In a bit of news that should be music to the ears of Minneapolis blogger and phone book fighter Ed Kohler , the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is pointing Minnesotans to a website to opt out of phone book delivery.

Link: http://www.yellowpagesoptout.com

The MPCA recommends opt outs because they stop waste from being created in the first place, thus making it even better than recycling. The MPCA says Minnesotans recycle about 20 percent of the 5,000 tons of phone books that are delivered in the state each year.

While it’s great to see FOX9 addressing the issue at some level, it seems like they’ve lost a step since their previous coverage in May, when they reported:

Only about 11 percent of phone books are being recycled around Minnesota, leaving stacks of Yellow Pages at the garbage dump. Now, a state agency is pushing for an opt-in system that would only allow phone book publishers to send books to customers that want them.

…

But the MPCA, would prefer the state implement an opt-in system, in which you’d have to give permission to get the books.

Sometime between May and yesterday, the percentage of phone books being recycled magically doubled (it’s actually declined dramatically since 2003 according to MPCA’s website). Also, the MPCA has switched from pushing for an opt-in system to promoting an opt-out system.

To me, this looks like a story built off a Yellow Pages Association press release promoting the domain name they purchased. As regular Deets readers know, yellow pages companies are failing to honor the delivery opt-out requests they receive, which makes the promotion of a website asking people to contact not one but three companies in the hope that they’ll honor the requests a relatively fruitless exercise.

Here are a few nuggets from the MPCA’s site regarding the costs (environmental and financial) we all bear:

Based on the 2006 estimates for total generation and recycling of phone books, if half of Minnesota’s households opted out of receiving printed phone books, that would reduce waste by about 6500 tons.

That amount of waste prevention translates to conserving 101,583 million Btu, and preventing 14,000 “metric tons of carbon-dioxide equivalent” (MTCO2E), a measure of global-warming potential.

Based on current recycling rates together with disposal costs (recycling or as waste), we’d save between $4.6m – $6.3m annually by not having to deal with over delivery ridiculousness. In fact, as a state, we could likely cut much deeper without causing any pain for MN households by paring down to one set of books per household. However, this relies on people taking the time to call at least two companies, navigating phone trees at each, and wasting hundreds of thousands of hours of Minnesotan’s time. And, again, this is based on the assumption that phone directory spammers will actually honor the opt-out requests they receive (not a pretty track record).

An opt-in system, on the other hand, would give households the right to receive as many books from as many companies as they’d like, but they’d have to request to receive them. This would solve a lot of issues that opt-out doesn’t such as litter deliveries to vacant properties. It’s hard for a non-existent person to opt-out of deliveries.

Is this too rational?

* The Pioneer Press ran nearly the same story. I’m not sure which is the original or if they’re nearly the same due to being based on the same press release.

Katie captured this shot from The National in South Beach in the spring. I wonder if hotels have problems with people stealing standing TP dispensers like this?

Nice touch with the B&W shot, Katie.

One of the most concentrated forms of print yellow pages spam is apartment building over-delivery. The above shot comes from Kelly Ford, who points out on his blog that his Manhattan apartment building has 7 units, but received 12 copies of the Verizon SuperPages from Idearc Media.

That’s a clear over-delivery of at least 5 books. How much more than 5 depends on how many of the 7 units are occupied, and, of those, how many want a copy of this particular yellow pages this year.

To make matters worse, his all-residential building on an all-residential street received a dozen Business to Business versions of Idearc Media’s yellow pages. So, at best, they hit 7 for 24 on delivery accuracy, but most likely worse than that. I hope Idearc Media doesn’t boast about the breadth of their distribution if this is what it looks like in practice.

Closer to home, Mark Gisleson over at Norwegianity pointed out last week that his apartment building received 60 phone books from Qwest Dex. How many of those 60 books were picked up by tenants before the landlord got around to disposing of the remaining books?

Those books were delivered to my apartment building two weeks ago today. Last night I noticed that not one of the five plastic-wrapped bundles of phone books had been opened. Not one tenant in my building wanted one. Not one visitor to our building wanted one. It was on the porch outside the security door so that means that every person walking by, every homeless person in the neighborhood (and there are more than a few) also passed on a chance to own their very own FREE! white and yellow pages for St. Paul.

This is a good example of why opt-in makes more sense than opt-out for yellow pages. The majority of people don’t want yellow pages. Actually, let me restate that. The majority of people don’t want three different yellow pages every year, with many people wanting no books at all. Because of this, it would be easier for those who still want books to subscribe to the one(s) they like rather than having the majority of people opt-out of the ones they no longer use.

It seems like it would be good for yellow pages companies to be able to go to their advertisers and say, “People really use our book. It isn’t forced onto people’s doorsteps. They subscribe to it.”

Could that actually happen?

But on most websites, ours included, the vast majority of unique visitors are passersby. They come through a search or a link from a blog, and they visit the site precisely once, usually for a quick glance at one page. In many cases, if you ask them 30 seconds later which site they just linked to, they won’t remember. It would be folly for us to build a business plan around consumers like that.

It sounds like Joel is trying to build a business around generating revenue from advertisers interested in reaching MinnPost’s regular readers. If that’s the case, paying attention to where those people come from, what they read, etc. is going to be valuable. To do this, Joel could segment his Google Analytics data down to people who’ve visits X number of times, by time on site, or other metric he finds useful in order to see what they’re doing.

He could also track clicks on his site’s donate button, or comment submission form to get a feel for which type of visitors are potentially coughing up some cash or engaging in the site at a high level.

Joel offers his theory on why pass-through traffic that arrives from all over the world through search engines and random links:

(In fact, the passerby phenomenon, driven by Internet search and linking, is a major factor in why online advertising revenue doesn’t come close to replacing what newspaper publishers are losing in print: There are simply too many page views, too much inventory, chasing too few advertisers, so online advertising rates stay low.)

This, to me, ties back to some of the stuff I wrote about CityPages in the spring. Newspaper websites are living a lie if they think someone from Romania visiting a random page of their website through a search engine is worth as much to a local advertiser as a subscriber, registered user, or regular visitor.

This should probably be obvious, but for those who don’t already get it, if you’re selling local ads to local businesses, serve the ads to local visitors. Or, only charge them for the percentage of impressions your site receives that are actually local.

To me, Joel’s leaving some money on the table if he sees no value in pass-through traffic. But the tactics for monetizing that traffic are different than local ad sales.

Here are a few things I find effective for monetizing pass through traffic:

1. Be good at SEO. Pass through traffic is largely an SEO play where people search for things written months or years ago. If search engines can’t access ALL of your site’s content, you’re missing out on potential traffic and revenue. Search engine optimized tags and a few content strategies can make a big difference too.

2. Google AdSense. The diversity of locations, topics, and motivations of this type of traffic makes it hard to serve relevant ads at any kind of scale. (There may be exceptions for this surrounding topics of posts.) Google’s AdSense program solves this by serving contextually relevant ads to visitors based on the content found on the page and the location of the visitor among other metrics. This greatly increases the chance that a visitor will find an ad relevant and click on it.

3. Limit AdSense. Don’t bother serving AdSense ads to regulars. This is the corollary to why you shouldn’t serve local ads to pass through traffic. Regulars don’t click AdSense ads. They may someday, but for now, the local ad inventory in AdSense is still very limited so not particularly compelling compared to what you can build yourself (and avoid splitting the revenue with Google). In fact, I’ve made one cent all month in AdSense revenue off my 10+ visit crowd.

4. Get aggressive with your archives. Pissing off your regular readers with intrusive ads is the StarTribune’s forte, but don’t make it yours. However, this doesn’t mean that every page should have the same ad mix for all users. If someone’s only going to be around for a single page visit, they may as well leave through a relevant ad.

5. Additional Ad Networks. Depending on your traffic volume, there may be other ad networks worth considering who’ll deliver relatively consistent CPM rates for your inventory.

To me, these are tactics that generate a growing volume of passive advertising income without having a negative impact on loyal readers.

One of Merlin’s favorite subjects is pointing out the ridiculousness of “productivity” websites that post new tips dozens of times per day. As he’s mentioned, you’re not doing anyone any favors by chewing up their time with recycled productivity tips. The best tips, in most cases, being, “get back to work.” He gets into this starting around 3:15 into this video:

Another topic that he often tackles is charlatan businesses such as the snake oil salesmen we see pimping SEO (Search Engine Optimization) services and self-proclaimed social media gurus. These tend to be consultants who may or may not be able to provide anything of value to clients. Additionally, at least part of what they sell isn’t all that far from common sense (ex. “If you want more online friends, don’t act like a jerk online.”).

Merlin tends to make some blanket statements about consultants in industries like this, suggesting that they’re ALL basically selling common sense advice or snake oil. Clearly, if people are selling snake oil, there is a problem. But when did selling common sense advice become a scam? People are more than willing to pay to hear things they already know. Look at how many people sign up for marathon training groups and weight loss programs. Common sense has value – especially when it comes from people who’ve been down that road before who can adjust the wheel a bit if necessary.

Somehow, this inspired me to talk to the camera a bit to cut a response to Merlin’s narrative. This is my attempt to differentiate the people who deserve to be ridiculed from those who are under the radar and those who actually know what they’re doing.

I’m all for knocking on companies and consultants who write checks with their mouth that their ass can’t cash, but let’s be clear that this is generally only a small slice of people working in any given industry (outside of MLM).