All this talk about paying for posts and the various ways to handle forms of “payment”, from 9 cents for forum posts, to post bartering, sigh, and I was finding it all amusing. Until Andy Beal noted in his blog that blog innocence, integrity, honesty and knowing what you are reading is really real and not based on greed, is truly gone.

Payperpost is in BETA. I didn’t get paid to tell you this.

For the record, until I’m absolutely ready to prostitute this blog, I will continue to post in it for free. It’s getting to be really boring, unoriginal, and so totally not profitable, being me.

I’ve been working on websites since 1995 and, eleven years later, we are still trying to understand how to build a good one. Nobody agrees on what works best. Nor do they agree on how to make some work better.

A gentle discussion has erupted into a serious inspection of persuasive web design, personas, usabilty and marketing in Persuasion Architecture and the Art of Agreement for Website Success. Not everybody is drinking the Eisenberg kool-aid. As we discuss Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? : Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing, you can see that some people place no or little value on personas. Perhaps there is no such thing as a business successfully selling online? It takes too much time and money to understand all the different types of people who come to your site, so don’t bother.

I’ve never been a good marketer. But, I do care deeply about customer satisfaction. Ignoring customers can take down a dot com and it will never come back. For me, it’s exciting to find studies on how people use and respond to web sites. This information matters a great deal to people who make their living online. It may have even saved the dot com I worked for, that built and sold web sites, and still crashed during the dot com bust.

We know that “ugly sites” and boring sites, and ho-hum sites survive for years and years. It’s easy to shake one’s head and complain to the web owner that their site sucks, but interesting to note that they remain in business. This is because they did something to convince, to persuade, to prove they could deliver on whatever they claim to offer.

What is it that they do, that makes them sucessful? Perhaps persuasion architecture, which Bryan and Jeff Eisenberg have trademarked, is something to explore and learn more about.

I try not to judge and let people bumble along with their own choices. However, I’m noticing an increase in the number of post sluts and am curious at the incentives behind this new form of self promotion.

My entire Internet career has always been based on supporting people and their web projects. There is one area, however, that I can’t walk into with any sort of pride. That area is inflating a web site property with fake information, or worse, personal attacks, just to get links or traffic.

It’s bad enough that people come to a web design forums, with the sole intent of promoting their own forums. I see this a lot, at Cre8asiteforums. Forum owners, or potential forum owners ask us, “Nobody comes to my forums. How do I get them to come?”

One solution they use is paying for posts. I really struggle with this choice.

My incentive for launching Cre8asiteforums’ earlier incarnation, when I was a SEO back in 1998, was to offer support and advice to those learning how to optimize web sites and submit them to search engines (which we used to do back then.) I wouldn’t dream of inviting someone to make up responses for the membership. Even when I was just starting out, the thought of falsely inflating the old Cre8pc Website Promotion club, or anything regarding myself, never occurred to me. I guess that makes me very dumb in today’s world.

In Today’s World

One company out there pays people to write posts at 9 cents per forum post, and sells the posts in bulk to forums who pay for packages of posts. The service didn’t say the writers had to be qualified in any subjects. It doesn’t sell “choose by topic” posts either. When you send in payment, you have no idea what you are buying. The writers themselves just have to be able write in English.

I think it’s a sign of where we are going. We, as an industry of web desginers, SEO’s, marketers and bloggers, are considering using any possible means to get noticed. It doesn’t seem to matter if we write cruel comments in blogs. It doesn’t matter if you post in forums in the hopes of getting an engine to follow the link to the site you just spammed the forum about or the link in your signature. (At Cre8asiteforums, we purposely send search engines on a URL joy ride to Pluto.)

John S. Rhodes, of the WebWord Usability Blog came up with a way to increase the number of posts in his blog.

When I saw his plan, I thought it was interesting because a post from him, with his reputation, is a nice gesture and something worth inviting to your own blog. I’m not sure how he could keep up with the demand.

He wrote,

“I promised to write three (!) blog postings for every posting on WebWord. That seemed pretty fair to me. I’m happy to say that since yesterday, I’ve “Paid It Back” to six different people. I think that my comments were interesting and useful, but maybe not.”

Note that he shows concern for quality and usefulness.

I decided to see what folks might think about this idea, so I asked, in Pay to Post Blog Comments. One member, remembering a recent reaction to Paying for Posts, wondered what the difference is. He wondered why John’s idea is acceptable, and the forums fake posts idea may not be.

I think the difference is the incentive. I opt for authenticity, integrity and honor. But, that’s just me. And, I feel responsible for the reputation of the forums I work for.

Ammon Johns, my co-Admin at Cre8asiteforums, compares the practice of paying for posts to Snakeoil Salesmen.

He says:

“Take a look at all the posts you have ever thought worthwhile. I’ll bet that in every case the reason for you thinking those posts worthwhile was the genuine human element. The fact that someone genuine was offering genuine advice or the benefit of genuine experience.

Now imagine paying for a post that is not genuine, and is likely to be ‘made up’ just for the sake of pennies. Does that add anything to the value of the forum, or does it, as I firmly believe, actually reduce the value of the forum?”

So, you can pay for posts and possibly fool your forum members. It reminds me of when we get several people joining Cre8asite at once, or when someone signs up from the same IP, with several different user names. They come to “talk to each other”, and falsely ramp up discussion to promote a web site or new product. Desperation breeds greed. I get that. I think it’s reputation damaging marketing.

You can post blog comments and say just about anything and get away with it. You have the freedom to destroy a company’s or person’s reputation, if you so choose. It’s an unpleasant choice and I’m sorry to see it used on my friends. And, myself.

On the other hand, some folks find ways to thank and support people in positive ways too. The Website Hospital at Cre8asiteforums is one such place. It offers free web site reviews for those who ask for them. I’m always amazed at how generous the majority of members are when they help their fellow web folk.

We don’t pay for those posts. They aren’t professionally written, or edited for perfection.

Like many blogs, they are written from the heart, by people who have one.

My son just called me from his Dad’s cell phone, from his Dad’s car. The conversation went like this:

“Hi Mom.”

“Hi Stefan.”

“When you wash my baseball pants…” He pauses. I wait.

“Mom, when you wash them and put them in the dryer.” I wait. The suspense is killing me.

“Well, when you get them out of the dryer.” Pause. And in all seriousness he says, “Can you put them in the freezer?”

I giggle, and wait for the punchline. There is none. He continues, completely serious. I’ve already spent 4 hours with him since I got him home from baseball camp. He fell asleep on the couch while I worked on my laptop nearby. As he leaves to go somewhere with his Dad, he admits the baseball clothes need to be washed for his first travel team baseball game tomorrow, and they are still lying in a pile in his room. This I know. So I’m curious about this freezer part.

“Why the freezer?” I asked, calmly, but a giggle slipped out anyway.

A slight sense of guilt in his voice replaces the serious 12-year old monotone voice on the other end of the cell phone.

“I got gum on them at baseball camp. Dad says you can pry it off when it’s frozen.”

He giggles. I giggle. He knows I’ll take care of this.

But I had to tell everybody here first. How often do you put baseball pants in your freezer?

I Am Caught on Video, Screaming and Crying

Last week I mentioned that my son’s team was in their playoffs for the championship for the season at Little League. They’ve tried for 4 years to get the top spot. Another team kept winning. They couldn’t be beat. Stefan’s team always came up short, like 2nd or 3rd place.

This year, they reached the end of the playoffs, intact. They’d beaten everybody and now faced the team that always wins. Stefan’s Dad couldn’t be there for the game, which was pretty upsetting for him. His step-daughter was graduating high school and he needed to be there. I offered to video tape the game so he could see it later. My husband, Eric,(Stefan’s step-dad), brought a digital camera as well.

I set the tripod up in a spot that let me get the pitcher, hitter, catcher and umpire in one shot. Stefan had to sit out several games because he had broken a finger this season. Being one of their 3 lead pitchers and a strong batter, it was torture for him to watch his team from the sidelines. He was healed enough to play in the very last 2 games. Coaches let him be the starting pitcher, but limited him to 2 innings, so as not to ruin the finger and to keep him safe for the travel team, in which he earned a spot as the pitcher. That travel team will be my life every weekend for most of the summer.

Stefan did really well. They weren’t no hitter innings, as he’d wished, and 2 runners got in. The game dragged on, with the other two pitchers taking over for Stefan’s team. Those two boys are also very dependable. It was a tie game, 6 - 6 by the top of the fifth inning. The other team scored a point and it was now 6 - 7. This was going to be close. I had stopped breathing long ago. Our team had a huge crowd of parents and well wishers and we were all on the edge of our seats in the baseball stand.

At the bottom of the fifth, Stefan came up to bat. He is well known in my town for his batting. At the age of 9, he hit his first homerun out past the Minors field, and that set his mark. Every year he had these remarkable hits, and we have a pile of baseballs with dates on them for each homerun.

There is a large covered bridge near the Majors field where they play. It was moved there years ago by the town, to preserve one of our relics from colonial days. The chant for Stefan had become “Hit the bridge!” when he’d come to bat. It was also common to hear the coaches for the other teams yell to their kids, “Back up! Stefan’s up!”

But, lest you think he’s some miracle child. He’s not. He strikes out too. He hates it, but there’s a pile of 12 year old pitchers in our Little League who throw fast balls. Stefan says his are over 65 MPH when clocked. I think there are few other boys just as fast. This makes it hard to hit a ball. Some have better “change ups”. So even with his history, we know he can just as easily have a bad day at bat and sometimes, on the pitcher’s mound.

I aimed the video camera to Stefan, now at bat. Everybody was yelling at him. I didn’t know this until later, but one of his coaches said to him, “If it’s a strike pitch, hit it anyway.” They needed to get a hit and it was now or never. Two kids were on base, ready to bolt. For some reason, I seemed to know he would have his miracle Disney moment. I know this because it’s on the tape. Right before he whacks the ball, you hear me say, “He’s gonna do it.”

And he did. Boy did he! He nailed that ball so hard it went out past the ball field, where nobody could possibly catch it, and off towards the covered bridge.

I saw the ball go up in the air and, not breathing, waited to see if it would land in the outfield where it could be retrieved or caught, or go out beyond, into the park. When it continued to fly onward, the crowd went absolutely nuts. I started screaming. Then, I started crying and sobbing outloud, “He hit the bridge. He finally hit the bridge.” Then I remembered his Dad.

In the next few seconds I spun the camera, still on the tripod, to catch Stefan taking his leisurely run around the bases, with screams continuing in the background. We learned, from viewing the tape later, that the catcher from the other team tossed down his glove in sheer anger and frustration, knowing this likely meant the end for them. I caught the part where Stefan made it to homebase, after the other 2 kids got in, and was swept up by his team mates.

Still crying and filming, you can hear me in the background sobbing. Eric was sitting right next to me, but I was off-planet and not aware of anything other than being so incredibly happy for our son. Then, as the tape rolls on, still aimed at the team celebrating, one of the mom’s notices me and shouts out, “Mom! Are you crying?” You hear the parents start to comment on that. (”Awww, she’s crying!”) And then I shut off the video, stopped to gather myself, and then, with all the parents offering congratulations and comfort when they saw my tears, I went to hug Stefan.

Then, I called his Dad on his cell phone. That was hilarious. He was sitting in the stands of a huge high school stadium, in the hot sun, with his wife and our daughter and other family members, repeating, “Oh my god. Oh my god,” and his voice kept getting higher and higher and then he started telling everybody in the stands there, “My son just got a 3 hitter home run!” As if these people cared.

The 6th inning went by quickly (at this age, they only play 6 innings.) Stefan’s team held off the other team with a no-hitter inning, so they won, 10-7. They finally beat the other team, and got some amazing trophies.

Later, the wife of the Head Coach came up to me, and quietly said, “This couldn’t have happened at a better time.” I knew what she meant, and nodded my agreement.

What the boys did not know, is one of their coaches had been diagnosed with a serious illness just a few days before. We hope he’ll pull through and go on to coach many more games.

I’ve been on cloud nine all week. This is why I haven’t blogged. I’m sure I’ll get back to business soon enough, but for now, I have some baseball pants with gum on them to wash and then freeze.

Picture taken after the kids received their trophies:

Thank you for letting me share this off-topic story.

So many web site designers who create sites for clients meet the challenge of presenting the final mockups for judging. When the design team includes a usability consultant, a search engine optimization practioner, copywriter, graphics artist and is managed by project manager dedicated to the craft of web site building, a lot of feelings are at stake.

There’s an excellent thread at Cre8asiteforums begun by a woman who has put in hours for a client, only to have a marketing department make so many changes to her designs, she no longer can feel any pride for her work. It is called Web Design is the Star, Everything else is the supporting cast. It’s a great read.

She writes:

“I presented 10 designs to my client, which the marketing people narrowed down to 4. They took one design and had me modify it, against my will, to an abomination. They made me do 4 ugly variations of this ugly design. They presented it to my client today to make the final decision- their 4 designs, and my 4 designs. I never commented because I thought for sure, my client would not choose the ugly design. Well he did.

So despite what a content rich, search engine friendly, and usable site this is going to be, it’s going to be ugly, and I’m not going to be proud of it. It made me realize how incredibly important the design is.”