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When working with a new payment gateway, they said I had to include their privacy policy and TOS on the site. Here’s what it has to say, according to their contract:
By providing this information you agree to Elavon’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Use
Privacy Policy: <http://www.internetsecure.com/privacy.html>
Terms of Use: <http://www.internetsecure.com/termsofuse.html>
Then, when I read the TOS, it says “You may link to the home page of this site, however, you may not link within this site or within frames on your site.”
Am I the only person that reads these things? How can I link to the TOS without violating it?
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The shop just shut down for the weekend. It’s a quiet, creekie, dark and eerie on the shop floor.
I can crank up the music and really get some focused, quality time working on the “big projects”
This is my new “late night focus time.” I’m getting old.
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From an email tonight:
Hi Mark,
I was just doing a search on “how to use elance” and google has your article as the top entry: http://markingles.com/outsourcing/
Thank you for the great information.
I noticed that it was written in 2007. I was wondering if you have additional insights that you have learned since that time? Furthermore, any good sample bid proposals come to mind?
I’d appreciate any info you might have.
Thank you for writing that excellent article.
Sincerely,
Eli
What’s funny about that is I’d forgotten about the article. It’s #1 on google with just 3 sites linking to it. It’s all as relevant today as it was two years ago. I wrote it after talking about it at a mastermind meeting and realized I actually learned a few things wasting all that cash!
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Full Color Brochure Printing
In Your Hands This Friday
GUARANTEED.
Yes. You read that right.
You can have your brochures printed and in your hands in just 3 days.
It’s simple: If you give us your artwork and $299 today, we’ll put 1000 8.5×11 trifold brochures on your doorstep on Friday.
I wrote an ad with such a strong guarantee I was scared of it. Full Color Brochures in your hands in 3 days or they’re free. I made it the headline. I had no fine print. We even counted Saturday and didn’t hide under “business days” or early cutoffs.
I was damn scared.
It was the strongest I could come up with.
It was better than everyone else’s crap!
My copy was the best it’s ever been. It had all of the elements with just the right “greased chute” for the reader. The graphic design was the cleanest and best I’ve ever had.
I ran the ad. And nobody bought…
It turns out, even though everyone says they’re in a rush, they don’t want to pay for it.
Lesson #1 – know your market. Not what they say, but what they buy!
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Back to a broken RIP in Prepress. No wonder I was in such a crappy mood all day.
Got a few little strategic projects done. Re-did my staffing. Have to find a new full time person…
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I missed last year’s GKIC Superconference. I went the the International Ice Cream Convention in Vegas the same weekend. I’m back this year, with Robin. Day 1 was pretty light on the content. Dan Kennedy, who is usually great, just read over some of his notes that he sent out before the event.
Ivanka Trump had a few lessons, but she was really there because of her last name. Dan has a fascination with Donald, but hasn’t been able to secure him as a speaker. It’s probably because they’re competing for the same audience of “Wantrepeneurs” with GKIC and Trump University.
Dan interviewed Peter Shea, the owner of Entrepeneur Magazine, and that had just a few lessons too. Pete isn’t much of a public speaker, so the interview style was a great idea.
I went to the IBA dinner with Robin and Dan got up and took about 40 minutes to tell everyone they (deservedly) sucked. He finished with a “thanks for your hard work, and all that stuff” to make it all better.
While the content might have been light, GKIC does some really smart things:
You have to be a member of their higher level programs to have a picture taken with Miss Trump. They have a “private” lounge.
They built a very nice “yes ladder” by first asking for a donation of any amount to charity. Then the next pitch was for a $20 book with some of the proceeds benefiting charity. The next pitch was for their own coaching group, then they opened up the next few days to other speakers to peddle their wares.
Bill Glazer presold everyone on why they were really here and that we can’t possibly learn everything from the speakers in an hour, so we have to invest in their products. The talks are useful but very incomplete for exactly that reason. Bill didn’t say my favorite line this time, “You’re here to go shopping.”
I think I’m jaded this trip because of GKIC Customer service. I registered for the trip and was supposed to get 3 months free of their newsletter. But 3 days later I was charged. I emailed to get it fixed and they gave me an excuse that I used to be a member. Their sales page clearly says “Notice: Non-Members and Silver Members will automatically receive a 2-Month Free Gold Membership and lower SuperConference Registration Fees.” I was a former member. That makes me a non-member. I canceled my membership in January because of their awful service and their fraudulent billing. Yes. FRAUD. When I registered, they gave me my badge and asked me to go to the help desk to “fix my membership problem.” I walked over there and gave the same person who was useless on the phone my info. He said I my membership had been canceled and he had to fix it. I told him it was supposed to be canceled since they fraudulently billed me. I told him he was the person who “helped” me on the phone. The response I got back was “I’m not the one to yell at.” For those of you who know me, you know I’m not a yeller. I can make a scene, especially when somebody is acting like a tool, but we were still being civil. He went to get Karen, an incredibly nice and helpful person, looked up my record and said it was a billing error and again asked if I wanted to fix my membership. I told her no, so she ripped my “member” tag off my bad as some sort of psychological take-away. Then she added a “guest” one. I was hoping for “non-member” but oh-well.
I left the “help desk” and then thought about it. I went back and asked if it was a billing error, if I could have my money back. Karen happily (and smartly) said “yes!” Mike grumbled the whole time about giving my money back.
Never once through the whole saga of email, phone calls, and 2 in person meetings did I ever get an “I’m sorry” – Those 2 words would have saved them a member. It does fit their theme of me being a part of their “herd” and just another cattle to be wrangled, so maybe I should lower my expectations?
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CentOS selinux won’t autorelabel the filesystem 
apcupsd doesn’t install right
Everything else runs great: Dell Poweredge 2950 2 gigs of ram 1 quadcore 2 gig processor and 6 500 gig drives running CentOS 5.2.
Pleasant surprises: dovecot is easier than courier-imap, new hylafax made setup take 5 mins
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I just signed up for twitter. I think I’m going to hate it. It’s like inviting your 10 closest friends out with you then telling your 100 closest friends about what a good time you’re having.
We’ll see.
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Someone decided to recreate our workflow and templates in our Trueflow software. They moved the actual art space down 1/8″ from where it should be and we decided to print all of todays work with the bottom 1/8″ unprintable on press. We caught it around 8am, and only had about 10 jobs completely ruined.
What a great way to start my morning…