Black Hat SEO – Don’t do it!

J.C. Penney has gone from #1 in search results on Google down to below #71.

What happen you might ask?

Well it seems that J.C. Penney decided to goose their search results using a Black-Hat tactic.  While Black-hat services are not illegal, if you are caught Google will bring their wrath down on you.

They had created about 2,015 pages are on sites which were nothing but links back to the J.C. Penney site.  These links were designed to fool Google into thinking that had more popular links than they really had.

Some might say that J.C. Penney got off easy for just having their ranking corrected.

Back in 2006 Google caught BMW doing this and other things and they totally removed BMW.de off the search engine results.

For more information about this read the great article in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/business/13search.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss

Do you have question about e-books as a reader?

Do you have question about e-books as a reader?

What do buy, how does it work?

Here are two great resources to help guide you with what you need to know about what hardware and formats are out there.

Consumer use guide to e-books.

http://www.michaelastackpole.com/?p=1911

The Ebook Beginner Guide

http://bookbee.net/bee-ginners-guide-2/

Publishers need to fear authors.

Getting back to e-books there was a great write up by urban fantasy writer H.P. Mallory talking about her independent publishing

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2011/01/guest-post-by-hp-mallory.html

After being rejected many times H.P. Mallory took the new path and self published her books and have been very, very successful. In blog she writes:

Publishers have had a hard few years. The recession was tough. Fewer bookstores mean fewer sales. Amazon and the rise of ereaders is eating into their print sales. But I don’t think bookstores closing, or customers switching to ebooks, are what publishers need to fear most.

Publishers need to fear authors.

Now, if you talk to any group of newbie authors who have been rejected by the industry, you’ll feel their bitterness toward the difficult, often humiliating, and seemingly arbitrary nature of the query-go-round.

And if you talk to any group of professional authors, you’ll feel their bitterness toward publishers who have made a lot of mistakes in regard to their books and careers.

Add the fact that publishers take 52.5% royalties on ebooks, leaving the authors only 17.5%, and that even if an author landed a contract today there would still be an 18 month wait for the book to come out, and I have to wonder what publishers are going to do in order to keep authors submitting to them.

I have to agree with her.  Let’s face facts when an author can keep 70% of the cover price why would authors sign up with a publisher and only keep 17.5% of the cover price.  It does sort of seem like a no braine

H.P. Mallory website:

http://www.urbanfantasynovels.com/

Sadness for events in AZ.

I am a registered republican and I am very upset with the event that happen over this past weekend in AZ.The past few years there has been a very toxic discourse with political comments being made on both sides.  However, as a republican I think that our party has been going down in path and into a direction in the worst way.When I see the following signs at our political rallies:

I think that we should hold our heads in shame.   If our political ideas can not be explain or held up to persuade people that they are right without threats or yelling then we might want to reexamine our position on some topics.

Kids look at 1980′s technology

Schoolchildren in Montreal are shown tech relics from the late 20th century (floppy disks, a rotary phone), and asked to describe their intended use. The video has some English subtitles.

This video makes me feel old.

The Rise of E-book OR Why is the publishing industry dying?

 

By following a few links I ran across a very interesting story and it illustrates how the publishing industry is changing.

The first is the story of a young author who could not sell her books doing the traditional publishing system. This author is Amanda Hocking:

http://amandahocking.blogspot.com/

Starting in early 2010 she started to publish her books using Kindle, Barns and Noble, smash mouth and other sites that allow authors to self-publish their books in electronic formats.  Over 2010 she wrote and put up over 10 novels.  With basically just word of mouth by the end of 2010 she has sold 148,887 books.  You don’t believe me?  She has put up screen shots author tools from Kindle and Barns and Noble to show her numbers.

http://amandahocking.blogspot.com/2010/12/pics-or-it-didnt-happen.html

Her books range between $0.99 and $2.99 for each book.  Assuming the lowest price we can guess that she has made: 148,887 times $0.99 = $147,398 less 30% which Amazon keeps this means that Amanda has taken home about $103,178.  That is more than almost any author would ever make with an advance from a traditional publisher.

With authors able to make and keep so much money for themselves why should they go with the regular and more traditional publisher?

But you say that OK, one woman has a hit on her hands that is not a good way to measure the success or not success of e-books. Fair enough.

The second author to look at is Mystery writer J. A. Konrath, author of the traditionally published Jack Daniels mysteries and nearly a dozen self-published e-books.

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/

who says: “I have seven self-published e-novels earning more than $24,000 a year each. I wish I had more novels that I couldn’t sell [to traditional publishers], because I’m making a nice chunk of change with them on Kindle.”

Just form those seven books he is doing: $24,000 x 7 = $168,000

I could go on and point out more authors who are having great success with e-mail, but this tip of the iceberg should get you started and realize that thing are changing in the publishing industry.  The change is simple; authors are taking control of their works and getting them to the public directly.

Your thoughts?

Formatting for YouTube

YouTube has become huge in doing marketing.  With inexpensive video cameras it’s not a big deal to record a product or service and to put it onto YouTube.

There is a great article on videomaker.com which will help you achive the best video possible.

http://www.videomaker.com/article/14561/?rfh=10

 

But here is the long and short of it:

• Maximum length: 10 minutes (we recommend 2-3 minutes)
• Maximum file size: 2 GB
• frame rate of 30
• H.264 as your compression
• Formats .avi, .wmv, .mov and .mpg files

 

US productivity hits an all time low for a day.

Have you seen the front page of Goggle for Friday, May 21, 2010?

They have out done themselves by creating an interactive PAC MAC game as their logo. Complete with “insert coin” button to replay and replay the game.  This is for the 30th anniversary of PAC MAN.  I am betting that computer speakers will be set to low and no one is going to get any work done today.

This is why Google is Google!

Big Brother is taking control of your Television set.

No that is not a joke!

You might not believe this but the FCC has given permission for Hollywood and other media has the rights to turn off any parts of your home theater that they do not want you to use.

This is not science fiction; the idea is that media companies can “Selective Output Control” technologies. In other words if a network or studio sends a major motion picture to your TV either via cable or satellite they have the right to turn off your DVR or other recording devices.

Do you not love this idea? Well I don’t. I know that they claim that this will stop pirates but just what is to stop them from taking “Selective Output Control” whenever they want to? And this doesn’t even begin to cover the concept of hackers who just want to screw with you for fun.

Tell the FCC to Say “No” to the Cable Kill Switch:

http://www.publicknowledge.org/action/say-no-to-soc

New Video – 2.5 minute marketing.

A friend of my did this as a sample. I’m trying to get him to do more.