Of Relevance

…among other problems.

QVC has sued a blogger, Donn Edwards for posting what it considers to be defamatory posts around the ethics of their business practice. In short, QVC lures people to presentations with the promise of a prize (car, holiday, whatever). When you go to pick up your prize, you have to sit through a presentation, and are then sold some sort of timeshare.

It’s scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to ethics, and it sucks.

QVC is suing for over R450,000 because they claim that as a result of reading Edwards’ blog, the following happened:

• 59 people refused to attend the presentation. Since QVC has a conversion rate of 15% at R6,000 (each) profit, this works out to a loss of R 54,000.00

• 15 members refused to pay their management fees, amounting to a further R52,500 loss.

So, let’s see…..

One lonesome blog, that is mostly focused on writing about computer security, and whose audience is probably least likely to be talked into a QVC sale anyway, has cost QVC R106,000 pure profit.

So what do they do? They go and sue the blogger. And what do the rest of us do? We write and comment about it. More blogs write. Newspapers pick up the story. It gets bigger…and bigger…and BIGGER.

Oops.

Also, keep in mind that the QVC loss came despite the fact that Edwards removed his posts. How will these losses escalate for posts that are not removed? And are indexed by Google? For ever. And, umm, ….ever.

It’s actually kind of funny.

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Yesterday, at the 27 dinner I had an interesting chat with Andy Higgins from Bid or Buy fame. Andy is also involved in Payfast.co.za, which is the latest payment gateway to hit our web scene. One of the features that Payfast is working to implement is credit card transactions (right now they enable EFT transfers).

Any discussion around payment gateways of course always leads to the “Why don’t we have PayPal here?” questions. Andy made a very good point: we don’t not have PayPal here becasue of exchange controls, as most people think. Rather, the Reserve Bank is very wary of allowing a money system that is “two directional”.

In other words, they are happy to accommodate a system to which you deposit money, and that money gets passed onto someone else (such as a credit card merchant). Not so happy with a system to which you can deposit AND withdraw money.

With a two directional system, you could start treating PayPal as your bank, especially for your savings account. I can see why that would make the Reserve Bank very, very nervous.

I suppose they are erring on the side of caution. We can scoff, but then again we are not in the financial crisis that the US is. Nevertheless, I would love to have 30 minutes with the person/team responsible for making these decisions, so I could explain to them that in this instance it is actually hampering our online economy. Probably our economy, period.

(Having said all that, I think there are ways to get a two directional PayPal account anyway. I am toying with some of them now, and am just waiting to find out if they are strictly “legal”. Or rather, if they are strictly “illegal”. If not, I will post on the topic in due course. And if you have an overseas account, you can get two directional PayPal).

As you may well know, South Africans registered for iTunes cannot purchase from the iTunes store, which can get rather frustrating. If you want to buy music not available for download from Musica.co.za and the likes, you have two options:

• Get dubious music from a Russian MP3 site. Songs cost about 20 American cents.
• Get a US iTunes account.

Getting an iTunes US account:

1.    Buy an iTtunes voucher from eBay. I started off with a $10 voucher from this seller, and the process was painless. (Just email him after you’ve paid, and he’ll email you the voucher code. Remember there is a time difference, so you might have to wait half a day or so).

The real bonus here is that for reasons I do not understand, you will pay considerably less for an iTunes voucher if you buy it on eBay, than if you bought it from Itunes. For instance, My $10 voucher was just over $6, and you can get a $200 voucher for $95.

2.    Once you have the voucher number (which you have to redeem in 24hrs), go to iTunes and log out if you are logged in.

3.    Go to the iTunes store, and click on “Redeem” in the right hand column.

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4.    Enter the voucher code when requested.

5.    When you are asked to login, choose to create a new account.

6.    Do not enter ANY credit card information. I suggest you use a gmail or other non .co.za email account. For the address, use a valid town and matching zip code.  I use 234 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, Massachusetts, 02215.

7.    Continue with the registration process, and guess what? You’re done!

Your account will be credited immediately with the full value of the voucher, and to replenish you simply need to buy more vouchers off eBay, as you need them. You are now able to download music, movies, tv shows etc, as well as the daily free stuff that iTunes gives out.

Enjoy!

Let me say this upfront … writing a book is not easy. It is time consuming. It’s discouraging. It’s frustrating. But on top of all of that, somehow it also manages to be fun.

So it has been a while now since I decided to write a book on Social Media, but I am happy to report that it is almost ready to go. Of course, I have been saying this for about a month now, so don’t hold your breath for the full version just yet. It is tentatively titled “Social Media made simple” and it aims to explain the concept of Social Media, and how it can best be practiced in a simple, coherent and concise way.

What I can share today is the Introduction. It’s a .pdf download, 4 pages long, and is a quick read. It outlines the path of the book, and I would really appreciate any comments you may have. You can email me at eved@ideabank.co.za for lengthy criticism (yes, I can take it) or just drop a line below.

Introduction to “Social Media made simple”

So I have this little online project on the side, www.click.co.za (it is a collection of user generated reviews and ratings on e-commerce shops in South Africa) and now I need to promote the site to gain maximum exposure.

The trick, of course, is to do so with minimum (or ideally zero) cost. Luckily, the venture is online and not on some street corner downtown, so in theory it shouldn’t be too difficult.Also, the audience is geographically targeted.

I am going to keep a brief log of all my ideas and the results they generate, and will gladly collect all your suggestions too.

Off the top of my head, here are some methods that are free or negligible that can be used to market online ventures.

Twitter: a good place to get initial feedback from a tech-savvy crowd. Also good for generating ideas, and creating the initial push for “viral” posts.

A blog: The foundation of any good online campaign. This can be in the form of an independent post (like this one), or a dedicated blog for the online venture (I have one of those too. You can subscribe here). You can ask others to blog about your venture for you, or guest blog it on other blogs yourself. Blog posts can be propagated using Digg and a (countless) number of other tools.

Facebook: Good for spreading news, links to blog posts, etc. Groups are quite powerful if used correctly, becasue they draw targeted eyeballs to your message. Facebook applications are also an option.

Comments on other blogs. If well written and relevant to the blog post and your online project, they can draw good traffic to your site.

SEO: Search engine optimization. Powerful way to get a completely new yet targeted audience audience. With a bit of careful planning and simple guidelines, you can ensure that your site appears in top search results (for free) when people search for relevant topics.

WOM: Simple word of mouth, propagated by the above tools.

Visual and Audio Media like Youtube, podcasts etc. These can help a message spread virally in a very short period of time.

Each of the above methods can fill a book on the exact how-to’s and when-to’s and best practice. Luckily none of it is new to me, so I can launch right into it. And of course, I am not going to limit myself to online PR only.

It has been suggested that a new online website should double its traffic every two weeks. I am not sure how correct this is, or for how long this applies. But I will be sure to keep a neat record of stats, so I can draw (and share) my own conclusions.

Any other suggestions?