Paul Harvey was America’s most loved radio newscaster.  His broadcast graced the airwaves for seven decades and touched the lives of millions of people.  He was credited with creating the foundations for the modern newscast and awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush in 2005, the highest honor that can be awarded to a civilian by the United States of America. None of these things was a small accomplishment.

Mr Harvey passed away yesterday, February 28, 2009 at the age of 90. The voice that reached into 24 million homes and businesses each day has been silenced. To say that he will be missed is an understatement. He will be mourned by a nation in ways that few people ever are.  He wasn’t a national hero or a figurehead.  He was not someone whom we glimpsed on a screen and admired. He was a friend and  family member, warmly welcomed into our homes each and every day. Mr. Harvey’s passing is a personal loss on a national scale.

Paul Harvey has left us a legacy as sales people and advertisers.  Over the decades that he spent on radio, Mr. Harvey garnered relationships with manufacturers and service providers that he advertised in some cases for decades. He was quoted as saying that he was “…fiercely loyal to those who put their money where their mouth is”.  To think that he wasn’t approached by every company that could afford advertising time on his broadcast would be foolish.  They clamored after him. He could have easily earned millions of dollars acting as a shill for any number of products and the American public would have listened. He never did so.

Paul Harvey never advertised a product on his broadcast that he did not use himself and trust enough to recommend to his dearest friend. His integrity was such that it appears on every biographical page and wiki mention of his name.  He was known as much for his ethics as he was for his commentary.  America Trusted Paul Harvey and he in turn took it upon himself to be worthy of that trust, even though it could have benefited him greatly had he done otherwise.

To anyone willing to pay attention, the way Paul Harvey approached business has several valuable lessons to teach:

• Never sell something you don’t believe in.
• Treat your customer the same way you would treat your friends and family.
• Don’t look at the money you can earn over value to your customer.
• Never steer your customer wrong, they are trusting you to give them accurate information and to lead them to a solution to their problem however small it may be. That trust is a sacred thing and should not be violated.
• If you can’t give the customer what they want, refer them to someone who can.
• It is better to lose a sale today than to lose a customer or reader forever.

In today’s hectic and competitive business world it is sometimes easy to overlook these lessons.  In the Internet game it’s most often the most aggressive or most willing to compromise values that win big today. They flash on the scene stomp on the competition, promise the moon and make the sale, but where will these people be tomorrow?

The Internet has a long memory. Unethical companies quickly find that word of mouth on the Internet is just as effective as word of mouth in a small town in rural America. People that don’t like the way they have been treated will tell other people about their bad experience. That word will spread quickly.

In the past they would tell their friends over coffee or at the grocery store.  Today they will tell them on social networking sites like twitter, where a single comment in 140 characters or less can reach a million people within a few hours. If the word is positive, you stand to gain more customers.  If the word is bad, you stand to lose the trust of a very large number of people before you ever had the chance to earn it.

Paul Harvey never lost sight of these things and neither should we. His business practices are worth their weight in gold and can be proven easily. Mr. Harvey broadcast for seven decades.  In that time period many other broadcasters rose to high stature and then for some reason lost the trust of their listeners.  Their careers ended there, usually after only a few years. Paul Harvey’s career on the other hand, never faltered.  He worked his entire career to keep that trust, and you should be doing the same.

In closing, I wish to send my best wishes to the survivors of Paul Harvey. In particular I would like to say to Paul Harvey Jr. that your father was a man to be admired. I’m sure that you were proud of him and I am truly sorry for your loss.

As for me, I’ll carry the torch for ethical business practices and I hope and pray that others will rally to carry it with me. It’s a legacy worth living up to and something that is not nearly evident enough in Internet advertising today.

Good Day, Mr Harvey.  You will be missed.

O.K. I gave my opinion on the topic of Izea and Google. In doing so I leveled some criticism at Jack Spirko of Comtechnews regarding this post.

There was a bit of confusion in the process, as my spam filters ate Jack’s response without giving me the opportunity to moderate it. Jack was understandably upset over this. I can understand that, as I would demand the right to defend myself if questioned as well. While this has been corrected, the comment trail has been rendered completely out of order. Not only that, but I felt that Jack’s comments deserved to be answered in their own post. So here we are.

If you’re interested in reading where this all started, read this. I put out my opinion, and I will admit that I was a bit rushed in doing so. This post is in response to the reply given by Mr. Spirko, which is quoted in full as follows:

Well you know I have always felt that a massive blog rant is just that a massive rant. Something you take the time to say because it needs to be said. You don’t do it to please English teachers.

I have also found that when people attack your spelling and grammar it is because your ideas, concepts and explanations are to powerful to challenge.

Did I go on and on about what Izea should be doing, yes and let me tell you I have their CEOs attention. The last time I got someones attention this way it was Donad Trump’s “Trump University” and my firm is now doing their Pay Per Click, Organic Search, General Consulting and in fact today their VP of Marketing publicly on his blog that my firms PR efforts where and I quote, “the first time I truly feel confident that we got what we paid for”. If you would like to read this post by Mr. Katz you can do that here,

http://www.trumpuniversity.com/blogs/marketingmaestro/index.cfm?blogpost_id=1124

Oh yea that all started when I posted at my blog saying that DT had a blog that sucked and what I picked on what that they were more concerned with grammar and spelling then real ideas and conversational tone.

So here is what I have to say to you.

First, the fact that I allowed your track back to my post will probably give your blog more traffic then you have ever had before. Perhaps you may wish to consider that before you pick on my spelling?

Second, Mr. Murphy is a good guy and I like him a lot and I do not question his character. He did respond though mostly because I had a mutual acquaintance that will remain nameless contact him and ask him to read my post. I believe Mr. Murphy read my post mostly because he was told that I have really been dead on about a lot or real messes online in the past.

Third, I would also say you may want to wait and see what my results of pointing out the massive holes in the Real Rank algo before you say I am doing harm. Bud, I think you were a low traffic blogger trying to bait my comments now that you have them, just please do me the courtesy I did for you and allow them.

Fourth, what do you want us to “unite” behind? The flawed Real Rank system? If you read my post (the concepts and reality rather then spell checked me) then you know how bad it is. Let me say I only scratched the surface. I could make a way for you to buy an elevated real rank as a commodity really easy, I won’t but I could that means if anyone every cares about real rank someone will. I know the black hat world better then most, I did a service pointing out these holes. There are much bigger let’s call them “truck sized” holes in this system.

Fifth, As you just go torched the way my blog did you may want to pay very close attention to my post that will go live on Monday morning. It will tell you what to do about it and how to prevent additional attacks by Google in the future.

Look I think Real Rank sucks and I care about people like you first, Izea second and Google well I am clear on that.

Jack Spirko

Fair enough. Now, since this asks multiple questions and gives multiple statements, I will respond to this comment one section at a time.

Mr. Spirko begins with:

Well you know I have always felt that a massive blog rant is just that a massive rant. Something you take the time to say because it needs to be said. You don’t do it to please English teachers.

Allowing that I’ve done the same as have others, I’m sure, Jack is absolutely right. Errors are made when you are writing passionately. This was also pointed out to me in comments by Opal Tribble and Amy (who pointed out some errors that I had made myself. Thanks Amy, they have been corrected.)

My point in this respect is that when a post becomes high profile but can be easily attacked by the very people you are ranting against, it can carry a more negative impact than a positive one. This holds true for anyone posting scathing comments on a topic using mostly l33t speak. These posts may even seem laughable instead of thought provoking.

Since both Jack and myself are seemingly guilty of the same thing in this case, let me just say that I’ll cast that blame on both of us. I do try to correct these errors when they are found.

I have also found that when people attack your spelling and grammar it is because your ideas, concepts and explanations are to powerful to challenge.

In this case it is far truer to say that I did not invest the time necessary to pick apart both proposed methods, nor do I have all of the data I would need to do so on hand. I’m sure that I could go through both and find points that have pro’s and cons, but at this point I have no time to do so. The point of my post was not to dissect the technical aspects of either argument, but rather to point out that attitude is important in getting a point across.

Did I go on and on about what Izea should be doing, yes and let me tell you I have their CEOs attention. The last time I got someones attention this way it was Donad Trump’s “Trump University” and my firm is now doing their Pay Per Click, Organic Search, General Consulting and in fact today their VP of Marketing publicly on his blog that my firms PR efforts where and I quote, “the first time I truly feel confident that we got what we paid for”. If you would like to read this post by Mr. Katz you can do that here,

http://www.trumpuniversity.com/blogs/marketingmaestro/index.cfm?blogpost_id=1124

Oh yea that all started when I posted at my blog saying that DT had a blog that sucked and what I picked on what that they were more concerned with grammar and spelling then real ideas and conversational tone.

I’m glad that Mr. Spirko has done such a stellar job in his work with Trump U. Mr. Katz does indeed give a stellar recommendation for the work of Jack and his associates, which is something that anyone in marketing loves to hear coming from his or her clients, especially those with this kind of name recognition.

To be completely frank, I did not once question Jack’s success in this industry, or his talents. It wasn’t really at the heart of what I had to say. The fact that jack got the opportunity by making his opinion known is intriguing to me. But having seen the attitudes with which Mr. Trump and Mr. Katz greet the world at large, perhaps not so surprising. All three men grab the day by the short hairs, and Mr. Trump himself is not known for subtlety, he is known for the ability to fail massively and succeed even more massively. Mr. Spirko and the trump camp et-al are probably a very good match in both work ethic and personality.

On his statement that he has the attention of Izea’s CEO, Ted Murphy, I do not doubt this. Ted has responded to not only Mr. Spirko, but several others directly through the Pay Per Post Blog, and has posted comments directly on Mr. Spirko’s blog. Given the fact that Mr. Spirko is also a paying advertiser with Izea, it would stand to reason that the folks at Izea would take the time to hear him out. they seem willing to listen to any member of their team, and try to give even their lowest performing “Postie” a voice in the company. This promotes a sense of family and garners nearly immediate support from anyone working directly with them, it’s one of the reasons I support Izea over many of the other options available today.

Now we get into Mr. Spirko’s direct responses to my post. Unfortunately this gets a bit personal. Nonetheless, I will address each bit in turn, exactly as it was left in comments, it’s only fair, and now it’s my turn to support my own statements.

So here is what I have to say to you.

First, the fact that I allowed your track back to my post will probably give your blog more traffic then you have ever had before. Perhaps you may wish to consider that before you pick on my spelling?

Actually, the track back totaled far fewer visitors than I’ve had at this blog for casual Stumbles on other posts I’ve written here, and I do not expect those numbers to jump any more than they already have. In any case, that wasn’t the point of the original post. The point was very much about the fact that we are often judged by our ability to communicate effectively and that failure to do so may carry a negative connotation or provide negative impact.

Second, Mr. Murphy is a good guy and I like him a lot and I do not question his character. He did respond though mostly because I had a mutual acquaintance that will remain nameless contact him and ask him to read my post. I believe Mr. Murphy read my post mostly because he was told that I have really been dead on about a lot or real messes online in the past.

I did not imply that you questioned his character, nor did I question yours. I stated that his replies to members of the discussion was a good measure of his character, or that it was in my humble opinion. I think that the more information Ted has on all sides of this argument will lead to the most positive outcome possible for the people involved in this situation. A situation that I hope can be settled among all parties in the future.

If Mr. Murphy chooses to use some or all of your advice, it will be based on the fact that he does have the information from all sides of the arguments. If so, I’m sure that it will be beneficial to everyone involved with Izea, as that is Ted’s focus, and should be.

Third, I would also say you may want to wait and see what my results of pointing out the massive holes in the Real Rank algo before you say I am doing harm. Bud, I think you were a low traffic blogger trying to bait my comments now that you have them, just please do me the courtesy I did for you and allow them.

I am waiting, jack. Actually, I’m going to be devoting a bit of time to go over both your comments and the RealRank releases, documentation and whatever else I can find, now that I find myself in this situation. I am not unversed in these topics, but have not devoted sufficient time to the facts or methods to give an informed decision at this juncture.

As to whether this blog is a low traffic blog… Yes, it is. I have just started working to add more content and generate traffic to this site. Previously it was simply something I had lying around. As to whether “I personally” am a low traffic blogger, well, I’d say medium traffic as far as my food blog goes. I receive several thousand page views per month, have good working relationships with several services and agencies, and am linked to from at least two of the most prominent blogs in my niche on a regular basis.

The fact that I tracked back to your original post was a courtesy. I don’t feel it is acceptable to mention another blog or site without giving them notice that I have done so. It’s just good manners. And since it took several emails between us for me to determine that this comment itself was swallowed whole by my spam filters, even you must admit that I am more than willing to allow your responses.

Fourth, what do you want us to “unite” behind? The flawed Real Rank system? If you read my post (the concepts and reality rather then spell checked me) then you know how bad it is. Let me say I only scratched the surface. I could make a way for you to buy an elevated real rank as a commodity really easy, I won’t but I could that means if anyone every cares about real rank someone will. I know the black hat world better then most, I did a service pointing out these holes. There are much bigger let’s call them “truck sized” holes in this system.

I would like to see a more united stand with Izea from those who use their services. The fact that RealRank has flaws is no more surprising than the fact that Google PR has flaws and has from the beginning. Then of course there is Alexa, a system so easily manipulated as to make it laughable.

I did read your post. Without more data, I can’t form an educated opinion on your statements. I have not been following all of this from the beginning. I have been working on other projects. I’m not a professional designer/marketer any more (I was from 1996-2006), so my focus has been on the sites I maintain, not the industry buzz.

All new systems will have holes, exploits and flaws. The measure of those systems is the ability at which those oversights are corrected, adjusted and sealed. I am willing to see how RR performs before I state that it doesn’t work at all. The staff at Izea are already shifting the system to meet the needs of both advertisers and posties, so I’m of the “wait and see” mindset for the moment. Time will tell where RR will be in the future of the industry, and adoption of the system is going to be a major deciding factor in its success or failure.

Fifth, As you just go torched the way my blog did you may want to pay very close attention to my post that will go live on Monday morning. It will tell you what to do about it and how to prevent additional attacks by Google in the future.

I skimmed that post just this morning, but will have to wait until later today to read it in depth, as I have family obligations this AM. From what I’ve gathered so far, there may be some generally good information there, but there are also bits that seem at first glance to follow some techniques I have avoided in the past for fear of being labeled “black hat”. Again, I’ll be sure to read the post in full, when I have time.

Look I think Real Rank sucks and I care about people like you first, Izea second and Google well I am clear on that.

You don’t have to worry about me, Jack. I’m quite comfortable. I am concerned for a lot of the bloggers that were using Izea as their primary source of income. This has to have been a devastating blow to their bottom line. In my case, I’ve seen my ability to pick opps fall off, but I almost never used my highest ranking blog for PPP sponsored posts anyway. The other two blogs I run have not been hit, yet, and I will be taking steps in the next few days to try and keep it from happening there. If so, I’ll still happily continue with lower paying opps. It’s more of a challenge to provide a relevant experience for me than a money maker.

I think that we both agree that steps need to be taken. It is perhaps true that we don’t agree on those steps, but please do not confuse that with competition or animosity.

This blog does not exist to make me famous, nor does it exist to make me wealthy. (I haven’t even bothered to add AdSense yet… I need to remember to get to that one of these days.) It’s simply a place for me to post my opinion on blogging and the business of it. In that sense, it’s successful enough for me.

Cheers!

Before I continue, I need to point out that I use PayPerPost to monetize three of my blogs, one of which is fairly popular. in that sense, this is written from the standpoint of a Postie who is caught up in all of this whether he likes it or not.

In the ongoing battle between Google, bloggers, and Izea (formerly PayPerPost), some of the loudest supporters of Izea seem to be doing more harm than good. Izea has strong support in the blogosphere from such notables as Andy Beard and Dustin Brewer, who not only support the company in a positive way, but do so with the kind of restraint that even their strongest opponents have difficulty arguing against them without sounding a bit foolish. There are, of course, other not so notable bloggers out there who seem to be doing their level best to make all of Izea’s “Posties” look bad.

For a specific example, I’m turning my attention to Jack Spirko, who has been posting comments both on the PayPerPost blog and his own blog at ComTechNews. Mr. Spirko seems to have dissension in the ranks in mind. His comments on the PPP blog are full of strong rhetoric as to why no advertiser will ever want to use the service if it doesn’t help to elevate his or her precious PR. (I’m not going to quote his comments verbatim, they’re public record, go see for yourself.)

I’m not saying that Jack doesn’t have a point. He does. (He’s also in the unfortunate situation that two of my own blogs are. sitting at PR0 status, thanks to Google’s recent Slap down.) PR does count for something. Unfortunately, Jack also posted his ideas in a recent post on his blog titled Is PayPerPost Loosing Its Way The Truth About Real Rank. I have not replied to him directly, simply because I believe that it would be pointless for me to do so, and because I feel that he’s doing more to fuel the collateral damage to bloggers using PayPerPost than some of their enemies are.

Mr. Spirko goes on and on about how he feels the system should be run. While it’s fine to have an opinion on a controversial subject such as this one, the fact that he’s on record as being a supporter of PayPerPost is a bit damaging in this case. He’s gaining traffic, and giving fuel to the opposing side in the simplest way possible, through the horrible use of both language and writing.

Mr. Spirko may very well be a whiz at online marketing and advertising, but he’s not a whiz at English. His post is full of misspellings and grammatical errors that, in the end, simply make anything he has to say look unimportant. This is fuel for the other side, plain and simple. The fact that Izea CEO Ted Murphy has taken the time to respond to Mr. Spirko tells me more about his character than anything, as most company executives would have ignored these kinds of comments.

There are others who seem to be claiming to support IZEA and Ted Murphy’s new battle strategy on one hand, but on the other seem to be working against any positive progress. Mr. Spirko just happened to be the only one I’ve seen so far that actually left a link to his own site.

In the end, I would like to put out a strong cautionary message to any “Posties” who feel the need to blog about this subject. Please. Please, check your spelling and grammar. Make sure that your idea is thought out and thought through. The best way to stand in this situation is to stand united. Feeding the “other side” with exactly the type of “blogosphere pollution” that they blame every one of us with is not the answer.

I’ve already stated that I took a hit to my Google page rank on any blog I host that is running Izea (formerly PayPerPost) sponsored ads.  The big G took this action a step further a few days ago and removed all PR from my primary blog, dropping it from a PR 3 to a PR2, then to a PR0 a few days later.  I had expected to just squeak in to a PR4 on this round of updates based on the number and quality of inbound links, but in Google’s eyes I have apparently violated the sanctity of their algorithm.

Originally I was concerned that Google would banish me from their search results as well, but that has not happened.  Actually, traffic from Google Search results has increased, if anything (something to do with a food blog and the holidays, I’m sure…  It’s my busy season.)

I know I’m not alone in this.  Andy Beard has posted several great articles on the subject, and I’ve been keeping up with what he has to say.  This one in particular is quite informative, and helped to put my mind at ease for getting dropped from the SERPs altogether.  I’m also completely revamping the site that was hit, so I’ll probably file a re inclusion request when done, though the only thing I can think of that I might have done to tick Google off is to have used paid posts, with disclosure and turn on dofollow on my comments. (This was done because I prefer t give a little automatic love to those who take the time to say something.  Unfortunately it has a price…)

If you’re running Izea on your site, you might want to consider this staement from the official PayPerPost blog:

We now know from some of our friends inside of Google (thanks “bob”) that they are now looking for phrases such as PPP, PayPerPost,ReviewMe, Payu2blog, etc. in the text of your post. For that reason I would suggest refraining from using any type of this text in the body of your posts, sponsored or not. When you disclose thank the sponsor, not PPP.

This is also something I had been doing, labeling sponsored articles as “PPP”.  It made things esy for me, but I’ll be going back through and changing this in the next few days.  One other thing I’m going to try is going back and either deleting any older paid inclusion posts. (posts older than the 30 day minimum) or at least changing all links to a rel=nofollow.  Hopefully this will keep Google a bit happier.

For now, my suggestion is that you subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed, he’s got the most reliable information I’ve found so far.

Well, the 30 days project hit a wall because of two very different but equally distracting issues in my “every day life”. First, CbsoP was accepted into a blog advertising network, which is driving the numbers higher than I could have managed on my own, therefore invalidating those statistics. (It’s a good thing, just bad for the test I was performing…) the second issue started when the little one in the house decided that he had to cut four teeth at the same time. For anyone with children, you’ll realize that almost all of my time has been spent tending to his needs, not my own.

I will restart that project shortly using different blogs as the benchmark and hopefully this time I’ll get through the whole process without a pause.

In the meantime, I’ve completed my first WordPress plugin, which will be posted here later in the day. While it’s not the world’s most useful plugin, it is functional, and I think there is a subset of the blogging world that may gain something from it. Most specifically those people using TTFTitles by John Leavitt, as this plugin is strictly a companion to his own that adds some functionality to the blogroll (at this point. It will probably gain a lot more functionality before I’m done.).

There will be other plugins and theme advice over the next few days, as I’ve been very busy getting a new custom theme together for a friend, and have been doing a lot of work on a theme upgrade for my cooking blog as well, which includes updates toa few other plugins.

Stay tuned kids! I’ll be back very shortly with more, now that My son is a little more like “Normal”

if you’ve been getting my feeds through RSS out of order or delayed by… Forever, please excuse the confusion.  Something in my previous WordPress install was causing the feed to malform pretty much randomly, which led to strange issues when attempting to get things out the door.

An upgrade to WP 2.3 seems to have remedied the problem, though now I’m seeing posts from a month ago in my feed reader…  If this is happening to you, just disregard, it should stop as of now.

Thanks

I’ve been working off-and-on at creating a plugin that will automatically update copyright dates. Granted, it’s a simple plugin, but there is still some basic functionality that I feel every piece of code should have, and I’m not quite there yet. I’ll post more about this as I have the time. Right now I’m in the middle of several very large projects and don’t have a whole lot of time to devote to the last bit of fine tuning.

No parties, no special anything going on, really.  Just taking a day or so off in celebration.

Have fun Y’all!

The Winners of Brenda Novak’s Third Annual On-Line Auction for Juvenile Diabetes Research have been announced, and We’re proud to announce the three people who won services from Spunpuppy Web Works.

Robin D. Owens was the highest bidder for a complete SEO and site optimization evaluation package. robin is the Rita Award Winning Author of Fantasy and Futuristic Romance.

Caren Helms was the highest bidder for a complete custom blog template by the staff at Spunpuppy.

Darlene Rosesilzer was high bidder for a complete custom website design package.

We’d like to take a moment to thank all of our winners for their participation, together we raised several hundred dollars for Juvenile Diabetes Research. We couldn’t have done it without you!

If you are one of the winners, you’ll be receiving an email from us within the next two hours.

We’re extremely happy to announce that our offerings in Brenda Novak’s Auction to benefit Juvenile Diabetes Research have earned $460.00 of the nearly quarter million raised by the event this year.

The highest bidders will be announced as soon as we are contacted, and offer our congratulations to the lucky three.  We’re very proud to provide our services for you!