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By Les Scammell, December 7, 2009 4:11 pm

The way things are going, Tiger Woods could take on cult hero status, not for golf this time, although it will be for scoring birdies. The US pay-for-scandal magazines are still shaking the trees to see how many more birdies they can get to fall out of the trees.

I mean, p-l-ease – haven’t we heard enough. Men around the world are getting green eyes, women will start to look at him and wonder, and the journalists are going to have a field day. If Tiger Woods wants to go around the world landing birdies and hitting holes in one – let him. What business is it of ours.

And everyone thought that golf was a boring sport. Mind you, those big dollars coming in every time he hits a ball certainly helps.

We are obviously a little short on sport stories – particular juicy sporting stories at present. Andre Agassi has had his run. The Williams sisters have had their spat for the year. There are no Olympics so chasing drug cheats is out. Sorry Tiger – you’re it. The journo’s have hit the bottom of the basket and don’t have anyone else to pick on.

photo credit: Keith Allison

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By Les Scammell, November 4, 2009 10:27 am

Over the last couple of days I have been looking at ways to improve my website. I know posting more often helps – and I am working to a routine on that front. Other areas included a new theme, removing a lot of the unnecessary clutter on the sidebar and perhaps creating a monthly newsletter.

The one are I have absolutely no experience with and feel somewhat helpless at times is in building a mailing list. Everywhere I look I see the words “the money is in the list”. Well hang the money, I just want a loyal group of readers who would be happy to receive a newsletter each month. Building the list is the only thing that has stopped me to date and being such a novice, the last thing I want is see my money going down a big hole with no return.

To cut a long story short – I went searching for list building advice and everything led back to Aweber. That’s fine, I checked out their site and everything ‘sounds’ good. The problem is, it is a monthly subscription. Now this blog doesn’t make $1 month so spending $19 (I know it’s not a lot, it’s just the principle) is not an investment – it’s an expense that needs to be considered.

So – now to the affiliate marketing angle. As a buyer, not seller, I often wonder what price a product would sell for if it didn’t rely on affiliate marketing. For Aweber, they pay 30% or a little over $5 per sign-up. Being a cheap-skate, I would rather pay the $14 each month instead of the $19. Small dollars I know. However I was looking at a different program over the weekend that cost $70 per month. It had a 50% affiliate payout.

To my mind, that means I am paying an extra $35 each month over the true worth of the program (if the owner is happy to accept $35 each month then that is its true worth). Like I said, it all adds up. suddenly you’re paying $2oo per month when it could be as low as $100 if there were no affiliates.

It’s just my little rant for the week. I understand that sellers need affiliates to spread the message and that affiliates need the income to survive. Now here is a question for everyone involved in affiliate marketing.

Can I register as an affiliate marketer – clear my cookies, then buy through my own link?  As least then I get the affiliate selling fee (effectively a discount).  Your suggestions would help?

photo credit: ChrisLB

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By Les Scammell, October 26, 2009 10:42 am

I have to wonder how green the Greens are when it comes to politics. And I don’t mean green as in novice – I mean green as in environmental. We have a situation now in Australia where the Government wants to go down a particular path in an effort to reduce green house gases with the big focus world wide on carbon reduction.

Rightly or wrongly, the Federal government wants to introduce a system of carbon credits and carbon trading. The long term aim is reduce the amount of carbon produced.

The opposition groups in the Australian upper house have rejected the legislation and are now proposing changes – basically rewriting the legislation before it comes back into parliament.

The Greens are the political group that have me befuddled the most. We have had ten years of climate denial in Australia. The former Howard government basically denies there was a climate problem. Even I have doubts so I can understand their position somewhat.

We have gone from a position of denial to a position of nothing is better than making a start. At least, that seems to be the view of the Greens. Now my thinking would oppose that. Making a start would get people thinking, talking and acting to make some changes in their lives.

I can understand the Greens want more controls put in place. However, as I stated, a start is a start. Instead, the people of Australia along with businesses both small and large are all being left in limbo not knowing when change will happen, what that change will be, and how much that change will cost us in terms of jobs and our weekly expenses.

What is the biggest fear faced by humans – the fear of change. I don’t agree fully with the legislation either but I do know one thing – once we make a start we can then think about any fine tuning that needs to be done. The Greens? They seem to be more about political grandstanding than actually doing anything constructive about the environment.

Comments (3)

By Les Scammell, September 6, 2009 3:43 pm

That may be a strange statement given the banner that will fly on this page throughout September. In all honesty – I don’t particularly care about the politics of Iran, or any other country really, even though I am a political person.

I have a serious distrust of all politicians as I feel they are not in office because they care about us, the general population. They are there to push their own agendas and often, we, the general public, suffer for that agenda.

Reports from Iran suggest the election was rigged. Perhaps it was, perhaps it wasn’t but in a way, tell me any election that isn’t rigged. Here in Australia we have compulsory voting. I didn’t like any of the candidates standing at the last election, yet I had to vote for one of them. Is that not some form of electoral rigging?

One of the arguments used to prove the Iranian election was rigged was that government opponents even lost in their home towns. Referring again to Australian politics, former Prime Minister John Howard became Australia’s only Prime Minister to lose his seat in office at an election. It does happen.

So why this post and why the banner? It matters not the politics nor the country. Where I will stand up and have a say is when free speech is denied. China and Burma have been classic cases of restrictions in free speech particularly when it comes to the blogosphere. Free speech is the life blood of blogging and I will always stand up for our freedom. I was struck by two paragraphs of a post by Andrew Sullivan on the Daily Dish:

“The forces of democracy have marshalled in Iran for accountability, transparency and fairness. Wherever they marshall, we should stand with them, especially in the blogosphere, where our Iranian brothers and sisters built the foundation for this moment.”

Putting aside the philosophy of democracy. The point that stands out for me is the use of the blogosphere to form a movement because this leads into a second paragraph later in the post:

“Ever since I penned The Medium Is the Middleman: For a Revolution Against Media, I’ve been waiting for this moment, which I predicted, twelve years ago, would come: a great day when the corporate media got pushed out of the way by authentic media from below. What is occurring worldwide, with the Iranian crisis as catalyst, is the emergence of the very kind of media from below that the human race – particularly the working class and the poor – so desperately needs.”

The media that everyone has access to is blogging. Whether you’re a multi-millionaire or the poorest person around, if you can access a computer and the internet, even in a public library, you can voice your views. In fact you can do it almost completely anonymously. Of course I don’t support blogging that is anyway destructive on a person level or designed to malign innocent individuals, it can be an important weapon against injustice.

Add to the blogosphere the power of Twitter and other social media and you have the potential for a new political force around the world – at least – a huge voice.

I don’t care about the politics in Iran, or China, or anywhere else. I do care about the rights of individuals to have the freedom to voice their opinions – DO YOU?