found my site. And it wasn’t from an ad.

9. About that IP Address

While we’re on the topic of their IP address, it comes from India somewhere. That’s part of why I doubt “Maria Wilson” really contacted me.

A much Better Alternative

One thing I will say that they did get right is my site has plenty of room for improvement. There are lots of things I can do with my site to make it better. I know that.

But do yourself a favor. When you get a contact like this through your website, just delete it. Save yourself the aggravation, not to mention however much of your precious money they would chisel out of your business in exchange for something that could potentially harm your business.

And that’s not to say all SEO folks are shady. Not by a long shot.

Remember what I said early on in this article? There are some excellent SEO folks out there.

For example there’s a guy in Europe, Yoast, who knows SEO backwards and forwards. He’s the guy who has written one of the two or three best SEO plugins for WordPress. It happens to be the one I’m using here on SuccessCREEations. Yoast is well worth his fees.

Use a reputable SEO company such as Web Savvy Marketing. It'll make you money in the long run.

Like all the best people in the SEO field, Rebecca has actual success stories to point to. And they are listed right on her website too. Imagine that.

Not only does Rebecca do great work, but in my experience she’s great to work with too. I highly recommend her services.

Bottom Line

The bottom line is this. Avoid SEO Scams. At best they will waste your money. At worst, they might get you banned from Google all together.

Go with someone reputable for your Search Engine Optimization needs. It may cost you more up front, but the return on your investment will be so worth it.

You can find more great articles at SuccessCREEations.

The new StumbleUpon Logo is a huge step backwards.

Seriously.

Stumbling Around the Web

For those of you who don’t know, StumbleUpon is a fabulous social media sharing site. Their Stumble tool bar is a great way to browse around the web and find new thing online based on your interests.

As you go you can give pages either a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Because it is interest driven people tend to see content they like. Plus they have some sort of learning algorithm so that it tends to show you more stuff that is similar to your likes and less of the stuff you don’t like.

You can also share websites directly with other Stumblers you are connected with, plus a whole bunch of other things.

StumbleUpon has been one of the big traffic sources to my websites over the years.

StumbleUpon Logo Horror

Up until yesterday StumbleUpon had one of the best logos in the whole social media world. I happen to like teal and green. The SU logo flowed from one side of the logo to the other like their service helps you flow through the web.

Here’s what they said about the redesign on their blog:

StumbleUpon Logo Change – We know this is a big change, and many of you (like us) had come to love our old blue and green logo. However, as we spoke with our members during our redesign process, we heard our old logo didn’t capture the true experience you had with StumbleUpon – the excitement you feel with every Stumble and the adventure that we take you on. (And just in case you were wondering, we didn’t change it because some users saw a similarity between our logo and Cascade Complete dishwasher packets, although the likeness is uncanny!) While our old logo will be missed, we have also heard from many of you who really like the new logo and feel that it represents what StumbleUpon is to you. We hope that you will come to love it as much as we do here. Plus it’s going to look GREAT on T-shirts and swag – stay tuned!

So. Let me get this right. The old logo “didn’t capture the true experience” with StumbleUpon. But this new orange eyesore somehow does?

It looks like a clogged pipe! Their marketing folks need some Drano. Talk about a focus group going horribly wrong!

The Old StumbleUpon Profiles

Full Website Redesign

The logo destruction is part of a grand redesign of the StumbleUpon website. I think I get what they are going for.

Seems like they want to make StumbleUpon as much the same as other social sites as they can. They’ve change their “Favorites” to “Likes” because, well, that’s what Facebook does.

New StumbleUpon Profile

At the end of the day I suspect this is a move to try to increase engagement on the website itself. Something tells me most folks use the toolbar nearly to the exclusion of the website.

Honestly I don’t begrudge them any of the changes to the site. I do miss the old ability we had (before their previous website redesign) where we users could customize our profile pages. But hey, the trend in social media sites today is away from personalization of user profiles and towards sterile sameness.

But the logo?!! What ever were they thinking?

Update: In the Mac App Store the iPad/iPhone customer reviews are running about 26 to 3 against the new logo with many folks clamoring to bring back the old logo.

You can find more great articles at SuccessCREEations.

Just because you bought your domain through GoDaddy doesn't mean you have to keep it there.

Since we started offering our domain registration service lots of folks are asking how to transfer domains away from GoDaddy. On our end it’s a pretty easy, straight forward process.

But GoDaddy’s side is a little less obvious. Go figure.

Before You Transfer

There are a couple things you should do before you try to transfer your domain because if you don’t they will cause problems for you during the process.

Turn off Domain Privacy

If you purchased Domain Privacy through GoDaddy for your domain you should turn it off before you transfer the domain. That means you will have to find your Domains By Proxy login information. It should be in an email you got when you purchased your domain.

The good news is we include domain privacy with most all our domains with the purchase price. (There are a few registries that don’t allow/support private registration.) So if you’re paying extra for that service with GoDaddy you will likely be saving money with us every year.

 Disable Domain Locking

In order to transfer a domain you must turn off domain locking. This is a safety feature that most reputable domain registrars offer to prevent unauthorized changes. Just click on the little lock icon to the right of the domain in their Domain Manger list.

Verify Contact Emails

Double check that the contact email addresses associated with your domain are still valid. GoDaddy will email you some info that you need to get. So be sure the Administration Contact email especially is set to your current email address so you will receive what they send you. If it isn’t then correct it.

Give these changes a minute or two to reflect your setting changes.

Transferring the Domain

Now you are ready to actually transfer your domain.

You can start by going to our Domain Registration Page. Since you already have a domain, click the “Transfer Domain” link over the search box in the middle of the page.

Here is the link to get GoDaddy to email you the Transfer Authorization Code

Go through the process there. It’s pretty self explanatory.

Then our system will send you a transfer request email.

Transfer Authorization

But before you do anything with that you will have to send yourself an authorization code from your GoDaddy account.

Back in your GoDaddy domain manager click on the domain you are transferring. Then click on the link in the Authorization Code field that says, “Send by Email”. (See the screenshot to the right for the location of that link.)

Then GoDaddy will send an email to the address listed in your domain’s Administration contact that contains the transfer authorization code.

Confirm Transfer Request

Once you have that transfer authorization code from GoDaddy then you can go back to the transfer request email that our system sent you. In it you will find a link to either confirm or deny the transfer.

Click that link.

That will take you to a page where you have to input the GoDaddy transfer authorization code, acknowledge that you are accepting the transfer of the domain, click the check box to agree with our terms of service and click the button to transfer the domain.

You’re nearly done at this point.

Get GoDaddy to Complete the Transfer

The link to complete the transfer from GoDaddy is a little hard to find.

(And this is the part that GoDaddy doesn’t seem to mention anywhere.)

If you do nothing at this point your domain will be transferred eventually. I’ve seen it take a week or so before I found this little step to get GoDaddy to complete the transfer right away.

Just log back into your GoDaddy domain manager and click the link for “Pending Transfers.” (See the screen shot to the right.)

Click the check box next to the domain you want to approve the transfer of and click the “Approve” button above the list of domain(s).

Then you should only have to wait a couple of hours or so for the transfer to be completed.

Like I said above, If you leave off that last step GoDaddy will take like a week to actually transfer the domain out.

Final Thoughts

To transfer a domain into our service costs $15/year (.com, .net & .org – specialty domains can cost more) which is the same as purchasing a new domain here. That price includes domain privacy, which GoDaddy charges an extra $10 per year for.

You don’t have to wait until the domain is about to expire to transfer it. Whenever a domain is transferred it automatically gets 1 year added on to it’s expiration date, regardless of how much time is left on the domain. If you’re ready to get started you can click here and begin the process.

You can find more great articles at SuccessCREEations.

Google +1 Button will have an impact on search results.

Big News

This is huge news because their +1 recommendations will influence results that everyone sees when they search with Google. With Google sending such a massive amount of traffic to most websites (we get about two thirds of our traffic here at SuccessCREEations from Google searches) anything that has the potential to shake up the search results this massively is huge.

If you have a website which is important to what you do then you need to know about this.

Google +1 Button On Search Pages

A few months ago Google added their +1 button to the search results pages. As they roll it out users have to opt into using +1. You can do so by going to the Google Experiments page and clicking the “Join the experiment” button by +1.

Google +1 button makes it easy to find something again.

+1 Button For Websites

Then last week they made their Google +1 buttons available for owners of websites to place them right on their pages.

Really this makes more sense when you think about it. How many people are going to go back to the search results page after they find what they are looking for to click a button?

People have gotten used to clicking social media buttons with Facebook and Twitter. Google is wisely tapping into that behavior by making their button available for websites. They’ve got an easy Google +1 button generator for website owners to get the code for their own sites.

And if you use WordPress then I recommend the WordPress Google +1 Button plugin. The plugin makes it easy to adjust the settings and add the +1 button to your site without having to know any programming or deal with the manual button generator that Google offers.

Search Getting Social

This is blurring the line between social media and search. Google has made it clear that they will be factoring in +1 recommendations into their search results.

Users will be able to see what has been recommended via the +1 button including by people inside their social circle. It should help users filter out some of the noise in the search results as the more relevant results naturally bubble up to the top of the results.

Therefore you are going to want to integrate the +1 button to your web pages. If you don’t, and especially if your competitors do, your website will likely have a much more difficult time ranking well in the search engines.

A Couple of Caveats

In order to use the +1 button to recommend pages you need to have a Google account. If you use most any Google service like Gmail, Google Analytics, Adwords, or even YouTube then chances are you already have one.

To me this makes sense. You can’t recommend things on Facebook or Twitter without a user account. Why would you be able to recommend anything to Google without an account there too?

The other thing that should be noted is that this isn’t available to Google Apps users yet. That doesn’t make any sense to me.

We use Google Apps here at SuccessCREEations. Have for years. Yet the +1 feature is not available because we can’t enable Google Profiles with Google Apps accounts. Google really should allow Apps administrators choose whether they want their users to have profiles. It doesn’t make sense for Google to shut out this segment of their user base, especially when Apps users tend to be even more loyal Google users.

Already Making a Difference

The +1 seems to already be making a difference in search results. I’m starting to notice some differences in search results when I search for the same terms in a browsers logged in with my Google Apps account versus my plain Gmail account.

I think you are going to want to add the +1 button to your website sooner rather than later.

You can find more great articles at SuccessCREEations.

Just say NO to "Upsell Hell"

When I first started online Go Daddy seemed like the obvious choice when I needed a domain. Since then I’ve bought dozens of domains from them. That’s not a huge amount, really.

I know people with thousands.

Go Daddy Marketing Practices

Since then I’ve grown weary of their marketing practices. Seems like they subscribe to the philosophy of “whatever works.” Like a Las Vegas casino, everything on their website is designed to extract as much money as possible from visitors as possible.

And the more inexperienced and naive the visitor, the more money that can be extracted, buyer beware.

Using Sex To Sell

It starts in their advertising where they use sex to sell their products and services.

Their “Go Daddy Girl” campaign got rolling in 2006 when they made a Superbowl commercial which was so suggestive the it got rejected by the TV network. They got tons of publicity when they “complained” about the rejection and then had to “rework” their commercial to make it acceptable.

What they did was tell people in the ad to go to their website to see the “unedited” version.

While the whole thing was brilliant marketing (I’m sure it brought them tons of business and customer awareness) it was thoroughly repugnant. That they still use the same approach in their ads seems to indicate that it works.

But that doesn’t mean I have to keep spending my money with them, not even for my domain names.

Upsell Hell

Then there’s the whole issue of their website. They use sex and low priced domains to draw people in. But in order to check out and actually pay for your inexpensive domain you have to run the Gauntlet of Upsell Hell.

There is a dizzying array of offers and options presented before a domain name can be paid for. Those of us with some internet savvy can sort out which of those options are a good idea (almost none of them) and which ones should actually be considered (really there’s only one of ‘em in most cases).

Unfortunately those who don’t have experience end up buying things they don’t need. A $7.49 domain can end up costing the unsophisticated shopper a couple of hundred bucks before it’s all over.

Alternative Domain Name Registration

I’ve finally had enough. I jumped through the hoops required so that I could offer an economical domain alternative to Go Daddy. We offer the most popular domain names for $15 per year and we include domain privacy with every domain at no additional charge.

Domain name privacy is the one thing that is usually worth getting (amongst all the Go Daddy upsells) because it protects your personal information and keeps people from using your domain registration information to spam you.

Our check out process is straight forward and simple with no convoluted upsells. We’re content to get fair compensation for superior service.

And we don’t use sex to sell our stuff, though that should be able to go without saying.

Oh, and Go Daddy? They charge an extra $10 per year for domain privacy. So we’re even less expensive than them because it would cost you $17.49 for what you get from us for $15.

Easy Domain Name Transfers

If you’re sick of Go Daddy’s marketing practices you are welcome to transfer your domains over to our service.

I am.

As my various domains get close to expiring I am transferring them so I don’t give Go Daddy any more of my money.

You can too.

Just click here and select the “Transfer Domain” tab, put your domain in and then click the “Next” button.

You might even just feel a little better about your website as a result.

You can find more great articles at SuccessCREEations.

These are just some of the features that can be added to your Facebook fan page with Lujure.

Having a dynamic viral Facebook Fan page is a critical must-have piece of marketing for most any business today.

Most people have figured that they need a Facebook page for their business. However few are building in the features that make them truly magnetic so that they actually attract fans and reach more people. The reason they don’t add these features is because it is really hard for the average person to do. Or at least it used to be anyway.

Let me explain.

Viral Features

What I’m talking about here are especially things like pre-like images and share buttons. Pre-like images are basically just a splash image that is shown to people who haven’t “liked” your fan page yet. When folks click the Like button the main tab content is revealed. Having a good pre-like image taps into people’s curiosity and encourages more likes.

Share buttons allow fans to share your page with their friends on their own Facebook walls. They’re a great way to get viral exposure to your page because they make it easy to share with others.

In fact, take a look at the image to the right there. That’s the Welcome tab for our EmmanuelPress Facebook Page. Here are the the interactive features we’ve got on that page:

1. Share Button – Makes it easy for fans to share the page on their own walls
2. Hot Spots – Link to other important places off of Facebook
3. Embeded YouTube Video – Embed a video welcome for your fans
4. Twitter Stream – Automatically updated from your Twitter profile
5. RSS Stream – List your latest articles automatically
6. Chat Box – Encourage interaction right there on your welcome tab.

And those are just some of the things that can easily be added to your Facebook fan page with this service.

Best Part

Example of a Facebook fan page pre-like image.

But the best part is that these features are now drop-dead easy to add to your Facebook page.

Or, I should say, drag-and-drop easy.

How?

With a service called Lujure I put together our page for EmmanuelPress in just 6 minutes and 2 seconds!

And it was only my second time using their service.

Not only that, but I recorded the whole thing on video, so I was talking while I was doing it (just for the extra distraction.) I wanted you to see how easy it is to put together a fairly complicated Facebook page for someone who was still pretty new to their service.

See for yourself.

Lujure

As you can see in the video, Lujure makes that whole process incredibly easy. I was able to add 6 great interactive features to our Facebook Page without having to do any programming at all. And I did it in as many minutes.

Lujure has several price points including a great Business Plan for people who create and/or manage Facebook pages for other businesses. That’s a great option because you can create as many Facebook Fan Pages as you want with it and it is completely white label (unbranded) so that no one has to know that you are using Lujure. It can be your own secret weapon to speed up production so you can create way more pages in the same amount of time.

They even have a free option so you can create a single tab and “try before you buy” so you can be sure it is all I’m saying it is without any risk at all.

Either way, Lujure will make your life so much easier when it comes you creating a Facebook page that sets your business apart from the competition. Go take a look for your self.

I think you’ll be glad you did.

You can find more great articles at SuccessCREEations.

Note: This post is a reprint of this article I originally posted on the main EmmanuelPress blog over the weekend: Post Tsunami Message from Missionary in Japan I think you’ll find it worth the reprint.

A tsunami wave washes ashore in northern Japan.

If you have seen any of the video coming out of Japan in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami this past Friday you cannot help but be moved at the incredible devastation that has been wreaked on the northeastern part of their country.

I know I’ve spent a bunch of time this weekend online watching videos and looking at photos of it all and I still can’t get my mind around how unimaginably horrific it must be to have entire cities washed away.

Of course it so happens that I have a good friend who lives in Japan as a missionary. And by good friend I mean that Kent was best man at my wedding. He has a site here on EmmanuelPress, the Muhlings in Japan, which I’ve been pestering encouraging him to use more.

Obviously he’s going to have his hands full in the next few months so I don’t expect him to be adding much to his website for a while yet.

Relief Training

Kent and his family were at the annual conference/retreat for their missionary organization in the mountains about 200 miles from the earthquake when it hit. The week before Kent attended an all day training on how to be prepared to respond and assist in the event of an earthquake.

Talk about Divine preparation.

Anyway I wanted to share with you in full the email Kent sent over the weekend to those of us who support their effort. I believe it speaks for itself.

Dear praying friends and family,

First, thank you for the over 80 replies to my last email!

I just finished reading them all, and I can’t tell you how encouraging it was to hear your love and concern in your words. Thank you. I am sorry that I won’t be able to answer them all individually (which I am normally committed to doing).

We continue to be amazed at the information coming in about what has happened. It is simply huge. Japan’s government takes great pains to plan for natural disasters, but this is on a magnitude that simply cannot be managed. It is chaotic — one only has to look at the news photos to see that.

CNN reported that the landmass of Japan appears to have shifted over about 8 feet. An agency in Italy reported that the earth actually shifted 4 inches on its axis. That is one whopper of an earthquake.

Last night there was a second earthquake, much closer to us, and big enough to wake us up. We have heard that because of the main earthquake on 3/11, the entire landmass of Japan is unstable and there will likely continue to be earthquakes until the shifting plates in the earth’s crust have re-stabilized. Japanese TV is reporting every earthquake or aftershock as soon as it is detected. There have been numerous smaller quakes or aftershocks, some merely minutes apart.

– Ooh, there was another one.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s email, our entire mission is gathered here in the mountains near Nagano (north of Tokyo) for our annual conference. Together we have a strong conviction that since we are here in Japan, we must respond in a direct, tangible way. Already we are in contact with an organization called C.R.A.S.H., which stands for Christian Relief Assistance, Support, and Hope. Their role is to coordinate Christian relief efforts in-country, and we have decided to take an active role. The church in Japan is small, but the love of Christ is big! We hope and pray the Christian community in Japan and worldwide will be able to demonstrate Christ’s love to the Japanese in a very visible, tangible way.

So, at this point, here is where we stand in terms of our own response:

1) Missionary personnel will return home at the end of our conference on Monday, as planned, assuming roads are reopened and train service has resumed.

Then, as soon as we get home, those of us who are planning to join the relief effort will begin planning and preparing. (First thing to buy is a good pair of work gloves and boots!)

2) We are waiting for C.R.A.S.H. to do their on-site evaluation, so we can understand the need better and know when and how we can get involved.

Some of the things that have to be figured out are: How will we get there? (The Sendai airport is currently under water, trains aren’t running, and some roads are damaged.) What areas are accessible and which aren’t? Where will we stay? Will we need to go fully self-sufficient, or will food and lodging be available? How can we best contribute to the effort — physical labor? Crisis counseling? Translation services for other agency personnel? Serving the local churches in their relief efforts? What other Christian organizations are sending teams and how can we coordinate our efforts for minimum confusion and maximum impact?

Then, as soon as we are able to, we’ll put a team together and go. That could be within a few weeks, but I really don’t know for sure.

3) We also plan to contact churches in our home town area of Sanda and invite them to participate in volunteer relief efforts, as we are planning to do. This is a potential opportunity to unite the churches in our community, and we are very interested in pursuing that.

4) Our mission, Asian Access, is setting up the “Japan Tsunami Relief Fund.” Our mission has relationships with several churches in the areas hardest hit, and we will send donated funds to those churches so they can contribute to relief efforts in their communities in the name of Christ, take care of their own members who have been affected, etc.

Also, some of the funds will be made available for our own folks who want to go and help in the relief efforts. At this point I and several others are planning to go, so those funds will help pay for our expenses (buying supplies, traveling to the site, etc.)

So again, the relief funds will be used to support relief efforts through our partner churches in the disaster areas, and also by our own personnel participating in the relief effort personally (hopefully including myself).

If you’d like to contribute to this effort, you can send checks payable to Asian Access and mark them “Japan Tsunami Relief Fund.” Mail checks to Asian Access, P.O. BO 200, San Dimas, CA 91773.

I hope you will prayerfully consider doing this.

Finally, please pray:

• That God will have mercy on the victims of this disaster.
• That God will give wisdom to leaders in the Christian community and in government.
• For the love of Christ to be clearly displayed by the words and deeds of God’s people.
• That many Japanese hearts would be softened, and that the assistance given in Christ’s name would lead to many opportunities to share the gospel of Christ’s salvation.
• For clear guidance as to what our part should be!
• Oh, one last prayer request for my family: Our children were shaken up by the earthquake, and when I told Caleb I would probably be joining the relief effort, he said to me, “But what if something happens to you when you’re there, Daddy? I don’t want you to die!” And then he started to cry. Please pray that God would comfort them with His love, and bless them with faith to trust in Him in all things, including our very lives.

Thank you, thank you, for your love and concern, your encouragement, and your prayers.

Love in Christ,
Kent

If you are looking for a way to donate to the Japan tsunami relief effort I encourage you to consider donating through Asian Access, the organization Kent mentioned. And here is more information about their Japan Tsunami Relief Fund.

I will follow up with information from Kent as I am able to receive it.

You can find more great articles at SuccessCREEations.

This week WordPress announced they updated their contact form builder for sites on WordPress.com. They also announced they were releasing a plugin that gives self hosted WordPress sites (i.e. WordPress.org) the same contact form.

Now the release of a plugin, especially one that is so utilitarian as a contact form might not seem that exciting to you. But the thing is, nearly every website needs to have a way for visitors to contact the owner of the site.

Insert Forms Button in Edit Screen

For folks who need something over and above a basic contact form, purchasing Gravity Forms is a great way to go.

Enter the Grunion

The folks at Automattic (the company behind WordPress) are calling this new plugin “Grunion” after a Californian coastal fish. Here are some things I like about this new plugin.

Seamless Integration

Grunion Forms Dialog

That makes it drop dead simple to access the form creation dialog screen. You can access it easily from any post or page on your WordPress installation. At the same time it doesn’t take up any extra screen real estate when not in use.

Clicking that button brings up a forms dialog box overlay that behaves in a similar manner to the upload/insert image dialog box.

Easily Customizable

Form Field Options

You also have the ability to customize each of the form field labels however you want to explain what info you want site visitors to enter. And while you are at it, making a field a required entry is as easy as clicking your mouse.

Set Recipient Email

Set Form Recipient Email

The plugin is set to default to the admin email for your site. However you can set each individual form to go to a different email address if you like. Or if you prefer, you can have it sent to multiple addresses.

That’s a very useful feature if you have multiple forms and a need to route them to different places, like if your site has multiple authors or you want to route different types of inquiries to different people.

Akismet Integration

The plugin has integration with Automattic’s powerful spam protection service, Akismet, built right in.

The nice thing about that is you can do away with Captcha forms, which tend to clash with site designs and are not particularly user friendly.

Built-in Archive

Feedbacks Menu Item

When you click it you are taken to a new dashboard page where there a record of received contact form messages is kept. It’s similar to the comments management menu. You have the option to delete the messages or mark them as spam if you don’t want them saved there.

All in all it is one of the most seamless integrations with WordPress that I’ve seen.

A Caution

I’m confident the folks at Automattic will be upgrading the plugin along the way and possibly adding features to it.

One note of caution with this early release, though: When I added a form to an existing page where I’d already typed in some text, the form deleted my existing content when it inserted the short codes for the form.

Since I had Revisions turned on it was no big deal to revert to a previous version of the page and just paste in the short codes.

It would be nice in future releases if the form would be inserted where the cursor was on the page in the same way that images are inserted. It’s a minor thing. But it could potentially freak someone out to have their content totally disappear!

You can find more great articles at SuccessCREEations.

Today I wanted to share with you an informative infographic put together by DigitalSurgeons.com comparing demographic data between Facebook and Twitter. I found some surprises here.

For example, even though Facebook is just about 5 times the size of Twitter, the first surprise for me is how similar their demographics really are. There are differences, but they are more a matter of degrees than outright contrasts.

It surprises me that Twitter skews a little older than Facebook. If your target market is over 30 years old then there is a higher percentage of them to reach on Twitter.

The income distribution was a little flatter on Twitter than on Facebook. Facebook users are more concentrated more in the middle of the income spectrum whereas Twitter has more at either end.

So what numbers in this infographic jump out at you?

You can find more great articles at SuccessCREEations.

Last week news leaked out of Yahoo’s corporate office via Twitter that the struggling web company was planning to “sunset” several of their services including the social bookmarking site Delicious. The news that Yahoo was planning to shut Delicious down was quickly picked up by tech bloggers. And that prompted a rapid-fire response blog post on Delicious.com denying Yahoo’s intention to shut the service down.

You see they are planning to sell the service, not shut it down.

I’m skeptical on that score. That’s probably because I once rode a company into oblivion all the while buying into everything corporate said about how we were going to be sold. Having been down that road, that blog post seems like a ploy to protect Yahoo’s stock value to me, especially when people in the know seem to think a sale is very unlikely.

It seems Yahoo just laid off most of the Delicious team. And then there’s the pesky detail of a ton of proprietary software deeply intertwined in the Delicious underlying code.

Del.icio.us History

Delicious is a social bookmarking site. It was one of the early ones out there and is fairly popular with the geekier crowd.

For those of us who like to be able to find interesting things sometime down the road, being able to bookmark stuff online is a great idea. Before I started blogging in 2005 I really didn’t have much of a need for web based bookmarking. My browser could handle it all.

But once I started spending more time online it didn’t take long before my browser’s bookmarks folder became unwieldy. Enter Delicious. Or, as it was known at the time Del.icio.us.

It had a funny domain which in a weird way made it easier to remember.

2005 was also about the time that the service was sold to Yahoo for an undisclosed amount. Most estimates I’ve seen were in the $30 million range. Last year the site’s founder said he regretted the sale to Yahoo.

Basically it was a good solid simple to use service that Yahoo purchased and then pretty much neglected to the point where they are looking to unload it one way or another. Of course along the way they changed the domain to delicious.com for good measure.

Why Should You Care?

It sounds like just a sad web 2.0 story. Why should you care?

Here’s the thing. For those of us who have come to rely on Delicious to keep track of our bookmarks it’s an inconvenience to now have to find a substitute service. Not that there aren’t plenty of them to choose from these days. I could list more than a dozen alternatives out there right now.

So, OK. It’s a minor inconvenience.

But what if…

What if, instead of Delicious, it was a service that my business depended on?

For example, I regularly see businesses which the only meaningful web presence they have is on Facebook.

Relying on a third party like that is risky (at the very least!) Sure Facebook is a behemoth and they are unlikely to go anywhere any time soon. Probably. But they are notorious for changing their policies in an almost whimsical fashion.

And they’ve gone from a niche college networking site to the second biggest website in the world in just a few years. What’s to say they might not fall off just as fast?

Stranger things have happened.

Do you really want your organization’s web presence to stand or fall on the whim of another company that you have no control over whatsoever?

I didn’t think so.

The Delicious Lesson

The lesson from this whole Delicious affair is this. When it comes to your own organization, whether it’s a business or non-profit, it is critical that you maintain a strong home base of operations in website that you own (i.e. on your own domain) so that you are not completely at the mercy of some other company’s decision making process.

If a periphery service (such as Delicious in this case) changes or ceases to exist you can adapt.

But if you’re foolishly relying on a social media site to be your main web presence, don’t be surprised to one day they change the rules on you. And that will be much more painful to cope with.

Oh, and I think I’ll be moving my bookmarks over to Diigo for now. What bookmarking service do you like best?

You can find more great articles at SuccessCREEations.