The final episode of our interview with Stevie…. It’s scary that these people walk among us. They are coming out of the woodwork lately it seems. Check out this post from Laura Atkins over on Word to the Wise.
Pay attention; it isn’t just the blocking and blacklisting. Spamming a purchased list can cause your registrar to put your domain in a coma, and/or your host, network, or ESP to suspend your account for being in violation of the terms and conditions of your agreement.
The conclusion of our interview with Stevie….
Thanks for tuning it! I hope you’ve had as much fun as I did. With any luck we won’t have to do this again, but I’m not going to hold my breath….
OMG LMAO Mr Red Pill can you please get me Stevie’s mom’s phone number?
I love hot pockets (wink wink).
PS…why would anyone want to pose as a poseur?
LMAO “I got my bills paid this month …” WHOO HOO! That’s too much 🙂
@Jeff – you know how it is with a hit show where everyone wants to be interviewed. Just afraid that non-poseurs start posing as poseurs just for a little airtime….
And BTW, our cameras caught up with Stevie and his mom…. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g49cVjOZkPE
@Rory – I thought he was going to get a little violent there for a minute, but then I recognized it as just some of his dance moves from the link above. 🙂
I can honestly say that was better than Family Guy! I just love how you edit…it doesn’t represent the way I believe EXACTLY, but it is certainly entertaining.
BTW, I did institute a leasing program for our subscriber lists (you did convince me there) but I have not, nor will I, stop buying and selling data as long as it’s legal, there is a customer for it, and there is a commercial audience. The response rate tells me that bulk email marketing is not a dead avenue and never will be.
It’s not telemarketing and you don’t have to deal with rejecting a salesman. Get over it! Unsolicited email is and always will be a great way to reach a receptive market. If it’s receptive and responsive, then your efforts to change that are manipulative…at best.
Here’s my issue with convincing the consumer that direct marketing of any specific nature is wrong; American economy is driven by “the sale” and in our economy anyone can AND DOES invent things, which gives American’s a lot of products and services to choose from with very little knowledge on the choices.
So it takes a salesman (or a marketer) to begin the economic cycle. Everything starts with the sale and if we remove direct marketing from our economy (as a whole) our economy would be far from Capitalism and could very well suffer incredibly.
It’s the “grass roots” marketers that feed you and convince the people to spend money. It’s the marketer’s job to be sure they are promoting products of value to that particular consumer, not vice versa. We cannot “flip” those roles…come on now, that doesn’t even make sense! Can you imagine the consumer having to make a proactive decision on EVERY purchase. It’s unrealistic to say the least.
In your world there would be no door-to-door salesmen, telemarketer, direct mail, billboards, or any other “Unsolicited Advertising” for the feeling of “intrusion” is what you feel the consumer dislikes.
Can you imagine That America?
No ADT (built their entire business on canvassing sales), no Kirby (the oldest door-to-door company in America), no fliers (it’s unsolicited just like bulk email), no postcards (it’s unsolicited just like bulk email)and so on. All this equals…A POOR ECONOMY.
If it’s a bad idea on a large scale, it’s a bad idea on a small scale.
The only reason you differentiate the email from these things is because it is profitable for you to do so. That’s my other issue…
Okay, you’re mixing things up and blurring the lines.
You’re comparing apples and oranges and equating them the same under the proposition that they’re both fruit.
Email marketing (oranges) is a tactic of direct marketing (fruit), as is direct mail(apples), dialing-for-dollars (peaches), or knocking doors (pears).
Postal addresses can be purchased from different sources, it’s hard to miss blocks of houses, and published telephone numbers are easily had – pick up the book.
Email addresses, on the other hand – just like cell phone numbers – aren’t “published”. Email addresses and cell phone numbers are considered private and personal. We can go into “why”, but it doesn’t really matter….
The reason that I differentiate is because it’s the right thing to do.
Of course email is profitable for me, I wouldn’t have made a career of it were it not. Duh!
I work for myself, and my boss is a real douche; he hates all the time I spend feeding trolls, but realizes it’s my own little way of going Geldoff so gives me some lattitude.
I won’t convince you. You don’t want to be convinced.
To put it into parlance that you might understand, it’s a battle of ideas. Since yours come with adverse consequences, I don’t think that they have much of a chance.
People will make up their own mind, and I’m afraid that, as Russell Sewell said in a recent adaptation of Chaucer’s A Knight’s Tale, “You will be weighed. You will be measured. And you will be found wanting.”
Godaddy thought so:
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: BULKEMAILDIRECTORY.COM
Created on: 16-Jul-10
Expires on: 16-Jul-11
Last Updated on: 04-Aug-10
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.SUSPENDED-FOR.SPAM-AND-ABUSE.COM
NS2.SUSPENDED-FOR.SPAM-AND-ABUSE.COM
GoDaddy will suspend anyone for a spam complaint. All it took was a guy like John to send an email. That’s not anything special.
They even seized the domain illegally, so we launched the site on a new domain (until our lawyers finish the UDRP dispute) almost immediately and this blog got us a few sales the first day up.
We haven’t lost any money and love the exposure John gives us…this is great!
…and the quote is “You HAVE been weighed…and found wanting…” great movie however and Geoffery would throw a fit to allow someone to misquote the greatest storyteller that ever lived.
Eh, making registrar complaints is more effort that I’m willing to put forth, instead “I will eviscerate you in fiction. Every pimple, every character flaw.” 🙂
I do have to give “Stevie” props for being such a good sport. Not everyone would have been….
Okay,
I want to say that I am quite prideful of my beliefs, no matter what they are. I truly agree with the reasons behind the standards that John, as well as yourself, promote and I am DEFINITELY going to change my business model to respect the recipient more, but you must admit; based strictly on the debate points themselves, it is difficult to convince someone that bulk email is SO WRONG. It’s almost like trying to convince America that Marijuana is the problem and not the law against it. Both debates are good and both sides have valid arguments.
The bottom-line is that my way of doing business DOES HAVE CONSEQUENCES, and they are costly. There is still good profits there, but reputation is becoming more and more important online and I do not want to sacrifice that for dollars. Hence, I will conform as long as my bills are paid.
John,
I saw you got one website shut down for spam complaints (the guys name was andrew stephens). Well, I found two others posing as spammers as well. They are from both: http://www.BulkEmailDirectory.net and http://www.emailgladiator2010.com/ Both of these do not have DNSBL’s but I know they are both causing a TON of spam on the internet with their fake lists. Whatever you need to do or how I can help you get these folks SBL’ed let me know.
While I appreciate the props, I don’t have anything to do with people having this that or the other thing shut down; they do it to themselves by the nature/practice of what they’re doing.
I don’t ever expect to convince the list seller that what they’re doing is really pretty scummy, I just like to use as an example to people that might be on the fence between doing the hard work and reaping the rewards or taking shortcuts and facing the consequences…. 🙂
John,
That was just Joshua Greenwood commenting there because he is my competitor and he knows I work with Andrew. That’s all. EmailGladiator2010 is another competitor of his that has his data for half the price,. You are just getting spammed yourself here now John…just saying 😉