Andy Hagans loves Ezine Articles

Matt Marlon, CEO of Traffic Power, who was recently profiled in the WSJ:

Mr. Marlon, 61 years old, filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy-court protection in 1996. In 1997, Mr. Marlon was indicted on charges of conspiracy to manufacture a controlled substance. He later pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, related to possession of a chemical used to make methamphetamine, and was sentenced to three years of probation, including six months of home confinement. The court record for his drug offense said he also had an alias, "Jimmy Ray Houts."

He recently had a fan site created at Matt Marlon.net. I wonder if he will send them a bogus lawsuit like he sent me.

If you are not a real charity and desire my ebook (but not enough value to consider paying for it) I recommend grabbing a dated version of the ebook from a file sharing network.

This may sound a bit harsh, but I am trying to keep up my ability to support legit charities as long as I can...and for that to happen some things need to change.

My charity support is going to require more effort from the charities. In the past I have done lots of work trying to help anyone and everyone, but I need to take a little load off the inbox.

If I try to make myself freely available to everyone and they expect fast responses for me giving them my business model free then I am setting up a piss poor value proposition. There needs to be some effort put in on the end of the charity so that I am not a charity verification service and so they value what I am giving them.

Earlier today I got this gem of a comment:

We are an Embassy of India School in Moscow, Russia and requested per your post "If you are a certified non profit, charity, church, open software developer, or school I can provide you with a free copy." for a free copy. It is now more than a week and we are still waiting. If you don't intend to send for free, than do not post the crap about sending free on your site.

And generally I am pretty quick with email, but sometimes I miss a few (and now have about 700 in the inbox to sort through - and get around 100 a day). With the charities I sometimes ask for verification. Based on the initial emails and the lack of follow through with some of them I would estimate that over 50% of the charity requests I get are fake.

Some people have went so far as trying to spoof their sent from email address. Others have created near similar sites and done bait and switch website techniques.

The number of demanding fake charity sleazeballs eating up my time is unfortunate. They are a scourge on my ability to learn and help good people and I am not going to let them change my perception of legitimate good causes. I will simply not waste my time servicing the fake ones.

Going forward for a charity to get my ebook free they must email me the following:

• my name (if you use dear sir expect sir to be synonymous with spam bin, because that is where it is going)

• an email with an address that matches the URL of the charity site (if you are an outside consultant helping a charity and you think it will really help you then it should not be that big of a deal for you to set up an email address)
• some sort of verification that they are a legitimate charity. (ie: see we are referenced by Network For Good here... or something like that...wherever they are referenced that MUST link through to the charity site matching the email)
• Most legitimate charities create a site and get no traffic before they even realize they could use something like SEO. If you have no website and outside verification then you can get that sorted before contacting me.
• you must also email me a URL from the charity site where there is a contact form or email address listed that I can mail back access of the ebook to
• if you have a charity registration number that also helps

Other requirements to get a free ebook:

• you do not have to be a registered charity if you are a legitimate good cause. If a site like World Changing wanted my ebook and was not an official charity of course they can have it free, but they would need to have content that made me feel like they were a good cause to me and possibly others stating what a good cause they are on their website.

• Legit open source stuff, legit schools, and things that I just think are cool qualify as well.
• I am uncertain as to what religions are right or wrong, but I believe many organized religions cause more harm or conflict than good. I feel like I am being fake if I help spread things I do not believe in to promote myself. Thus going forward the only religious institutions I will offer my ebook to for free are those which represent interdenominational institutions (ie: those that accept all types)...and it should say so on your site...you should point me to where it says this.

If you send me a charity request email and it does not comply with any of the above do not expect a reply.

Mail requests to seobook@gmail.com

Love it or hate it please let me know your thoughts :) or :(

I always noticed that some blogs and sites like Threadwatch got uber tons of comments while this blog did not get many.

I recently bought Threadwatch, and the last couple days I have put far more effort into that site, but have noticed a good number of comments on this one as well. It sorta goes to show that sometimes by changing your perspective you can appreciate stuff more.

Thanks to everyone who has been commenting and whatnot.

Now another thing that is a huge difference between this site and that one is that in the past I think I spent lots of time thinking about and analyzing stuff to the point where few people would want to comment on any of the posts (ie: if you already say it all then there is nothing left).

On Threadwatch the audience, editors, format, and whole system is more geared around an infoporn mechanism. Find cool stuff and let others comment on it. Try to find at least 1 or 2 things every day that make readers become smilers and most likely writers.

If you want others to comment sometimes it is easy to leave a bit out. If you work really hard to say both sides of a story it is much harder for readers to quickly add something than if you mostly highlight one side and give people easy things to add.

Shorter is typically better as well. As far as social interaction goes short sweet and funny will typically beat out comprehensive and perhaps being a bit overly wordy.

I still need to work out lots of the mechanisms for the social stuff, but that is one hell of a site to be able to learn on and while I hope it does great even if I hosed up I think the experience is worth so much money. Thanks again for the opportunity Nick and all the readers / editors / writers at TW.

There are many problems with running multiple similar brands in parallel.

• It splits your focus

• you end up cross posting stuff where it does not belong

I am going to consolidate many of my domains in the near future. SeoBook and ThreadWatch will remain unique channels, at least until some tells me that I am screwing up majorly bad and it should be otherwise.

The key for me to do well with them is to respect them for what they are...ie: this site is supposed to be about actionable SEO tips, and ThreadWatch is about rumor and stuff that is fun and interesting about search / technolgy / SEO.

I also recognize that some of the people posting comments at TW have been in the game far longer than I. In the past I would reference some of the comments that I thought were great, and I will keep doing that going forward.