A traveler bought a donkey to haul his belongings. He had a long way to go, and could not carry all of his belongings himself. He chose a fine, strong donkey, from a breeder who was known for breeding sturdy pack animals.

The man loaded his belongings onto the donkey, and set out upon his journey. After a number of days, he reached a city. He entered the marketplace, and there he saw many merchants, selling all sorts of wares. One merchant caught his eye. He sold hats, for donkeys. The traveler thought the hat so interesting he just had to have it. He bought it and put it upon his donkey. It covered the donkey’s ears, and made it harder for the donkey to hear, but the man liked the hat so much, he hardly considered it. He did wonder why his donkey was less responsive to his commands, but blamed it on the animal.

He traveled on. In the next city, his attention was taken by a merchant selling leg decorations for donkeys. This he had to have! He quickly bought a set of four and fastened them onto the donkey. He thought they looked very fetching. His donkey adopted a funny walk to keep from bashing the leggings into each other, and the man found himself criticizing the donkey for being awkward.

In the next city on his route, he discovered a decorative pack saddle. It was far heavier than the plain one he had been using, and it did not accommodate the burden as easily. But he liked it so well, he strapped it to his donkey, and loaded his goods onto the pack saddle. The load was somewhat unbalanced, and some items had to be tied to the side with ropes, where they dangled and beat upon the donkey’s legs. At the end of the day, some goods were damaged, and the man was angry with the donkey.

A city later, he found a full body blanket for his donkey. It was meant for night use, but he liked it so well that he unloaded the donkey, put the blanket on, and reloaded the animal. During the hot day, the poor beast overheated, and had to rest more frequently than usual. The man cursed his donkey for being slow and lazy.

Traveling on, the man found a merchant selling shoes for his donkey. Not the typical iron shoes, but full covering, lace up shoes. He thought them so clever that he immediately put them on his donkey and happily paid a high price for them. The donkey could no longer feel the earth beneath it’s feet. It stumbled and plodded instead of stepping lightly. The man found he needed to hit his donkey to keep him moving fast enough.

The man was angry that his donkey was no longer the sturdy and sure animal he had bought. It frustrated him. He beat the animal to make it go faster, and to punish it when it stumbled, and hollered and cursed it when it did not obey his commands.

Finally, he could take it no longer. Arriving in a small desert town, he determined to sell his donkey for what he could get, and purchase a new one. In a hurry, and frustrated with his animal, he sold it and only removed his original traveling packs, leaving the animal to the new owner with all the trappings in place, and set off with his new donkey (a quick and responsive beast), with his eye out for new accessories to bestow on this new and “better” animal.

The new owner of his old donkey patiently removed the blanket, the pack saddle, the hat, the shoes and leggings, and rubbed down the tired animal. He fed it a good meal and rested it for several days. Then he placed a plain and simple pack saddle on it, loaded it with a sizeable burden, and marveled at the strength and sure-footedness of this donkey that had been described as a weak and clumsy thing. He set out on the road, soon passing the first traveler, who was making his way with his new donkey, slower and slower, as he again loaded it with unnecessary trappings.

It seems so clear when it is choices someone else is making regarding a donkey. But when it is our own website, and we think the next new gadget is “really cool”, we have a harder time making wise choices.

The rule is simple… If it does not help achieve the primary goal, don’t do it.

If you want your website to SELL, then don’t put things on that get in the way of that. Otherwise, your website will be less responsive, slower, and will stumble and fail to perform effectively.

The whole FaceBook Fan page thing has me really wearied. I get fan invites from everybody and their dog. Most of them don’t know me. Not really. If they have never bothered to make any kind of personal contact, why in the world do I want to be their fan?

Lately though, if you allow a Friend connection with anyone you do not personally know, the first thing you get from them is a fan invite.

I think that the whole fan page thing is sort of run wild. When fan pages were not so well known, you had a chance that people might want to subscribe. But now, since everyone has one, the competition and lameness factor has risen to such a fever pitch that it is now far more difficult to create an effective one that actually serves a purpose, or to get it noticed.

Now let me assure my clients that I don’t mind when they send me an invite. After all, I KNOW them, and I have a vested interest in their business. But I don’t subscribe to all of those either – some cover topics I am not highly interested in.

And I don’t mind when my real friends send an invite either. I KNOW them, and they KNOW me. There is a relationship there.

But I’m selective about which pages I subscribe to. There is only so much time in the day, only so much room for STUFF in my life. If I subscribe to a page, it has to MEAN something to me. If I don’t, it isn’t an insult. I don’t like lime green, I dislike jazz music, I’m death on get rich quick scams or anything that even comes close. Lots of other personal quirks… I choose based on my likes and dislikes.

Right up there with Fan pages, are Causes. I don’t do FaceBook Causes. They are pretty much a useless gesture. A bunch of people sitting around commenting on a problem, but nobody really doing anything other than joining. It doesn’t change a thing. If I want to change the world, I am going to get busy doing something effective, not just gathering a group of people to notice that there is a problem. And then I’m selective about what I take on also – there’s only so much of me to go around.

I don’t live my life on FaceBook. I don’t play games there, and I don’t expect life to revolve around it. I live out here, and drop in for newsbites once or twice a day, and drop a little info of my own. Beyond that, it isn’t even real.

Most fan and cause notices I receive are deleted without further investigation. If I do not recognize a name behind it, it doesn’t even show on my radar. I don’t think I’m unusual in that… at least in final outcome.

Maybe a lot of people DO subscribe without really paying attention to what they are doing. Those people aren’t valuable contacts. They subscribe with the same degree of attention they pay to your announcements.

The key to effective networking is relationships. You can’t build relationships unless you get to know people. A fan invite is an assumption of an existing relationship – smart people just don’t respond unless the relationship is already there. And if you KEEP sending them (I get them from some people several times a week, even though I consistently ignore them), you just annoy people. Annoying people you want to reach is NOT a good idea!

Spend less time broadcasting, and more time making meaningful contact. It will get you further.

I hear friends of mine recommend CraigsList to get business by advertising there. Frankly, I don’t have the time to waste. I’ve had several experiences with it, none of them good. The problems were enough that I find the entire venue to be a collosal waste of time.

First, I posted a business ad – nothing but spam came back from it.

Next, I posted several separate ads, for similar things, but distinctly different. In Canada, they were all allowed to remain active. In the US, all but one were flagged as duplicates, even though they were not. I got some spam from the ads, but nothing else.

I recently posted ads for three different laptops – Three different brands and model numbers, three sets of specs. One was allowed to stay, the other two were flagged as duplicates. An HP Pavilion laptop for $500 was flagged as being a duplicate of a Dell Inspiron for $300, and apparently so was the Dell Inspiron (different model number) for $200. No terms of use were violated in any way.

Oh, but before the items were flagged, I did have time to receive a total of six scam emails – CLEARLY scam emails, regarding the postings.

I don’t have time to wrestle with a careless company that can’t even determine when something is genuinely a duplicate post and when it is not. And I don’t have time for the spam.

One of my biggest gripes about it is that you can ONLY do local. Ummm…. Local for me is 300 people. My business is national. There is no way you can effectively use CraigsList if you have a national business. Let’s see… Pick one city in the US to advertise to. Just one. And you can’t advertise to another with anything remotely similar for another 30 days.

Who has time for that?

As a rule, I don’t usually post ads that expire in 30 days. I just don’t have time. Online ads are rarely effective anyway, and classifieds are some of the least effective.

And even if your ad DOES last for 30 days, nobody looks at it after the first three days. It takes time to write a good ad, time to get in there and post it, and then people see it for three days. Hardly worth the bother.

If you are in a small town, marketing nationally, or if you are selling something that people are not fighting over due to high popularity, CraigsList isn’t going to be an effective venue.

I never liked the idea of being thrown in with the prostitutes anyway.

UPDATE: I got half a dozen more responses from the remaining listing – all of them scams. Sloppy writing, incorrect English, and requests for a lot of information from me and promise of a cashier’s check if I ship it – not one mention of asking for more details, request for photo, or anything a real buyer would do. Classic for scams.

I am not an inexperienced seller – I have sold dozens of computer items on eBay and have an excellent feedback rating there. We bought and refurbished, then resold laptops for several years, so I know how to do so successfully. A complete lack of legitimate responses, and being flooded with scam responses is not typical for other venues where I have sold such items.

If you have an educational site, is it ethical to promote items on the site that you profit from, or is that a compromise of your informational integrity?

I have a business educational site. The purpose of the site is to promote scam awareness, educate people about what helps them really earn, and how to spot a good program or a bad one, the advantages of independent business endeavors, etc.

I have two clients that offer multi-level distributorship programs. There is no charge for either one. Both are ethical and have a good chance of returning a profit if someone works them.

I’ve toyed with the idea of joining both just for signups and sponsorships. One of them would require that I purchase items at least for my own use. They are items I am likely to use anyway. The other would not require purchases, and would allow me to function purely as a recruiter.

One consideration is TIME. Do I want to invest the time to really make them work. Since I have outlets that would allow me to plug in information to existing channels, I think it could work without undue effort.

The major consideration though, is ethics. Is it ethical for me to promote specific programs and profit for them on a site that purports to be unbiased?

The thing I’ve learned is that this is what people WANT. When they come to a “build a business” site, they want to be told, “Here are some honest choices.”

But I still wrestle with it. Still unsure of whether it lowers my credibility and makes me just another “work at home” site that exists to promote a program instead of to benefit the end user.

Forums and networks are HARD to get started. And once you get them going, it seems to be very difficult to KEEP them going.

We all like to think that when we begin an effort to get people together for conversation that there are millions of people out there who want to discuss the same things we do. But others rarely have the same agenda, even when they SAY they do.

Forums and conversational venues RARELY take off spontaneously. Getting them going takes a LOT of effort, and so does keeping them going. There are longstanding tactics that everyone uses – which sometimes are successful, but more often, just feel tired.

• Regular moderator posts.
• Encouraging members to spread the word.
• Contests.
• Controversy.
• Daily “topics”.
• Allowing ads one day a week (the result of which is, that usually, one day a week, you have lots of posts, which nobody reads, and that this is the ONLY day each week that you have posts).

We all do these things on our networks in an effort to keep it going. It may or may not help, and often it does not.

How do you know your network is dying?

• When the only posts are ones you make yourself (or your moderators make).
• When the only posts are on “ad day”.
• When people ask questions and nobody replies.
• When nobody ASKS questions anymore.
• When the majority of new signups are hit and run spammers.
• When your long time users no longer post.
• When your moderators start dropping out.
• When the only members you have that regularly do anything are the same people you associate with everywhere else online. Without new blood, networks die.

People online, as a rule, have a short attention span. While it is hard to get a venue going, it is even harder to keep it going for more than a year or two if you do manage to get it going. The initial burst of enthusiasm that people have over something new is short lived – about two months. You often find that once they lose that, there is nothing left and they wander off to see if someone else is more interesting.

Once you see those signs above, it is very difficult to bring it back from the edge of extinction. Oh, you can try, but often you are just beating a dead horse.

Nobody likes to admit that something didn’t work. But more venues fail than ever succeed, and the statistical difference between success and failure is monstrous. Perhaps one in a thousand ever even gets off the ground, and perhaps only one in a hundred of those keep going for more than a few months.

• A heavy marketing campaign can help.
• Listening to your users can help – if they talk. Often they don’t.
• Intense involvement on your part, and recruitment of other helpers can help.

But there’s no magic formula, and there is sometimes no way to rescue a venue that is in decline – the perception of decline can be almost impossible to reverse.

Often, it is simply best to go on to the next thing.

No, I’m not talking about Twitter collapsing under it’s own weight… not literally anyway. I’m talking about the process and change that any popular app goes through, and where Twitter is in the process.

Online, highly popular things seem to go through a process:

1. New and fresh. As such, EASY to get found, if the application is gaining popularity. It is easy to ride the crest of the wave, because you have relatively little competition, and a growing audience base.

2. Commoditization. It becomes common, others start building businesses off the side of it, and people start producing reams of “how to” instructions, touting the benefits, never mentioning that the environment they used to achieve the success is now no longer the same environment because it has grown so much. At this point, everyone is trying to jump on, it becomes a huge fad, and people say good things about it even if they are no longer true, because they are just DOING it, believing that it HAS to be good, not really analyzing the real effect. The company may go corporate at this time, instituting changes that are subtle, but which have major effects.

3. Exploitation. With popularity, comes exploitation. Spam follows any success. And it is not really controllable. As the communities respond to reduce spam, the spammers devise ways to circumvent the limitations. The environment usually ends up being about 10% what you want, and the other 90% trash. During this time, the company may respond to adjust the app to compensate – often doing so kills the spark of originality that made it grow so well in the first place.

4. Implosion. The combination of increased competition, and increased spam and corporate compensation for problems, combine to vastly reduce the effectiveness of the environment. It still grows, but the legit growth actually begins to decline, and the number of people using it in daily life for useful purposes declines. The spam growth continues to escalate, which makes it appear that it is still successful, but close analysis reveals that it is actually declining in real popularity. The big movers and shakers will become bored with it – some will hang on peripherally, maintaining a lackadaisical presence, others will wander off to the next promising thing.

5. Equilibrium or death. Somewhere, after going through all these phases, a state of equilibrium may reached, where either the spam is controlled enough that a sustained legit user base can be either mainained, or increased slowly, or, the venue gradually declines in legit use and the spammers take over. Alternately, the combination of uncontrolled exploitatin, corporate policies which strangle value, and loss of popularity gradually kill the environment. We’ve seen this happen with many online venues and with many marketing tactics. Only some really ever recover from the implosion, and those that do often do so at the expense of the value to the legit users.

I’m not predicting doom and gloom. Nobody knows WHAT Twitter will be after the implosion. But I think that it is either close to this point, or in the middle of it now. With very popular things online, it is inevitable. FaceBook has already been hit, and seems to be surviving, though the value is decreased due to the spam attacks and high competition in the venue. Linked In hasn’t really hit the Implosion stage yet because it hasn’t really taken off with that rabid popularity. YouTube is surviving it, though with reduced value, and MySpace has passed it and gone into slow decline. Google hit it, and is now in a slow decline, due largely to corporate policy which is strangling the value.

I don’t Twitter. I don’t have time. But if it were not for this impending implosion, I might have decided it was worth my time to try it out. But having watched many venues go through this, I knew that the value was temporary as it was at the time, and that if I neglected to get on board, it would pass, and something else would come along. If you miss out on Twitter, no biggie. There is more to life than Twitter, and something else will come along to replace the hype.

In general, the bigger the faddishness of it, the faster it fades into oblivion after implosion.

And if Twitter is your life, then you need to learn how to live!

They asked their members what they needed to do to make the venue better. Many ideas were submitted. Many of them had to do with the high amount of spam on the network. A “report this user” button was requested. Complaints flew about private messages that contained nothing but ads, profile posts that had ads in them, and comments that were nothing but ads.

A few weeks later, the company responded with a plan. They said they’d been listening to the community and here was their solution: Free members could not put links into profile posts, and could not email all of the members of the network. Paid members could spam to their heart’s content. If you paid, you could put ads on comments, profiles, and send them to all of the members in an email blast too!

This, they called “listening”. Too much spam, said the members. Instead of taking reasonable and logical steps to reduce the spam, they just decided to charge members to do it. The age old internet marketing answer to everything. Let them do whatever they want, just charge them for it. It is bad if they do it for free, but it is ok if the site owners are profiting from it. Profit again becomes the arbiter of right and wrong.

Google sets a marvelous example of this – penalizing people for paying for traffic, unless they are paying for it from Google. Restricting content on publisher’s sites if they want to put AdSense on their sites, but allowing Advertisers to break the rules. The almighty dollar rules.

The network in question (which will remain nameless in this post) goes on my ever lengthening list of useless time wasters. My account will be canceled as soon as I finish this post. A sad thing, because the network did have some potential. There were opportunities to interact, and ways to participate. But unfortunately, all so bloated with spam that it was an unpleasant place to be. Instead of addressing the problem, the company has decided to institute it as policy, that the problem is acceptable as long as people are paying to make it so. A paying few will drive away the heart and soul of the networking community. The best networkers will run at the sight of it, because they know that networking and advertising are two different things, and they are turned right off by blatant spam.

Not for me. I’ll go where I can associate with smarter people.

A client asked me today, how to get the long tail search engine traffic. Good question, and a good goal. Getting it has always seemed easy for me, but when I actually started to analyze why so many people fail to get it, and why some people just easily do so, I learned a few things.

First, it is important to understand WHY long tail traffic is so important. Think of a very big fish that dies on the beach, and all the seagulls swarm to it, fighting over that one fish. Hundreds of seagulls, and one fish that happens to look bigger than all the rest.

Meanwhile, all around, there are other fish. Smaller ones to be sure, but still enough. Maybe you have to go catch a few, and that takes a bit of work, but it certainly takes no more work than fighting your way to the front of the crowd to get one measly bite of the big fish.

Personally, I choose not to be a squabling gull. Recent research suggests that less than 6% of traffic comes from the top 10 keywords in a given industry. If you increase that to the top 100 keywords, it still accounts for only 20% of the traffic. So everybody and their dog are fighting over that 20% while the other 80% is pretty easy pickings.

There is a trick to it though. Common marketing instructions say to get it by having lots of content. They leave out some important information though. Because content alone is not enough.

• If it is reprinted content, it will lack the power. Good long tail content is ALWAYS unique.
• If it is the same thing everyone else is saying, it won’t work. Good long tail content is interesting… it gives people information they can’t get elsewhere. It has the “ah-ha” factor.
• If it is egotistical it is as much a waste of your time as the content is a waste of the visitor’s time. It has to speak to the needs of the individual who might want what you have, and it has to do so in a way that other marketers are overlooking.

Everyone who tries to go after the long tail tries to take shortcuts. So it doesn’t work. You have to be thoughtful, and you have to know your customers to get it.

Every VA in the world knows that if they write articles, they can market with them. So every VA in the world writes the same articles – “How a VA can save you money”, “Grow your business with a VA”. BORING! There are 200,000 copies of that same article, written by 200,000 different people, and not one of them says anything that a real prospective client wants to read.

If you want to grab the long tail, and profit from content writing, you have to start thinking out of the box. What are the real concerns of your customers? What are they really searching for online that they can’t easily find?

Forget keywords. Seriously. Long tail keywords happen naturally as a result of good writing, you simply do not have to think about them. If you start thinking about them, you destroy your ability to get them, because the power is in the variety – the happenchance that occurs with good writing.

Think about needs.

If I am considering surgery, I want statistics on morbity rates, but I also want personal stories. In fact, with that target market, personal stories may be the most powerful writing.

If I want a website, and I don’t know much about the technology behind it, I want someone to explain things in simple terms.

If I am looking for insurance, I may want to know what effect my health history may have on rates or ability to get insurance. I may want to know whether there is a medical exam, who does it, and who pays for it and how.

Listen to your customers. What are they asking over and over? What are they most concerned with? Answer those questions in ways no one else is doing. And make sure you give some information in there that gives them a key, or a grain of understanding that they can’t get somewhere else – that is the “ah-ha” factor. The meat in the article that makes them think, “Oh, NOW I get it!”.

The combination of those things – original content, stuff that is interesting and informative to your audience, unique writing with the “ah-ha” factor (that tells them something no one else is saying in quite that way), will bring in traffic and people who are already pre-sold. When you give them something they can’t get from just anyone, you’ll be pulling in people who want to work with you, specifically. And you’ll be astonished at how they found you – it will be something you could not predict.

Unpredictability is part of the power of the long tail. It is what makes it easy to just write, without worrying about doing anything other than creating good writing, and it is what brings them in to you rather than to your competitors who are just aiming at the top spots.

It’s been working marvelously for us – and by getting power in the long tail keywords, we eventually start moving up in the top ones. But I’d be happy if we never did that, simply because those long tail keywords are so powerful, we really don’t even NEED the top ones.

Let the other mindless gulls squawk and squabble. I’m content fishing on the fringes.

Yeah you, FaceBook “Friends”! I don’t read your teleseminar emails, your “join this” emails, or your “special deal” emails. Nope! I trash ‘em!

I have some real friends on FaceBook. You know, the kind who actually KNOW me, that have talked to me about something real, who have taken the time to be a real person to me. If they ask me to join something (which they only do if they are reasonably certain I will be interested – see, they KNOW me well enough to know that!), then I read their message, and consider it.

But if all I have ever seen of you is your name in an ad, you haven’t got a chance. If you email me on a regular basis with ads, and have never taken the time to so much as look at my profile (by which you’d know I’m death on internet marketing spam tactics!), then you are going to be trashed without being read. In fact, I won’t even read the TITLE of the email (yours are so long that all I ever see in my email program is your name… you know, the hypy one that is too long…). I never SEE the great thing you are trying to advertise, all I see is your name and BLIP! You’re GONE!

I’m a nice person. At least, most of the people who know me say that (if you ask my teenage daughter who is in a mood, she might not agree, but the prevailing concensus is that I’m not mean). I don’t like getting snotty about this. But sometimes I think that this is all that certain people will HEAR!

I’m also NORMAL! Virtually EVERYBODY, except internet and social networking greenies, react the same way I do. They don’t have time for people like you! Their life is full of meaningful relationships, urgent tasks, and offers from trusted sources. Why in the world would they even bother to read your ad when you haven’t bothered to try to even get to know them?

You may think you are following the rules – you may think that your PM blasts fit some rule of “relationship building”. They don’t. They are ads. In a world saturated with ads. Everybody is screaming, and nobody is listening to anyone who hollers. They are listening to those who quietly talk to them, person to person.

Next week, I’ll be unfriending anyone who sends me regular PM blasts who doesn’t even know my name. I encourage everyone who reads this to do the same. They can all go and holler to themselves. The rest of us have a real life, and a real business, and we’re too busy succeeding to listen to your immature irritations.

If you need to know how to do it right, I’m always willing to help – and that ISN’T an ad. Countless people will tell you I’ve offered them free resources that were solid, or gave advice without cost that was invaluable. I don’t want to stop anyone from succeeding. I just want to help them get out of their own way, and stop irritating the very people they ought to be befriending!

NOT part of the Recession Survival Series – That will publish later today. Just an important interjection that should not wait.

I thought long and hard before writing this. I dislike categorizing someone else’s decisions as a bad example, but the mounting trail of actions on the part of the new CRE team comes together into some unmistakable patterns. I think an article about this, especially now, is both pertinent, and worth exploring to illustrate some points about business. I apologize for the negativity, but there just isn’t any way to be positive about this because it is SO CLEAR that what is happening is bad for everyone involved, ESPECIALLY the CRE developers. I’ve never seen someone so blatantly shoot themselves in the foot!

I think it is also relevant to point out that when CRE announced the update to 6.3, and its new pricing structure, my first impulse was to say, “Well, there goes that one, my clients will never go for yearly extortion.” (And it is that – no other software company disables part of the software if you do not renew. They withold updates or support, but they do not lock you out of the admin.) But one client said, “Oh, I can go for that.” (she is selling the store so she doesn’t need to worry much about sustainability), so we moved forward with it anyway. I thought I would be open minded about it and see whether the upgrade had value. I have now decided, irrevocably, that CRE will not be a sustainable option for our clients. I cannot, in good conscience, recommend it again unless there are significant changes in both the company policy and behavior, and the software itself. I will explain those reasons in this post.

First, it is important to understand who the target market is. CRELoaded was Open Source software, and always had a free version available. Development was slow, the software was somewhat clunky, but fairly functional. There always remained a high number of bugs. Those who used it did not use it because they loved it, or because it was fabulous – for the most part, except for a few blindly rabid fans, they used it because it was the best of the worst. Cart software tends to be old, clunky, and built on aging frameworks (like CRE), or new, immature, and lacking in important features (it is incredibly complex, so development is very difficult). There is very little middle ground. CRE just happened to have a smidge more ease of use and sustainability than others. But the margin was SLIM.

CRE had a set of longstanding problems, leftover from its OSCommerce roots. OSCommerce is an aging dinosaur, which is even more clunky and awkward than CRE. But CRE retained enough of that to be time consuming and annoying to use in ways it should not have been. Less so than Zen, X-Cart, Cube Cart or some of the other options, but still frustrating to use much of the time.

In spite of that, a gathering of people, all with the thought that at least since it was Open Source, the community could contribute and make it better together, came together and did just that. Many of the major improvements in CRE were contributed by community members. The support base was almost exclusively community contributed. You got help from other users, not from the developers. There is a certain amount of idealism in the Open Source community, people are willing to band together for the common good.

So now, with a paid scheme in front of them, the community feels betrayed. The scheme was sprung on them with no notice, no warning. Purchasers of higher priced versions have no consideration if they have purchased very recently. Too bad, pay again if you want to upgrade. Long time users, who have invested a great deal in the CRE community are now told, pay if you want to keep your store going. If you don’t pay, your store either gets outdated, or if you already have upgraded to the new paid scheme, we’ll lock you out if you don’t KEEP paying. Contributors find that their contributions are now rolled into a package that THEY have to pay for if they want to use!

The developers are crying that they did it to make the software better. But that does not appear to be the case. The new package is mostly window dressing. They also claim they did it to provide better support. But they don’t. In fact, they’ve shut out the best helpers from the forum. They say they have “new documentation”, yet it is sparse, not even current for the new version, and only contains instructions for obvious tasks. The conclusions I draw from this are not very nice, but there is so much evidence, there really is no other conclusion.

You now get a little support when you pay for the software. Complaints on the forums allude to wasteful responses, and burning the support time in clarifications that should have been obvious, instead of getting actual help. Further, since they’ve shut down the people on the forum who can help you there for free, and have driven off many others, the conclusion is that the developers resent the free source of information, and want to confine people to the paid support.

If you think this conclusion is off, consider:

• The major contributors to the forums have been suspended from the forums. These are the ONLY source of helpful information on trickier issues.
• The ONLY voice for the company, who ever posts to the forums, has NEVER ONCE actually answered a question, even when the answer had to be fairly simple. NOT ONCE. The answers are always hedgy, they circumvent the actual question, and then lay blame for the criticism of the project on “unprofessional” behavior of the criticizers. If you express dissatisfaction, apparently, you are unprofessional!

At the same time they have done these things, they have embedded yet MORE advertising in their software. Not only do you have to pay a yearly fee with the promise of penalty if you do not, but they have placed advertising through the whole software interface. It shows up during the install (in a way that is not obvious that it is not a required informational field instead of a request for info from a service), template ads embedded in the design area, active ads at the top of the admin.

Again, we might accept these things if there were significant improvements. But I’m not seeing that either.

The longstanding problems are still there. A little bit of eye candy (and not even GOOD eye candy, the design improvements are pretty lame) in the backend, a few more modules bundled in, and one or two tweaks which did not make things easier, only changed how it is done. No real VALUE added to the package for the average user.

Consider… Leftover from OSCommerce, the software has had a major issue in wasting time. It does this in two ways:

1. Database queries are very wasteful, and SO SLOW, that you spend an average of 15 to 45 seconds just waiting for an admin page to load. 5-10 seconds is considered normal to long for page load times. Cumulatively, this adds up, and it drives people off from the frontend also, costing in customers.

2. The interface is clunky, requiring 2-3 actions to do things that should take 1. To configure the store, I am confronted with more than a dozen links. Each of these leads to a page of config options – each page has probably 20-30 options on it. In order to edit any of those, I must first select it… and wait for the page to load. Then I have to hit an Edit button… and wait for a page to load. I can then edit the item, and… wait for the page to load again. I am spending between 1 and 2 full minutes on EACH OPTION. That means it takes me 15 to 30 minutes to edit each set of options instead of the 2 minutes it should take. All in all, HOURS of wasted time for each install and setup. This should be done in a single screen. Load the list of options, and edit fields already visible, so all options can be edited at once. A single form for each set of options, instead of hundreds of fiddly separate forms. There is no reason why it should not have been done LONG AGO. I just don’t have that kind of time to waste. I’ve used Joomla. I know what config interfaces should be.

The new version has only 2 templates. The old standard, and a new one that is WORSE than the old standard as far as coding methods and editability. It has hard coded images all through it instead of putting them into the stylesheet where they can be more easily controlled. One can only assume that the lack of quality templates, and the lack of templates in general (they reduced from 4 to 2), was to provide an incentive for people to purchase templates instead.

It is abundantly clear that all the “work” they were doing on 6.3 and the delays to release were caused not by the developers slaving night and day to bring new features or improvements, but to embed all the new revenue generation bits and protections into the code. They developed for their greed, and not for the customer need. That is pretty short sighted, because if they’d just made it good, and done some real improvements, people would not be nearly so grumbly about having to pay for it. All that coding time they spent forcing customers to pay for more and more just serves to detract from the value, and tick off the customers. REALLY foolish.

Interestingly, they are running around doing a lot of “image control”, and spending a LOT of time trying to put bandaids on all the negative reviews and comments. This is borne out in their forums and by the fact that they dug out my blog (not by any means a ragingly popular blog), and took the time to comment. Now, not ONE issue has ever been addressed other than by placating and evasive words. Had they done what they knew to be right, and were they confident in what they are doing, they’d be concentrating on fixing problems and hurrying to address issues with actual helpful information. The fact that they don’t do this tells me that they KNOW they are on shaky ground, they know they are being unfair and inconsiderate, and they know that they are also on legally questionable ground (a whole ‘NOTHER story!). Even STARTING down that kind of road is foolish. It tells me they are more concerned with ILLUSION than with REALITY. Always a deadly course for a business. And suggests ulterior motives – questionable ownership, and the possible intent to bleed the company and walk away, or to use it for other less honorable purposes. For any serious business, problem resolution and prevention is ALWAYS more profitable than damage control after the fact.

It is important to realize that a store owner cannot just “move to another cart”, otherwise you cannot quite understand the position that a cart users is put in when a cart moves from free to paid, or worse, to a situation like CRE just did. Each cart has DAYS of work involved in the setup, and often hundreds or thousands of dollars spent to get it the way they needed it. Sometimes custom coding has been done, to get just the right features, and that custom code, design, and config work cannot just be ‘ported to another cart. Most of the time, it must be painstakingly redone. So what is the struggling shop owner to do? This change will cause many to either operate a store that is at risk for security exploit, or to be forced out of business. Yes, it is that serious, especially in the current economic climate.

Now, there is a complete conclusion here. It is a lengthy one, for which I appologize, but it must be explained fully to get the whole import.

First, they deprived people of their agency. They took away the independent options, and are muscling people into a position of HAVING to buy what they did not choose to purchase in the first place.

Second, they have demonstrated over and over that they do not appreciate the help of the community, in fact, they resent it, and want it to go away. There is no other conclusion for the events on the forum.

Third, they will shut out any resources which provide any alternative to purchasing services or enhancements from them. They fear any competition, they have no willingness to develop a spirit of helpfulness.

Fourth, their actions are completely contrary to the community spirit of Open Source. They are driving away the very community that build them, and turning on them in a fairly nasty way.

Fifth, the leadership is talking a lot, but saying absolutely nothing of value. The comments on one of my previous CRE posts are clear evidence of that. Lots of placating words, an effort to manipulate me into accepting blame as the unreasonable bad guy, but no actual addressing of actual issues. There never has been, and one can only assume there is no effort to do so.

Sixth, the software has only ever been good enough to compete as a free offering. If I want bad software, I can get it free anywhere. If I want GOOD software, that is also available free. If I want to actually PAY for poor support, I can get that from ANY company out there! If I want to pay for obsolete OSCommerce underpinnings, I can get LiteCommerce. If I want nightmarish templating, I can get that from X-Cart. If I want unsustainability, I can get that from CubeCart. If I want any of those options for free, the choices are plentiful. Any one of those packages costs less over time than CRE, and is no worse. I refused to pay for them because they had serious problems – and I feel that paid software ought to NOT have the most obvious sustainability problems.

Seventh, they are spending a lot of time on image control, and on policing negative publicity. Time that could be better spent actually addressing the issues. They KNOW they are in trouble, and they know the course they are on is indefensible – otherwise they’d answer effectively, and work on fixing what is wrong.

Eighth, they did this at the beginning of a recession! People are looking at CUTTING BACK, not adding on expenses. BAD TIMING!

Ninth, the combination of poor decisions and inconsiderate actions on their part, not to mention just bad business management in their choices to just go around telling people to stop complaining and gee everything will be ok cause we are really nice people after all instead of actually addressing issues in an open and helpful manner, combined with an unsustainable payment model, means that they cannot stay in business long under the current structure and policy. I am a startup expert. I know what it takes to succeed. They have consistently done everything that would get in the way of long term momentum, and they are currently driving off their most loyal customers – those that were responsible for bringing them the most business. The only customers left are those who feel they have no choice. That is a poor base, they’ll eventually find other options.

I think the company cannot survive more than another year, perhaps two at the outset if they continue as they are. That is a well-considered opinion there, and one that I feel strongly. This is, perhaps, the primary reason I will no longer recommend it as a viable and sustainable option for my clients. The company is not stable enough to ensure that the software will go forward in growth with my clients. It is too likely to fold and simply disappear. I won’t advise that my clients invest in something so shaky.

I’ve advised that my clients get behind new projects a lot. We’ve invested our time and support behind MANY young projects, and many Open Source projects. This one, we can’t. It lacks the two most important elements in Open Source, and brings with it baggage and a developing track record that virtually guarantees their failure.

For the record, the two most important factors in Open Source, to ensure sustainability, security, and growth, are:

1. An active and responsive developer community. Theirs is obviously not responsive, and their activity is concentrated more on developing more forced revenue streams than on delivering value to the users.

2. An active user community. It is drying up so fast that only a few die hard hopefuls are left, and some ignorant newbies who did not know what they were coming into.

So the whole point here is, in those points above, CRELoaded has given us an admirable roadmap of what NOT to do if you want to stay in business. If their actions were carefully calculated to drive off their customers and go down in an unspectacular poof of electrons, they have chosen exactly the course to ensure that it happens.

Take a lesson from them:

1. Understand your target market, and put their needs first.

2. Base your revenue generation on the choices and goodwill of your customer base.

3. Give good value at every point possible.

4. Cultivate a spirit of helpfulness.

All four are things they have failed to do, and which can make or break a business. DO those four things, and you can succeed and compete even against big business. Fail to do those things and you’ll crash, no matter WHAT your business size.

So long CRE… been nice knowing you, but I don’t think I’ll be there for the funeral.

Note: The opinions expressed in this post are the perceptions of the writer, and should not be interpreted or quoted as fact without corroborrating evidence.