Consumers Intolerant Of Ecommerce Failures

The survey found that 42 percent of those who have had problems when conducting online transactions have switched to a competitor or abandoned the transaction all together. Another 52 percent, who experienced bad customer service from a company, have stopped doing business with the company.

Ecommerce continues to grow and Forrester Research estimates 2007 online retail sales will reach $157 billion and projects that number to grow to $271 billion by 2011. But the growth masks underlying issues.

"We’re in a ‘perfect storm’ as users’ dependency on ecommerce grows and their patience for bad online experiences wears thin," said Rebecca Ward, CEO, Tealeaf. "More than a decade into ecommerce, we’re increasingly savvy online consumers, and we’re no longer willing to put up with experiences that do not live up to our expectations."

"Companies doing business online must pay attention to their customers’ experiences and help them to succeed, or risk losing them entirely. The only way to understand issues, improve conversion rates and better serve customers is to have visibility into everything that happens on your online channel."

Bad customer service from companies led to a second wave of abandonment with 52 percent of consumers ending their business relationship with a company entirely and another 72 percent who stopped doing business entirely or decreased the amount of business they do with a company, or filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.

"The risk of abandonment is escalating not only after initial online transaction problems, but also for those who try to remain loyal, because contact centers are fundamentally ill-equipped because they lack the visibility to adequately address the concerns of website customers," said Ward.

Google’s paper titled ‘Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population’ was crafted for the Usenix conference on File and Storage Technologies.

With little published formal research on why drives fail available, Eduardo Pinheiro, Wolf-Dietrich Weber and Luiz André Barroso did what engineers do and researched it themselves.

They suggest in the paper’s abstract that 90 percent of the new information produced around the globe has been tucked into storage on electronic media somewhere; that’s based on 2002 research performed at UC-Berkeley.

In most cases, that storage means a hard drive. Since the engineers just happen to have access to "a large disk drive population in a production Internet services deployment," they decided to look at that and see what they could learn about drive failures.

That research made it into their report (PDF). It’s what they didn’t find that proves the most interesting.

Modeling based on the self-monitoring facility, called SMART, of a drive, looking at parameters that tend to match failing drives, was dubbed "unlikely to be useful" for predicting other drive failures. "Surprisingly, we found that temperature and activity levels were much less correlated with drive failures than previously reported," they wrote.

Spinning and overheated disks have long been considered an early warning sign of drive failure, but to the engineers these symptoms were not a red flag of imminent failure.

Drives failed in their analysis without tripping any SMART indicators.

They also noted that after a drive suffered its first scan error, it was 39 times more likely to fail within a 60-day period than drives lacking those errors.

Predicting failures based on SMART alone looks like a very inaccurate endeavor, and SMART may be more useful for determining trends in a drive population instead.

 —

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If I had to assign blame it would go in this order:

1. Some awful devices

2. Terrible marketing by Napster

3. Terrible software by Napster

4. Microsoft DRM

Microsoft’s DRM isn’t great, but it is pretty good. You don’t hear a lot of people saying, “I would buy that Samsung device, but Windows Media is just so awful!”

I guess, since Microsoft is using their DRM as a rallying point for the anti-Apple crowd, some people are going to try to blame them. They’re wrong, but they’ll try. The fact of the matter is, Apple is on top for reasons beyond Microsoft’s control. Well, beyond their control so far

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Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

Visit the InsideGoogle blog.

Multi-module ERP software integrates business activities across various functional departments, from product planning, parts purchasing, inventory control, product distribution, to order tracking. ERP has transformed the way multi-billion dollar corporations conduct their businesses. Successful implementation of ERP systems could save tens of millions of dollars and increase employee satisfactions, customer satisfactions and sustain competitive advantages in every- changing marketplace. Corporate executives are often perplexed by the stories that how reputable corporations (Hershey Foods, etc.) have failed miserably and lost ten of millions of dollars in their ERP endures.

The failures of ERP projects are preventable if we can identify the common causes of the failures regardless the companies and industries that implement them.

An ERP system is the combination of ERP software, the business processes that the ERP transforms, the users of the ERP system, and the computer systems that run the ERP applications. The failures of a ERP project is often the result of the failures in one or more of those four components. The failures in computer systems (hardware and operating systems) are much easier to identify and to fix, so we’ll examine the failures in software implementation, business process and user acceptance.

Failure of ERP Software Implementation

Module-based ERP software ( http://www.sysoptima.com/erp/erp_modules.php ) is the core of ERP systems. Most ERP projects involve significant amount of customizations. Packaged ERP software modules have build-in functionality that work in a standard and simplified enterprise environment. However, every organization is unique in data requirements and business processes. It is the customizations that transform packaged ERP software into ERP software that meets organizations’ individual business processes and operations. Long and expensive customization efforts often result the pass of release deadline and budget overrun. Customizations may make the software more fragile and harder to maintain when it finally goes to production. Major changes may be required in the later stage of the implementation as a result of incomplete requirements and power struggles within organizations

The integration of ERP systems with the IT infrastructures also challenges ERP project teams. The use of appropriate implementation methodologies can often make or break a ERP project.

Failure of Accommodating Evolution of Business Processes

According to Anthony, R. A, business processes fall into three levels – strategic planning, management control and operational control. Organizations continuously realign their business processes of all levels in response to the ever-changing market environment. Many ERP systems aren’t flexible enough to accommodate evolution of business processes. many ERP system need a major overhaul in every a couple of years.

Failure of User Acceptance

The users of ERP systems are employees of the organizations at all levels. ERP projects usually modify the company’s business processes which create extra workload for employees who use them initially. They may not think that the workflow embedded in the software are better than the ones they currently use. Ongoing end-user involvement and training may ease the difficult in organization’s adaptation of new systems and new business processes.

Bruce Zhang had worked a few years in distribution and fulfillment industry. He contributes to Order Fulfillment ( http://www.4th-media.net/order_fulfillment/ ) section of an ecommerce ( http://www.4th-media.net/ ) website.

The sad news, according to numerous government and independent resources, the odds are stacked against these budding entrepreneurs. In reality, the odds are stacked in favor of failure as most new business start-ups fail in three years, and many more fail before their second year. What are the problems new entrepreneurs face that cause such catastrophic results?

Biggest Reason for Business Failures – Failure to Plan.

The biggest problem seems to be lack of planning. New business owners fail to complete business or marketing plans. They get so fed up with present jobs, or life styles, they jump into self-employment ventures. They fail investigating local competition or the potential customer market and start business ventures destined for failure. They open shops and go out of business before their second year. Had they taken some time in research, they may have found the local market was too saturated or local business was already struggling to stay operational. They may have found certain barriers to entering their market that would prevent them finding business success. However, they failed to do that research, and many didn’t formulate business or marketing plans. They lacked a road map taking them to their goals, and combined with the other reasons mentioned, is why they failed. Without clear plans identifying individual steps to success, how can you become successful? Sadly, most all business failures failed to create road maps.

A business plan is critical if you want government funding or a bank loan, but it’s just as critical if you don’t need them. The business plan is a report on research into your chosen business field. By completing it, you find out about your local market, competition and potential customers, if your industry is growing or declining, and a host of other information needed to formulate plans for business success. While the business plan tells if it is a wise to open your business, a marketing plan reminds you how to make sales. The marketing plan lists step-by-step instructions to increase business sales. One step may build on another, while some steps are implemented together, but regardless how these steps work together, it is important to think about it BEFORE opening your business doors. Without a clear, step-by-step plan to show where you are, where you want to be, and how you get there, then chances of realizing your dreams will be slim to nil. How can you sell products or services if you don’t know what kind of people buy them? That is just another thing business and marketing plans help you discover. Without the information, these plans help you find, you will likely fail in your new business. You can find some valuable information for writing business and marketing plans through the Kaufman Foundation’s Entreworld.org at http://www.entreworld.org/Channel/SYB.cfm. If you haven’t written these plans, then I’d suggest taking time to start them now. They will help ensure business success.

Lure of FREE Internet – I should get Information & Tools for FREE?

With more people flocking to the internet to start a new business, many try accomplishing their self-employment dreams with little financial resources. The internet has become a place where people rely on finding information freely and for no financial investment. In the beginning, it may have started out that way, and free information was abundant, but as more businesses flocked to the net, finding free information is becoming increasingly difficult. Most people depend on search engines to find information, but the businesses learned to exploit search engine vulnerabilities to gain visitors and most times you will only find paid solutions for your information needs. Somewhere, the information IS available freely, but it is going to take time to find it, and sometimes it takes a LARGE amount of time to find it. The question becomes how quickly you want to start your business, and how much time you can spend searching for information? If you want to start quickly, then you need to realize the need to make some financial investments in your information needs. Just be sure to research the company before buying their information. It ensures their information is timely and useful. If paid information is not an option, be prepared to spend some time researching the information. There are various government resources for information searches. A good place to start is FedStats located at http://www.fedstats.gov/ . They have a toolkit including DataFerrett. DataFerrett is a government database-search tool to find different market and demographical information compiled from census information and other government agencies.

Marketing – I Need to Know ALL About it Before I Begin.

Another problem stems from ineffective marketing efforts. People spend time looking for marketing materials and ways to self educate about it while failing to take action doing something to try improving their exposure. If I can impart one marketing secret to you, that secret is this: marketing is somewhat a trial and error process. It involves making modifications and doing testing to gauge what is most effective for your market and products or services. Keep in mind marketing works differently for different people too. But in the end, marketing is building trust, integrity, and reputation with potential customers and getting products or services out into the consumer’s mind. Tracking efforts is important. Without tracking, you will never know what works and what doesn’t work. Be sure to keep marketing effort lists. Include the marketing medium, company, an ad copy, dates and times it ran, and add a tracking code to each one to track the sales made from them. Lets say you run an ad in your local newspaper to gain increased sales. When running the ad, include promotional code or an extension at the end of a phone number to know where the sales are coming from. When someone calls or mails an order, make sure you collect the information from the promotional code, or ask them the phone extension they are calling. Add up the data and it tells you exactly what ads are paying off and which ads might need reworked. To determine what is working and what isn’t, take the cost of the ad divided by the number of sales and see which one is lower. Lower cost per sale is more effective and better. Depending on your marketing budget, place numerous different ads at once and test your ads quicker to see what brings the best returns for your marketing efforts. Don’t sit there and do nothing while trying to learn everything you can about ad creation and marketing techniques. Write up a few ads and start testing them. The sooner you begin testing the sooner you learn what will work for your market. Without sales, you have no business. Without effective marketing, you have no sales, and therefore will have no business. Don’t let indecision sink your dreams.

From Brick & Mortar to Online Business Ventures – Doing it Successfully.

The next problem seems to be businesses making the jump to the online arena. Once again, small mom and pop type shops starting on the net with limited budgets take to free hosting services to get a web site online while attempting to increase market share. When done appropriately, this idea can help boost sales, but done incorrectly, it only helps eat away at profit margins and helps ensure failure. When doing business on the internet, nothing beats having your own custom domain. You won’t get that from most free hosting services, and worse, many free hosting services place ads throughout your pages to help recoup costs of free services they provide you. In the business expenses grand scheme, domain name registration is inexpensive. Many hosting services are also inexpensive. For as little as $10.00 and $20.00 per month, you can have a registered domain, and paid hosting, which allows more flexibility than free hosting services. When I speak of more flexibility, I talk about ability to run automated scripts and possibly sell ad space to other businesses. That’s a critical requirement for membership sites and any business owner wanting automation scripts to make business marketing easier.

Customer Composition & Continuing Education Process – Keeping Educated on Market & Consumer Trends.

Another area where most businesses fail is failure to continue learning about potential customers. Even if you develop good marketing materials, do all the planning, and continue to increase visitor volume, failure to track their demographics and trends can eventually lead to missed trends changing visitor make up, and these trends could make offerings outdated. If that happens, you will watch your sales begin to drop off and any affiliate programs you promote could start to suffer. Keep an eye on web site logs and track visitor clicks, or even better; find ways of gathering visitor data through polls and questionnaires on your web site. Ask them direct questions and watch the feedback. This information is invaluable when tailoring your ads or deciding what affiliate program products and services to promote. Find some free offers on the internet and offer links to them to any visitors taking time filling out your polls or questionnaires. Just ensure the freebies are valuable to your visitors and you will increase chances of gaining direct response information from them. Take for example a scenario where you want to offer another product or service, but that product or service will take some extensive time to implement and produce. By placing polls about the product or service features and asking visitors direct questions about their need or lack of need for it, it could help you avoid wasting time and resources on products or services that aren’t going to sell. That’s just one example of how powerful information is when it comes to your business success. Use common sense, ask questions, and keep your ears and mind open. Through direct response polls and questionnaires, you will ensure future business success.

The Know it all Complex – Refusing to Accept Change.

Another time where businesses fail are when owners think they know everything there is to know about it. Let me tell you something, time is never ending and always changing. Time marches on, and those choosing not to march with it get left behind. That is what happens when you think you know it all. Time marches on leaving your business behind, and it fails. No matter if you’re in business for 25 years or are just starting out, there is ALWAYS something to learn from it. Whether it’s learning your visitors’ demographics better, learning which ads draw more attention, or learning new and creative ways to market your business, no matter how much you THINK you know, there is ALWAYS more to learn. Not only does time march on, but people change, and so does the consumer market. Failure to track these changes through online information gathering processes or paid services will surely cause your business to falter and possibly fail. Running a business is a constant learning process. Lean to continue your adult education and you help ensure your future business stability and success.

Biting off More than you can Handle – Knowing When to say When.

The last reason I will mention in this article is business owners who try doing too much. You can’t be everything to everybody. You have to pick an area that maximizes your talents and downplays your weaknesses. Today, more commonly referred to as niche marketing, is where you learn to fine-tune your marketing target to increase business success and sales. Running a business requires us to wear many hats. There’s the accounting that needs to be done, marketing that always needs improvement and submission to effective advertising mediums, customer service, web site design and promotion, writing content, and the list goes on forever. One-man operations require an almost exhausting amount of time and commitment to get work done that needs done. If you don’t quickly learn your strengths and weaknesses, you soon become so overwhelmed when adding more tasks that you could suffer from shut down. Shutting down won’t accomplish anything, and your business could very easily fail. Be careful of this, as burnout is quite prevalent amongst business owners. By knowing your strengths and carefully evaluating projects before you implement them, you will know when you can still do it yourself, or if you need to think about hiring some help.

There’s a lot of money to be made in self-employment, but only by taking steps to ensure your business’ future. Educate yourself as much as possible while not being stuck on knowing every detail before you act. It’s better to do something than sit and do nothing while your business begins to falter and fail. But by taking the proper precautions, you could save yourself from falter and possible failures before they happen. The best bet to running a successful business is doing the research, write the plans, create a credible list of information resources for future questions, and track your visitor demographics identifying your customers in as much detail as possible. Through planning for possible problems, you have the answers to fix the problems as they come up while avoiding potential business failure. Remember, failing to plan means planning to fail. Put in the time and research ensuring you know as much as you can about your business and its operations. Know how much it costs to generate a sale and know whom those sales will come from. Find out how much it takes to run a business in your market and the kind of profit you can enjoy. Knowing all this information will help ensure you have proper mishap prevention plans in place ensuring your business future success. Until next article, happy business operations and my wishes for your greater business success and growth in 2005.

James R. Sanders is the owner of Sanders Consultation Group Plus. He has been a webmaster and web site designer since 1997, and involved in self-employment ventures since 1992. He is presently a contributing author of NewbieHangout, and has been published through WebProNews. His goal is to provide practical information based upon his years of experience to help webmasters, web site designers, and self-employed people achieve their goals in today’s competitive global market. You can email him at webmaster@sanders-consultation-group-plus.com.

Managing an IT project is very difficult; especially the first time you try it. The project manager’s days and nights are filled with stress, worry, dreams, aspirations and fear. Some first timers are overwhelmed by their newfound power while some are weighed down by the responsibility. But for most, the overriding concern is to avoid both personal and project failure.

This fear is often instilled and/or reinforced by the project manager’s supervisor. The new assignment is often initiated with comments like, “Don’t screw this up.” “This is your big chance to shine.” Or, “don’t make me look bad and regret giving you this opportunity.” Trust me, those sorts of comments really help first timers succeed.

For the project manager, this sort of fear is not only counterproductive, but also misplaced. In fact, I think that every first time project manager desperately needs to fail. That’s right. I’m not just saying that it’s ok to fail; I’m saying that if they don’t fail, they may never learn to be effective project managers. In fact, complete success may set their management careers back by years.

As a manager, consultant, trainer and coach, I’ve had the opportunity to work with hundreds of first time project managers, and I’ve become convinced that one of the greatest impediments to their success is their need to succeed. If against all odds they do manage to succeed, they fall prey to the twin career killers, arrogance and self-confidence, depriving them of the opportunity to grow and learn.

Project management is such a complex discipline that it is completely impossible for a first timer to have mastered all the subtleties of task, people and risk management. In fact, it’s impossible for anyone, no matter how experienced to have mastered it all. The successful first timer is invariably lulled into a false sense of security that they know much more than they really do. They become convinced that they are now fully-fledged managers and can take on anything.

What’s more dangerous is that they get brain freeze. They stop learning. Why learn when you have mastered a topic?

It can take two or three failed projects to undo the career damage inflicted by early success, before a new project manager reclaims the humility and open-mindedness that they started with. Unfortunately, by that time, their careers have probably absorbed major damage. It is one thing to be seen as making a few mistakes as a first timer. It’s another to have demonstrated a pattern of failure. Both the manager’s image and self-image have been irretrievably damaged.

So what does the first timer need?

• A few big mistakes
• Permission to make those mistakes
• Coaching and introspection to learn from them

If you are a first time project manager, be prepared for some problems along the way. Relax and enjoy the ride. No one will lose respect for you.

If you are the manager of a first timer, give them permission to make mistakes. When they do, make sure that they learn from them and don’t make the same ones again. Coach them about the sources of problems and the meaning of their failures. It’s normal for them to have difficulties, but make sure that you view them as training investments and not as screw-ups. Your job is to ensure that you get the maximum return on investment for the training that mistakes offer.

Becoming a project manager is hard work, but a little failure will help make the transition from individual producer to manager more successful.

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Paul Glen is an IT management consultant and the author of the award-
winning book “Leading Geeks: How to Manage and Lead People Who Deliver
Technology” (Jossey-Bass Pfeiffer,2003). He regularly speaks for
corporations and national associations across North America. For more
information go to: http://www.paulglen.com. He can be reached at
info@paulglen.com.

The near gibberish it outputs looks completely unhelpful and you haven’t a clue where to start. Well, this article hopes to give you some clues.

A cover your butt procedure I always follow is to link a kernel BEFORE you change anything. If it fails, you know it was already broken, and didn’t break because of something you did. If you are feeling really paranoid, answer “N” to the “Do you want this kernel to boot by default” message, and then do:

-==-

and see if the two files are the same- they certainly should be if you haven’t changed anything yet. If they aren’t, I suggest:

-==-

We’re going to start with an actual case. A local consultant called me because he had tried to increase a kernel variable, but the link failed. The increase was critical to the proper functioning of the system, and he couldn’t fix it.

As it turns out, I could have identified the problem in seconds. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that at the time (live and learn), but even if I had thought of that method, I would have dismissed it because I was sure the problem was elsewhere. I’ll tell you what I should have done that would have instantly told me what was wrong, but I’ll hold off explaining why until later. Here’s what would have given me the answer I needed:

-==-

Think about that as you read along.

This article doesn’t go into the whole subject of drivers and the link directories very deeply. You might want to read Understanding Device Drivers if you want to understand more.

The first thing I did was this:

-==-

After the script finished belching out its errors, I used CTRL-D to exit “script”, and went to look at /tmp/linkerr. Here it is:

-==-

Pretty awful mess, isn’t it? I was convinced that a driver file in /etc/con/pack.d must be missing or horribly corrupted. Actually, though, it couldn’t have been a missing driver file- the link_unix would have reported that in plain English. A really badly corrupted driver file would have also barfed differently, though the error message wouldn’t be as obvious (I’ll show examples of that later).Could it be that a good driver had been copied incorrectly- for example somehow copying /etc/conf/pack.d/clone/Driver.o to /etc/conf/pack.d/kbd ? No, because that would give us multiply defined symbols, and there’s no mention of that in the output.

How about a Driver.o from a different release, or from a backup prior to the application of patches? Yes, that could cause these kind of errors, and that was my first thought. Yet, I know the local consultant pretty well, and that doesn’t sound like something he would have done, even accidentally, so I gave up that and decided that some needed driver was just not being linked into the kernel. Now to find it.

I picked a symbol from the list of errors and went looking for it like this:

-==-

Let me say right away: that’s NOT the best way to look for symbols in a .o file, but I got lucky and “str” popped up as a match. I checked /etc/conf/sdevice.d/str, and it was marked N:

-==-

Now that’s pretty odd: it shouldn’t have been: “str” is the Streams driver and is necessary for just about everything on the network. I changed it to “Y” and tried the link again:

-==-

That’s better; a lot less errors, but still no success. When you are linking a kernel, even one error is one too many. So I tried my script again, but with clnopen this time:

-==-

This didn’t work, though. It’s not that “clnopen” isn’t somewhere in one of those Driver.o files, it’s that “strings” isn’t good enough to find it. However, I had other weapons: I was dialed in to the customer, but was working from my own machine which happens to be the same OS release. On my machine, I have the Development System installed, and the Development System has “nm”. So on my system I did this:

-==-

Bingo! The “clone” driver has “clnopen”, and sure enough, it too was turned off in /etc/conf/sdevice.d (nobody knows how or why this happened, by the way). I turned it back on, and now the kernel linked successfully.

If I had not had “nm”, I could have done this:

-==-

As I said at the outset, if I had done a diff on the two sdevice files, this would have shown me:

-==-

The reason that works is that link_unix apparently doesn’t replace sdevice until the link is successful (sdevice is built from the individiual files in /etc/conf/sdevice.d). That’s very helpful for this kind of error, because it immediately shows you what has changed since the last successful link.

Other Linking Errors

Of course, there are other things that can go wrong. One I see now and then is where a new device has been partially installed or partially removed, and the kernel fails to link because enough of it is still there to confuse it. In a case like this, you want to look in /etc/conf/cf.d/mdevice, and the offending device will probably be at the end of it. If you are not really sure, you can just comment out the line you think is the problem by putting a “#” at the beginning of the line; if the kernel then relinks, that was it. For example, here’s the end of my mdevice; the E3H was the last thing I added to this machine:

-==-

Corruption

What about a corrupted driver? The errors you get will depend upon the nature of the corruption, but let’s try some experiments (if you aren’t comfortable and sure of yourself, don’t try this on a working machine):

-==-

When I did this, I got a message saying that the file “Wed” (it happened to be Wednesday) couldn’t be opened for input. Let’s try something else:

-==-

This time I got a message complaining that it couldn’t open “file ELF”. That would be a very definite sign of corruption: Driver files would always be “COFF”.

To put everything back as it was:

-==-

I hope this gives you a little more confidence should you ever run into a broken kernel relink. Certainly other errors are possible, but these are the most common I’ve seen.

Originally appeared at http://www.aplawrence.com(http://www.aplawrence.com/Unixart/linkfail.html)

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Copyright and Reprint Info

A.P. Lawrence provides SCO Unix and Linux consulting services http://www.pcunix.com

On this morning, I decided to take a closer look at one email in particular. That led me to also lend a critical eye to some other ads as well. So below, I’ll give you my evaluation of a few of the many email ads I’ve received… which ones got my attention, which ones I just rolled my eyes at… and why.

Attention Getter

Here’s one that is well targeted, indeed! The headline read: “Inquiry About Becoming An Affiliate.” That got my attention because my copywriting course does have an affiliate program. I’m always interested in adding new affiliates to the group. So I read on.

Part of the message is below:

———————–

Good morning. I would like to inquire about possibly working with you and your company on an affiliate basis.

My company maintains a fresh, 100%, opt-in email database exceeding 15,000,000 qualified consumers. These consumers have specifically requested to receive purchase information regarding your product(s) or service(s).

If you’re interested, I would be glad to speak with you about a cost-per-action (CPA) email campaign that WILL make additional sales and generate alternative revenue.

———————-

While the generic line about my product(s) or service(s) let me know immediately that this was a “canned” ad, it still gave me something to think about. Did I respond? Yes! Why? If I could get the copywriting course in front of over 15,000,000, and pay the same affiliate commission I was paying anyway, what would I have to lose?

Rolling My Eyes

However, among the pile of emails were some real duds. I must get 10 of these ridiculous emails a week. You’ve no doubt seen them, too. They say something like “I joined this program a few months ago and promptly forgot about it.” Oh please!

Why did I roll my eyes at this one? While it started off good, it wasn’t punchy enough to get me to respond right away. That’s no major crime. It often takes repeated exposure of the same message to get a good response. But… when you get the exact same message from several different people 3 or 4 times a day – you find out quickly that this is an overused ad, not a personal recommendation.

Then there are the ads that are just extremely targeted . A few headline examples are:

Karon, FREE 30-Day Sample of HGH – One problem with this is that I don’t need Human Growth Hormone. The other problem is that clicking the email launches one of those automatic scripts that take you directly to the site. Something I personally can’t stand! I also get at least 3 of these annoying things a day. With me, chances are that if the ad pops up a screen when I click it, I delete the thing before the screen even finishing loading.

Health Discovery! No Diet! No Exercise! – All the exclamation points immediately let me know that this is a hard sell scam. Not to mention, I have trouble keeping weight ON… not off. This one was deleted without reading any further due to simple irrelevance.

Approved and Ready! – The copy of this ad simply stated: “Your home refinance loan is approved! To get your approved amount, go here.” Hmmm… if memory serves me correctly, I never applied for a home loan. Click!

As you can see, all of my first impressions were based on the subject line. Other factors in the ad copy contributed to my final decision about whether to look into the offer. The subject line, however, was the single playing card as to whether I would read ANY of the copy.

Final notes: put the majority of your time into developing your subject line. Then test, test, test to get the best results. Also, make very, VERY sure your mailing list is targeted. With all the options today for segmenting lists, you have the luxury to email your ads to a group much more specific than “women over 30.” The more targeted you can get, the better your response will be.

Copy not getting results? Learn to write SEO copy that impresses
the engines and your visitors at
http://www.copywritingcourse.com. Be sure to also check out
Karon’s latest e-report “How To Increase Keyword Saturation
(Without Destroying the Flow of Your Copy)” at
http://www.copywritingcourse.com/keyword.

1) Walt formed his first animation company in Kansas City in 1921. He made a deal with a distribution company in New York, in which he would ship them his cartoons and get paid six months down the road. Flushed with success, he began to experiment with new storytelling techniques, his costs went up and then the distributor went bankrupt. He was forced to dissolve his company and at one point could not pay his rent and was surviving by eating dog food.

2) Walt created a mildly successful cartoon character in 1926 called Oswald the Rabbit. When he tried to negotiate with his distributor, Universal Studios, for better rates for each cartoon, when he was informed that Universal had obtained ownership of the Oswald character and they had hired Disney’s artists out from under him.

3) When Walt tried to get MGM studios to distribute Mickey Mouse in 1927 he was told that the idea would never work– a giant mouse on the screen would terrify women.

4) The Three Little Pigs was rejected by distributors in 1933 because it only had four characters, it was felt at that time that cartoons should have as many figures on the screen as possible. It later became very successful and played at one theater so long that the poster outside featured the pigs with long white beards.

5) Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was sneak previewed to College Students in 1937 who left halfway during the film causing Disney great despair. It turned out the students had to leave early because of dorm curfew.

6) Pinocchio in 1940 became extra expensive because Walt shut down the production to make the puppet more sympathetic than the lying juvenile delinquent as presented in the original Carlo Collodi story. He also resurrected a minor character, an unnamed cricket who tried to tell Pinocchio the difference between right and wrong until the puppet killed him with the mallet. Excited by the development of Jiminy Cricket plus the revamped, misguided rather than rotten Pinocchio, Walt poured extra money into the film’s special effects and it ended up losing a million dollars in it’s first release.

7) For the premiere of Pinocchio Walt hired 11 midgets, dressed them up like the little puppet and put them on top of Radio City Music Hall in New York with a full day’s supply of food and wine. The idea was they would wave hello to the little children entering into theater. By the middle of the hot afternoon, there were 11 drunken naked midgets running around the top of the marquee, screaming obscenities at the crowd below. The most embarrassed people were the police who had to climb up ladders and take the little fellows off in pillowcases.

Walt never lived to see Fantasia become a success. 1940 audiences were put off by its lack of a story. Also the final scene, The Night On Bald Mountain sequence with the devil damning the souls of the dead, was considered unfit for children.

9) In 1942, Walt was in attendance for the premiere of Bambi. In the dramatic scene where Bambi’s mother died, Bambi was shown wandering through the meadow shouting,” Mother! Where are you, Mother?” A teenage girl seated in the balcony shouted out, ” Here I am Bambi!” The audience broke into laughter except for the red-faced Walt who concluded correctly that war-time was not the best time to release a film about the love-life of a deer.

10) The Sentimental Pollyanna in 1960 made Walt cry at the studio screening but failed at the box office. Walt concluded that the title was off-putting for young boys.

Walt was human, suffering through many fits of anger and depression through his countless trials. Yet he learned from each setback, and continued to take even bigger risks. Combined with the wisdom that experiencing failure provides, he was ultimately led to fabulous financial rewards.

Stephen Schochet is the author and narrator of two highly acclaimed audiobooks “Fascinating Walt Disney” and “Tales Of Hollywood.” To hear RealAudio samples of these entertaining and inspiring productions please visit http://www.hollywoodstories.com.