You collected it yourself
Buying a list or using email addresses of people who have no idea who you are will do you no good. In fact, it is more beneficial for a business to do nothing then try using an email  list of questionable origin. Unless you want to promote yourself as a spammer, of course. It is worth remembering that penalties are very serious.

You let people know what you intend to do
Say you collect email addresses of your clients who believe you will only use them for business purposes – contact them if there are problems with their order, clarify details, etc. They are generally OK with that. Does that mean they will be happy to receive sales and marketing emails from you? Not necessarily. How they will react? Will they be OK with it or not? If not, they may ignore your emails, unsubscribe or complain. And too many unsubscribes or complains will get you banned. End of story.

You use the list regularly
Even a good list will go stale after a while. People change email addresses, move to other jobs, etc. Using your list at least once a month will keep it healthy because a good Email List Manager will clean out bounced back email addresses.

According to a recent  survey by Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, of all online adults, 92% use email, with 61% using it on an average day. See it for yourself here.

As a business tool, email is still invaluable. Social media is a great tool too but can you really conduct a meaningful business conversation via Twitter or Facebook? Posting or sharing confidental business documents? Could be hard, don’t you agree?

As a result, the site is a customised WordPress installation that took about 3 full days from start to finish.

The e-commerce part of the project was implemented using WP E-Commerce plugin that, although not perfect, was relatively easy to setup. The biggest problem I had with the plugin was related to somewhat out-of-date Australia Post shipping module that still has old postage prices and doesn’t include some of the options such as pre-paid satchels that, in our case, turned out to be a cheaper solution. As version 3.8 is about to be released, I didn’t want to spend too much time fixing this module. At the end, I used the weight rate to calculate the postage cost.

Project also included Search Engine Optimisation, Mailchimp integration, Google Analytics, AdWords campaign setup with Conversion tracking, etc.

Unfortunately, this project has been canned due to supply problems. Too bad.

Freedom man.

Oh, the wonderful life of freedom! No rules, no responsibilities, no care!

God, I love it! Day after day I wonder why people look at me with  pity or disgust. Why?

Really… I see all these masses of people and cars rushing one way in the morning and another way at night. Not many off them people look very happy to me. Stressed out, worried? Yes, there is plenty of that.

And here I am – on a side of the road. Laying about in a gutter, not a worry, mate. I have my smokes, my drink, and my freedom to do nothing. I am not worried about being late because I am not going anywhere. I am not worried about loosing my job and my house because I don’t have them.

This is my choice of life. I live like this because I want to. I love freedom. As simple as that. I just love having nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Except, of course, my trusted old bag.  Trusted old, scruffy bag full of money…

Traffic Control

Sam Shem’chlaki didn’t really like his job. Not really. More like not at all, even. If you think about it, you could pretty much say he hated it. Big time.

Being rooted on a side of the road, looking at all this traffic moving past… Happy people, not very much so, all going somewhere, smiling, frowning, talking, arguing… Moving. Bastards! Arghhh!

Sam was a traffic policeman, meaning he was stuck to one place for the duration of his contract – placed on top of a tree trunk, rooted to one place day and night, summer or winter. A pair of binoculars and a whistle. A smart phone. Not an iPhone or anything but still.

Actually, it was quite OK at the beginning, first five years or so. After ten, he had enough. Getting close to fifteen he started to feel he’s getting a bit mad. All this traffic… Day and night… Moving. Moving. Moving!

Good thing, Sam didn’t have a gun.

Sad monster © Igor Bissikalo

It’s dark in here… and so quiet… I am not quite sure where I am but it doesn’t feel good. Not that I am afraid of dark, har-har-har! Har-har-har. Har…

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeh, why I am here? What have I done? OK, you could point that I am a monster, but so what? Am I scary? Am I ugly? Do I smell? Not really!

Still, this darkness is making me nervous… Not good. Not good at all. What was that? Did you hear it? You think, there are people here, in the  dark? I think so too!

Damn, this is not good at all… I want to get out of here!!!!!

Depending on your target keywords, this can be relatively easy or extremely hard to achieve. Easy or not, this will require quite a bit of time, 6 months or more, and some major effort. The search engine spider is a slow creature.

That’s why it is recommended first to test your chosen keywords using another technique known as Search Engine Marketing or SEM, which is all about driving paid traffic to your website via Google Adwords or similar service. The result is instant although not necessarily cheap, especially if you forget to set your daily budget or let Goggle helpfully set it for you.

Anyway, the major SEO benefit of the paid traffic is in the relatively fast fine tuning of your keywords or keyphrases before you begin full scale optimisation of your website for free traffic.

Artifact

At first, we couldn’t see what it was. I mean, with all this damn fog you couldn’t see much at all…

But, as we got closer, what was just a dark blurry form started to take shape. Still, it took us forever to get close enough to appreciate the thing for real.

God, was it old! There was some extensive natural damage, whole parts of the structure missing here and there. One side looked like it had been chewed on by some huge mechanical creature, tooth marks still clearly visible after all these years. And yet… it was unmistakably impressive.

It was what we were looking for all along. It was The Relic.

Babe © Igor Bissikalo

It’s just not fair!

I always bring her flowers yet she never notice me. Why is that, I don’t know. I mean there is nothing wrong with me, really, don’t you agree?

So the whole situation is a mystery for me and, I fear, I cannot go on like this for much longer.

Should I move on?

I do not know yet, but this relationship is not progressing the way I hoped it would. What I am to do?