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Let me begin by saying that on a personal level, I don’t agree with online gambling. However, that is a personal opinion and I don’t have the right to dictate to other people what they should think.
My friend and colleague Ron drew something to my attention today which has absolutely appalled me. A large part of me wants to be very, very angry but in truth, my overwhelming emotion is fear. Fear of where this could take us. The action in question is the attempt by the Governor of Kentucky to seize 141 web domains that are, in his view, associated with online gambling. It has to be said that this association is very loose, in some cases merely carrying advertising. Let’s set aside for now the fact that the Governor was “elected in part on the strength of a promise to bring casino gambling to the state” (Washington Post 10.8.08) which raises all kinds of issues relating to vested interest, and focus on what is going on here.
A spokeswoman for the Kentucky Justice Department stated that “We think it creates a tremendous disadvantage for our legitimate, licensed and taxed gaming interests, and there are some damages that are due to the commonwealth as a result.” In other words, they want damages from businesses that operate outside their state for the terrible crime of carrying on their business. They want to restrict the citizens of Kentucky from having access to businesses that operate outside the state, the same spokeswoman said that their ‘primary goal is to force the Web sites to block Kentucky residents from visiting them’. Do I take it then that the residents of Kentucky are not to be allowed to do business with any organisation outside the state unless it meets with the approval of the Governor? Obviously their Governor does not believe that they are capable of making decisions for themselves. Obviously their Governor believes that freedom of choice is not a privilege to be accorded to them.
Then there are the wider issues still, what if a company does not like the fact that a competitor has a website, and is going about it’s lawful business. Can they then seize that website on some pretext or other. What if the Government of China decides it doesn’t like the policies of the American Government and seizes their websites… where does this end.
For those of us who make our living on the Internet, the creeping shadow of vested interest is like the darkness spreading from Mordor, insidious and dangerous and we have to guard against it by whatever means we have at our disposal. More frightening still, to me, is the restrictions this places on the freedom of the individual to live the life they choose, safe in the knowledge that those freedoms will be protected by those whom they elect to do so. America prides itself on being the land of the free - but is it still?
Today has been a day of unremitting gloom on the economic front, with the demise of Lehman Bros and the trials of Merrill Lynch – added to the doom and gloom of the last few months, things look pretty grim. I could go into a real full scale rant here about the stupidity of the economic policies that have led us to this point, but that means raking over old history and if I start on the subject of Thatcher and the Bush dynasty, my blood pressure and my temper may never return to normal. Rather my thoughts turned to what effect this is going to have on those of us who work online, particularly the online marketers. I use the term ‘Online Marketing’ rather than ‘Internet Marketing’ quite deliberately as the latter has become so tainted over recent years.
I fear that we will see the rise of more the ‘Get Rich Quick’ scam artists that are out there – as the economic realities hit our wallets, life is going to get very hard, and people will be looking for solutions. When that happens, they become vulnerable to the less scrupulous members of our societies. People will grasp at straws even though they know in their heart of hearts that it is unlikely that the elaborate promises are true.
As and when this happens – and it will, Internet Marketing is going to get a bad name which will affect all of us who work ‘in the ether’. There is already a lack of trust among some people who are afraid to buy anything online because of all the financial fraudsters out there, these scammers will add fuel to that fire and make it even harder than it already is. Making a living online is not easy. Those of us who do it know full well it is hard work – very hard work. It is going to get harder.
What can we do to prevent this? Constant vigilance and shining a light in their dark and dirty corners seems to be the only way forward. Whenever those of us who have standards of honesty and morality come across these schemes we must use our skills to expose them. We are all good at what we do, or we wouldn’t still be here. We can get our words heard on the ‘net, we know how to SEO a website til it squeaks for mercy. We know how to make ourselves seen and heard – and that is what we must do. We must use our skills to protect ourselves and those who are vulnerable.
A society can be judged by the way it protects those who are dependent upon it, the newbies out there are dependent upon us, the more experienced members of our online society. We must do what we can to protect them, and in doing that we protect ourselves.
I’ve beavered and bustled, torn out not a little hair and become even more of a grumpy old woman than usual - but I have completed (more or less) the theme and the site using FirePow, and an HTML template version of the theme that I developed for the products that are being promoted. It has certainly been an experience. Just for good measure I also decided to use PopShops to generate the product pages that I wanted for the second part of the site.
Halloween Funny Stuff has finally opened it’s doors to visitors. Is it perfect? Not by a long chalk and I suspect I will be tweaking and twittering with it for a while, but does it do the job – yes, I think so. My good friend Ron Rink tells me he likes it because it is clear and easy to read. That pleased me enormously, being somewhat visually challenged myself so I have achieved one of my aims. Other friends and colleagues have spoken kind words about the graphics, which really is a turn up for the book as it is a well known fact that graphics and I have a love hate relationship – I love to hate them! Why something which should be so simple causes me such grief, I don’t know – but it does.
Using PopShops to generate the product pages for the second half of the site was a pleasant experience. It was simplicity itself. The only thing I would say is that if you are going to use the autogenerate for later product pages from the datafeeds, do make sure you pick your ‘front page’ products with extreme care or you can end up with a few ‘sillinesses’ as my friend Philoscribe would say. You do also have to keep checking on the product status – but that is the way of the world for anyone involved in affiliate marketing
The job now is to develop the site and this is where we shall see how FirePow operates, certainly in terms of setting up the site, it worked well and there are plenty of training videos to help out with both basics and more advanced options. In the meantime, I’d be interested in your comments.
I’ve spent the last couple of days grappling with a whole new set of skills. I build websites, it’s what I do and how I make a living. Anything I can do to make it easier, provided it’s ethically acceptable, is of benefit. As I have said before I will spend money to save time so I thought I would try out FirePow as a blog/site management system. Then comes the fun bit… I wanted to build a site using wordpress but for the life of me I couldn’t find a theme that would work, so as there is a theme generator within FirePow I thought I would give it a try.
Was that ever a learning experience! It’s still not quite finished so I shall wait to reveal the url for a few days - however I have to say that the Theme Generator was very easy to use - almost too easy, in fact and I did have to do a fair amount of tweaking after the event. As a rule I would say you need to do far more thinking than I did before you start. It would also help to watch the training video before you start rather than half way through as I did. Make sure you have your colour scheme planned, and you have your images ready, but that aside it wasn’t as fearful a task as I thought.
As for FirePow itself - early days yet and I don’t feel I can do a full review yet, however thus far I am impressed. It has certainly lived up to all the promises as far as I have got, but the proof of the pudding will be in the eating as they say. Watch this space!
My poor old blog has been sadly neglected of late… no excuses only pressure of work and this always seems to come bottom of the list. Time for that to stop!
Just as an FYI, one of the things I have been busy with is setting up a website for my dearly beloved’s woodturning business/hobby. You can have a look at Lacemaking Bobbins - I have to admit to encouraging him greatly in this for two reasons, first it gives him an understanding of just exactly what it is I do when I disappear for hours into the office - websites don’t grow on trees and they need careful nurturing. The other reason is far more selfish - if he gets busy in the Workshop, I might get some new bobbins too…
