Web Marketing Strategy Update

Recently, I finally got around to looking at the scripts available for the Firefox plugin, Greasemonkey. I was not expecting what I found.

From the main site:

Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension which lets you to add bits of DHTML (”user scripts”) to any web page to change its behavior. In much the same way that user CSS lets you take control of a web page’s style, user scripts let you easily control any aspect of a web page’s design or interaction.

For example, you could:

• Make sure that all URLs displayed in the browser are clickable links
• Improve the usability of a site you frequent
• Route around common and annoying website bugs
• Use the Coral content network selectively.

Most of the scripts are fairly innocuous and are designed to help users get more out of various websites.

But MANY are designed soley to strip ads from pages, remove redirects and even change affiliate links.

Here are some examples:

Bloglines Moreover Ad Remover
Description: Get rid of ads in moreover feeds on bloglines
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Ad Blocker
Description: Block advertisements
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

This excerpt of the script shows what ads are blocked:

createOptionInput(appendTo, “Block items from known ad servers”, “blockAdHosts”, true);
createOptionInput(appendTo, “Block items with common banner sizes”, “blockBannerSizes”, true);

// Ad elements:
// – Elements commonly used for ads
// – Blocked ad sources
var AdElements =
{
adTagNames:
[
"a",
"img",
"iframe",
// "script",
"embed",
"object"
],

blockedSrcs: new RegExp(
[
// Paths
"//ads\.",
"/ad/",
"/adclick", // "/adclick/" and "/adclick.php" both seen in the wild
"/ads/",
"/advertisers/",
// "/banners/",
"/klipmart/",
"/sponsors/",

// Filenames
"ad_banner",

// Hosts
"2mdn\.net",
"clk\.about\.com",
"z\.about\.com/0/ip/",
"adbrite\.com",
"addynamix\.com",
"adknowledge\.com",
"adlegend\.com",
"adlog\.com\.com",
"adserver\.com",
"adsonar\.com",
"advertising\.com",
"atdmt\.com",
"atwola\.com",
"blogads\.com",
"casalemedia\.com",
"centrport\.net",
"creatives\.as4x\.tmcs\.net", // CitySearch
"cl\.cnn\.com/ctxtlink", // CNN contextual links
"directorym\.com",
"doubleclick\.net",
"emarketmakers\.com",
"falkag\.net",
"fastclick\.net",
"feedstermedia\.com",
"mads\.gamespot\.com",
"gms1\.net",
"googlesyndication\.com",
"hitbox\.com",
"industrybrains\.com",
"insightexpress\.com",
"intellitxt\.com",
"kanoodle\.com",
"klipmart\.com",
"kliptracker\.com",
"linkshare\.com",
"click\.linksynergy\.com",
"maxserving\.com",
"msads\.net",
"rad\.msn\.com",
"pointroll\.com",
"primaryads\.com",
"qksrv\.net",
"rightmedia\.com",
"adsremote\.scripps\.com",
"serving-sys\.com",
"spylog\.com",
"trafficmp\.com",
"tribalfusion\.com",
"vpptechnologies\.com", // Intellitxt
// "public\.wsj\.com/marketing/",
"yieldmanager\.com", // Rightmedia
"ystweb\.com",
"zedo\.com"
].join(”|”)),

blockedIds:
[
"adbrite",
"adstrip", // kuro5hin.org's blogads
"cnnTravelot", // cnn.com
"overtureIframe", // wsj.com
"spons-links" // forbes.com
],

var Banners =
{
knownSizes:
[
new Dimension(728, 90), // Leaderboard
new Dimension(468, 60), // Full banner
new Dimension(392, 72), // Full banner w/ nav bar
new Dimension(234, 60), // Half banner

new Dimension(120, 240), // Vertical banner
new Dimension(240, 400), // Vertical rectangle
new Dimension(180, 150), // Rectangle
new Dimension(300, 250), // Medium rectangle
new Dimension(336, 280), // Large rectangle

new Dimension(300, 600), // Half-page ad
new Dimension(160, 600), // Wide skyscraper
new Dimension(120, 600), // Skyscraper

new Dimension(250, 250), // Square pop-up
new Dimension(125, 125), // Square button
// new Dimension(120, 90), // Button 1
// new Dimension(120, 60), // Button 2
new Dimension(88, 31) // Micro button

So, if your site has ads that fit ANY of the above criteria, a Firefox user with this script installed won’t see any of them. On top of that, the script is of course easily modified to add addtional hosts or ad dimensions, etc.

Here’s some more Firefox extensions designed to deceive:

AmazonAffiliate
Description: Exchanges Amazon affiliate ID’s with your own (claim the Amazon links on websites.)

Dont Require Email
Description: Pre-fill a fake email address on WordPress / MT / TypePad comment forms
Written By: Adam Vandenberg

Bloglines FeedBurner Ads Remover
Description:
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Economist Links
Description: Rewrites Economist links to ask for the printer (ad-free) page
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Flyertalk Adremove
Description: Removes Sponsored Links ads in threads on Flyertalk
Written By: Guttorm Aase

FoxNews Ad Remover
Description: Removes the top banner, middle banner and middle right box ads.
Written By: Vlajbert

FoxNews Friendly Video
Description: Removes the video ads.
Written By: Vlajbert

Gizmodo Hide Ads
Description: Hides ads on Gizmodo.com Pages
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Good Will Press
Description: v0.2 – Replaces popup window JavaScript with ordinary links and provides easy access to swf files for direct downloading.
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Google Ad Remover
Description: Removes ads from Google search result pages
Written By: Max Kueng

Hide Gmail Ads
Description: (2005-04-03) Hides Gmail content-sensitive ads.
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Hide Google AdSense Ads
Description: (2005-03-30) Hides Google AdSense Ads iframes anywhere.
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

IMDb Image Deblocker
Description: removes transparent gif that blocks saving some IMDb images
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

IntelliTxt Disabler
Description: Disable Vibrant Media IntelliTxt automatic text links, like on AnandTech.com. Update: 2005-08-03
Written By: Steven Barnett

Iskon AdRemover
Description: Remove the ads from Iskon pages
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Launch Fox
Description: Open all Yahoo Launch videos in WMP, commercial free
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

music.download.com ad remover
Description: Removes ads at the top of music.download.com
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

New York Times single page format
Description: Rewrites New York Times links to ask for single page format; derived from neugierig.org version
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

New York Times Convert Popups
Description: Rewrites New York Times links to convert javascript popups to regular links; derived from neugierig.org version
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

NYPost Ad Remover
Description: Removes the story inline ad.
Written By: Vlajbert

OnlyLady News Ad Remover
Description: Removes the ads in the pages of onlylady.com
Written By: Roger

Penny Arcade strip page ad remover
Penny Arcade sticks that ad above each strip, right? And you have to scroll down a bit to see the strip unless you have a huge screen. I hate having to scroll when going through comic archives. This kills that ad.
Written By: Jay Kominek

PopCap Ad Remover
Description: Removes video ads just before game start.
Written By: Vlajbert

pornCrapFilter
Filter out everything on TGP pages, showing just the images that are linked to other images (i.e., the thumbnail images). Removes everything else on the document. Filter porn sites to only list the interesting stuff (images!)
Written By: ydant

Pure Google
Description: Cleans Google’s interface of extraneous links and text.
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Prefetch Google Ads
Description: Prefetches Google Ad Links
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Idea is to generate clicks on all the ads. This robs advertisers, and risks the webmaster being banned by Google AdSense, which is prresumably the point.

RaagaAdSkipper
Audio ads gets inserted whenever songs are played from Raaga.com. This script skips Raaga audio ads.
Written By: Saravana Kumar

Remove CNN ad column
Description: Remove the “ad column” from the right hand side of cnn.com
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Remove ads from TitanTv
Description: Remove ads and “featured channels” from Titan TV’s grid
Written By: David Twist

Remove ads from ARS News
Description: Remove the “ad columns” from the ARS News Articles
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Remove IMDB ad column
Description: Remove the “ad column” from the right hand side of imdb.com
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Removes link adverts
Description: Removes the advert pages getting in the way of uComics strips
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Salon Premium Pass
Description: Allows you to visit Salon without having to view the prem-pass ad.
Written By: Vlajbert

Salon Ad Remover
Description: Removed inline story ads from Salon.
Written By: Vlajbert

Skip Top Frame Ads
Description: Skip top frame ads and go directly to the second frame
Written By: LouCypher

Sina News Ad Remover
Description: Removes the box ads in the news page and cleans up the start page of news.sina.com.cn.
Written By: Roger

Something Awful Forums – AdStripper
Description: Gets rid of the registration ad for the Something Awful Forums
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Sohu News Ad Remover
Description: Removes the box ads in the news page and cleans up the start page of news.sohu.com
Written By: Roger

SMH RemoveAds
This script removes advertisements and other clutter from the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age web pages. They are much nicer pages to view with less content on the screen detracting from the articles.
Written By: Alexander Else

StraitsTimes Ads & Width
Description: Adjust width & remove Ads
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Stright Click (sic)
Description: Click straight through links that just redirect somewhere else (looks for another URL embedded in the link).
Written By: arantius

Stream MP3
Description: Add a link to stream MP3s
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

TimesPagingRemover
Times Group websites (timesofindia.indiatimes.com, economictimes.indiatimes.com) present a story in multiple pages and it is really annoying to click several times to read a single story. TimesPagingRemover script gets the printer friendly page of the article and shows the full article in a single page.
Written By: Saravana Kumar

Unblock Right-Click at Wretch
Description: Wretch blocks three attributes of HTML elements: onDragStart, oncontextmenu and onSelectStart. This script unblocks the three events.

WashingtonPost Auto-Login
Description: If you end up at the WashingtonPost.com login/register page this script will automagically fill in and post the register form for you.

*At first I thought this filled in your own details, but a look at the code shows this is not the case:

setValue( ‘EmailAddr’, t + ‘@mailinator.com’);
setValue( ‘Password’, ‘abc.123′);
setValue( ‘PasswordConfirm’, ‘abc.123′);
setValue( ‘Zip1′, ‘12345′);
setRadio( ‘Gender’, 0);
setValue( ‘DobYear’, ‘1965′);
setOption( ‘JOB_TITLE’, ‘BOSS’);
setOption( ‘PRIM_RESP’, ‘IT’);
setOption( ‘INDUSTRY’, ‘INTERNET’);
setOption( ‘COMP_SIZE’, ‘SIZE_1′);

Written By: Vlajbert

Washington Post RSS Query String Remover
Description: removes query string from pages loaded from Washington Post RSS
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

WSJ Ad Remover
Description: Removes selected ads from WSJ.
Written By: Vlajbert

Yahoo! Mail Ad Remover
Description: Removes ads from the free version of Yahoo! Mail
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Yahoo Groups Sponsored Links Remover
Description: Removes Yahoo Sponsored Links from Yahoo Groups
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Yahoo Ad Removal
Description: Gets rid of all ads on Yahoo (the ones that show up after using AdBlock to get rid of the graphical ads)
Written By: DesertFox

Yahoo Group Interstitial Skipper
Description: When a Yahoo Groups message inserts an interstitial, automatically move on to the next page.
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

_blank Must Die
Replaces annoying _blank targets in hyperlinks with a _self target. It replaces target attributes containing _blank as well as values like blank, _new, new, _neu and neu.

All the scripts above are freely available for plug-and-play installation by every Firefox user. The number of scripts like this will only grow, unless people look at them in the same light as porn or warez, and put them in the same generally unacceptable bracket when it comes to providing hosting and promotion services.

What I want is a script I can put on my site that detects this sort of thing and redirects to a page saying, “ENTRY DENIED! We have detected you are blocking advertisements on our site. The creation and maintenance of this site is not free. Web hosting costs money. Our time designing, writing, editing, etc., is not free. The advertisements pay for the site. If you refuse to accept that, we refuse to accept you!”

To the users of these and similar scripts, my message is:

This is just like spamming, only the other side of the coin.

My website is MINE. It belongs to ME, not you.

Understand?

It appears on your computer by your choice — I don’t put it there, you go out and fetch it.

You wouldn’t visit it unless you found it valuable in some way.

That value costs me time and money to produce. And if that wasn’t enough, I even pay for hosting, etc., so you can download and view my site on your computer for FREE.

I don’t charge you to access my site.

Instead, the revenue from ads PAYS FOR YOU.

Now I don’t mind if you want to change the fonts or appearance of the site to something you find more appealing, but when you block the ads, you cheat me out of my income. Even worse, it’s money that wouldn’t have come out of your own pocket anyway. That kind of mean, begrudging mentality is sickening.

The fact is that without income from advertising sales, newspapers, magazines, television and much of the Internet would probably not exist at all, because if consumers had to bear the true full cost of production, they would be too expensive for mass consumption, and therefore exponentially more expensive to produce.

Where would the world’s favourite search engine be without advertising? It either wouldn’t exist, you’d have to pay to use it, or all the websites would have to pay for inclusion; which without advertising, would in turn have to charge you for access, sell you something or be goverment funded from taxes.

Advertising revenue is the oil that keeps the wheels of popular media turning.

Every independent professional should have a web site, an ezine, and an email marketing strategy, right? If you’re not taking maximum advantage of web technology to market your professional services, you are behind the times, and missing out on huge opportunities. At least that’s what most marketing experts would have you believe. But how valid is this advice? And is it for everyone?

Before email was widely available, marketing newsletters were printed on paper and sent by mail. There’s no question that e-mail is a more economical solution for sending a newsletter. Instead of being able to afford only a few hundred newsletters at a cost of $1 or more each, you can send tens of thousands for only pennies. With an ezine, technology can save you money and allow you to extend your marketing reach. This is one of the many ways that web technology can be your friend. Here are some others:

- A web site can attract new customers to your business from across the street or far outside your local area. If your site has high rankings in the search engines under appropriate categories, or many links from keywords prospective clients might search for, you may get dozens of inquiries from people who otherwise would never hear of you.

- Using email autoresponders can help you automate your follow-up with likely prospects. Just subscribe a prospect to an autoresponder list once, then send periodic broadcasts to the whole list, encouraging prospects to hire you or attend your learning programs.

- Participating in online discussion lists and message boards can allow you to network with a large group of people in your target market without leaving your home or office. Appearing on live chats or webinars permits you to be a public speaker without the time and expense of travel, and speak to national or global audiences.

For these reasons and more, it appears that using web technology is an affordable way to reach prospective clients easily. You can potentially attract larger numbers of prospects for fewer dollars than with many more traditional methods of outreach. But there are pitfalls.

Broadcast email can be an efficient solution for following up with prospects who already know about you. But it’s a terrible way to introduce yourself to a prospect for the first time. Far too many coaches, consultants, trainers, and other professionals add subscribers to their ezine or autoresponder lists without their permission. Not only is this ineffective as a marketing strategy since most readers simply delete e-mail from people they don’t recognize, but it can seriously backfire when someone is offended by your unsolicited mail.

%%Google AdSense [code=!!gblock!!]%%

Here are some other ways that using technology in marketing can become your foe:

- Technology makes it easy to hide. When you have a web presence, an ezine, and use e-mail autoresponders to contact your customers, you may think there's no reason to contact them in person. You may feel justified in not picking up the phone, attending a business event, or suggesting a lunch date if you think your technology is doing the job for you. But a web site or e-mail isn't an equal substitute for a prospect hearing your voice or seeing your face. It's pretty rare for someone to hire a professional without talking to him or her first, so if you put off the talking, you may also be putting off the hiring.

- Launching and maintaining an attractive and useful website, and achieving high search engine rankings for it, can be an expensive and time-consuming project. Unless you pay close attention to your budget, you can easily find yourself spending much more to land each client than you would ever pay using offline marketing methods. A high-traffic web site is a valuable resource for a business that can take advantage of a global presence or a large volume of new clients. But if your business is primarily local or you only need a few new clients each year, you may end up paying for a level of visibility you don't really need.

- Too many inquiries from the web can waste your time. Anonymous visitors to your site will often email to ask about prices and other details. These inquiries are completely unqualified -- you don't know anything about the people who are writing. If you take the time for a thorough reply to each one, they can consume a significant amount of energy. On the web as well as off, prospects who are referred to you by people who know your work are much more likely to hire you than those who find you by accident. If that's so, perhaps it makes sense to put more effort into building referrals than into building a broader web presence.

Web technology is really no different than any other method of marketing your services in that you must judge the appropriateness of each strategy for your unique circumstances. If you find writing to be a chore, perhaps a regular ezine is not the best choice for you. If you only need a few large, local clients each year, you may want a web site for prospects to explore after you contact them, but not spend your money on web directory listings or search engine optimization. Autoresponder reminders may be effective to increase enrollment in public workshops, but not such a good idea to sell in-house training to corporations.

%%Google AdSense [code=!!gblock!!]%%

Just because a strategy is the latest and greatest doesn't mean it's the best. Publishing a blog may be terrific if your target market spends a lot of time online, but not so good to reach those who rarely open their browser. Webinars can be an effective tool for attracting high-tech or corporate clients, but not for home business owners or consumers who operate older, slower computers with dial-up Internet access.

Relying completely on technology to bring in clients can also give you a false sense of productivity. When you are writing copy for your web site or setting up autoresponders, you feel like you are taking action about marketing. And these activities can be important behind the scenes steps, but you shouldn't confuse them with direct outreach to prospective clients. Web copy won't make any sales until people see it, and autoresponders will have no effect until people are subscribed to them.

Web technology provides just another set of marketing tools, not a complete solution. Using every marketing tool the web has to offer is not a requirement of doing business. The purpose of your marketing should be to bring you enough clients to earn the level of profit you desire. When marketing technology adds to your bottom line, it's worth employing. When it doesn't, there's no reason to use it.

About the Author
C.J. Hayden is the author of Get Clients NOW! Thousands of business owners and salespeople have used her simple sales and marketing system to double or triple their income. Get a free copy of "Five Secrets to Finding All the Clients You'll Ever Need" at http://www.getclientsnow.com