Technorati Email Flagged In Gmail As Phishing

Why?

Well possible reasons could be that they use PHP List from their own servers, and the SPF records could do with a little work, plus no indication of things like feedback loops etc. I am not an email deliverability expert.

Delivered-To: list.andy@gmail.com
Received: by 10.211.202.19 with SMTP id e19cs5391ebq;
Wed, 9 Sep 2009 20:57:04 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.114.163.5 with SMTP id l5mr1847786wae.140.1252555022884;
Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:57:02 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path:
Received: from mail01.technorati.com (fw01-620.technorati.com [208.66.65.12])
by mx.google.com with ESMTP id 13si3719602pxi.23.2009.09.09.20.57.02;
Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:57:02 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 208.66.65.12 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of noreply@blogcritics.org) client-ip=208.66.65.12;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=neutral (google.com: 208.66.65.12 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of noreply@blogcritics.org) smtp.mail=noreply@blogcritics.org
Received: from bcweb03.blogcritics.org (bcweb03.technorati.com [10.12.113.122])
by mail01.technorati.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2BC3219BCE9
for ; Wed, 9 Sep 2009 20:57:02 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by bcweb03.blogcritics.org (Postfix, from userid 503)
id 2192416C116; Wed, 9 Sep 2009 20:57:02 -0700 (PDT)
To: list.andy@gmail.com
Subject: State of the Blogosphere Survey/Changes to Your Technorati Authority
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 2009 20:57:02 -0700
From: No Reply
Message-ID: <1484669ea94992dffb014142837dd930@blogcritics.org>
X-Priority: 3
X-Mailer: PHPMailer [version 1.73]
X-Mailer: PHPlist v2.10.2
X-MessageID: 261
X-ListMember: list.andy@gmail.com
Precedence: bulk

However you could easily blame this all on Gmail as here are a bunch of other legitimate emails I pulled out of spam during the same session.

Emails That Headers Could Possibly Be Improved

Comment subscriptions from Copyblogger

Comment subscriptions from Disqus

Emails With Good SPF

Google’s own Google Groups emails (Note: I don’t open those very often that could negatively affect delivery)

A change in Plaxo Terms of Service… I wouldn’t have known about

Forum updates from one of my hosts, VPS.net

Dr Mike Woo Ming isn’t phishing… that I know of, and all the links in this email seem legit… and his headers seem to be in order from my layman perspective.

Technorati’s solution would be to use an email service provider who has good delivery. One suitable option might be Getresponse’s “Deda” Service.

That isn’t an affiliate link (no deep linking support) but who knows, if you mention my blog post maybe they will allocate a sale to me.

That being said, no email service provider’s emails are immune.

Seth Godin using Feedblitz

Jason Potash using Prosender / Aweber whitelabel

Matt Trainer using iContact

Trey Smith & Frank Kern using Infusionsoft

Delivery for people using their own scripts isn’t fairing any better, in most cases much worse.

For email service providers, my unique key whitelisting system would work, and guarantee flawless delivery.

Email is the de-facto master password for a huge swath of your online identity. Tread carefully:

* As a software developer, you should never ask a user for their email credentials. It’s unethical. It’s irresponsible. It is wrong. If someone is asking you to code this, why? For what purpose?
* As a user, you should never provide your email credentials to anyone except your email service. Sites that ask you for this information are to be regarded with extreme suspicion if not outright distrust.

This is the same terrible system used by many large social networks, and 2 scripts I recently strongly advised internet marketers not to use.

• Optin Accelerator – due to be relaunched soon
• Then there was Viral Optin Generator
• Coming soon is Viral Inviter which has some redeeming qualities, it works with old address books from Outlook etc, but it is still asking for highly personal passwords, and there are some other security faults.

Viral Inviter, with even heavier marketing and endorsements, will have a huge long-term negative effect on email marketing, with the rewards quickly being overtaken by a backlash of negative sentiment and poorer email delivery which will be universal.

Plurk which has very recently become very popular also suffers from this evil invite and finding friends method, but at least has a redeeming feature.

http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&cmid=0&fs=1&su=Invitation+to+Plurk.com&body=I+have+been+using+Plurk+and+I+think+you+should+check+it+out%21%0A%0AAccept+my+invitation+by+going+to%3A%0Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fplurk.com%2FredeemByURL%3Ffrom_uid%3D15547%26check%3D-1998160234%26s%3D2%0A%0ACheck+out+my+profile+at%3A%0Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.plurk.com%2Fuser%2Fandybeard%0A%0APlurk.com+-+Your+life%2C+on+the+line&tearoff=1&shva=1&ui=1

http://compose.mail.yahoo.com/?Subj=Invitation+to+Plurk.com&Body=I+have+been+using+Plurk+and+I+think+you+should+check+it+out%21+Accept+my+invitation+by+going+to%3A+http%3A%2F%2Fplurk.com%2FredeemByURL%3Ffrom_uid%3D15547%26check%3D-1998160234%26s%3D2.+Check+out+my+profile+by+going+to%3A+http%3A%2F%2Fwww.plurk.com%2Fuser%2Fandybeard

http://www.hotmail.msn.com/secure/start?action=compose&subject=Invitation+to+Plurk.com&body=I+have+been+using+Plurk+and+I+think+you+should+check+it+out%21%0A%0AAccept+my+invitation+by+going+to%3A%0Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fplurk.com%2FredeemByURL%3Ffrom_uid%3D15547%26check%3D-1998160234%26s%3D2%0A%0ACheck+out+my+profile+at%3A%0Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.plurk.com%2Fuser%2Fandybeard%0A%0APlurk.com+-+Your+life%2C+on+the+line

That first line for instance brings up an invite email inside Gmail, no need to scrape Gmail contacts, and then you can use Gmail’s own address book to access contacts.

They also use Facebook

Existing APIs

Google Yahoo and Microsoft also have APIs for this kind of stuff which can also be used for finding friends.

Google Contacts API
Yahoo! Contact API
Windows Live Contact API

Over the last few months I have already taken the decision not to promote a number of sites and services launched by Internet Marketers using these dangerous scripts.

I have proven I can rank highly in the SERPs for any product. It is going to help conversions when on the first page of the SERPs for your product name potential customers find…

Product Name – WARNING: SECURITY RISK – Read This First!
or
Product Name by Marketer Name – Warning: Security Risk

The only problem is, this won’t be a typical fake affiliate promotion, but a real warning

Update

Tim has provided the code so that anyone who buys one of these viral tell a friend scripts can easily modify it so that it stores all the personal data entered in a form. It would take a typical script kiddie less than 2 minutes.

Doing it on someone else’s server is a little more work, plus they would need to get access, but how many people really think their websites running 3rd party scripts are totally secure.

Tim points out Paypal… how many marketers use Gmail for Paypal access, along with their Adwords, Adsense, Domain registrations etc. I know I do, because I trust Google with the data more than I trust my ISP – plus it would be a thankless task changing everything if you changed ISP.

Marketers are the perfect target

• Running lots of 3rd party scripts on a site
• Often running outdated versions of WordPress
• Have multiple sites on the same server
• Have a “set and forget” mentality

http://www.viraloptingenerator.com/index.php

This script is different to Optin Accelerator in a number of ways

• The script is hosted 100% on your server
• No subscription fee
• It doesn’t “send home” any date, so it is 100% your responsibility

In theory that makes it almost exactly the same as the scripts used by the big boys of Web2.0 though their servers are less likely to conk out the first time someone with 200 contacts in Gmail uses the script if you are on shared or even most reseller hosting. You would probably have problems on most virtual servers as well.
I don’t know if the service can be configured to use a 3rd party SMTP, whether it uses sendmail, phpmailer, or swiftmailer.

If you are a smart programmer, picking this up might give you a few ideas, but remember

• It is still against the published ToS of Aweber
• You are still encouraging people to do something that is unsafe if running an internet business
• Legal liability – it is you sending the emails – in some ways I would be worried about the claims on the sales letter that it doesn’t keep a record – if you are sending emails there is always a record somewhere, though you are best advised to keep a record of every email you send anywhere.
• The script needs to be maintained for updates – maybe it will be updated over time, but best to allow for programming time to keep it working.
• The Plaxo option is free, and maybe safer

I have thought a little more about the suggestion Aweber make about forwarding emails – that is actually unsafe for most email lists, because many readers will also forward unsubscription information. What happens if they forward it when you are price testing? Forwarding effectively encourages public posting.
Maybe it is better to mail the person sending when they use a standard TAF with a letter encouraging they forward that to friends and also the message that goes to their friends.

It is still TAF though, so check with your email service provider.

What I want to impress upon you is… if possible… you should endeavor to confine your selling efforts to…

Players With Money!

Why? First of all, it is easier to sell something to someone with money. It’s an obvious fact that person has the money to buy what you’re selling. If you’ve got a $500,000 house for sale, it doesn’t matter how appealing the house is if the family you’re pitching it to has a pitifully low total income.

But there’s another fact you mustn’t overlook. People with money usually means they also have an important character trait most of the “sheep” out there don’t possess. Namely…

They Have The Ability To Make A Decision!

And… without talking it over with their spouse, their lawyer, their CPA, or their mommy. Usually, people with money got their loot because their lives are filled with independent thought and movement. These people with a high Halbert Index also possess another rare commodity. Namely… the ability to recognize true value. In other words, yes, it’s true these people are easier to sell than Joe Average but… only if you offer true value!

Reflect, for a moment, on what I sell. This would include a high-priced, rather arrogant newsletter, expensive seminars, expensive videos, audios, printed information packages, client services, etc. Who won’t buy my material? Basically, stupid, lazy people who relate its value to how much it weighs and how much “bulk” they receive. Who does buy my material? The answer is easy…

Players With Money!

From the archives of the great Gary Halbert, in a letter titled “The Halbert Index“

Powerful thought provoking stuff that precedes what many top level online marketers aim to achieve today, though many were themselves students of the great Gary Halbert. Do take the time to read the complete article, in fact you could spend days insides Gary’s archives.

I can’t resist one further quotation

I think the original letter was written back in 2003 – the idea of internet marketers promoting high ticket items is nothing new.

Some of the traits of higher ticket products

• Higher customer satisfaction
• Lower support costs
• Higher retention
• More repeat business

What Does It Take To Get There?

• Research A Niche
• Keyword Research
• Research Potential Products
• Create Products (preferably using outsourcing)
• Setup an effective sales funnel
• Generate traffic
• SEO
• PayPerClick (PPC)
• Buzz marketing and Linkbaiting
• JV Partners & Affiliates

Alex Goad has been a reader of my blog for about as long as I have been writing it, and I have a great deal of respect for him. He has achieved phenomenal success over the last 12 months with a number of successful Clickbank products that have become successful not because of hype, but quality. I actually had a chance to be part of one of them in the past, but it would have been hard to condense things whilst still provide the depth of information I felt obligated to provide.

That being said, I still wanted to see what Alex created before considering a mention here, let alone encourage people to buy it.

I believe I am one of the few who have actually had access to a large chunk of the materials, though many were still in draft form.

One important segment that Alex has included is on Traffic Funnels or more importantly Sales Funnels, and he has written one of the best explanations I have read about why a traffic funnel is important, and how they should be set up.

Well at least in part…

I have monitored almost every major product launch over the last year, and even the experts are leaving a huge chunk of their potential subscribers and profits to chance.

As for bloggers, there is a gaping hole in the sales funnel, and it is not at the end where the sales are made. Even if you manage to gain a minimal commitment in the form of an RSS subscription, hot prospects quickly turn cold.

I am one of the worst offenders

Technological Hurdles

Basic list building on a blog isn’t too technically complicated, but there is a lot more that can be done to enhance the process and build fanatical readers and boost income, though many of the tools such as membership scripts often need to be jury rigged to achieve any level of back-end coordination.

Even the most experienced pros effectively separate the list building mechanism from the blog. Whilst that might be suitable in the internet marketing niche, there are better ways of doing it.

Players With Money Bonus

Over the last few months I have been designing what I believe will be the “perfect funnel system” for blogs, whether for conventional bloggers looking to boost their subscriber base, for affiliate marketers, and yes… it will also add a totally new dimension to major product launches.

I have spent a lot of time ensuring that it is the right product for the market

During the next week I intend the development to start… I might need more than one full time programmer working on the project, and I intend it to be sold on a recurring membership basis.

Anyone who orders Players With Money and joins the program for at least 2 weeks will be entitled to free membership even if you eventually decide that it isn’t the right product for you and ask for a refund. That is the level of trust I have in Alex’s product.
It is a Clickbank product, so the refund period is a lot longer – you will have absolutely no risk

At this time it will only be for WordPress, and I am going to try to make it affiliate system neutral, so whether you are dealing with Clickbank, Paypal, PayDotCom, IDevAffiliate, InfusionSoft, 1ShoppingCart or other system, either as an affiliate or as a product creator, you will be able to benefit.

The aim of the system in a nutshell

• More links
• More traffic
• More subscribers
• More sales
• More profit

One of my biggest negative traits (other than possibly fulfilling Alex’s requirements in the video) is that in some things I am a perfectionist – it has taken me a long time to finalize the design, but hopefully that will ensure a premium product.

p.s. As an added bonus, you will also get to be in on the initial beta test and become launch partners. It is a beast of a system, and intended to be insanely viral.
p.p.s I am going back through historical affiliate transactions and also including those who have supported me or trusted my advice in the past (those I can track to an individual), though I feel you will also benefit from Players With Money, I do know how to treat my customers and future affiliates like gold.

Terms

I am going to get there in the end, but I currently can’t fix a delivery date. It will be a major undertaking – if you qualify as a “Player With Money” based on the definition from Gary Halbert and repeated in Alex’s video, this won’t concern you.

Also to conform with Clickbank terms (how many affiliates offering bonuses even know these rules, let alone comply with them)

1) The bonus offer is not the responsibility of ClickBank or of the seller of the primary product.

2) ClickBank will not honor any refund requests that are based on non- delivery, quality, or functionality of the bonus materials.

3) I have always listed my contact information and any issues regarding bonus delivery, bonus functionality, or bonus quality must be addressed with me, not with ClickBank or the seller.

Further Reading

My thought process has continued since I wrote these articles, but you might find them enlightening – they also provide some level of proof as to how much time I have already invested in this project.

Why Blogs Suck – an in-depth rant on blog subscription rates and the inefficient sales funnel process they create.

10 Reasons Why Social Media Marketing Sucks – damn another rant, but again I delve into traffic and sales funnels.

I am quietly confident that this will be the most valuable bonus offered by anyone for Players With Money but it will require your patience and trust.

Update: Just to be sure

When you arrive on the payment page for Clickbank having followed my link you should see something like this showing at the bottom of the page, with the affiliate ID “Nommus”

If you have any queries just let me know, I am even available on Skype a lot of the time.

I will be monitoring the Clickbank account for transactions, and they provide contact details, but to be sure after your purchase it might be a good idea to forward me a receipt using my contact form.

In direct referral stats it didn’t cause a shockwave until I looked at the specific pageviews of the page he chose to link to, my WordPress category.

My category pages rarely figure highly in the most viewed, so I could actually attribute the majority of the traffic to that specific landing page, even if the traffic originated from an email or RSS subscriber.

This takes me back to one of the discussions I had with Joost regarding his Google Analytics tracking from RSS Plugin – I am sure there must be some way to modify it so that when you link to someone, they can actually see the traffic you sent them, not just click-throughs from a blog page, but from subscribers.

This actually relates to link and traffic reciprocation, quite an important blogging concept.

People Need To See The Traffic

With an affiliate program it is easy for the affiliate program owner to see the traffic you send them. Everything is tracked. With blogging in general it isn’t so easy.

Search Engine Land for instance frequently link to me in their Search Cap which goes out to email subscribers.

From the posts that appear on the Search Engine Land blog, I rarely see more than 10 visitors – but that doesn’t account for the traffic sent from the email newsletter which is totally invisible.

Frequently I see posts receive a flood of traffic where I don’t have a referrer, because it is coming from various email clients.

Danny actually faces a similar problem, as he has raised the question of cross promotion of conferences in a discussion on Sphinn.

The big problem? The email edition of Search Cap is invisible traffic.

If people see that a link made a significant difference to traffic and conversions of whatever kind, they are much more likely to reciprocate.

In many ways, measurable traffic is the only traffic that counts and where you are promoting someone else, they have to see it too.

This means that they totally blow Feedburner Email subscription away as far as features are concerned.

Apart from one important aspect.

Exclusive: Aweber Will Soon Report Email Sububscriber Numbers To Feedburner

In the announcement Justin Premick mentioned

This is just one of a number of enhancements we’ll be making to the Blog Broadcast tool. Stay tuned…

I probed a little deeper and we can expect to have counts reported to Feedburner in the near future, but no specific time frame.

What Does This Mean To The Blogosphere?

Internet marketers who concentrate on email subscriptions from their blog using Aweber will soon be able to benefit from the same social proof as if they were RSS subscribers. I know a few marketers that previously only had a few thousand RSS subscribers who will suddenly be propelled into similar subscriber counts as… Techcrunch 600k+

I think that shakes public perception up a little

A Confession About Feedblitz

Feedblitz also have this capability and a bunch of cool features, and I exchanged emails with Phil Hollows 1st December after an exchange of comments both here in the past, and on Problogger.
There seem to be a number of ways that Feedblitz could meet my needs for email in the same or similar way to Aweber, though it might take a little work with existing scripts

I really need to spend some time on full evaluation, but my house move and subsequent lack or intermittent connectivity has disrupted my workflow.

To be fair, I reached these conclusions more than 6 months ago… but saying anything at the time really would have fallen on deaf ears. I needed to have an established audience created in a traditional way, without any “explosive” growth from gaming social media, paid advertising or leveraging existing traffic.

• It would have been looked on as moaning and whining
• I would be told that you can’t expect instant success from blogging
• That you have to write better content to be successful
• The only blogs that gain lots of traffic and subscribers write list posts and have great headlines
• You have to optimize your monetization to make any money online

However ultimately everything comes down to one thing…

Blogs Suck For Lead Acquisition

• The number of editorial links you receive is generally related to the number of subscribers
• The number of repeat visitors to a blog is generally related to the number of subscribers
• The amount of money a blog can make is generally related to the number of subscribers
• The prominence of a blog on social news sites is at least partly related to the number of subscribers

So to get more links, visitors, money and possibly even success on social news sites, you need to optimize your visitor experience with one single aim, to get more qualified subscribers

Here is a little test for you, lets look on this as a group project.

1. No. of New Visitors During Last Month

In Google Analytics I know that I have had around 20,000 unique visitors that Google Analytics looks on as new visitors during the last month. Whilst this figure is fairly inaccurate, at least it is “constantly inaccurate”, so we can use it as some kind of reference point for the future.
In Google Analytics it is also possible to segment the new visitors by the source of traffic. I still gain more traffic from Google search than I receive from social media such as StumbleUpon, in fact 32% of my new visitors are from search, and that traffic is generally highly targeted.

2. Subscriber Gain or Decline During Last Month

Go into Feedburner or your other feeds stats, and work out how many subscribers you have gained or lost during the last month. Feedburner numbers can fluctuate a little, so go for an intelligent average.

Over the last month I know that I have gained around 400 subscribers

3. Compare New Visitors To Subscribers

Based on my data:-

(400/20000)*100 = 2%

2% doesn’t sound very good, it almost certainly isn’t very good, though the figure is probably a little on the low side. Many of those “new visitors” could well have been previous visitors.

At the same time, many of those subscribers could well have been repeat visitors.

2% Subscription Rate Sucks…
But Is Yours Any Better?

If you had traffic coming to a sales page, you might be happy with a 2% conversion rate… though you would obviously strive for more.

If you are offering totally free content of high quality, you should expect a much higher subscription rate unless your conversion of traffic into subscribers totally sucks, and lets be honest, mine currently does, and there is a high chance your’s does as well.

This isn’t a problem with blogs as such, as blogging software is really just a content management system.

Blogging and joining the conversation is important

It is very rare to see a blog that has a highly optimized traffic funnel, in fact I have seen some marketing blogs advocate what is effectively the exact opposite of an efficient sales funnel. For some silly reason they advocate advertising to new visitors, and switching off selling to people who have subscribed.

People who subscribe are your hot prospects, and if you don’t sell them something, they will most likely buy from someone else. If they buy from someone else, you have lost a customer

There are factors that might give some “abnormalities” to the overall statistics, such as a newly launched resource with plenty of traffic leverage from friends, affiliates or social media, and an efficient traffic funnel can change things dramatically.
Older blogs that are reaching a saturation point within their niche might have a reduced rate of subscription.

Blogs that can leverage “fake” subscriptions by frequent discussion of competing RSS readers and aggregators probably have a higher subscription rate than their real “responsive” numbers. I know my own numbers aren’t too far off because the occasional “hit” such as my article on “Linking Abuse” was read by 90% of my subscribers based on Feedburner usage statistics.

Email subscriptions for 3rd party blogs are hard to quantify if they are not reported to Feedburner.

So what is your subscription conversion rate of new visitors for your blog?

They bring out interesting, useful, sometimes controversial or disruptive products, but they are certainly market leaders not the following pack.

In the case of RSSBrief, they are taking on an existing market, RSS Readers, and in many ways it seems they might also step into reputation management and RSS Search.

I have a feeling even Jason Calacanis is going to like RSSBrief because it will help him with reputation management for Mahalo… but when it is finished.

The closest I have seen to RSSBrief was Myfeedz, but that didn’t quite hit the mark for me, it might be better for other people. Myfeedz really gives an overview of the whole blogosphere.

RSSBrief tries to give an overview of specific blogs, or specific blog posts, extractng core details about the content – an “executive overview” to help you determine whether the full content is relevant.

Some people might argue that that is the purpose of an opening paragraph, but opening paragraphs are either lacking in specific information, or more often than not these days, carefully crafted to entice you to read the full article.

(more after the jump)

I offer full feeds but many people don’t, and opening paragraphs might not tell you what you need to know. That is a fake “after the jump” just to prove a point.

I wonder if PayPerPost will be presenting RSSBrief which is part of their Argus platform at Techcrunch40 – maybe they will get to come face-to-face with Google – just imagine if they won the top prize and having it presented by Google and Michael Arrington.
I haven’t seen a list of people presenting published – maybe having the PPP guys there would have been just too much to handle.

As Adam Ostrow notes on Mashable:-

On the plus side, the service does seem do a fairly good job of summarizing articles, but whether that is something customers are really looking for will remain to be seen.

He also notes it is an alpha, and you can’t enter your whole reading list – there is no way to log in at all.

I love seeing projects at this early stage, because it allows you to see the potential, and possibly shape it into something more useful.

Why I See Potential In RSSBrief?

I do see a lot of potential in RSSBrief, and not because I would consider the guys at PayPerPost to be friends, and they certainly don’t pay me anything to write about them.
You could class it in some ways as being payola, they have linked to me, featured me in their marketplace etc, but they haven’t to coin a phrase ‘bought my soul”.

So the first thing I am going to do in my writeup is criticise them, and quite strongly.

Here is the link to my page on RSSBrief

http://www.rssbrief.com/feeds/24

It absolutely sucks I am page number 24 and not page number 1

Techcrunch is page number 14

This is a little tongue in cheek, but there is a serious point to it, the URLs should be based around my URL

http://www.rssbrief.com/feeds/andybeard.eu

http://www.rssbrief.com/feeds/techcrunch.com

Here is why….

Summary Feeds

RSSBrief provides 2 kinds of RSS feed

A Full Feed http://www.rssbrief.com/entries/full_xml/24
A Summary Feed http://www.rssbrief.com/entries/summaries_xml/24

I absolutely hate the full feeds option currently, because it strips out all the formatting, and possibly doesn’t count as a feed subscriber with Feedburner. Guys it is ugly, and possibly pointless.

I love the summary feed with one caveat – the useless URL

http://www.rssbrief.com/entries/summaries_xml/24

That should read

http://www.rssbrief.com/entries/summaries_xml/andybeard.eu

That summary is actually something very useful I could even use on my blog or for various mashups, but even more useful would be a way to get a summary for a specific post.

I would love to be able to pull in a summary for each post into a sidebar section automatically, or to pull in summaries in some way for additional data on category archives etc.

For effective use, all data needs to be based around the actual URLs, and not numbers.

I am not a number

RSS brief isn’t a full grown application, it is a technology demo or alpha because it is suitable to be “played around with”, and I could actually use the summary feeds as it stands to add some value.

For some of those higher output blogs such as Techcrunch or Mashable, I could imagine subscribing just to the summaries.

I really wish they would change the URLs – they might currently reflect how they are being stored in the database, but end users will get a lot more benefit if they are more user friendly.

I also hope they are going to report subscribers through to Feedburner in some way (and also with their email service Zookoda)

Hmm Zookoda – I have a feeling Zookoda is going to be integrated with the Argus backend as well. Maybe we will see PayPerPost reporting subscription numbers to Feedburner, but we will also see PayPerPost competing directly with Feedburner, now owned by Google.

When I worte about Zookoda in the past, I hinted that something of this nature might be possible.

In some ways they are now a Feedburner competitor, which might make this a little complicated. If it doesn’t happen, I expect to see PayPerPost/Zookoda move into the feed syndication and statistics business extremely quickly.

Hmm statistics…

PayPerPost have already stated that they will have some fairly advanced tracking within Argus – they really need feed readership statistics to be able to offer advertisers. They can grab some of it via Feedburner API, but can also offer their own competing platform.

PayPerPost To Directly Compete With Feedburner and Google Reader?

Thus the title of this post, it is pure speculation, but PayPerPost do have the funding to pull it off, it makes 100% business sense, they have the attention of a large blogger audience, and they will provide a feed reading experience that will be attractive not just for bloggers, but also professional businesses.
They might not be able to pull people away from Feedburner – they don’t have to, they can offer a parallel service that offers value, and will gain uptake.

As long as it could be tracked, I would add an additional feed subscription for the RSSBrief summaries, and I feel other people would as well.

Zookoda’s email offering isn’t perfect, but it is free, will offer advertising revenue in the future, and is more likely to be developed than Feedbuner’s

Despite my highlighting of Feedburner’s problems in the past, they have done nothing to rectify any of the things I highlighted that is immediately visible, even a simple thing such as adding a small text addition to outgoing emails for CAN-SPAM conformance.

Ok, so they are now Google, and Google can probably get away with a lot of things that smaller companies can’t. Who after all is going to take Google to court for a spam complaint?

Can you tell I am excited about the direction PayPerPost is taking this – their business model has always been disruption, they are going to do it again.

I don’t like speculating about purchases too much, but this one actually intrigued me, because there were a number of options.

I was going to post a nice short list something along the lines of

5. Splashpress Media – PayPerPost have been looking to get into some higher profile blogs for some time, and this would be one option
4. B5 Media – For a similar reason, but B5 have funding, and I doubt would be looking to cash out too soon for the sums possibly available
3. Clicky – PPP were in the market for tracking in the past, and Performancing fell though – then not long ago Performancing first of all started using clicking for their service, then dropped it.
2. Blogcatalog – I know VC Dan was very interested in MyBlogLog, and Blog Catalog has a lot of potential

So who is left?

I have got to know Dan Rua quite well from various discussions about PayPerPost and disclosure, and Dan is one of the main driving forces behind PayPerPost as a primary investor.
He is a very smart “guiding hand”, thus I came up with one overwhelming argument.

Dan wouldn’t advise on a purchase of a product unless he tried the service himself.

So my first stop was his Venture Capital blog.

I do read Dan’s blog, and there were no mentions of him testing out any new products. He did write a fair amount about MyBlogLog in the past, even though he wasn’t an investor, thus I expected some kind of mention of a service if he was testing it.
So I took a look at his sidebar.

Zookoda thus became a contender, but there had to be business reasons for the purchase, and they were easy enough to find.

1. Zookoda have been advertising with PayPerPost heavily, in fact I would think one of their biggest cost centres is advertsing with PayPerPost.
2. Zookoda offer a free service and have been promising a method of monetization for some time. Just like Google and Feedburner, their offer of monetization and the cut of the advertising revenue would allow them to continue offering a free service. Most publishers would jump at the chance of more revenue
3. Zookoda needed an advertising sales team – PayPerPost has an advertising sales team
4. Text Link Ads offers Feedvertiser, and also has ReviewMe. PayPerPost is similar to ReviewMe, but more mass market. With advertising sales in Feeds an established marketplace, and PayPerPost already an established player in blog monetization, it is no great shock that they might try to offer more monetization options.

Whilst I could have written the above a couple of days ago, I wanted it confirmed, so I popped off an email to Dan. It was obvious the announcement was being orchestrated, and whilst I could maybe have gained a few extra page views, it might have upset the apple cart.

Dan didn’t get back to me until a couple of hours ago.

Nice work Andy…I can’t believe you leaked it ;-)

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/04/23/payperpost-acquires-zookoda/

Here are some of the things that Zookoda need to fix:-

• Feed Stats – they need to work together with Feedburner to report feed usage – if they do this already, they really need to make that information obvious.
  In some ways they are now a Feedburner competitor, which might make this a little complicated. If it doesn’t happen, I expect to see PayPerPost/Zookoda move into the feed syndication and statistics business extremely quickly.
• Legal Disclosure – One of the interesting shortcomings of Feedburner, and one which I have pushed/encouraged them about in the past, is how poor Feedburner is for CAN-SPAM compliance, and meeting UK/European regulations. I think we will soon see disclosure options for email and feeds available from PPP / Zookoda
• Affiliate Program – This is something that relates to PPP as well – I would love to see some recurring income.
  Both Feedburner and Zookoda are currently lucky to not have disturbed sleeping giants such as Aweber and GetResponse, who both offer rather rudimentary services for bloggers, which don’t offer the important “social proof” of Feedcounters that I have mentioned in-depth in the past. One caveat though – do some work on the landing pages – I have removed the “Review My Post” button on this site because it wasn’t converting, and in my opinion is confusing for a person who first comes across it.
• Comment Subscriptions – I don’t like serving them from my own domain, and they could easily be monetized. I currently use an SMTP plugin, and use Gmail as a SMTP gateway.
  I have a number of teething problems with my email subscription plugin – it isn’t as reliable as it could be and seems to drop people who requested to subscribe. I would love to see an alternative service. Lots of big blogs do not offer comment subscription, I don’t know why. Current options for following discussion are not ideal. It could be monetised
• Delivery Rates – In the Email marketing world, delivery rate of email is looked on as important. If you are offering RSS to Email services, for some reason this doesn’t seem important. Maybe blog content has a 100% delivery rate due to trust, but I would love to see some figures.
• Migrations – How would I move to Zookoda from Feedburner? Obviously I would want to have the ability to have my stats merged, or have some kind of full service.
• Aggregated Feeds – I would love some way to provide multiple feeds on a blog, and to then supply aggregated subscriber counts

I am actually excited about the Zookoda purchase by PayPerPost. In some ways I am surprised that someone didn’t pick up the site earlier. That being said, 10,000 customers isn’t a lot compared to the 500,000 customers Getresponse have, I don’t think Aweber quote customer numbers.
In some ways good technology is important, but 500,000 customers paying a monthly subscription allows a huge budget to develop services.

We are pleased to inform you of the result of the just concluded annual
final draws held on (20th March,2007) by Coca-Cola in conjunction
with the British American Tobacco Worldwide Promotion.Your email was
among the 20 Lucky winners who won £1,000,000.00{One Million Great
Britain Pounds} each in the THE COCA COLA COMPANY 2007 PROMO.

Notice the disjunction?

Why would Coca Cola who like to promote a healthy image associate anything to do with British American Tobacco, who as the company name implies make Tobacco products that generally carry a heath warning?
Admittedly some would argue that Coca Cola should also carry a health warning, but are the spammers just totally stupid?