In my website statistics, I have been watching a trend over
the last year or so. That trend has gone from just a few misled
individuals a year ago, to hundreds of duped webmasters today.
Did you buy into the lie too?
Webmasters Do Need Traffic In Order to Sell Goods and Services.
Every morning when we get out of bed, we webmasters of the
world know deep in our hearts that all we need to make our
money today is a certain amount of traffic to our websites.
We have tested our websites and tracked our results, and we
have learned that a certain percentage of our visitors will
buy what we are offering.
So, as we begin each day, it is usually our goal to take one
more step towards building exposure for our website. We want
to build one more channel that our future customers can use
to find our websites.
Through tracking we know that one of every ten, twenty of
forty people will buy our goods and services. So, we hope
to see one hundred, two hundred or four hundred people visiting
our website today. Experience has taught us that in order
to make the kind of money we want to make each day, then we
must present our website to X number of people each day.
The Most Effective Lie Utilizes a Small, Nugget of Truth.
Webmasters do need traffic to their websites. That is the
one, small nugget of truth that supports the lie.
No one is going to argue that a website does not need traffic,
unless they are just a fool at heart.
What the "Seller of Lies" fails to tell is that
the types of traffic differ. The Seller of Lies does not
tell
you that targeted traffic is one hundred times more likely
to buy what you are selling than untargeted traffic!
The Seller of Lies has tried to convince you that since you
offer a B2B product or service, that the best person for you
to target is other webmasters.
What the Seller of Lies fails to tell you is that "deception
does not help you build the trust that you need to sell your
products and services." In fact, most webmasters, once
they learn that someone has deceived them, they will refuse
to buy from the person who has deceived them!
But, the Seller of Lies does not share that side of the picture.
Nope. The Seller of Lies is only interested in taking your
money and giving you a false sense of hope and accomplishment.
So, Who is the Seller of Lies?
The Seller of Lies are those companies who sell the software
product that pings websites in such a way as to appear as
if the software user's website is sending traffic to the destination
website.
You know whom I am talking about. You have seen their websites
in your Referral URL tracking. You see their links, and you
wonder why they linked to your website. So, you go check out
their page to see how they linked to your site, and why their
traffic would be interested in visiting your website.
You look and you look, and then you realize that this webmaster
has duped you! You realize that this webmaster is using that
ping software to hit your website, creating the illusion that
they have a link to your website on their web page.
I don't know about you, but every time I realize that I have
been tricked into visiting someone's website, I confirm in
my own mind that I will never buy what that website is selling!
I don't like to be deceived by anyone, and I do hold grudges.
The Twist in the Trend
When these pinging programs first came to the web, I would
see a few dozen sites in my logs each month with one or two
pings to my site --- never more than six pings in one month.
This week, I have been seeing people pinging me dozens of
times with the same URL pretending to be a link referrer to
my website.
In the good old days, when people did this on occasion, the
few hits would not drastically affect the accuracy of my website
statistics and logs. In the good old days, my top 25 referrers
would not be changed, and I would only see the false positives
when I looked at all of my referrers.
This week, 21 of my top 25 referrers are these people deceptively
pinging my website to get me to visit their website! Instead
of looking at the top 25 and moving on, I now have to pull
up the full list of referrers each time to get an honest appraisal
of my position for the month.
Did I mention that I do not buy goods or services from people
who try to deceive me?
What is worse about the up tick in this trend is that some
of these dishonest webmasters are pinging me with false positives,
from every webpage of their website! ARGH!!!
March of 2006 is very literally the first time in history
that I have not been able to fully trust in my site logs...
I am soooooo very ticked off about that. Very literally, I
rely upon my site logs to show me what marketing methods and
websites are providing me the best bang for my advertising
dollars. And now, I have to dig through more than one hundred
false positives to find the true positives.
Did I mention that I do not buy goods from people who waste
my time as a result of their deception?
Did I Mention...
Yes, I did mention it... Repeatedly...
In order to sell your goods and services online, you must
earn your potential customer's trust. You cannot earn their
trust, if you have deceived them to get them to your website.
Just a Nugget of Truth...
Wow! You have been using your ping software for a week or
a month now, and you can see for yourself that the software
vendor did not completely lie to you. Your logs prove it...
You are now getting tons of new traffic to your website...
But, the important question you must ask yourself is this.
How much of that new traffic have you been able to convert
into sales? In the end, this is what it comes down to. Is
this brilliant piece of promotional software increasing your
sales at
the same time it is increasing your traffic???
If your answer is "yes." Well good for you. It
won't last... Not everyone, looking at their logs and seeing
your
URL, actually realizes that you are deceiving them. But after
they have read this article today, they might just be a bit
wiser to your
deception and stop buying from you.
If your answer is "no." Well, you should of known
better.
Wrapping Up...
If you are considering the purchase and use of this pinging
software, do yourself a favor and pass it up. There are many
systems that you can use to promote your business and build
your traffic, without deceiving people. Your future customers
need to trust you, so don't give them a reason not to trust
you.
And for those of you currently using this software - count
on this. If you are pinging my website, you will never see
a single dime of my money, no matter how good your product
or service might be.
Bill Platt is the owner of http://thePhantomWriters.com
Article Distribution Service. He has been engaged in article
marketing since 1999, and he has offered his distribution
services since 2001. He brings his personal touch and experience
to every article distribution, offering advice and suggestions
to his
clients as needed, to help them to improve their article's
results...
