This is going to be a really scattered post. I blame the cold medication.

Since I’m pretty into New Years’ Resolutions, especially the wildly unrealistic kind, I am resolving to lose some weight. I am resolving to get off my ass and learn to cook something other than hash browns. I am resolving to go swimming regularly. I am resolving to burn my confectional. I am resolving to lose the FIFTEEN POUNDS I’ve gained since starting a full time home business in September.

As IttyBiz is not a weight loss blog (and thank God for that – if it was, it’d be pretty damned unsuccessful so far) I will not bore you with updates. Thinking of New Years’ Resolutions, though, gets me to thinking about business.

Your business.

I have a feeling that one of your resolutions – stated or unstated, structured or vague – is to get more business in the coming year. Getting business is about marketing. And marketing is my thing.

Therefore, starting tomorrow, I’m going to be running 31 days of marketing tutorials. I’ve written about 20 of them so far, so there’s room for me to answer specific questions if you have them. You can leave questions in the comments or, if your site sucks and you’re embarrassed by it or you think your question’s really dumb, you can email me directly at naomi@ittybiz.com.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about USPs. Do you know what those are? No? Maybe you should come back tomorrow, then.

—

In other news, it’s been a busy week over here at IttyBiz HQ. Some of the highlights include, but are not limited to:

- My computer broke.
- I switched email clients and lost a bunch of emails.
- One of the lost emails was from GoDaddy alerting me to the fact that my credit card expired.
- IttyBiz subsequently went down.
- My mother came from Europe for 9 days.
- We lost internet, home phone, and cable connections.
- 2 head colds.
- 2 of Jack’s teeth arrived, unplanned and unwanted.

Oh well. At least I’m not pregnant. Not that you’d know. Did I mention I’ve gained FIFTEEN POUNDS?

Breathless with anticipation about 31 days of yummy marketing goodness? Subscribe here. That way, when your business is a raging failure, you can’t blame your marketing. Don’t worry, you can still blame your mother.

***

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By Naomi Dunford - Nov 30, 2007 in Marketing School - 8 Comments
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As promised, here’s the first product link for the IttyBiz charity drive. Don’t have a clue what I’m talking about? Click here. Remember, even if you don’t buy this product, anything you buy through Amazon from this link helps the cause. Click the bag, buy a banana hanger, doesn’t matter.

Anyway, about this item. The awesomeness of this bag cannot be overstated. The title of this post is taken verbatim from one of the many, many five star ratings on this product.

Here’s the deal. You buy a bag that looks highly funky. The World Food Programme feeds a kid for a year. A YEAR! This is a perfect gift for the conscious person – whether they’re fashion conscious or socially conscious, it doesn’t matter.

(Oh, and yes, I’m well aware that the celebrity spokesperson for this product is Lauren Bush. I know it’s hard, but try to get past it. Don’t take it out on the kids.)

Want to subscribe for more save-the-world-by-shopping goodness? Click here. Every day till Christmas, people. At some point, you’re going to have to shop. You may as well do it here.

***

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By Naomi Dunford - Nov 28, 2007 in Charity - 3 Comments
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This post has nothing whatsoever to do with Tiger Woods. It has to do with follow-through, something I hear Tiger Woods is very good at.

My apartment is painted beige. The actual name of the color is “Surrey Beige”, arguably the most boring name in the history of the interior paint industry. My mother would love it. I would prefer to call it something like “Mushroom” or “Mochaccino”, but I am not in charge of naming paint colors, although I probably should be. (Does anybody out there run a paint company? If so, can I have a job?)

Moving on. The other day, I was reading a boring home decorating magazine, one of those ones that exists for the sole purpose of procuring advertising dollars. (Kind of like some blogs I know.) I run across an ad for Beauti-Tone paint. Beauti-Tone is a Canadian brand that’s been hit pretty hard by the emergence of the Martha Stewart, Debbie Travis, Disney, and NFL paint lines. Beauti-Tone is not sexy.

A few years ago, paint manufacturers didn’t have to be sexy. They had to make decent paint. It was a commonly accepted fact that the color you buy, once on your walls, would bear no resemblance to the color on the card you spent an hour choosing. You hoped for the best and bought something that wasn’t too ugly. That was it.

Now, though, the paint industry is very different. Now, paint is sexy. Paint is indicative of something bigger. Take a look in your local Home Depot and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. People actually have brand loyalties now. I used to be a Martha Stewart paint chick. Recently, I’ve moved my loyalty over to Debbie Travis. If we ever buy a house (ha!), Jack’s room will be painted something like 100 Acre Sky or Bibbidi Bobbidi Blue. If I had a girl, which I don’t because God thinks He’s funny, there might be some Pixie Dust involved.

Paint is serious shit, people.

Anyway, Beauti-Tone. The ad is perfect. Adorable. Edible. I am a marketing professional and I’m normally pretty immune to stuff like this, but I wanted to pack my stuff and move in to this ad. There is a Golden Retriever. There is a couple lazing around in bed. There is a fluffy white duvet. And there is a paint chip. On the paint chip, it says “Snuggle In.”

Now, I happen to know that many of the readers of this blog are men and they don’t give a damn about things like paint colors. I also happen to know that the primary buyers of paint are women. And women eat this stuff up.

Anyway, what do I do? I rip the page out of the magazine, I put on my coat, and I start walking to the hardware store. (I’ll add here that the color of the paint in the ad is, for all intents and purposes, the exact color of the paint already on my walls. And yes, I’m about to buy it anyway. The ad was that good. They are selling a good life involving dogs and duvets and devoted children and damn it, I want some.)

I get to the paint section of the hardware store, giddy with the promise of new paint. I look. I look. I look some more. There is Beauti-Tone but there is no Snuggle In. There is a conspicuous lack of snuggling in any capacity. There are some numbers – sexy ones like W3033-1. But no Snuggle In.

I go home, snuggle free and defeated. I go on the internet – no catalog. I go to a different paint store. Snuggless.

I am disappointed. I talk to my husband. We discuss our lack of paint. We think about the walls in our home business office. We decide white would probably be better. I go back to the hardware store. I buy paint.

White paint, by Debbie Travis.

(I later found out that Beauti-Tone does, in fact, list their paint colors on their cards. In small print. On the bottom. On the back.)

What lesson do we learn from Beauti-Tone’s big ass screw up?

Follow through, for God’s sake.

Know what you have going for you and play it up. Bleed it dry. Beat people over the head with it. If you make ordinary paint but it has a great name, plaster that son of a bitch every which way till Friday. Or Saturday, for that matter.

Do not promise people Snuggle In and give them W3033-1.

Do not start and then refuse to finish.

Do not give people a taste of your greatness, only to recede back into mediocrity.

***

Liked it? Want more? Subscribe to the feed. Then you can feel superior when you talk about me to your friends. Kind of like I do with Zen Habits.

***

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By Naomi Dunford - Nov 27, 2007 in Home Business Marketing - 10 Comments
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We are the shoppers, and we’ve had enough.

This season, our dollars will make a difference.

We’ve had enough of hearing that your cologne will make her have sex with us, when someone dies of AIDS-related illness every 12 seconds.

We’ve had enough of watching you spend millions of dollars to persuade us that your lip gloss will make us more beautiful, while millions of people in this country eat less than one meal a day.

We’ve had enough of feeling the environment collapse while you cover your useless and disposable products with 7 layers of non-biodegradable packaging.

We’ve had enough of listening to you try to convince our children that the holiday season is about who got the best officially-licensed gifts.

This season, we will teach our children to think about what really matters.

This season, we will do our part to keep John Lennon’s dream of peace alive.

This season, we will help people across the world to Livestrong, warming our hearts at the same time as our bodies.

This season, we will clean our souls as well as our hair.

What You Can Do

When IttyBiz made the front page of Digg, we had been using Amazon advertising for about 6 weeks. On the day we made the front page, we received 23,000 visitors and received 5 times the Amazon income on that single day than we had in the six previous weeks. This was without asking anybody to do a thing.

We’re going to try and replicate that success, and we’d like to do it for charity.

Here’s what you can do:

From now until Christmas, IttyBiz will be donating all of our proceeds to charity. (For information on why we are not mentioning our charity of choice by name, please click here.) If you click on any of IttyBiz’s links to Amazon products, or on the link at the bottom of this post that leads to the Amazon homepage, money from anything you buy will help those in need. Even if you click on the link for the Berenstein Bears book for your nephew and end up buying a blender for your mom, a portion of every single sale goes to a good cause.

The best part? The cost of your item will not change. Your $20 item still costs $20 - but now a portion of that money will go to help those in need.

You were probably going to buy something that they sell anyway - you may as well do it through the link and have a decent portion of the cost go to a great cause.

Each day, in addition to our regular posts, we’ll highlight a new gift item that gives an acceptable portion of it’s proceeds to charity. Click here to subscribe for updates. If you don’t use a feed reader, you can have updates emailed to you by scrolling to the top of this page and inputting your email address. I’ll never see your address - it’s fully automated - so I promise I won’t spam you. I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. Which I don’t, because I’m sure you’re very nice.

Here’s the main link you can use to get to the Amazon homepage. Please bookmark it for your future purchases.

Amazon’s Home Page - Do your shopping here.

If you are a member of any social networking or home business groups and you liked this post, it would mean a lot to us if you could vote for it. We might be able to make a really big difference this season, and we’d love it if you would join us. Please, let your friends know. So many people buy from Amazon every single day. Your costs won’t change, and you can be a part of something great.

***

Overwhelmed? Freaking out? Borderline hysterical? Click here to get your own small business marketing plan. It’s not scary, I promise.

By Naomi Dunford - Nov 26, 2007 in Charity - 30 Comments
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Since there is no decent shopping to do in Canada today, I’m catching up on reading blogs instead. Today I run across a wonderful piece by Christine over at Self-Made Chick chronicling the first part of starting her own business. It’s very good, you should read it. When you’re done reading it, you should read my response.

I feel I would be remiss if I didn’t post the other side of the coin - what sometimes happens when what happened to Christine doesn’t. This was what happened to me, and it was probably just as hard, although many wouldn’t think it this way.

When I started my business, I was way too successful.

Let’s back up a little bit, shall we? When I was growing up, both of my parents were home business owners. My father is started out in software, moved into custom furniture, then on to high-end mustard (!). Since school wasn’t exactly the biggest priority in our house, I spent a lot of time going to sales calls and trade shows. I watched him sell very expensive stuff to people who didn’t know they needed it. I was probably about four when this whole game started.

This went on for several years, and I’m sure you can guess where I spent my spare time. I mean really, why hire staff when you can employ your daughter for free? When I went to live with my mother, she ran a graphic design business and I watched her work every hour God sent as well.

I learned from a young age that entrepreneurship is very hard work, and that you have to struggle to make ends meet. I learned that if you’re not working all the hours in the day, you’re not doing it right. I also learned how to sell stuff. Really well.

When I started the online segment of my business, I planned for my own failure. I put every conceivable contingency plan in place. I was certain it would take at least two years of uphill battles to even make it into the black. I planned to work 16 hour days. I planned to feast on ramen noodles. I was convinced I would barely make a living wage. I knew that at the start of your business, 80 percent of your time should be spent on marketing, and market I did.

A little too much, you might say.

I was inundated. I had more work than I could handle within about six weeks. I was subcontracting to anyone who could form a sentence. I was drowning. I had more money than I’d ever imagined but no time to spend it. I put on 12 pounds because I didn’t have time to cook and spent two months eating take-out. My son was spending more and more time with his nanny, and my husband was relegated to housemaid duties.

This is not a good way to live, people.

Some people will tell you to plan for every eventuality. I wouldn’t recommend that - there are a lot of eventualities out there. I would say plan for three.

Wild success - Think about whether or not you’re comfortable hiring staff. You don’t need a date and time, but know if you’ll be prepared in the first year, two, or five. Create a strategy for choosing between potential clients when you have too many requests. Also choose the color of your Porsche.

Debilitating failure - Like Christine said, stock up on everything. Running out of toilet paper seems like no big deal now that you get paid every two weeks, but when you’re certain you’ll never eat again, it’s a nice little luxury to have. Prepay as much as you possibly can. Rent, electricity, cable, phone - whatever you can. Avoid revolving debt. If everything is prepaid and you have 3 months worth of food in the house, you can go a long time without making any money. Add one car payment and you’re screwed.

Somewhere in between - This is the boring stuff. Accounting plans, marketing schedules, what color tissue paper you’ll use to wrap your Pet Rocks. This is the stuff you’ll find online and in entrepreneurship books and it doesn’t need to be rehashed here.

If you’re still reading, I’ll take this opportunity to tell you that something highly special and exciting is happening at IttyBiz on Monday. You should come.

Or you could subscribe to the feed. Then you wouldn’t have to come. You could just sit back and wait for IttyBiz to come to you.

***

Overwhelmed? Freaking out? Borderline hysterical? Click here to get your own micro-business marketing plan. It’s not scary, I promise.

By Naomi Dunford - Nov 23, 2007 in Home Based Business - 11 Comments
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Written with love by Naomi

Yesterday, we talked about random acts of honesty - the kind of truths you tell out of the blue and without provocation. Today, we’re going to talk about what to do when someone asks you a direct question, the kind that makes you want to lie even if you know you can’t.

Redirection is a skill that everyone needs. It is sometimes also known as being evasive, sneaky, or avoiding the question. This may be true, but since you’re going to be doing it anyway, you may as well know how to do it properly. Here’s the big trick to the redirect.

Behind every question, there is a secret meaning. Find the meaning, find your answer.

In the comments section of yesterday’s post, Shane asked what to say when your wife, girlfriend, sister, or mother asks you, “Do I look fat in this?”

There are two possible meanings behind this question. She wants to know if you love her, or she wants to know if what she’s wearing is acceptable. She does not want to know if she looks fat.

If she doesn’t look fat, say so. Use whatever level of enthusiasm is appropriate to your relationship. Do not tell your mother she looks “smoking”. Do not tell your girlfriend she looks “sharp” or “snazzy”.

However, if she does look fat, you need to redirect. (We’re assuming she’s not already morbidly obese. If everything she wears makes her look like a beached whale because she is, in fact, a beached whale, the secret meaning behind the question is actually “Does this make me look fatter than usual?”)

The only acceptable redirect under these circumstances is to blame the clothing. Some examples:

“Do you think something happened in the wash?”

“I think the dry cleaner’s screwing up again.”

“I think they’re doing something weird with their sizing lately. Maybe they’ve changed sweatshops.”

“Have you heard about this whole vanity sizing thing? They’re saying clothing makers are starting to change the sizing of their clothes to make people feel thinner. Isn’t that weird?”

(If you can get away with the last one, you’re golden. Not only did you get off the topic of her being fat, you also managed to ask her for her opinion at the same time.)

Dealing with home business relationships is the same as dealing with fat girlfriend relationships.

You need to find out what they’re trying to find out.

Let’s say a potential client asks you outright if you have done web design in a medical environment before, and you don’t know a stethoscope from a tongue depressor. You know that web design is web design and you don’t need to be a damn surgeon to give their chiropractic office a shiny new site. You also know that what they really want to know is if you will do a good job for them. Here are some things you could say:

The medical community requires an impeccable eye for detail… (Follow up with examples of your stellar attention to detail.)

What kind of medical details are you looking for? (In most cases, they’ll give you a long answer and forget that you didn’t respond to their original question.)

While I do the design elements for all of my sites, I have an extensive network of professionals in place that can handle many fields. (Start talking about something else immediately. Asking a question would be a good choice here.)

In the vast majority of cases, the person asking the question isn’t going to hammer you until you answer.

The redirect will not solve all of your problems, but it’ll solve a bunch. Sometimes, you need to realize that you’re screwed either way. If a potential employer wants to know if you can use Excel and you can’t, you might be just out of luck. If that’s the case, though, you wouldn’t have got the job no matter what you answered.

Come on! Subscribe to the feed! I’m trying to get 1000 subscribers by Christmas. You wouldn’t want my failure on your head, would you?

***

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By Naomi Dunford - Nov 23, 2007 in Home Based Business - 6 Comments
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Written with love by Naomi.

I’d like to state for the record that I am all for honesty. Good stuff. I’m digging the truthfulness. Big fan over here. But. There is a but…

Honesty is like communism. Executed correctly, and under the right circumstances, it’s wonderful. But it’s often just a really big flop.

There are two kinds of honesty. One is dumb. The other is not dumb.

The first kind is honesty for honesty’s sake. This is the kind of truth you tell when you don’t even need to tell it. The kind of truth that has no relevance to anyone. The kind of truth that does nothing but alleviate your own guilt, fear, or discomfort.

Example: “I know it’s only our second date, but I think it’s only fair to tell you I’ve slept with 34 other men.”

Yes, that may be true. It’s also really dumb.

The second kind is honesty for clarity’s sake. This is the kind of truth you tell because it needs to be told. The kind that’s useful to the receiver. It purveys necessary, accurate, and relevant information.

Example: “I know it’s only our second date, but I want you to know I’m really enjoying spending time with you.”

Also true. Not so dumb.

Someone I like very much (this person shall remain nameless to protect the innocent) was recently offered a lucrative and exciting opportunity for which they are amply qualified. Part of this opportunity involved this person writing press releases. This person has never written a press release before.

I got an email that said, “Damn! I don’t think I can get that gig now. They want me to write press releases!”

Now, maybe I’m a big fat lying pants, but I think that’s a load of crap.

In this situation, my friend can say, “Gee, I’m sorry, I’ve never written a press release before.” This would be true.

My friend can also say, “Let me send over some clips and a testimonial letter from one of my current clients. I’d love to write your press releases for you.”

Guess what, people. That’s also true. Which one do you think is more important? Which one is more likely to help your home business?

It’s true that my pants fell down in front of 15 football players in a crowded restaurant on homecoming weekend. It’s true that I stole cigarettes from the gas station I worked at when I was 17. It’s true that I never finished high school and made it into college on a technicality.

You don’t see me mentioning any of those in my query letters.

You get to pick the truths you tell.

Tell the truths that needs to be told.

That covers out-of-thin-air honesty - the kind of statements you make without provocation. Tomorrow I’ll lecture talk about what to do when somebody asks you something outright in Honesty: The Fine Art of the Redirect.

Have you subscribed to the feed yet? What, do I smell?

***

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By Naomi Dunford - Nov 21, 2007 in Home Based Business - 11 Comments
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I have a confession. I was born without the urgency gene. I just can’t get it together to care. Therefore, if you have breaking news and you want to give a hard-hitting, journalistic blogger an exclusive scoop - call someone else. I’ll probably be napping.

These links may be old news. I present them to you anyway.

Do you like pizza? Do you have children? Do you run a home business? If any of the foregoing apply to you, please check out this post. I’d could tell you what it’s about, but then I’d have to kill you. (Hint: pizza, children, business.)

If you want to get anywhere in business, blogging, or possibly even in life, you need to learn to network. (Also to market yourself and your wares, but that’s why you’re here.) Here is a fantabulous (hey, spell check didn’t grab fantabulous… how cool is that?) quote from the link you’re about to go to:

There tends to be mindset among small business owners and freelancers that if you somehow gain some marketing advantage by simply doing what you’d normally do, but with a slightly elevated degree of effort or intention, that is a bad thing. Read more here.

Speaking of networking and public relations (which, since your business is small and you’re probably broke, you should be) check out this quick and dirty post about colossal PR screw-ups. Be ashamed or be proud.

Just in case you’re not one of the 36,000 subscribers to Get Rich Slowly and you’re also not one of the 643 people who have Dugg this post, read about JD’s transition to full time blogging here. This is pretty freaking inspirational, people.

Moving on, let’s talk about Wall of Scribbles. I copied a link and some text from the following post, intending to blog about it someday. Well, today was the day, but I figured I’d go back to the blog to make sure he hadn’t all of a sudden started publicly advocating reindeer tipping. (Sorry, that’s not a link. I don’t have a link about reindeer tipping. If you find one, let me know.) Turns out, he ended up quoting me, which was pretty freaking awesome. Now I feel weird linking there, though. Kind of incestuous and, I don’t know, the kind of thing someone in marketing would do.

However, it’s not Corey’s fault I couldn’t get off my ass to do a link round-up, so here it is anyway. Sorry, dude.

There are certain types of people out there that can go for it. They set their eyes on something, and the run full steam towards that goal…. Then there is the other group that merely lives through situations and makes the best of things. They see the world as something that happens, not something to make happen. These are your desk-jockeys. These are your lunch alone in a diner sort of people. These are the people that ride the bus every day and wonder why they got on it, and then forget that they wondered it.

Although I will happily eat lunch alone in a diner, he’s onto some really cool stuff here.

Penultimately, which is one of my favorite words and I use it frequently to prove you can still write even if you didn’t go to college, we have Joe and Steve from I’ve Tried That.

To those of you with young children, yes, those ARE the same names of the guys from Blue’s Clues but, no, they are not actually the guys from Blue’s Clues. Anyway, they sent me a free copy of their new eBook, The Complete I’ve Tried That Guide to Telecommuting. Joe and Steve say things that make me laugh like “Finally, a presell page that isn’t longer than the book itself!” and “We lose money so you don’t have to.” Thus, I agreed to take a peek at their book.

It does not suck, and it is a great beginner’s guide to, well, telecommuting. It is not insanely boring and they don’t use lame-ass strike through $347 $247 $117.43 $29 pricing. In fact, it’s pay what you want. Like Radiohead, except not so widely publicized by Rolling Stone magazine.

The book has 40 pages and four decent sized chapters - Basic Requirements, Resumes and Cover Letters, How To Find Jobs Online, and Contacting Potential Employers. This book is good if you’re new, not necessary if you’re not new. I would venture to say it’s nearly imperative if you’re new. A lot of the information is available elsewhere, but I challenge you to find it in one sitting. Vital information, nicely and neatly packaged for less than $347. Unless you want to pay $347. If that’s the case, I want some affiliate income. (By the way, for those of you who care about this kind of thing, I get no affiliate income from saying this. It’s hard to figure out affiliate dollars on the book equivalent of pay-what-you-can night at the local rep theater.)

And last of all, something from an email forward. My friend Melanie, who has just recently started reading this blog and is likely to be very offended now and refuse to pay for my lunch on Thursday, sends me forwards. Like, a lot of them. I’m not really a forward kind of gal, but hers don’t suck too much and she’s my friend so I read them. Here is my closing piece of wisdom.

Never laugh at anyone’s dreams. People who don’t have dreams don’t have much.

Yes, it’s something you’d see in your abuse counselor’s office. It’s also true.

***

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By Naomi Dunford - Nov 21, 2007 in Home Business Marketing - 7 Comments
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So we at IttyBiz have been following a post and some comment streams between what seems like my fellow home business owners James and Harry at JCM Enterprises and basically the entire free world with an internet connection. This got me to thinking, and because the comment streams were so huge I figured I’d write a post instead. But first, a disclaimer:

WARNING

The preceding and following statements represent the opinion of this blogger alone and are not necessarily those of the entire blogosphere. We take no responsibility for any debate, dispute, argument, fight, falling out, wars, acts of terrorism, or any other negative reaction that may result from these thoughts in any form. (We’re thinking about making this a standard disclaimer for our blog. Maybe we’ll copyright it and sell it to other bloggers. Speaking of income streams…)

So for those who may not have seen this, the bottom line is James took a hard but honest stance on an issue he feels strongly about. (Edited to add: The issue is PLR. At Jarkko’s smart request, here’s an explanation of that. PLR stands for Private Label Rights. By definition, it means I write it, you take credit for it, like ghostwriting. That’s the official meaning. What actually happens is I write it, sell it to a gazillion people and they all pretend it’s theirs. Either that, or I write it 600 ways to breakfast, sell it 600 times as original content, and people spam the bejesus out of the Google front page with a bunch of rewritten articles that say the exact same thing.)

The response to his comment was outrage, and at one point the blogger in question turned off comments. James has apologized for offending anyone WITHOUT retracting his original stance (way to go James!!!!) but the fallout seems to be continuing.

Basically, here’s a metaphor of what happened:

Them: Hey James, here’s a bunch of resources about how to run a pyramid scheme! You should check them out!

James: Dude, that’s a pyramid scheme. I don’t want to run a pyramid scheme.

Them: HOW DARE YOU say we’re running a pyramid scheme? [screaming and character assassination ensues.]

I’m not saying PLR is a pyramid scheme, so just settle down. You get the point. This is a metaphor.

This led me to think about the actual purpose of a blog. Now I may have missed the point entirely, but to me, the purpose of a blog is to create an online community in which we are free to share our opinions and foster debate and discussion. I understand that to some people, debate is a dirty word that makes them feel uncomfortable, but my experience has been that the average commenter (commentator?) can respond with a contrary opinion in a very mature and non-offensive manner.

I realize that this is just my opinion and that not everyone will agree with me. I also realize that I have no right to tell people how to run their blogs. However, doing things like removing comments from a post seems anti-blog to me. I have no issue with moderating first-time commenters (we all know there are very good reasons for this) as normally the blogger is only confirming that the comment is not spam. They are not erasing contrary opinions from their site.

If you do not respect or want comments then you do not want a blog - you want a website. Or a soapbox.

I believe that James and Harry handled this situation with grace and with a true spirit of open debate. James did the grown-up thing here by apologizing for offending anyone and stressing that he did not mean for his comments to be taken as a personal attack, and kudos to those bloggers who accepted the apology.

I can understand those commenters who personally attacked him and Harry when they felt they themselves were being attacked, but I have absolutely no respect for the ones who continued the attack after an apology was publicly issued. I (perhaps mistakenly) assume that we are all mature enough to be able to make our points without the personal attacks.

Moral of the Story? There’s a big difference between legal and ethical.

By engaging in activities your professional colleagues deem to be unethical, you open yourself up to criticism. If you truly believe what you’re doing is right, defend yourself to the ends of the earth. If you run away like a scared little puppy, it’s probably because you can’t defend yourself. And you can’t defend yourself because you’re in the wrong.

Bonus Moral of the Story. Don’t be a baby.

(Naomi’s busybody note:I have a few things to add. One, generally, when I’m attacked, I let the attacker do his or her thing and burn out. I don’t feel the need to wave my gun around saying, “Don’t YOU attack ME, motherf*cker!!!” Maybe that’s just me.

Secondly, one of my favorite expressions in business is “management by objectives”. When it comes to any type of corporate communication, know what the hell you’re trying to do. If you want to create a group of adoring fans and call it a “community”, fine, turn off your comments. You’ll lose the respect of everyone except your sister and your mother, but whatever.

Third, this whole fiasco was about PLR, also known as article spinning. For those of you who are not freelance writers, this involves taking an article - either one that you wrote or one you got from somewhere else - and basically changing a teensy, weensy bit of it to make it pass Copyscape tests. This is not about using an article or a publication for research. This is about changing “like” to “love” to “enjoy” or similar, every third word or so. Then you do it 600 times and resell it.

Not like any of you care, but I’m with James. According to my definition of legitimate, this ain’t it. It’s not illegal, but neither is taking a really young looking 18-year-old, dressing her up in a school girl outfit, pretending she’s 12, and marketing it as child porn. It’s dirty, but it’s legal. Just like this trumped up version of plagiarism.)

Discuss. I promise I won’t turn off the comments. You could also subscribe to the feed. Then we can duke it out in comments every day of the week.

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By Jamie Dunford - Nov 19, 2007 in Moral of the Story - 34 Comments
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Normally I’m not one to post twice in one day, but people, you HAVE to see this.

Young Go Getter has been one of my favorite blogs, even before they awarded me with 5,000 free business cards. Today, however, they’ve outdone themselves. Guest poster (?) Darius of Colour Lovers and Hands On Worldwide gives an AWESOME breakdown of blogosphere miscommunication and general bullshit in his post:

Blogoshpere Gone Wild:Top Blogs Play Telephone with Nissan.

He uses the word “blognannegans”, people. For that reason alone you should go right now.

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By Naomi Dunford - Nov 19, 2007 in Home Business Blogging - 9 Comments
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