Whatever Happened to Proofreading?Written by Owen Johnson
One of great things about Internet is it has made us instant communicators, instant authors and instant ad copy writers. One of WORST things about Internet is it has made us instant communicators, instant authors and instant ad copy writers. Too many people just type an email and hit “send,” including emails intended to sell us something. Or they build a nice looking web page, type their content and immediately go to their FTP program and upload it. They don’t bother to read what they’ve written first.We see results of this daily: Email ads so poorly written we instantly delete them and web sites with so many typos we have no confidence in business’ abilities or integrity. In short, lost sales. (The author of a guide I recently read about spotting scams on Web mentioned that some things they all seem to have in common are misused and misspelled words, misused or missing punctuation and typos—sloppy work.) I’ve seen web sites that seemed to be written by people whose first language was something other than English and whole message was lost. And here’s one worth a chuckle—or a shake of head: While reading an eBook telling me how to write one and stressing importance of proofreading, I saw more typos and misused words and punctuation than I could count. Now, how much should I trust this man’s advice? In fact, I’ve found that MOST eBooks telling us how to make money on Internet are put together so haphazardly I’m becoming convinced there IS no way to make money using their methods. Anyone who throws together their information in such a hurry they don’t even proofread it doesn’t gain much credibility with me. And probably don’t with you, either. I’ve been told that this sloppiness doesn’t matter much to younger generations, from “X-Generation” down, and that’s apparent by fact that they tend to be ones who are most often guilty. But to older generations it matters a great deal. Now, guess which age group is fastest growing in terms of Internet use? Which one has most money to spend? And which one actually spends most on Internet? It’s Baby Boom generation, those people 45 to 55. If you want us to buy from you or believe what you have to say, you’d better make sure your copy is well written.
| | Hot on Yahoo's heels, comes Looksmart @.15 per click!Written by S. Hartung
In headlong rush to reach sustained profitability, Yahoo has been doing all sorts of twists and turns. They increased price of submitting a site for "review" a while ago to $299. Recently, they made $299 fee annual. Then, just a few weeks ago, they changed all Yahoo Mail users preferences from "opt out" to "opt in" *without* asking them so that they could send ads to everyone! Hmmm... Now, hot on heels of Yahoo, comes LookSmart. But they've added another twist... When Yahoo made changes to its policy, it "grandfathered" existing accounts (making them immune to changes and only applying them to new accounts), However, LookSmart, who used to charge $199 for "Express Submit", which was then increased to $299 (sound familiar?) has now gone "Pay Per Click" (with no click costing less than 15 cents!). Not only that, but they've applied changes to all existing accounts. So if you paid $299 for a "review", you now have to pay per click.
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