Regular readers will know, only painfully well, that I consider download sites to be loathsome creatures.  The justifications for this view sprinkle articles in this blog time and time again.

So I’m not going to go into detail, again, on why I consider them to be so.  Please use the search tool above if you seek clarficiation on this – but warning, it’s not pretty.

Some time back (well over twelve months ago now) I stated on several forums and this blog that the day was coming when the search engines started banning these cretinous sites.  While that day hasn’t quite arrived, it would seem we are closer than many, if not most, ISV’s suspected.

I’m a server log reader-aholic.  I religously examine my server logs through a number of tools daily (not all at once) for each website I run.  Imagine my delight today when I see the search term from Yahoo for  “free live sound mixing software” and got the following result, page after page, for the download sites:

Click the images to zoom in…

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

Page 5

Page 6

After page six my enthusiasm for looking flagged.

Some notable names in there, many more are not there of course.  But it’s encouraging.  Site Advisors accuracy on such matters is a matter of some dispute, but in this instance I’m not complaining.  Though I do feel for the Adwords advertiser the scumsites download sites are featuring in the listing.

Updated: Forgot to mention, and it’s important, if you’re linking to these places on your website, indeed any download sites at all – PULL THOSE LINKS NOW.  Site Advisor works on the principle of guilt by association.  If they are flagged you’ll end up flagged like this too!  That’s been the scenario in the past.

Scott Kane

Related posts

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Being a “micro” anything tends to be a tough road to hoe.  Software, where micro is actually pretty common, is no different.  On this blog I frequently toss established wisdom out the window, throw the baby out with the grey and sullied bathwater of software history and in general take careful aim at the standard Micro ISV marketing techniques – and fire.

Frankly I like most Micro ISV’s.  They’re generally pretty decent people, smart, innovative, honest and it has to be said, prone like the rest of us, to accept some things on face value or because “…it’s what’s done.”

From time to time I get the odd comment on this blog, private email and ribbing on some online forums for my stance on things, like, you know – download sites… 

Yes.  Those pesky peddlers of  pustules of Google Adsense and their puerile self righteous justifications for existing at all.  We all love them, except me apparently…

I don’t want to go into the full justifications of my stance in this article.  The curious can certainly use the search feature of this blog by searching for “download sites” without the quotes or use the site-map who’s link is in the footer of every page to browse the category dedicated to them.

The Download Sites Solution Response From Matt Cutts

Rather I’d like to cover two issues which are related to download sites, quite apart from my usual rants on the subject.  Those are Integrated Marketing as an mISV and Matt Cutts who usually says some pretty interesting things about SEO, but in this instance, seriously Matt, is guessing at best.  I’ll explain why presently.  First though – listen to Matt’s YouTube Q and A on the subject:

There ya go – the video is on the left.  Listen to it and then we’ll talk a little about this, what I consider to be, rather flippant and badly researched response on Matt’s behalf…

First – Google must love download sites as customers or sellers rather – of the content of their ad network.  I mean, nothing comes close to the amount of Adsense these guys can fit per pixel on any page.  I hate to think what they’d do if computer monitors were theater sized!  Now, I’m not implying that issue affected Matt’s perspective on this at all here.  Nope.  Rather I’m implying Google doesn’t punish more of these sites than they do already simply because, well, they’re economic pragmatists.

What Matt Cutts has done here is answer a “It doesn’t hurt…” by submitting and listing on low quality download sites.  That’s an absolute.  The problem with absolutes is nothing generally is and can be defined as “absolute”.  It’s more complex than the relatively glib reply Matt gives to the Richard M whose asking the question (and for the record I’m not Richard M, though I do know who Richard M is – Hi Richard!).

An Answer To Matt Cutts’ Vague Response

History shows us in recent times that the penalty for linking to low grade sites is indeed a heavy one – and not just from Google as Yahoo using Site Advisor do a similar thing.  If the download site has malware a number of micro ISV’s have had their sites listed as containing malware erroneously due to the download site or sites.  It’s a carry over effect.  This alone wouldn’t have been hard for Matt to research.  There are specific cases of this in articles on this blog.  Guilt through association.

I’d call the search engine telling people your site contains malware when it does not because of an association with a crummy download site an effect on your ranking.

Second is the proclivity of some download sites to:

1. Rip bleeding chunks of your content off of your sites web pages because they see themselves above decency and international copyright laws.
2. Creating sub-domains of your product name and ranking above many micro ISV’s for their own product.

That this hurts is obvious from search engine rankings of products from micro ISV’s.  If – and they do – download sites outrank many, some whom I know quite well, on important keywords then you’re losing the battle.  You need that customer or downloader on your website so you can sell to them.  Not have a download site feed them GoogleGobble by way of Adsense.

That’s my bone of contention with Matts reply here.  He didn’t research and answered a rather vague question somewhat, well, even more vaguely.

Which brings me to, what I see, as my own solution.  That I need a solution, given I don’t submit to any download sites barring Download.com and don’t permit the others to link to me – under pain of a PAD file from hell – is case in point that download sites are a blight on the search engine landscape.  They can and do on occasion beat me on some keywords.  A temporary problem as a rule if a little common sense SEO is applied.  Anyway…

Integrated Marketing

I’m pretty open about many of things I do when writing here on this blog.  But rest assured I never, and probably never will, open up on everything I do.   I make no apologies for that.  However there is something I aimed to do for some time and in recent times put into practice and that is “Integrated Marketing”.

This is a different approach to most micro ISV’s, but it seems to be starting to pay off.  Usually Google gives one a link on page one if you are relevant and optimized to the subject and you don’t try and scam them – and the market you are targeting isn’t enormous.

I state here again I loathe black hat SEO people and am not so fond of those who call themselves “white hat” or “blue hat” either.  At the same time, if you’re building a company, and not just a product, it’s reasonable for sites to be listed on page one that belong to you as not one site for the keyword but two or more.

Note that each sells a different but complimentary set of products, they have in some instances the same customers, but in other instances other customers.  So the relationship is a good fit.  They integrate.

Before I go into specific details and explain myself it’s fair to point out that in all instances quoted here I did not start with a “fresh domain name” in any instance.  I always “break a domain name in” before using it by registering well in front and providing some basic details to the search engines for them to get use to the site – to date that’s mean no sandbox treatment from the search engines.  Thus ranking to page one isn’t as hard as it would be, once the site goes fully online with content, as it would be if you registered a domain, built the site and waited within the space of a week.  As always it’s about planning ahead – we’re in business right?  That takes planning.  Something I learned after breaking every single business bone in my body – many time over.

Now, the whole structure is not complex, most of it is entirely automated and the results are starting to speak for themselves.  Searching for certain keywords on certain products will result often in two websites, both owned by me, on page one speaking about those products or related and complimentary products -  and that does not include this blog.  In some instances it’s three sites and in many instances spread over several pages due to different types of content.  This is actually a good thing as not every “page summary” in a search engine page appeals to all people, I’ve noticed, though they be entirely connected and related to the same search word.

Again, before I go further, keep in mind that if you have only one product this technique is going to be a little tougher.  Not impossible.  It’s hardly revolutionary but it is sorely overlooked by most.  Also – not all of the products are software, in the case of CDROO it’s audio files of music and sound effects.

So, apart from “Program X”, which I won’t name here at this time, the structure is something like the above.  To understand why this diagram is significant to this discussion though one has to understand what each site does.

TwoCan Software

That’s the company name.  Yes – we do know how to spell Toucan!!  It’s a hammy play on words indicating that two people, my partner and I, can get this darn thing off the ground. 

Updated 29 June 09 10:49 am: The domain name for the company site is TwoCanSoftware.com for those who went to look and found something less than desirable by not adding Software to TwoCan my apologies.  Previously the shorter domain name was just a squatter. Now seems the usual scum and villiany have moved into the shorter URL.

TwoCan on first glance appears to be a website much like other “company” websites that lists all the products a company sells.  Appearances are one thing, but that’s not why it was conceived or created.  TwoCan is also an aggregate of RSS feeds of every one of the product sites – and including this blog – which works wonders with what we’re talking about in relation to integrated marketing.  While it aggregates it does not just pull in the whole RSS feed, but rather the summary of each post and links directly back to the product sites blog article.  Forming a a rather effective bond between it and it’s products, while serving as a nice resource for folks not specifically interested in a specific product, but in general or related issues.  TwoCan does not rank at or near number one in any search engine directory.  It’s not supposed to, that’d be futile as the product sites should do that, that is their purpose.   However TwoCan is increasingly appearing on page one, albeit towards the middle or bottom of the page, and that’s a good thing.  It gives searchers two chances to find us – and I’m pleased to say has been known to push the odd download site off of page one and onto page two where they belong… 

PerforMixer

PerforMixer, compared to the other sites and with the exception of “Program X”, is a relatively new site.  PerforMixer is suffering a bit of an age and nationality crises.  It seems Google has recently started ranking sites with a different IP address range to the TLD below those from the same TLD IP range as the search engine.  So, for example, PerforMixer does well in the Australian, New Zealand and South Pacific Google engines, but not as well in the US, CA and UK ones.  Google has always done this to some extent, but recently it’s become rather acute.  Not sure what’s going on there.  I may end up buying US IP addresses to resolve this if it becomes permanent.  PerforMixer is an interesting product in some respects.  I predicted when I released it that it would be a slow seller.  It has met that prediction.  However it is a reasonably popular download and, probably because I’ve optimized in advance for it, receives a lot of search traffic from people looking for cracks, keygens and torrents for it.  So it’s no runaway success in sales, but seems popular enough to steal given that these search terms are a daily occurrence now in my logs on all my sites.

So, back to the subject, PerforMixer is on page one for most of it’s important keywords, number one of page one in many instances and then further down the page is TwoCan for the same or similar keywords.  Nice.

MixAction

The same story with MixAction.  MixAction comes in first for related keywords, then TwoCan for many of those is further down the page and then, more recently, the newest player in the game:

CDROO

Now, CDROO was created to sell royalty free music and sound effects to MixAction customers primarily, with a wider view towards podcasters and online video creators.  So it’s a good match and as it shares many keywords with MixAction it appears in an increasing number of instances for keywords on page one, often below TwoCan.

Program X

Another multimedia product and ultimately with a goal towards becoming our most important in many regards.  The same technique as above to be used over time.

OK, that’s the beginnings of Integrated Marketing.  Not download sites, they are not party of the plan beyond download.com which automatically means their affiliate sites.  Just articles, content and roll your sleeves up hard work.  A drovers dog could do it in fact!

Scott Kane

Quote of the day:
Sometimes people are layered like that. There’s something totally different underneath than what’s on the surface. But sometimes, there’s a third, even deeper level, and that one is the same as the top surface one. Like with pie. – Joss Whedon, Zack Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen, and Jed Whedon

Related posts

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1. Launched CDROO.com Royalty Free Music, aimed at the theater sound cue industry for our product MixAction, but also for podcasters, bloggers, video creators and handy for ISV’s.
2. I posted about content writing for websites being hard work and fun.
3. Posted here I intended to, in a sense, replicate what was done June 2008 here in an effort to bring MixAction to market – goal July 29th as a beta at the minimum.

So how’s all that been going then?

1. and 2. CDROO And Content

Pleased to say my contention in respect of content really paid dividends with CDROO.  The site went live on Sunday 7th of June 2009, previously it was offline, pointing to a “Currently Offline” page with no content, all database driven so therefore invisible to the search engines and no sitemap.xml file to cheat with.  As of yesterday (just on a week later) CDROO has made it to page one in Google for what are, for that site, important keywords.  Money where my mouth is time, so:

You can click the image to the right to zoom in.

Basically the site has begun to appear on page one in Google for a number of competitive keywords and in the example to the left extremely competitive keywords of “Royalty Free Music”.  Not all Google engines in all TLD’s reflect this yet, which is quite common with Google, there’s a bit of catch-up that goes on with the TLD’s.  But it’s a pleasing result and it’s basically down to rich content.

Now, the thing is here that while CDROO has nothing to do with software sites, it’s music, the keywords being targeted are more competitive than most Micro ISV’s software products.  There are domains on page one of that result who’ve been there since the turn of the century.  Some of these players are huge with very large websites.  There are no download sites to help them get there, CDROO has a Google PR value of only 3 (it’s been offline for almost 8 months or more and most of that PR exists due to this blog).  It’s down to the content there, there are no Adwords campaigns for it running now or previously.  I’ve made a point of posting this, not as a pat on the back or even to refute the nonentity who posted a comment last week decrying the article I wrote on content – and to be fair there’s a comment in the same post from an ISV supporting the claims I made on content so it wasn’t all negative.  Rather to illustrate this process is not magic, it’s not about silly coloured SEO hats or anything else.  It’s actually about rolling up your sleeves, being creative with content and putting in the hard yards.

Did WordPress, the engine the site uses for delivery of all content, play a role?  Absolutely.  No question.  The right plug-ins, using it’s rich features such as categories and tags certainly played a role, Google and the other engines are eating it up.  Sales are small, no question, but visits are increasing and as sound and music is to a degree subjective it will take time to turn the SEO result into sales as the collection of available music and sound on the site grows.

3. July 29th Goal For MixAction

OK, this is actually the tougher one of the two.  Unlike this time last year I’m now either running or building six websites, including this blog, so there’s less of me to go round.  But yes, yesterday was a productive day coding and a good start to the self push I started yesterday – and I got an article written for MixAction’s own blog – something I now schedule to do two to three times a week.  MixAction’s website still doesn’t rank number one for every keyword, but it’s nearly always in the top two results there and indeed in most instances does rank number one for main keywords and I’m seeing it overtake those it wasn’t number one for over time as I continue to write content.

The people using the tool Keyword spy and WhoIS lookups that “analyse” the site  that I see in my MixAction site logs daily?

You’re doing it wrong! 

Looking towards an update on coding next post.

Scott Kane

Quote of the day:
Always and never are two words you should always remember never to use. – Wendell Johnson

Related posts

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• Micro ISV's SO Much Semantics, So Much Blind Faith, So Much Adherence To AssUMe And Yesterday's Truisms (3)
• CDROO Launched – A Micro ISV Resource For Royalty Free Music And Sound + An Offer To Readers (2)

I wax lyrical on this blog about the fact that I firmly believe content is not only powerful but essential to micro ISV’s in order to succeed in their endeavour.  I’ve stated before that submitting to download sites is not marketing.  It’s merely a cop out.  And we all adore a bloody good cop out – eh?

There’s no doubt it’s hard work writing content.  But once you start you’d be amazed at how easy it actually becomes, yet few ISV’s ever get to this point.  It’s about thinking outside the box.  Content is merely information about our product or service presented in an informative or even entertaining way.  We technically already have the content – it’s in our brain as we have domain knowledge – or should – in respect of our product or service.

No domain knowledge?  “Yer doin’ it wrong!”

It is hard work, but it’s not impossible work.  It has amazing results, we see those results everyday and sadly fail to consider what they actually are – results.  For example think about your favourite websites.  Why do you visit them all the time?  It’s probably a fair bet it’s because they have content, frequently updated content most likely and that content is related to your specific interest or interests.

Product Sites Without Content Is Like A Naked Turtle – Skin, Bones, But No Shell

On my product sites I have blogs, operating exactly the same way as this one, though not in all instances called a “Blog”.  CDROO calls it “News Releases” which includes articles on new product as they are released and articles related, in the case of that site, to royalty free music, podcasts and videos.  As you probably know CDROO is a relatively new site so the articles there are limited in number.  But the method used on CDROO is the same as the method used on MixAction and the other sites.  The reason those sites rank so well and so easily for a ever growing list of keywords and phrases is the content.  You can actually watch your visits grow as you post articles – content.

Across on CDROO, for example, today I posted an article titled “Music, A Heartbeat For Your Videos And Podcasts“   You can read it if you’re curious by Clicking Here

It’s not in depth, it’s not the same as the kind of articles I write here on this blog.  It’s purely explanatory and offers some elementary reasons for including music and sound in podcasts, videos and other multi media productions including live theater.

If you’re not publishing articles, content, regularly, you are missing an amount of traffic that would surprise if not render you rather aghast.  I wince when I read or hear mISV’s claim they are not interested in capturing clicks for certain key phrases from Google, related directly to thier product, when I, stupidly, contact them to inform them that I’m getting their traffic here on this blog.

What am I talking about?

From time to time I’ll write a little article here for a product produced by a fellow micro ISV.  Those articles all to frequently outrank their sites on those keywords.  The only exceptions are the handful who write content themselves.

But ranking isn’t important unless that ranking leads to clicks – right?

Sure.  But that’s the point, I wouldn’t know those articles ranked unless I saw those clicks in my logs.  I have no reason to go looking for them until I start seeing them month in month out coming here.  In time those results wane as I’ve only written one article and other savvy marketers in that domain marketplace will write articles consistently related to the subject.  So in time they, with no link to those ISV’s and often competing, end up dominating the result in many instances.  Suggesting, clearly, regular dynamic content is not only powerful, but bloody well essential.

I’m sure it’s an experience other bloggers and readers of this blog who do similar things  are all to familiar with.  People are typing sentences into the engines and those sentences will match sites that have matching phrases and prhase combinations.  If you don’t match them – even if you’re optimized for the keyword it’s more often than not the case that somebody else will out rank you in the results.

Why be number 3 when you can easily be number 1?  Why be on page 2 or 3 of the results (or page 157!!!) when you can be page one in position 1, 2 or 3 and in the case of my own products frequently all three positions because of how my sites are setup to cross feed each other when and where such a cross feed is valuable to my markets and my products - together.

Honest – if you’re not writing content, articles, features – you’re not running on all cylinders as a business.  The carburettor isn’t pumping the right amount of fuel and you’re not getting the horsepower your business is capable of achieving.  When our car is inefficient we get it serviced.  Don’t forget to service your business.  A lube job and oil change refreshes your car, it’s a mechanical spring clean.  Spring clean your websites with some content and measure it yourself.

Scott Kane

Quote of the day:
A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future. – Sidney J. Harris

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“Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain
Where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies,
Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers,
That grow so incredibly high.
Newspaper taxis appear on the shore,
Waiting to take you away.
Climb in the back with your head in the clouds,
And you’re gone.”

Copyright Lennon and McCartney.

While it’s a pretty song, the lyrics are, to say the least nonsensical.  I find many Micro ISV comments on search engine optimization in the same vein.  Big on laying it down with a big stick, big on supporting the wisdom of the SEO ancients, but low on actual, personal enquiry, evidence, testing and data.

Now of course, they’ll ask you for data to support any claims you make, but if you ask for the same they’ll either ignore the question or, from the safety of an anonymous user account, decry you for heresy.

BOLLOCKS!

OK, the reason for this conniption here relates to that hoary old subject of SEO and back links.  The blind faith so many, and in this case Micro ISV’s, have in relation to the belief- “you’ll fail to get ranking in Google if you don’t have high PR” – an assumption that’s based on….  What exactly?

Ah – “General Knowledge!!!!!”

It was once general knowledge that the world was flat.  A cleric in a middle Eastern Country can be found on YouTube still espousing this clap-trap, a few young Earth proponents of the extreme variety here in Australia and America’s bible belt – but most of us accept it as a fact in 2009 that the world is not flat, mostly because it is demonstrably a sphere.

You can certainly A/B test this for yourself (PR not the world is flat, that’s somewhat more involved   ), and I encourage you to do it, but my contention based on my own tests, that can be verified by where my sites rank – even in the more highly competitive keyword pages, is this:

The notion of page rank (PR)  doesn’t mean a bloody thing in concrete terms. It’s merely and indicator of the popularity of the site as a place people link to and that Google has gotten around to measuring.    PR is a metric that is frequently months behind reality, is measured using metrics not even Google seem entirely sure about and it only measures open links.  It doesn’t measure, for example, RSS.  Hell, even most website server logs fail to measure RSS feed reads properly.  It does not measure your rank in the engine.  Not at all.  It doesn’t even quantify in any real, measurable way.  One of my websites out ranks on a major keyword for it’s sector out in front of huge companies with PR of 6 and 7, it’s only a 2.  They’ve been there for years, that website has been there less than twelve months.

There was indeed a time when PR was valuable.  Say around the turn of this century.  But nowhere near as important as it was made out to be.

It’s Content

Yes, it’s time to pull out that old stick again.  It’s content that makes a real difference to your physcal page rank, content and relevance, not the PR value.  So simple to prove even the lamest, thumb stuck in mouth Micro ISV can do it.  Relevant content based on your domain knowledge that was responsible for creating your application in the first place.  No domain knowledge, insist on adhering to trashy, spammy download sites to do your job badly for you?  Please refer to this article by Clicking Here

Because that’s what this whole “rely on the download sites and content is crap” ethos is in essence.  Spaghetti SEO.  By doing it your PR rank goes up – no question.  But it does nothing for your site rank – your physical location rank in Google’s results.

Congratulations – you’ve just successfully spammed page one of Google with a whole bunch of links who will, even if you are number one, cheerfully direct people to somewhere else, irrelevant to you.  Now, please go and place a  hard hat on, because your next step is to hit yourself over the head with a brick.  Because it hurts like hell, but it feels oh so cool when you stop!

I’d Rather My Competitor Was Ranking Next To Me

Because it offers comparison.  You should be confident your product delivers superior value to your customers to the point most customers are going to choose you.  If you are not confident of this then I – and you should – question why in heck your selling and actively developing it.

People are shopping comparatively.  Like it or lump it.  They are increasingly looking for reasons to buy – and not reasons you give in your website copy.  They want reviews, from people like them.  They don’t trust manufacturer blurb, we have been so over exposed to marketing hype we know we can’t believe even half of it.

Nope.  People want to read the experiences of others.  The good, the bad, the ugly.  Jamming thousands of BS download websites with your PAD spew onto page one doesn’t prove that you’re the best, it proves you’re a disinterested prick who couldn’t give a flying frack about the quality of your product website or your customers experience.

Epic Jerk!

It also proves you don’t have a clue where you’re heading and have a proclivity towards being a “sheeple” because your following along with the advice of some person who’s not done the hard yards of testing.  “Baaaa!”

Now, I’m not telling you to take my word for it.  That’d be like a hammer calling a mallet a blunt instrument.  Test it.  Write content, do the work, measure, test, repeat.  Try it.  Not only will you quickly find you get results, which are far more valuable than anything I might jump up and down about, but you’ll control the results to a far greater extent.  Grasp that download sites offer zero return for effort – no matter how little effort you consider them to be.  That download site submission software sells merely because thousands of people, perhaps like you, who are Micro ISV’s believe without testing, anything they are told.  Handing over hard earned dollars year in and year out – for nothing!

If you write the content, it needn’t ever be mega essays, encourage bloggers to talk about your product – bloggers who are the type of people to be your customer, get reputable sites like CNet’s Download.com because the reviews really do mean something – to review you and prove it for yourself.

Note – blogs etc reviewing your product or site won’t increase your PR rating either.  Get over it.  But they will appear in search results, they will send traffic from those locations.  They will make you money – depending on the blog – the financial return from download sites for most Micro ISV”s on the other hand is zero.  If fact it’s less than zero because those sites don’t want people to download your product – they want people to click their Google Spew AdSense.

Then again – you could continue being a “sheeple”, follow the crowd and let those who do the hard yards beat you effortlessly.  Frankly in many instances that would suit many of us just fine. 

Scott Kane

Quote of the day:
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Teach a man to create an artificial shortage of fish and he will eat steak. – Jay Leno

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Customer service is almost always viewed as a necessary evil. Annoying customers always poking around looking for answers to things which are right in front of them and causing us to take time out of programming to help them. So this leads into the great cop-out. Make it beta and hey, make it free. Those 2 tags let the programmer get out of so much. Customer has a problem? Screw off, it’s free. Can’t find a phone number or email address to contact us by? Screw off, it’s free.

While I accept there are always exceptions I don’t find this argument at all spurious.  I’ve been a member of a number of software (mISV) trade associations, participated in various forums for several decades and moderated three newsgroups aimed at small developers starting or running small software companies for ten years, before I retired as the primary moderator. In each of the instances above I’ve found the world is brimming with lazy, scared (and both) developers.  Hell, they even get angry when they ask for suggestions for assisting their business and the answer you give forces them to abandon their laziness or scared mindsets.

 

• Write content for my website?  No way!  I’m no writer.  I don’t have time.
• Start a blog?  No way!  I’m no writer.  I don’t have time.
• Avoid using PAD files?  What are you? Some kind of heretic? Download sites are my friend!
• Incoming links are the answer to SEO!  Why would I bother with your suggestions to actually work or make a fool of myself writing?
• All I have to do is submit PAD files and sit back and wait for all those sales! Go way oh philistine Kane!

 

While I fall short of being contemptuous of these answers (not just given to me) I admit to getting extremely peeved.  To the point where I rarely attempt to help anymore.  But to the point of the “lazy + scared = free” equation.  I think it goes further.  It extends to the same mentality that prices software at $10, 19.99 and I’ll say it “29.99”.  This is 1990’s pricing.  While internet access and hosting has gotten cheaper, admittedly two major expenses for online sales, bread, milk, petroleum and the cost of sending your kids to even a basic school has more than tripled since then. Are you pricing because you’re lazy or scared?  

Scott Kane  
Quote Of The Day

“When we came we had a drought. Then the floods put the bushfires out”.
(Theme Song From On Our Selection soundtrack.  1995)

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• ISV’s Are In The Business Of Software, Not The Business Of Audio And Video… (13)
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• 10 Years Anniversary Today. EPIC FAIL. I Quit. Starting An ISV … (7)
• Starting An ISV? No Domain Knowledge? Go To Incubator, do not pass Go, do not collect a Registration… (1)

I try to follow these scum merchants and their proclivity for the advancement of turning search engines into sewer pipes, and as I’m switching currently across to VisualStudio and the .Net platform I have cause to do more searching than usual.

What I’ve noticed is a massive increase in download sites using the product name of an ISV or mISV’s software as a sub domain of their website.  What this effectively means is that they are attempting to out rank the author – and each other naturally – on the product.

OK.  Sure many have been using web pages with the product name for some time, which certainly can play a role in rank.  But a sub domain is taken as far more authorative by the engines – even Google.  Don’t give them the “benefit of the doubt” here, this is extremely cynical.

Given that a sub domain has to be setup – albeit scripts can do it – and takes more work (and expense in many cases) than a simple generated page /productname.html compared to product.name.spammydownloadsite.com

Some developers with a firm grip on SEO are not going to be affected by this, those using content, blogs etc will cream these Google Adsense farmers without any problems.  But those, most, mISV’s who don’t write content, don’t get the basics of SEO will be affected.  Especially if they host their product on a company domain name mycompany.com as opposed to a product domain name myproduct.com

To my mind this is tantamount to stealing IP.  Maybe your IP.  Though you’d be hard pressed to make it stick in a court and the downloads sites know it.

Check and keep an eye on the the search engines lest a download site sneaks up on you.  Better yet – ditch PAD, ditch the download sites and get cracking on writing content to support your product.

Scott Kane

Related posts

• 10 Years Anniversary Today. EPIC FAIL. I Quit. Starting An ISV … (7)
• Starting An ISV? No Domain Knowledge? Go To Incubator, do not pass Go, do not collect a Registration… (1)
• Cracks, Hacks, Keygens, Torrent Files and Lamers (2)
• Content – OK, But What About The ISV Competition And Their Content? (2)
• Micro ISV's SO Much Semantics, So Much Blind Faith, So Much Adherence To AssUMe And Yesterday's Truisms (3)

History is full of people who aren’t heroes, they don’t do heroic things, they just do boring things for years and years so that others can enjoy their lives free from problems certain other people wish to inflict upon them.  I think that about sums about the content of this article.

Ten years ago this month a group of Usenet newsgroups were formed.  The groups were created for the software industry as a moderated solution to stem the bickering and vicious flame wars that broke out daily on the parallel “alt” newsgroups.

In those days, 1998, there were no blogs, forums were in their infancy and Google was a search engine player that barely anybody bothered to use – or considered worth worrying about.

Usenet was the communication method of consequence then and previously.  It was not perfect, far from it, but it was the best we had at the time.

People coming into the software world since the .com bust will probably not appreciate just how important and pervasive Usenet was – how much it was relied upon and how busy it was before it’s subsequent tumble into spam chaos and eventually – where it lays now, in it’s final twitches of death with the RIAA hammering in the last nails into it’s coffin.

Click To Zoom Into Picture

Download sites were the premium distribution method – for once I’m not going to rail on about those at all in this post. 

“Blue Sky Usenet” – something you read about a lot back in 1999, in the admin and moderator discussion groups – never materialized.

People often ask me privately, and I’m sure many more wonder silently, why I can go from mild mannered to a verbal hurricane of abuse in a forum.  Read on.  This post will explain at least some of the reasons.  Part of it is to do with being so bloody tired and having seen so much BS on forums from anon posters before…

ISV and MISV Not In Currency

The term ISV was rarely heard outside the hallowed halls of Redmond and mISV wasn’t even coined yet.

For mISV’s and many ISV’s the word was Shareware.  An established word, in many ways a good word and a totally misunderstood word both within this industry and without.

Even by the people involved in writing software that was released under it’s auspices.

A word I admit even I myself cringe from now, mostly because the word, but not necessarily the products, has been hijacked, as surely as the word “hacker” was hijacked by a clueless media and masses to describe a criminal element where once it referred to nothing more sinister than a programmer.

Hijacked

Hijacked by the same people, media and masses in many instances, and used to describe software in a negative light, even though it does not and never did represent this.

It never ceases to amaze me how desperately the media and masses embrace the idea of misappropriating the words and acronyms of the computer industry and software in particular.

If one called a football Quarterback a 25%Back they’d be outraged – fighting words! -and wouldn’t stand for it.  But misuse and change the meaning of an industry they participate in as consumers and not as professionals with little if any true understanding and they jump in without a care in the world and either re-assign or invent definitions.

Besides – why would they let truth get in the way of a good yarn, eh?

A distribution method, not a type of software.

A message that was never heeded and a message that falls on empty ears.  But also an ethos, in many ways, an ethos that puts a huge number of people who adhere to it in a position where they remain transfixed in the last century and an ethos that seems to require some to direct their ire and ridicule upon anybody daring to state this.

It is because of the public definition and the application of the ethos, by some, that I reject using the word and don’t want anything to do with it.  That the moderator of three newsgroups dedicated to the word and an industry advocate and volunteer for so many years should say it will no doubt direct fire in some quarters and has to be considered quite an irony.

In fact a handful, most don’t read blogs or have one, followed me to this blog and from time to time you may spot their “comments” to posts if you’re quick enough and I haven’t gotten to deleting them.  Deleted not because they expressed opinions that differ from mine, but because they are generally of the same caliber and character they exhibit on Usenet – albeit, there, they have tended to use their real names but post anon here – foul, vulgar and full of abuse and viciousness.  You’ll recognize the posts, they are usually malformed, parochial and full of cuss words.  The only comments I do actually delete.

But the wonder of IP addresses links them easily enough and names can be put to their comments.

Small Think

I also reject the name “shareware” now because it defines the worst of what I have come to see as “Small Think”.  Small Think surrounds one with a set of walls, beyond which one can’t venture by definition of thinking small.

To some extent the phrase “mISV” has the same potential – of smallness.  I prefer ISV, but if one must then mISV is a huge step-up from defining oneself as a “shareware author” in 2008.

Just like the term “SOHO” that was big in the 90′s (Small Office Home Office) and full of hype and buzz and now irrelevant, dated and “small” thinking, so is the word “shareware” as it is generally applied.

Knowing the correct definition of the word doesn’t change this.

Knowing better doesn’t change this.

The ethos behind shareware, coming from somebody who’s met the who’s who of that realm, worked beside them and calls some of them friends even now, limits ones expansion.  Mentally and business wise.   That’s the ethos – not the friends. 

Some people, it’s true, only want a small business and that’s a healthy enough thing, but most of us would prefer to expand our minds I should think…

There is simply to much baggage, to many hangers on with a vested interest in keeping things locked into the “Good Old Days” and to many miscreants determined to prey upon those adhering to some of it’s philosophies.

I promised I wouldn’t mention download sites – didn’t I?  

You may argue at this point – but why is a definition needed at all?

That’s a good question.  It’s basic human psychology.  To belong to something one must apply a name.  It’s what we do.  The adherence to the word “shareware” and the irritation statements like those I’ve made here creates, characterizes this.

If you don’t need to define yourself – more power to you.  But most people do – and most people will define you, or at least try to do so as a “something”.

In my book it’s better to give them a name to use that has a more positive connotation than “shareware” has.

It’s also important, in order to evolve ourselves and our businesses, that we look beyond the traditional fountains of wisdom.  The traditional sources and organizations and clubs and forums and see the wood for the trees.

Very few “shareware” authors have grasped the “Web 2.0″ movement and very few have tried to understand that the world has moved on from 2000/2001 and it’s a different, mind numbingly different, world to the one we knew.

Many, no most, start out with the actual goal of becoming “shareware authors”, instead of the goal of becoming a software business.  This is a critical failing point.  It’s the true definition of “Small Think”.

Meanwhile – Back To Usenet

Back to the three newsgroups created  -

comp.software.shareware.users,

comp.software.shareware.authors and

comp.software.shareware.announce

went through the RFC’s and votes were collated, a moderator elected, that being myself, etc as required to create a newsgroup in the “Big  8 Hierarchy” – a more complex process when they are “moderated.”

The tricky thing with Usenet moderators on the Big 8 groups in particular is that they are benevolent (some malevolent and some a combination of both) dictators – for life.

Short of the moderator retiring there is no method by which to sack or replace them.

As far as the newsgroups go they become the last word.  The charter that binds a newsgroups applies to every person bar one.  The moderator is free to do as they please, add or take away from the charter and so on.

In those days a moderator could (and did) pull Usenet feeds from recalcitrant ISP’s who supported spamming, through the network of other moderators and participating servers – known as “uplines”. Literally depriving the downline ISP of their upline feed.

As Usenet was then part of an ISP’s business model this was a big deal then that pulled recalcitrant ISP’s into line – even big ones – whether it be because they supported spamming in the name of “free speech” or allowed their customers to bypass the moderation process on a given group.

Now days it has zero impact and indeed is no longer possible to do.

A moderator could, and did, cancel posts, drop email addresses of spammers and abusers into anti-spam engines and bot’s and in some instances have a persons account pulled by an ISP for NetAbuse.

Hated, despised, loved and respected and combinations in between.

The idea is that the moderator you elect is beyond reproach and saves the readers and posters bacon by being the final word on riff-raff, trolls and flame wars.  Cross posts, spamming and being on topic.

It’s a tricky balance because folks will always either agree or disagree with a moderators decision.  It’s not a popularity contest and a moderator in a busy newsgroup suffers personally to a large degree because of this, something most people never consider.

So why were these three groups created?

War…

I’m going to mention events in this post, but will change the names to protect the ingrates innocent.

In the alt hierarchy there was a war going on.   A nasty perpetual war.  Mainly between one protagonist and the ASP.  For the purposes of this article I’m going to refer to the person as Darren Rosethorn.

Rosethorn was at one stage an ASP member.  What made him unique was that he wrote viruses and distributed them.

Now – it’s fair and correct to say here that these were harmless viruses for the purposes of evaluating anti-virus software.  His intent, in this regard, was not to cause harm – at least not via the actual “product” he pedaled.

When the ASP was getting set to release a CD of “shareware” distributed software products Rosethorn wanted to be on it.  I’m not going to go into the nitty gritty details of what transpired in relation to that beyond stating the primary point…

“Shareware”, wrongly, had a reputation amongst the public and media as being a sure fire way to “get a virus”.  Whole erroneous articles were written in computer mags, computer “Experts” and “Whizzes” (man I hate that noun) spouted nonsensical claptrap about this over and over as only the clueless can.

The ASP, rightly, fought and was fighting to clean up this image.  So putting a virus on a CD, harmless or not, clearly wasn’t the way to get there…

To do it would have been a publicity failure on an epic scale.

So they didn’t, had their own internal war with Rosethorn and this “house mate Rosethorn” was evicted due to his ill behavior within their private forums.

That’s when the wars erupted in public.

Nursing his anger and in possession of a nasty tongue and typing hands (who’s spelling and expression was at middle Elementary school level it seemed) he exploded into the public newsgroups not just daily – but all day – and night.  His objective was to cause as much collateral damage to the organization and individual members as possible.

The problem was that newbie readers took him at his word.  So others would try and point out what was actually transpiring.  Resulting in a type written guerilla campaign from Rosethorn.

It got pretty ugly.  The pubic newsgroup was rendered useless as he entered every discussion and fired salvos.  Ignoring him made it worse.  He just got nastier and created his own posts – en masse.

He’d “evolve” quotes from people that were wrong or frequently fabricated and, as is common on the Internet, say it enough times so that it appeared real to newbs.

DejaNews (spelling correct for site name) – the forerunner of GoogleGroups indexed this stuff and it bled into the search engines.  It looked pretty horrible and caused potential reputation damage to anybody he “misquoted” or fabricated.

The problem with Rosethorn was that he liked to argue but was not terribly good at it.

• Long words confused him.
• Spelling eluded him
• Logic escaped him.

So when your’s truly entered the fray – though many other notables did a sterling and truly excellent job in those battles – he met somebody who didn’t care what Rosethorn called him, threatened him with or otherwise – and for the first time met somebody who would monitor and reply in the group to him for as many hours – and longer – as he did.

Previous attempts to create a moderated group in the comp hierarchy had failed.  The votes weren’t there.  But as Rosethorn went on, and to some extent myself and others like me, it became clear that the comp groups were needed and they needed to be moderated.

The problem was – getting a moderator is not easy.

Cutting a long story very short I volunteered, was nominated and elected as primary moderator, with Tim Skipper a co-moderator, though Tim disappeared some time later.

The groups were endorsed by vote, overwhelmingly – no matter how many times Rosethorn tried to duplicate his vote, poor guy just couldn’t understand the idea behind what an IP address did.

The first order of business was to work out a mechanism to approve or reject and even cancel posts.  Canceling was necessary as some deviants used to “approve” themselves by adding moderator headers to their posts.  In those days most news servers honored canceled posts.

To use the likes of RoboMod then  you needed a server that could interface with Usenet.  At that time this was not an affordable option for me.  So I wrote a desktop client that could do all of the needed actions with a single mouse click.

Basically when somebody posts to a Usenet moderated newsgroup it goes to the moderator’s email account.  Whether it be spam or a genuine post.  At that time server space was measured in tens of megabytes or in my case a hundred – and that was just short of a premium account for most shared hosting.  So receiving hundreds of messages was expensive, time consuming and a pain in the ass.  Made worse by a flood of spam.

So it needed to be simple and quick.  Basically it received the email, stored it and allowed me to read the message and approve it by inserting a header into the message and then injecting it into my local news server.  Rejections would send an automated reply – if I wished, or a detailed hand typed reply should that be more appropriate – and for the spam it just deleted them.

Today the groups are run on RoboMod and the spam is mostly handled automatically through Bayesian filters.

But not then.  I had to wade through the lot.  Moderation often took hours each day.  That you had to do it several times a day to keep the immediacy up (essential for the life of the groups as people quickly lose interest if there are delays) compounded this.

Rosethorn’s First Order Of Action Was To Be Banned.

On the day the new newsgroups went live Rosethorn posted hundreds of messages – cross posted – to each and every one of the three newsgroups.  Cross posting was not allowed  under the charter.  His messages were rejected.  Imagine your first experience as a Usenet moderator and being met by this?

It was my first experience of battling spam submission software – that’s what Rosethorn was using.  Type it once, submit it many times automatically.  Except in this instance to a limited number of groups, the one’s I moderated, rather than every group on Usenet.

If got better – or worse as the case may be.  He sent hundreds more, many decrying my “censorship” and the fact that I was ‘biased” against him and an all round Mr Meany when it came down to it.

I rejected them.  The guys was a nutter without question, but a clever nutter…

He’d worked out that if he sent a few hundred messages and cross posted them I’d have to reject them for each newsgroup.  Three newsgroups = 600 separate messages each time.  By adding the alt groups this became more complicated.  But then I realized something.

He added the alt groups last on the list of newsgroups.  By doing so he effectively handed me a method to moderate him on the alt groups simply by rejecting his messages sent to the Big 8 three that I did moderate.

If I rejected the first of each message he’d cross posted I rejected it for each of the three groups I moderated and the alt groups.  It’s a flow on effect.

He never did manage to work that one out and very few others have either…

What he’d also handed me was the ability to cancel his garbage in the alt groups – legitimately in the interests of “Usenet” which we could get away with back then, especially, if as these did, they were slanderous or advocated criminal behavior.  So while he could see his messages nobody else did and they stayed out of DejaNews and thus the search engines.

I applied this sparingly and only on the worst of his messages.  My hypocrisy does have some bounds. 

It took twenty four hours and Rosethorn was in my “Twit Filter”.  Basically a black hole in my little moderation software client that rejected his messages without me ever seeing them.  In my time as moderator only four people, other than serial spammers, ever made it into that filter.

Why didn’t I just put him there from the start?  It was always my goal to be fair.  Behave yourself and anybody could post.  Arguments were fine, flame wars were off the agenda.  In fact flaming was specifically banned by the charter from implementation of the groups.

Every person who wound up in the “Twit Filter” was given multiple opportunities to amend their behavior.  Frequently I would not reject a flame, but chide the poster and ask them to keep it nice.  Only serial offenders wound up there.

It has to be said that a lot of people hated that I would ban a person completely like this.  But then – they didn’t have to deal with this stuff and what they actually saw in the newsgroups was only a fraction of what I received by email – either personally or via the admin address.

I had a life too.  Dealing with this kind of tripe daily quickly makes it impossible to do anything else.

It was a requirement that people use their real names (even if that meant typing “John Smith” instead of “Bike Boy” or some other stupid anon name).  It was to protect the regulars from being slammed by trolls.  It worked, but for some folks it was an unbearable requirement.

Rosethorn also had his ISP pull his access, the details of how that transpired are something I’m not prepared to detail.

Mail Bombing Moderators

As I’ve said moderators were largely despised.  In 1999 I was “mail bombed”.  Mail bombing is an email with an attachment sent to the moderators admin address. At that time none of the webhosts I hosted with or could find had a mechanism to limit the size of an email message.

If you were hit, as I was, by a 100 megabyte email and given we were using dial-up connections (broadband was rare in Australia at that time and incredibly expensive) your server was effectively hosed for email sending and receiving and the whole server if your email account exceeded your hosting allocation.

That meant you paid more dollars to the webhost and if, as it did, happen on more than one occasion then you had problems keeping your hosting account.  A little war broke out between me and my then webhost because of this.

As I had clients who hosted their accounts through my accounts it affected them too when the webhost pulled the plug.  The plug being pulled because I refused to pay the $750 AU hosting cost per month that they were demanding to cover their “admin” costs for the mail bombings.  $750 AU for 100 megabytes?  Needless to say I moved and I’m not ashamed to say never paid them their retrospective new monthly charges.

It was a huge mess.  I learnt a heck of a lot about servers and how they ran in this period, including those we don’t give much thought too like POP3, SMTP and NNTP.

Spyware Raises It’s Ugly Head

Around 1999 a new idea swept the small software business industry.  An idea for getting paid.  An idea that was so “pre dot com bust” as to be laughable today.  The idea of embedding adverts into software and making the software free to use, the advertiser footing the bill through impressions and clicks.

What a fantastic idea!

Developers big and small rushed in and embraced it.  They raved, they ranted, they recommended and they didn’t see it coming.  To be fair here – neither did I, so no kudos to me.

The ads gave the company serving the ad inside the poor old developers product the opportunity to spy on the user.  The developer didn’t know.  Honest.  Who examined outgoing packets in those days?  Even firewalls were far less common than now.  So all that lovely data was streamed out from users around the world keen to use a freebie product.

From download software (the days of dialups so  anything that helped download a file without falling over half way through due to dropouts was a great tool), FTP clients, email clients, newsreaders, archiving tools – hell – anybody could join in on this merry- go-round.

Not everybody did.  But a heck of a lot did.  I was, I’m glad to say, somebody who didn’t. But not because I have amazing prescience, it’s just to my mind this.  If something looks to good to be true then it probably is…

When some people began to discover that what was being transmitted back allowed the ad companies to track their use around the web and more – all hell broke lose.

Reputations were destroyed overnight, software products were destroyed overnight.

Some developers recovered, others never did.

From my perspective as moderator of these shareware newsgroups it was another set of flamewars to contain and sadly another person to drop into the “Twit Filter”.

This person was all about “exposing” the evil software developers using the adware  in their products.  That the developer was also a victim in this debacle escaped those on their crusade – and one lady in particular, queen of the nutter’s, became so vile I plonked her permanently.

Her pet theory was that “shareware” was actually doing this all the long.  That it wasn’t viruses it was now spying.  That we were truly, truly ever so evil.  She even had a website naming names.

That website lasted two days before her host pulled it.  Probably the easiest take down I ever participated in.  

The TPA Attempts A Takeover

Around the turn of this century and for several years later a character appeared in the alt groups and then on the groups I moderated called, for the purposes of this article, Mr Fullohimself.  Sometimes posting under the name “Mike The Canadian”.  Yessir, this Canuck was one Mounty who’d fallen off every horse he’d ever ridden – right onto his head.

The TPA (Trialware Pontification Association if my memory serves…    ) was the brainchild of this Einstein of the tundra.  Never a dull moment, he did everything in his power to discredit people who liked to use the word “shareware”, banned his sheep, I mean members, from posting in any newsgroup that contained the word “shareware” (though it never stopped him from doing so) and kicked them out of his sandpit organization if they had badges on their site or links to download sites that even so much as contained the word “shareware”.

Oh yeah!

Further, he appointed himself as the arbitrator of what constituted the correct development tools, IDE and compiler (which was summed up in the word Delphi for the record) and declared all else “junk” and the software created with them as “junk”.

VisualBasic?  Junk says Mr Fullohimself.

C++?  Junk says Mr Fullohimself.

Java?  Junk says Mr Fullohimself.

Yep.  Junk.  Except he used terms and phrases that were, shall we say, more colorful.  Not content with this he would name software products that used these languages and label them junk.  Yep.  Sheer class he was, all the way.

I’ve always been good at picking the right button to push.  When I called him a “waste of space” he took it pretty hard.  Compete meltdown.  Then disappeared for a while.

Where it ties in to the groups I moderated is that he became the third person to be placed in the twit filter when he insisted on pursuing his pogroms there.

I asked nicely, demanded, warned, then plonk.

Maybe you’re starting to get a faint inkling about what I mean when I say I’m tired.

The Kooks Arrive

There’s a group of fruitcakes on Usenet called the “Kooks”.  These folks spend all their days and nights hijacking newsgroups by replying to threads saying “kooky things”.

To join them you have to be a certifiable kook.  They even have their own newsgroups, vigorously defended, as a base of operations.  From time to time they dropped by and tried to kook-ify the newsgroups I moderated.  What I’ve failed to mention is that stupidity is also a requirement of a Kook and so they have never quite “gotten it” as far as moderation goes and eventually give up.

All the same – more unnecessary and unseen work.   Haven’t seen the Kooks active in my own newsgroups (or trying to be active rather) for years, maybe they finally worked out that “moderated” thingo…

Enter Mr Charm And Personality

Sal Plankton.  The ultimate purveyor of bovine excrement.   His name changed here to protect the men in white coats charged with his treatment.

Plankton was a “journalist”, so he assured everybody he corresponded with.  His was also a wanna-be “shareware author” and an ASP member.

Plankton delighted in making others feel wretched about themselves – any which way he could.  Within the ASP he raised many controversial issues, he wasn’t always entirely wrong, but he was rarely eloquent or restrained.  Every minute, every word typed was an opportunity for Plankton to twist and turn every thread into his own personal war zone.  Most people ducked for cover.  Some of us refused.

It was after one industry event that he labeled some ladies in the industry, also members, as “babes” repetitively and to this day, having known the man, purposefully I believe for his own amusement, and described them in what they felt, and I felt, to be unsavory ways..  When asked not to so by those ladies he accelerated his descriptions, leading to a huge war inside the ASP newsgroups and I admit I swore I’d not let him off the hook as this guy wasn’t prepared to let it go.

It concluded, whether it was to shut me up or because it was just time we’ll never know, in me being made Vice President.  I didn’t succeed in getting Plankton booted, though I sure tried.  But I made bloody sure he was suspended – or more specifically stayed up all night the day his suspension letter was sent as some folks in the board room were getting the jitters in respect of sending it.

In anger Plankton quit the ASP and erupted in the pubic alt groups.

A whole new war – except this one could argue, had command of a vocabulary and was a bit harder to press buttons on.

He made lots of threats, emailed officials with threats and succeeded in getting more lawyer letters to cease and desist.  He’s probably framed them or something, he’s that kind of guy.

Even as a, now, sworn enemy of the man I tried to maintain fairness as moderator in the comp groups and had an exception placed in the legal letter he was sent that allowed me to communicate with him if necessary in respect of the comp newsgroup operations should he post there.

He did, gently at first and then the cycle repeated and he became obnoxious and nasty and ignored warning and entreaties and finally he met the “Twit Filter” as only serial offenders did.  Becoming number four.

He was certainly gifted with a turn of phrase the old Plankton.  Labeling me, laughably as “Osama Bin Software” and “The Most Powerful Man In Shareware” as well as a host of other rather clever, but pointless titles.

To this day he still comes to the newsgroups and posts – at least the alt groups, stirs the pot, slanders people and post occasionally on the newsgroups I’ve moderated due to an amnesty granted three years ago.

Though I’ve written little about it this was probably the most exhaustive and detrimental of all the battles waged on Usenet for the newsgroups – and the one that coincided with me becoming extremely ill – though not due to it, it was just more stuff to heap on top of an existing and growing illness I had.

Illness

By 2003 until around 2005 I was sporadic in running the groups.  I was in hospital in 2003 eight times, for three weeks each time approximately, within twelve months.

Kathy Morgan, a long time reader and Usenet enthusiast and moderator, inspired me to kick things over again, did a lot of running around to get RoboMod running and hosted and basically gave me the kick in the backside I needed, Kathy becoming the Assistant Moderator.

The groups returned, but the momentum was lost and posts rose a little for a while then finally slowed to a trickle as the Usenet exodus began in earnest.

The Worm Has Turned And I Resign Today

Times have changed, Usenet is history and I’m dog tired of the whole thing.  This article only brushes on the surface of what was, for me, a job that was for many years harrowing and an enormous time sap.

Today their are few posts to moderate, much of it is rubbish and I find myself resenting every post that comes in as I have done my bit.  To my mind it’s time to concentrate on getting my own business together, some altruism for my own customers and the role of police officer, peace keeper and dictator is not compatible with this.

Ultimately, if I remain, I’ll have to reject a post from somebody making a software announcement that potentially competes with my own products.  I never have and never would allow myself to do this for any other reason than such a post violating the charter for some reason – but the accusation would be made as it’s the accusation of the moronic inept and frankly I don’t need it.

This wasn’t a problem in the past because:

1. There were fewer “developers”.
2. My products were so vertical that most people simply ignored or didn’t know of the market.

I’ve seen a lot during my time as moderator.

• I’ve seen the rise and fall of download sites (at least as far a ethics go).
• The rise and fall of many search engines
• The rise and fall of more software companies and products than most people see in a lifetime.
• The rise and fall of “this is the new thing, the old thing is gone, you’re all gone, look at me I’m the future.”

I’ve seen PAD invented and PAD abused, software associations spring up and wither and die on the vine.

I’ve seen newbs come in with bright eyes and expectations.  Asking the same questions year in year out and making the same mistakes year in and year out and those same people getting mad when it’s pointed out to them – even though they’ve asked folks for advice.

I’ve seen “experts” come and go, some spouting true pearls of wisdom and others spouting claptrap and mumbo-jumbo as only a shaman can.

I’ve seen flame wars on SAS becoming “the only way” for a decade, yet it never has become so.

That Linux would replace Windows going back to the mid nineties (actually mid eighties if you count Unix being said to take over DOS).

I’ve seen people claim web app’s would kill desktop software by 2002, yet here we are in 2008 and this hasn’t happened.

The boring and gut wrenching, at least for me, part is that these same claims, these same arguments, the same type of “newbie” hasn’t changed in a decade.  It remains what it always was.  A pointless, infantile outpouring of ill conceived typed diarrhea.

The concept of “Web 2.0″ is rejected by most adhering to the “Shareware Ethos”.

And frankly I don’t care anymore.  I’m content to divorce myself from those who cling to it, knowing that irrelevancy and time have their own mechanisms of change.

If there truly is a “Web 2.0″ ethos then there needs to be a “Software 2.0″ ethos too.  Many are doing exactly that.  I link to them in my blog roll for a reason – and it’s precisely this reason.  They get it…

In conclusion, I hope I managed to help some people over the last decade.  The newsgroups are quiet now, very few posts compared to their heyday.  I do know I have made many fine friends over the years, people inside the ASP, people on Usenet, people all around the world for whom I have the utmost respect.

It’s been an epic year for me

The last twelve months have seen me do more than I’ve done in the last six or seven.

• I ran as a candidate in a Federal election here in Australia November 2007.
• I swore off ever writing software again and decided to concentrate on audio.
• I quit the ASP as a member, and I admit as a protest on a specific issue I felt strongly about – and still do.   As an ex Vice President and ex Board Member and a volunteer there for many things in that organization it was a difficult, but timely decision.
• I discovered the meaning behind the idea of “Web 2.0″
• I realized what I’d been missing.
• I read books and articles by people, some of whom are in the blog roll of this blog.
• I realized, in no small part thanks to Bob Walsh that I could believe again in building a software company – though I doubt Bob realized exactly how life changing and the kind of thoughts that emerged from my own study of his works.
• I made a decision to write MixAction.
• I decided to do it right – build a company and not just a product.
• I paced myself during June 2008 for 30 Days to build a product and came up with a neat prototype for MixAction that is now being fleshed out to become a more rounded product.
• I launched this blog as an experiment and rediscovered what I’d forgotten.  That content is a more powerful tool for search engine ranking than any number of SEO tips, tricks, tweaks and download site submissions.
• That my family and my business were and are more important than anything else. with the possible exception of politics in respect of my business – but never instead of my family.
• I’ve gotten a handle on a major life changing and truthfully life ending illness – and won.
• I’ve stopped adhering to the old ethos’, examined new ones and decided the best ethos – for me, not necessarily for you – was the one I developed for myself based on what I thought I knew, what I learnt and am learning and what might be most likely to transpire.

Do I regret being a Usenet Moderator for ten years?

No.  I learnt a lot.  I saw a lot and I learnt to respect a lot of people and I hope earnt their respect too.  Sure I made some enemies, but overall most people were great people and to those people I say thanks for the opportunity!

An EPIC FAIL became an EPIC GAIN and it is also with some mixed feelings, it’s true, that I resign today as moderator of the comp.software.shareware.* (css.*) newsgroups – and yet an incredible sigh of relief escapes me and I don’t regret the decision one bit.

I’ve done my part for this industry – at my cost, financially and personally – for ten years.  Enough is enough.

Thank you to each and everyone that supported me over the years – you will not be forgotten by me.

A big thank you to Kathy Morgan – previously my co-moderator and now the primary moderator of the newsgroups.  Kathy is a wonderful person who did a fantastic job in getting me off my butt and the groups moving again at one point when I was experiencing some of the darkest days of my life.

Thanks to my wife for sacrificing so much of herself, and without wanting to her own life indirectly, through putting up with having a husband who was a Usenet moderator.

Scott Kane

Ex Moderator comp.software.shareware.*

Quote of the day:
Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It’s already tomorrow in Australia. – Charles M. Schulz

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“OK, I add content but what about my competition adding content?”

The simple truth is, and this is probably more applicable to smaller niche markets (vertical) than to broader horizontal markets, is that most of your competition will never do it.

By and large most of us compete with people who are either 100% programmers or 100% hobbyists.  Generally speaking neither is terribly good at writing content, neither is terribly interested in trying and neither bothers to consider why they should.

It’s about what motivates their/our thought processes.  Most dev’s and hobbyists have the perspective that  “if I build it they will come.”

That they won’t and don’t never seems to enter their heads.  As you’re reading this I’m assuming it’s entered your head.  The fact that you read blogs, whether you agree with me or not, or anybody else you read, sets you apart from the rest and it’s probable – apart from your own competition.

Newsflash: The idea of content on the net for marketing purposes is not new.

It’s been with us since the mid/late nineties at least.  But very few developers have actually done anything about it.  That’s because most look for automated solutions.  They firmly believe the “easiest way” is always the best way – it’s a developer thing.  It’s what makes us tick.  We automate to solve others problems and look for automation to solve our own.

While I personally advocate giving the download sites in general a miss, with the exceptions of CNet, Tucows and a handful of others, I don’t for a moment expect wide spread agreement with me on this particular blasphemy amongst developers… 

But – even if you do decide download sites and submission software is important to you, and I acknowledge there are arguments in favor of this – I just dispute them – your job is far from over.

Your competition is going to be using PAD files, download sites and possibly automated submission.  There is no silver bullet here.  Your use of these tools is not unique, it does not set you apart and it does not do much more than scrape the surface for the possible combinations of search terms people are going to type into a search engine.

You’re goal is to gain as many clicks from as many of those search terms as you can – at least for the important ones.  Your product name and the solution it addresses may not always be the important one a potential customer is looking for.

Google Adwords gets a lot of text written about it.  From genuine marketing gurus to the insidious wanker’s looking to scam by producing “Secrets of Google Adwords Revealed” type claptrap.

It’s a great tool, Adwords, I’m not about to argue otherwise.  The statistics are against trying to claim anything other than use Adwords as far as you can afford to do so.

But – the very keywords ISV’s pain over for their products – and it has to be said – at times pay through the nose for – in many instances can be obtained free just by using content for the search engines.  Google, and to a lesser extent some of the other engines, seem to place a site as authorative based on content.

If your site details and provides content related to the keywords you need, logically, you’re going to be more authorative.

According to Google presently, at least from the engine here in Oz, this blog is the most authorative in relation to the keywords “Starting an mISV” and sixth most authorative for “Starting an ISV”.  Some guys called Eric Sink, Joel and Ian are in front of me on the latter- whoever they are… 

Google Have Improved Search And It Works In Our Favor…

I personally admire the way Google works.  Despite the many criticisms of Google they have improved the quality of search.  Going back to the days of 90′s search engine spamtopia is evidence of that.

We can use this to our advantage, legitimately, properly and cleanly.  You will not read anything here – ever - suggesting you try to game the search engines.  I view such tactics along the same lines as I view download sites.  Bottom feeding parasites intent on offering no value to others but value to themselves using any scam way possible.

Don’t try to scam or game the engines.  Instead be a contributor of value, not a purveyor of SEO perversity – and hold your head high.

Be wary of Gurus Sprouting Yesterday’s Wisdom…

As I’ve said here before, what used to be true does not always hold.  The “wisdom” of download site submission as the most effective tool for search engine clicks is flawed.  It’s flawed because the download sites increasingly offer little or no value to their visitors and increasingly push them to click on Adsense sprayed all over the “page” dedicated to your product – almost in an overwhelming number of cases burying it.  Frequently removing direct links to you and if the link is there using redirects and no follow tags.

With content you not only provide relevant value but you reach beyond the meager PAD file descriptions that these sites invariably repeat.  A thousand submissions all to often equals a thousand PAD description duplications.  There is no value in this.

But content you write that relates to your product – information people are looking to find out – is unique.  It’s your’s and prepared properly (practice) it lasts and ties in well with your objectives of leading your potential customers to a place where they can more easily access your product.

Altruistically speaking you’re potentially helping them twice.  To my mind that’s a powerful concept.

The cost is your time.  If you can afford not to expend your time on writing your own content and can afford to pay somebody to write it – more power to you.  But don’t shrug it off with the usual old developer BS of “I have better things to do than write stuff like content – I’m a programmer not a bloody writer.” Because if you do you are wrong on both counts…

You are first and foremost a business person.  Programmers work for “other” people.  Writers work generally for “other people” – but business people – ISV’s – work for themselves and do things that provide benefit to their businesses.

Watch the doughnut, not the hole…

Watching the download sites and not the hole seems to be a developer trait we need to shed.  I’ve seen so much text typed over and over again about “what’s the best tool for maximum download sites submission” and “which are the best download sites” and then little sprinkles of reality like “very few of my clicks come from download sites…”

Hang on….  That last one.  “…very few clicks”  ??

What’s going on here?

The prevailing logic is that the links on the download sites (which invariably do not point directly to you or are redirected or have no follow links) feed back into the SEO loop.  The more the better right?

Vitamin C helps us avoid getting colds so I’ll swallow the whole bottle I’ll never get a cold - ever!!

Ya think?

I know I’m belaboring this point.  But honestly, it’s illogical to think that thousands or even hundreds of submissions is going to offer long term assistance.  Google and the others, over time and increasingly as algorithms are tweaked are going to strip this repetitive PAD induced vomit out of their listings leaving you back at square one.  It’s happening now and it’s going to become increasingly common because Google has never made any secret of the fact that they strive to optmize quality search and remove garbage and duplication.

I’m going to put my money where my mouth is though, because I know that no matter how many paragraphs I write here a good many of readers aren’t going to buy into the idea that content is superior to download site submissions as an SEO tool.  I might be arrogant but I’m not that dumb!! 

MixAction, my own product, will be released sometime this year.  Hopefully sooner than later.  Here’s what I’m going to do.  I’m going to run a commentary here on what I’m doing and then map that back to SEO results as they happen.  Real results and not just some guy on a blog poking holes in the air with his fingers…

I’m also going to review a great little book (e-book) that’s very affordable, cuts to the chase and I believe will help set some ISV’s in the right direction.  It’s written by fellow blogger and ISV Steph.  Stay tuned!

Have a great day!

Scott Kane

Quote of the day:
Eat a live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day. – Unknown

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• Day 52 – Downloadsiteasaurus – Extinction Event (8)
• Another nail in the coffin (0)
• Some ISV Marketing Freebies (0)

Well.  Actually no.  Kind of, but not exactly.  I am but I’m not.  I could be but I’m not really… 

At least in the sense that I have here previously.  Instead what this article attempts to address is a link between “download sites” and “domain knowledge” and how they have utterly nothing to do with each other and why you should care.

Now that I’ve totally confused you – let me follow it up with:

It’s not hard to influence search engine rankings for your business/product with a sprinkling of common sense and some good old fashioned hard work and never use a PAD file or a download site again.

Better than that – that influence is done using your own information, your own controls and your own time and it does not involve any stupid (or clever for that matter) – pick your colour hat -  “SEO’ techniques at all.

It’s simply common sense and most of the search engines (including Google) welcome it.  It’s pretty powerful and people without any experience can apply it providing they follow some basic common sense – and -  are consistent and diligent and use a plan….

Oh.  A Couple of more things:

You’ll need to either have solid domain knowledge about your product or at least know (or at least try to find and learn about) how to access information that will enhance that knowledge.

You’ll need to stop saying you ‘can’t write” and understand and accept that practice will improve what you do over time – as in all things – and hence how and what you write.

There is no “can’t” if you are bootstrapping.  Instead you compromise, learn and adapt.

You need to consider that people reading your content are not going to be critics considering it for the next Pulitzer prize or expect you to provide a thesis.

Blogs, for example, are best served raw.  Warts and all – and people actually seem to prefer it, even if they disagree with your contention – because it’s coming from the heart. Your heart.

The psychology for this, as far as I can tell, lies somewhere with the popularity of TV soap operas and reality shows.  If they can relate to you then you have a leg up on the competition and for them to relate you’re better off sounding like an average person writing than, say, a professional journalist.

If you can write like a journo then more power to you – but it’s not essential.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ll know that I pretty much equate download sites on the level of somewhere between slugs crawling around in the dirt – or gentiles feasting on exposed flesh.

I don’t think they do us any favors.

I don’t think we need them.

I’d love to see them shrivel up and kick the bucket.

There are exceptions like the CNet sites, Tucows and a handful of others – but the rest are total Google spam.

Yet ISV’s and more particularly mISV’s cling to them in desperation and honestly believe they’ll help them in their quest for, well, whatever your personal quest is for your product and business…

Most mISV’s and a good many ISV’s are very much like the kittenpreneur above.  They think this is the key to the kingdom.  Total Google domination that will out click their competitors.  They tend to forget their competitors are probably using PAD files with similar descriptions listed on the same download sites.  From page 1 to page infinity of just about every search engine.

I firmly believe there is a better way.  But as a statement that’s not going to cut it, right?

OK.  An act of faith to a limited extent is needed here.

I’m going to use this blog as a limited example.  It’s early days for this blog.  I’m not Bob Walsh or Seth or Joel.  I don’t get anywhere near their level of traffic – though it’s growing.  So I’m not going to actually state what keywords I’ve used to work my way up onto page one (and higher) for certain ISV and mISV related terms that older more established blogs dominate.

But I will explain the reason – the real reason – for why I started the blog and what it proved to me.  Something I will be taking away to use on my business product website’s.  Having said that – the blog has grown beyond the experiment and it has many more purposes now, including the fact I like to write, people seem to get some value out if it, even if it’s just disagreement, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun! 

I started this blog – and admit I came late to this game – as an experiment only a few months ago in March 2008, to see if content really could influence the search engine results we see.  The blog uses no Adwords, it doesn’t do anything else except consistently discuss issues related to my own mISV business in the making and general ISV issues or subjects of interest.

It uses various tools to enhance those keywords, the very ones we’ve been using for years like meta tags etc.  Because it’s possible to automate this in tools such as WordPress the task is made a lot easier to be sure.

But…  It’s the content that is critical.  The content is relevant to the keywords and it’s paying off in terms of results when it comes to the subject of starting an ISV or mISV.

If you look at the articles I post here they pretty much all have something in common.  The most obvious might not actually be obvious to all.  The subject line for each post.

In most instances they have been chosen for the purpose of testing their impact on search engine results.  You might be surprised to learn that I get around 50 – 100 hits in the logs for “cracks, hacks, keygen’s and torrents” each month due to one article alone.  That I get currently twenty hits a day for “secret herbs and spices” even though this blog has nothing to do with chicken… 

This would be utterly stupid for a product site where you want relevant eyes on relevant content.  But in the nature of an experiment anything goes – OK?  

OK – the point is that the subject plays a critical part and it’s so easy to do.  That the subject is also a meta tag in WordPress by default certainly assists in this.

But  to really make a difference you have to have posts that relate to the subject, my “secret herbs and spices” hits will ultimately wither and die, I have no interest in maintaining those keywords.  I just wanted to see if I could. 

The other, for this blog, more important keywords however are used in blog posts time and time again.  In the subject, in the articles, in the meta tags, in the blog tags, in the categories and so on.  They are more durable, though do require maintenance – frequent posts with content.

I see, in various forums, at times folks asking how often Google spiders a site.  They don’t believe me when I tell them that Google comes into this blog several times a day (other blogger’s will understand this and why it is so), and articles go up within hours and often right to the top of Google (and Yahoo and Microsoft’s various search engine flavors like Live).

The trick is the XML sitemap and  the fact that you can set Google (via a free account from Google) to come at a certain frequency.  That and a WordPress plugin that notifies Google of a new post when it’s posted… 

But without frequent posts Google has nothing new to get (same goes for the other engines).  So clearly if you want to play this game, and I believe firmly you should, you’re going to need information that updates frequently.

There are several ways you could handle this.

1. A blog.
2. A website that incorporates a blog type engine.
3. A CMS like Joomla or similar.
4. Hand written HTML pages (a major PITA – I used to do it this way in the 90′s and trust me, you don’t want to have to do that when the other tools do it so much better).

You don’t have to have a blog, at least not in the sense we think of them.  You can use blog software simply as an article manager.  The idea is to get people to visit.  Information has more “stickiness” than a product page.  The idea is to become a resource.

Alas Usenet is Dead…

Many years back now the accepted wisdom was to join Usenet groups and offer information to people and become a helpful regular using your signature in each post as a sales tool.  Alas Usenet is Dead.

What’s needed, and has been lacking, is a clear alternative.  People are not subscribing to Usenet.  Heck, most these days don’t know what it is, let alone how to use an NNTP client.

Articles are that alternative.

• People use Google as if it is the Internet.  We need to grasp that average people are typing URL’s into Google instead of the address bar and clicking the Google result to go to a specific site.
• People use Google as an encyclopedia.  Why not be the source of information they are looking for?
• People are hungry for information.  The mISV and ISV can fulfill that hunger and in the process expose these people to their product.  Tactfully of course.  One has to resist the urge to blast them with marketing rhetoric in articles unless the product clearly addresses their quest.  Tact…

There are rules here…

Yep, there are rules.  The objective is not to try or succeed in spamming a search engine.  The objective is to become a valid, readable, content rich place that adds value to the search engines themselves, potential customers and as a neat side effect, your business.  The rules are:

If you write crap you’ll be crapped on.

You have to write information with the intent of contributing something of value.  Your opinion is valid, your perspective is valid, your knowledge is valid.  However a half hearted attempt to scam the search engine with unfulfilled keyword stuffing and rubbish will hurt you, not help you.

This is the virtual world and not the physical world.

The same rules do not apply. You can build up your content over time, and get pretty quick results as you go.

Google, for example, can be inexplicable at times.

This is not a get rich quick scheme.  This is about hard work, planning, rolling up your sleeves, analysis and it must be said – sheer determination.

It’s true the Google-dance, the sandboxes and other weird stuff impact on us all.  But content – valid content – can greatly assist.  None of my sites have been sandboxed, for example, ever and I have numerous domain names.  All of them have been indexed and visible within 3 weeks of registration and putting something up.

The old truisms are no longer true…

At least as far as marketing ISV wise goes.  What I’m talking about here is the old “truisms” that were dead set true yesterday are no longer true.  Download sites were essential to our businesses.  Usenet and forum posting was the only way to get the message out.  But the new mitigating factors such as the emergence of Google, blogs, PHP driven content technology (like WordPress, Joomla and similar tools to name but a few) are more effective, within reach of any ISV and have an incredibly low cost.

I’m no soothsayer and I’m not trying to say a sooth.  Waking up and smelling the coffee brewing is part of evolving our business, products and minds however.  There is no doubt we need to wake up and start inhaling those vapors.  Way past time.

I do know, understand and appreciate that many reading will not feel comfortable with what I’m suggesting here.  It does require, for many, the pain of overcoming comfort zones.  But a decision has to be made – do you control your destiny or are you happy to let it meander along with the likes of download sites and your competition controlling it for you?

Yes, that’s a rhetorical question.  But it needs to be asked because time and time again the same objections come up with ISV’s.

“I can’t write.”

You couldn’t program once either – how did that change?

“It’s OK for you.”

No it isn’t.  That’s presumptuous of you.  We all have nagging doubts about ourselves and we all have the capacity to address them.  You are no different to me or anybody else in this regard.

“You’ve had a lot of practice.”

So have you – you’ve just got to change your perspective on how you consider what you’ve written.

“There’s nothing to be said about my product.”

Respectfully – look at the logic of that statement.  Either you don’t know your subject matter (domain knowledge which you can fix) or you wouldn’t say that – or you’re backing the wrong horse and need a different product that you do know something about.

The bouncing cueball…

Steve Ballmer bounced around the stage and yelled “Developers, developers, developers…” and forever made an impression on programmers.  I still haven’t worked out why this is so.  I simply can’t fathom any sincerity out of Steve’s repetitive bouncing athletics in this case.  However – I do believe there is a more important bouncing chant for ISV’s  and it’s this:

“Content, content, content, content, content…”

If you take anything at all away from this article – or even this blog – I’m hoping it will be that. Content.

Thanks for reading!!

Scott Kane

Quote of the day:
You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. – Mark Twain

Related posts

• Content – OK, But What About The ISV Competition And Their Content? (2)
• Day 52 – Downloadsiteasaurus – Extinction Event (8)
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• 10 Years Anniversary Today. EPIC FAIL. I Quit. Starting An ISV … (7)