“Two and a half years ago, EFF sued AT&T on behalf of its customers, seeking to hold the telecom giant responsible for its craven complicity in the White House’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program.

Since then, the phone companies and their allies in Washington have spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying Congress to grant them retroactive immunity. They ran ridiculous fear-mongering attack ads against any politician who dared to oppose them. President Bush threatened to veto any bill that allowed EFF’s lawsuit to continue.”

Our rights as Americans are being wiped off the slate by this administration and the Telecoms because of – MONEY and the smoke screen of FEAR!

Help EFF Continue the Fight Against Warrantless Wiretapping

“We need your help to take the fight to the next level. We’re going to challenge Congress’s unconstitutional grant of immunity in our case against AT&T. We’re going to fight for a congressional repeal of immunity in the next Congress. And we’re going to file a new lawsuit against the government, challenging its warrantless surveillance practices, past, present and future.”

I’d like to remind you that Internet Marketing is not immune to this type of eavesdropping. Think about that…

The Electronic Frontier Foundation cares about our rights. Click through and make your own determination. To make a direct contribution you can go here.

Post from: EveryJoe

On A Personal Level – I Agree

Conversion University

We now move on to “Outcomes” which is further broken down into;

• Website Optimizer Overview: “Website Optimizer allows you to test changes in the website content of your pages in order to determine what will be most effective in getting conversions. You choose what parts of a page you’d like to test — headline, image, promo text – and we’ll run an experiment on a portion of your site traffic to determine which content on your site users respond to best.”
• Website Optimizer Helpful Hints: “While it’s easy to set up experiments using Website Optimizer, each one will benefit greatly from a bit of preparation and planning before you begin. You’ll learn what works best for you after you’ve run a few experiments, but it’s always valuable to learn from others as well. We’ve provided a list of best practices and things to avoid when setting up your experiments.”
• Time on page as a conversion goal: “Conversions aren’t always associated with actions in the browser – a user who finishes reading an article, for example, won’t trigger an event in the browser to indicate that she’s done. In this case, it may be useful to count a conversion after the page has been loaded in the browser for a certain amount of time.”
• Experimenting with dynamic content: “If you have an e-commerce site with many products, chances are that you use templates to dynamically build each product page using content from a database. This scenario will illustrate how to experiment using dynamic content.”
• Tracking all movement past the landing page: “If you’d like to find out which variation encourages visitors to navigate deeper into your site from your landing page, Website Optimizer lets you specify multiple conversion pages for a single test page. In this case, you’re not concerned with the specific action that they’re taking, so much as that they’re taking action and not leaving your site after viewing your landing page.”

Once again, there’s more, including How To Improve your newsletter subscription rate, A/B testing in 5 minutes plus…

Post from: EveryJoe

Google’s Conversion University – Outcomes

eBay denied stay in LVMH case

The French Court of Appeals today denied eBay’s petition to stay an injunction issued June 30 by a Parisian court that requires eBay to halt all sales of four LVMH perfumes over any site worldwide that is accessible from France, according to an eBay spokesperson.

An eBay spokesman says the company “will comply as technically and humanly possible” with the injunction while it continues to pursue its appeal of the ruling.

In a statement, LVMH says that today’s denial of the stay “confirms the seriousness of the faults committed by eBay’s sites . . . and confirms the significance of the legal precedent set by the Paris Commercial Court’s Judgment on June 30, 2008.”

The change in the link policy has been put on hold. And neutral feedback won’t be counted as negative feedback. That’s quite a change in tune. Then again, $63 Million ain’t chickenfeed either. It ought to be enough to alter your tone, at least temporarily.

One might also suppose that this constitutes a series of losses which might also adjust the “volume” …

Post from: EveryJoe

eBay Not Sounding Quite As Contentious For The Moment

Ever hear of RhymeZone? Me either… Check this out – what can you do with RhymeZone?

• Find rhymes: This function will return words that rhyme with the word you typed in.
• Find synonyms: This function will return words that are the same or similar in meaning to the word you typed in.
• Find anonyms: This function will return words that can mean the opposite of what you typed in.
• Find definition: This function will search for definitions of the word you typed in. It will also allow you to submit your query to other online dictionaries on the Web.
• Find homophones: This function will return words that have exactly the same pronunciation as what you typed in but are spelled differently.
• Find similar sounding words: This function will return words that have a pronunciation that’s similar, but not necessarily the same, as what you typed in.
• Match consonants: This option will return words that have the same pattern of consonant sounds. Phonetic, for example, will return fanatic.
• Find related words: This option will return words that are related in some important way to what you typed in.
• Find similar spellings: This option will return words in the dictionary that are spelled similarly to what you typed in. Use this feature to spell-check a word that you aren’t sure of.
• Match these letters: This option will return words and phrases that contain the letters you type in.
• Search for pictures: This function will search for kids-friendly pictures on the Web related to the word you typed in.
• Search in Shakespeare: This function will search all of Shakespeare’s plays and poems for your word.

Post from: EveryJoe

RhymeZone Rhyming Dictionary and Thesaurus

Conversion University

We move on to “Onsite Behavior Analysis” which is further broken down into;

• Five Tips for Writing Effective Web Headlines: “One of the easiest, low-tech ways to make users stick around and look at your products or services is to catch their attention with an engaging headline. Recent research suggests that users decide to stay or leave your site in 8 seconds or less — in that short amount of time, headlines are the one piece of copy that users will actually read.”
• Five Questions To Ask of Your Site Search Data: “A search box is a goldmine of information for you the site owner, because each time visitors search your site, they tell you in their own words what they are looking for. This article shows you five key ways you can use the data in your Google Analytics Site Search reports to understand visitor intent.”
• Five Objectives of Website Copy: “Informative text is reassuring to visitors and it gives search engines something to crawl. Let’s look at five things you can accomplish with text.”
• Segmenting Your Visitors: “Segmentation is simply breaking your visitors into groups and examining traffic and conversion data for those groups.”
• Design Your Website for Increased ROI: “It’s easy to over-focus on driving traffic to your site while overlooking another equally important key to website ROI – content optimization. Make the time, money, and effort you’ve spent developing your online marketing pay off. Design a website that gets visitors to take action.”

And a bonus section – Six Steps To Conversion Health; “Consider these six points as you assess the strengths and weaknesses of your current site and plan your re-design.”

Post from: EveryJoe

Google’s Conversion University – Onsite Behavior Analysis

Michel Fortin’s Copywriters Library

Response-Boosting Tips and Life-Enhancing Advice.

“Want to boost your response? Write killer sales copy? Attract qualified clients? Reach higher levels of success? Copywriters Library offers a variety of free teleseminars, books, recordings, reports, and resources to help you.”

These are from the front page of this great site;

• Gary Halbert Interviews
• Scientific Advertising – Claude Hopkins
• Power Positioning 10 Commandments – Michel Fortin
• John Carlton Interviews
• The Science of Getting Rich – Wallace Wattles
• Drop Your Goals – Michel Fortin

You have to check it out! “On this website you will find a variety of free books, reports, and recording made by some of the top copywriters, marketers, and entrepreneurs in the world.” These are the top folks in Internet Copywriting history!

Post from: EveryJoe

Michel Fortin’s Copywriters Library

Conversion University

It all begins with “Acquisition” which is further broken down into;

• Sitemaps for Search Engine Optimization (SEO): “Here are five ways Google Sitemaps can help you drive more potential customers to your site and improve the visibility of your content.”
• A Benchmark Strategy to Search Engine Marketing (SEM): “It’s easy to get caught up in keyword bidding wars. Don’t give in to this temptation. There’s a better way and it begins with finding a breakeven cost-per-click benchmark.”
• AdWords Targeting and Tracking Tips: “Here are five tips for targeting – and tracking – your ads effectively.”
• Optimizing your AdWords ROI with Google Analytics: “By looking at a single report in Google Analytics, you can see the ROI for each keyword you buy, spend confidently on the keywords that perform, and drop the ones that don’t. Here’s how.”
• Intelligent Advertising for Small Business: “You’d like more visibility for your site, and you’ve had a salesperson tell you about the benefits of buying a listing on her portal site. It sounds like a good deal, but how do you know? Here are a few tips that will help you make an informed decision.”

Conversion University is part of Google Analytics. (For those who didn’t know)

Post from: EveryJoe

Google’s Conversion University

Net Neutrality Debate Is Secretly All About Internet Television Net Pioneers Say
By MacRonin
David Clark, a senior MIT computer scientist who spent eight years as the internet’s chief protocol architect, argued that the focus on neutrality is misplaced, because the net hasn’t ever been pristine. The current debate, he says, is really a reaction to a coming tectonic collision between the cable industry’s traditional business model, and the movement of television onto the internet.

Sandvine calls net neutrality “laughable,” defends filtering
Ars Technica – Boston,MA,USA
As Sandvine puts in it a white paper on net neutrality (”A Broadband Wild West?”), “This over-subscription model is observed regularly in our modern life.

Supreme Court to Review Net Neutrality
All About Jazz – Philadelphia,PA,USA
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled against AT&T, saying the telecom company was setting its wholesale prices so high that the Internet service provider could not compete with the low prices AT&T charged in the retail market.

What a Non-Neutral Internet Looks Like — Let’s Go to the Video
Public Knowledge Tech News and Comment – Washington,D.C.,USA
By Art Brodsky on June 24, 2008 – 11:42am
Thanks to AT&T and Comcast, however, we now can see what an Internet without Net Neutrality will look like, and it’s not pretty. Right up front, we should thank our friends who labor in the neighboring vineyards of what’s called “public access” cable TV, the part of cable reserved for public, educational and governmental programming.

Group Pushes for High-Speed Internet Access for All
Redmondmag.com – CA,USA
Federal Communications Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein was among the scheduled speakers in New York at the Personal Democracy Forum to announce the creation of InternetforEveryone.org. Other participants in the news conference included Google chief technology evangelist and Internet patriarch Vinton Cerf, in addition to law professors and entrepreneurs.

Charter: NebuAd Deal Raises Concerns
MediaPost Publications – New York,USA
Digital rights groups and net neutrality advocates condemned the plan, which they viewed as more invasive than other types of online ad targeting, …

Should The US Nationalize The Internet?
InformationWeek – Manhasset,NY,USA
Greedy businesses threaten innovation by trying to put an end to net neutrality, media companies want to control every Internet-connected device in an effort to lock down distribution channels, and spammers and other fraudsters have pretty much taken over e-mail. Now, TechCrunch is reporting that Vint Cerf, the so-called “father of the Internet,” says maybe we should think of the Internet as being like the highway system — a public good that should be nationalized.

Encrypted Traffic No Longer Safe From Throttling
By CmdrTaco(help@slashdot.org)
“New research could allow ISPs to selectively block or slow down your encrypted traffic even if they cannot snoop on your transmitted data. Italian researchers have found a way to categorize the type of traffic that is hidden inside an encrypted SSH session to around 90% accuracy. They are achieving this by analyzing packet sizes and inter-packet intervals instead of looking at the content itself. Challenges remain for ISPs to implement this technology, but it’s clear that encrypting your traffic inside an SSH session or VPN connection is not a solution to protect net neutrality.”

Google’s Fight to Socialize Broadband
By podcasts@redstate.com (Redstate Network)
Through a host of third party organizations, Google is at the center of a spider web of entangled left wing interests hiding behind feel good notions like “net neutrality” that have evolved from keeping internet service providers from charging you extra for using iTunes instead of Rhapsody, into socialized broadband.

Post from: EveryJoe

Net Neutrality Links 07-06-2008

This is simply from a snippet gleaned from the forum – the thread was filled with much more!

Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer

“This free tool will analyze your headline to determine the Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) score. As you know, reaching your customers in an deep and emotional way is a key to successful copywriting, and your headline is unquestionably the most important piece of copy you use to reach prospects.

Your headline will be analyzed and scored based on the total number of EMV words it has in relation to the total number of words it contains. This will determine the EMV score of your headline.

In addition to the EMV score, You will find out which emotion inside your customer’s your headline most impacts: Intellectual, Empathetic, Spiritual.”

Post from: EveryJoe

Analyzing Your Headline Text

eBay Cancels Plans to Go PayPal-Only in Australia

“eBay has cancelled plans to go to a PayPal-only marketplace in Australia. It had intended to limit buyers and sellers to using its own payment service exclusively, but withdrew its notification to government regulators after the agency indicated its intention to prohibit eBay from doing so.”

In a refreshing comment by one of Auctionbytes readers;

“How refreshing it is to actually see a government in action whose primary interest is protecting its constituents rather than acting as a rubber stamp for the interests of big business.”

Post from: EveryJoe

There Will Be No eBay PayPal Only Requirement For Sellers In Australia