All posts by Mitch Mitchell

I'm an independent consultant in many fields, so I have a lot to share.
Personal

What Do We Expect For Free?

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A few days ago I saw a comment on another blog’s posting that made me start thinking about this concept of the word “free”.

It was a fairly innocuous comment stating to the writer of the blog that he would have liked to see a little bit more information on some of what she was sharing with all of us to get her insight as to why she was recommending some things that she was recommending. I wrote back that I thought she was giving us a lot already and that I was at least happy for all the time that she was putting into giving us what she was giving us.

However, it got me thinking about it just a bit more because I realized that there are times when I am like everybody else in expecting a little bit more than what I’m getting from something even if it happens to be free. There were a few people who made comments on a review post I wrote on Six Figure Blogger Blueprint wishing that the author had given us a little bit more detail on how to specifically do something, and I remember thinking at the time “hey, it’s free, what do we want?” And yet, when I think about it, there are a lot of things that I get for free online that I’ll write about.

For instance, I’m running a WordPress blog. There are times when I’m complaining about something, such as those constant updates that seem to irritate most of us, and every once in a while I remember that this is a free program. There are a couple of other things I’ve written about that I absolutely hate, such as Disqus, Intense Debate and Blogger, but when you think about it those things are free also. Of course, I’ve chosen not to use any of those things, and instead pay for my hosting and my blog, and don’t filter my comments using either of those other two things I mentioned or anything else, but it’s not much different than just openly complaining about something that’s free.

What should we really expect from “free”? Should we expect that everything we get for free give us full details as if we were paying for it? I’m thinking that’s what blogs are for, because there are a lot of us who give a lot of information out to people absolutely free. I think I’ve done some tutorials on this blog and one of my other blogs on how to do things step by step, and yet I don’t get paid for any of those things. I don’t mind that because it’s a blog after all, and I like sharing information whenever I can. At the same time, you notice over there on the left that I have three things that I’ve created, and each one of them also has some step-by-step information that I am expecting someone to pay for if they want that information.

Here’s the thing about “free”. “Free” still takes a lot of time to create. Whereas I can write a blog post usually in less than five minutes, there are people who take upwards of an hour or more to put together a blog post. How many of you have actually written a book? How many of you have actually written a report of some kind outside of school work? These things do take time to put together, especially if someone is trying to do a good job. If they do it like I do anything, they probably start off with an outline, then a brief sketch as to what each outline point is supposed to contain, then they write or create the thing, then they edit the thing, then they might take the time to pretty it up somewhat before it’s ready for delivery. I’m bad when it comes to the “pretty up” part, but I’m not so bad at the rest of it.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t have the right to have some kind of expectation that what we are either going to use or read at least in some fashion addresses the topic we’re hoping it does. Getting something free and finding out it has nothing to do with what it said it did is diversionary and sneaky, and that’s not right. But for everything else, I think we have the right to try it out, and if it works for us or we can get something out of it then great. If we can’t get anything out of it or it doesn’t work right, then at least it didn’t cost us anything and we should probably be happy for that. It doesn’t mean that something free can’t be criticized, but it does mean that the level of criticism should match how much it cost us.

It’s just something I’ve been thinking about over the past few days as I remembered something I had written a while back ago asking the question How Do You Value. How do we decide when something we get for free is valuable even if it doesn’t give us everything we want?

Social Media

Twit Cleaner

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What, another Twitter related thing? Yes indeed, but man, this is another great one.

The Twit Cleaner is an online program that will analyze every person you’re following and tell you things about them that you may not have been paying attention to. For instance, when it ran through mine, it told me who sends out only links and never engages with anyone, who sends mainly spam messages, who hasn’t been around for awhile, who’s not following you, and a couple other things.

Once you’re done, you have the chance to go through the list, determine who you want to keep following, and then, if you’re following fewer than 2,000 people, you can click the button and it will start unfollowing people. It’s careful not to unfollow everyone at once, as I guess it worries about triggering a Twitter reaction of some kind, but eventually it will eliminate all the folks you tell it to.

In my case, it highlighted 378 people I was following as actionable, and I decided to save fewer than 10 of those folks. So, at some point my follow number will be reduced by 368 folks, people who won’t even know I’ve dropped them since Twit Cleaner basically said they don’t interact with me anyway.

This is crucial, and it’s great. A major lament has been that social media hasn’t proven to be all that social, and you’ve seen me gripe about it often enough. The way Twitter had it set up, it would have taken me hours to go through my list and weed out many of these people. This is great, and I’m happy to share it with y’all.

The Twitter Book

Price – $11.81

Social Media

Four Square

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Man, I feel so old!

There’s a new site that seemed perfectly suited to today’s “tell all” social media crowd. This one is called Four Square, and it’s basic purpose is to let people know where you are. You can link it into Twitter so folks can follow you around to see where you’re going or where you’ve been during the day. People can then visit to see exactly where you are, and they can comment on it if they so choose.

The principles seem to be twofold. One, it allows people to share with their friends where they are in case they want to stop by. Two, it gives a little bit of advertisement to the places where folks are. Here’s an example of how it works. Someone posted on Twitter that they were in Clinton Square, here in the Syracuse area. Here’s the link to what comes up. As you can see, it looks like a miniature Google Map, and there’s one person who’s commented on it, though a week ago so she obviously didn’t see who the person was who posted the link. However, I saw the link on Twitter, so I know who posted it and at what time they posted it as well.

Here’s the part about feeling old. I can’t imagine posting where I am at any point during the day, unless it was a major get together. For instance, if I were at a tweetup with a lot of other Twitter people and we wanted more people to come, I might post that. But if I were going to a meeting, I wouldn’t tell anyone because it’s not their business. Today I saw people who sent their Four Square message when they went downtown, to the special outdoor hockey game, to Winterfest (something I’ve never gone to in all the years I’ve lived here), to get their nails done, to a couple of different restaurants… that’s as far as I’ve reached thus far, though I figure as I get through a few more messages I’ll see more. Maybe this is tied again into this thing I have about being tracked, but I just can’t imagine it.

Still, it’s something to share for those of you who might feel inclined to want people to know where you are all the time. Frankly, I’m thinking you could just save time and implant a tracking device under your arm. lol

The Space Saving Air Hockey Table.

Price – $399.95

Affiliates

101Phones Not Paying Me My Commission

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Once again, I have to “out” one of my affiliate programs for not processing my commission on a product I’ve marketed for them.

At the end of my post about the Six-Figure Blueprint book, I posted an affiliate product from 101Phones, a 2-line phone with two portable extensions, which in essence gives you 3 phones to put in different rooms. About two weeks ago I had someone purchase that phone; I know that because I was informed of the purchase. I got the numbers I needed to verify it, just in case I never got credit for it.

This is another company through Commission Junction, so I went to the CJ site and found the affiliate information for these people and sent them an email with all the information. By the way, I waited a week to see if my commission was going to show. I waited 3 days, and didn’t hear a thing. I then sent a second follow up email, and I included another email address I found for the company, as well as an email address I had for CJ, which I’d had to use at one point last year when I initially had problems getting credit for another sale. Here it is, 4 days after that one, and once again I’ve not heard anything.

In the second email, I told them if I didn’t hear from them I was going public with my complaint; this is it. Now, why am I doing this? One, I think two weeks is long enough to wait for notification of my commission, especially since CJ says it should only take a week at best. Two, I don’t want anyone else getting cheated if these folks are scam artists. Three, I know they’re on Twitter, and since my posts show up on Twitter when they see the headline, if they care about their business, they’ll head over here and see what I’ve written and I’ll get some kind of action. It worked that way when I had issues with both Panda and Football Fanatics in the past.

It’s hard enough to make money online without feeling as though you’re being cheated. This time around, though, I have to admit that I’m surprised I haven’t heard from Commission Junction either. After all, they’re the initial folks helping to support these companies, and it has to make them look bad when they’re affiliates aren’t doing what they’re supposed to do.

If it takes another 4 or 5 days to get some action, I’ll be removing any advertisements for their products, sending them an even sterner email, then probably dropping them forever. I kind of like their stuff, and the product was delivered very fast, but if this is how they treat their affiliates I don’t want to have anything to do with them.

Yeah, this is how I take a stand; I hope y’all don’t just sit by and let someone treat you badly, especially when it’s money that’s concerned.


Personal

Three Warnings Or Fears

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There are three things I feel compelled to talk about, none of which has anything to do with internet marketing, but one does have something to do with social media, so I’ll start with that one.

A few days ago, a federal judge decided that high school students should have the right to blast their teachers on Facebook or anywhere else because of the 1st amendment right to free speech. I was astonished when I read this, and it seems there’s a lot of folks, including the American Civil Liberties Union, who believe this is proper.

Sorry folks, but I’m not one of them. We had a local incident just like this, and the student who created the page was suspended and every student who signed up for it got detention. I agreed with suspending the student, but not for punishing everyone else who signed up, especially since some kids never said a word.

Here’s the thing. What this moron basically did was give license to anyone to find someone they don’t like, create a Facebook group in their name calling them whatever they want to do, then invite other people to come in and join the ugliness. And that person has no recourse whatsoever because of this bad interpretation of the 1st amendment. By the way, the first amendment doesn’t say everyone gets to say whatever they want whenever they want, which is why we can’t go around screaming “fire” in a crowded theater and many other things.

I wonder who he and the ACLU are going to feel when the first person either gets killed or commits suicide because of this ruling. And allowing kids to do that against their teachers is absurd; imagine the repercussions of this type of thing later on. If I’m the teacher, I’m failing this kid. And what happens when one kid starts doing this to another kid?

I can tell you this; if I knew someone was doing something like this to me, I’m going after them in more ways than you can imagine, and the last way will definitely be physical. No one has the right to slam an individual without expecting consequences, and whatever they are, outside of taking out anyone else who’s around, isn’t off limits. If you’re in the public eye, or a company, that’s different. Allowing students to publicly slam teachers… I see trouble brewing.

The next thing on my mind is news this week that the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, NY, this week produced a substance that was 250,000 times hotter than the sun. This is another group that’s trying to create things that should remain in space and far away from Earth, in this case mini-stars instead of a black hole. Now, maybe I’m just an alarmist, but I’m thinking having substances on the Earth, even if they don’t last long, that are hotter than the sun is a bad thing. I don’t care how far underground it is, that can’t be a good thing. For my own comfort, Long Island isn’t far enough away from me for them to be doing that kind of testing anyway. Does anyone else think this is a bad idea?

Finally, there’s a guy named George Church who is the top guy when it comes to mapping out genomes. He has actually gotten to the point where he believes we can and should create a neanderthal so that we can see if it might offer resistances to diseases and the like to humans of today. By the way, that link downloads an MP3 file of his interview talking about it. He also believes we should recreate things like dinosaurs and mammoths and the like so we can study them better.

Once again, I’m reminded of the Jeff Goldblum line in Jurassic Park: “Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” When this movie came out I thought about how cool it might be to recreate dinosaurs, but it’s now 17 years later, I’m no longer an idyllic 33 year old, and I’m thinking this is a bad idea as well. We have no idea what kinds of diseases these things had or just how lethal or smart they actually might have been, and reintroducing these things into our lives now is a horrible idea. The idea that we can create life that doesn’t exist anymore is scary to me; I can see how this one could get out of hand.

Oddly enough, I’m not against cloning, which one might think is the same thing. The thing about cloning is that it’s not like what people think it is. A clone of any animal is still a distinct and individual life form that will live a totally different existence and life than its predecessor, and we already know what the predecessor was and how we interacted with it.

Anyway, those are thoughts I’ve had today that I just finally had to write about. I know, my mind is in a weird place sometimes. Comments?

Planet Earth 5 DVD Set - Standard version

Planet Earth 5 DVD Set – Standard version

Price – $59.99