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Damage control?
How on earth do you even TRY to control what has been damaged. L$ is a dead entity for me. I'm going with INK.
It wouldn't surprise me a bit if L$ had a "company plant" listening in and writing damage control "type" stuff. That sort of sneaky behaviour goes hand in hand with how they have treated all their loyal customers throughout this whole fiasco.
As I said before ... psst L$, don't let the door hit you on the way out!
PS. I don't think anyone here didn't think the same thing Dave! We may have bought into the L$ scam and paid for our "reviews" ... but bitten once, shame on L$, bitten twice, shame on me. I admit to being naive about many things, but nobody is THAT naive.
(edited by: rcjordan at 1:43 am (utc) on April 17, 2002)
I didn't want to lose my $299 but now, a day after they began counting my clicks, my site is going down. I beleive with the ratio of clicks I receive L$ expects me to spend about $1200 a month to keep my listings in L$ and their partner sites (MSN is the only 1 I care about), but my site is a FREE web site. I make no money off of it so now what guys? How can I retain my top slot on MSN without paying these guys any more money?
HELP ME!!! =(
If your site is non-commercial and in Zeal how does your site fare in MSN?
The company that shouldn't be mentioned obviously don't realise that webmasters ARE the web. We own it. We run it. Let's vote with our wallets.
HELP ME!!! =( .."
OK I sympathise... by "free" kastro you mean that you make no revenue from the site? - ad revenues, sales, affiliate income, etc.?
Looksmart has stated clearly without actually putting it into words that they are only interested in commercial sites that have a ROI of at least 15c per click. That means they dont cater for people like you (or me).
Overture offers a way into MSN (for money too). Google is the place to be for sites that are *really" free. They tend to favour high content, seful sites linked to from authoritative sites. The MSN consumer is not very savvy. Unless you are selling something directly from your site (which you are not), i question the real value of a MSN listing when compared to a google listing.
I see it as a staging post for net newbies, where they stay until they find better pastures (and better search engines). Maybe this move (PPC followed by PPC in SERPS) will actually accelerate this process. I suspect it might... in which case the damage from this fallout will reduce.
If your market isn't focused heavily on this market sector the damage will be even less.
But seriously, I hope that Looksmart does read this 'feedback' and take it in. There have been a couple of threads (one started by me) about how LS can rescue the situation, or at least do some damage limitation and restore some dignity to their operation.
I don't think that I have ever seen such a united front against any search engine like this before. It doesn't bode well for the future of Looksmart (and MSN).
I think that part of the problem is that there is a massive reality gap between us and how LS/MSN perceives the web. It is this expectation that we would actually pay $40,000 per year for mostly worthless traffic that sums it up. Where is the sense of reality in this?
Is it that LS and MSN massively overestimate their value to webmasters? Do they honestly think that bleating about terms and conditions is going to make us say "oh well, that's ok then"?
And setting the value at $0.15 a click? it reminds me of those days when Yahoo charged $100 CPM for banner advertising. I wonder how they came up with this number - is it the average click cost on Overture? Have they forgotten that most sites can't support the cost of PPC advertising? LS are effectively removing every advertising supported site from their database.
But still, it comes back to this reality gap. The majority of website owners simply cannot possibly afford to pay $0.15 per click for highly targeted traffic, let alone for the mixed bag of traffic we receive from MSN. I looked at the MSN traffic for one of our sites, and because 80% of it is irrelevant, LS are actually charging us $0.75 per click.
Did they do *any* market research before introducing this?
What are other people recommending? Yes or no to Looksmart UK submission?
Some pretty good observations there Abrexa. You are spot on about the united front. The reaction of my customers was unanimous.
L$ have only just scratched the surface in terms of reaction to their move. The flack has only just started to fly.
"LookSmart Alert: Your budget has been reached and traffic to your listings has been temporarily paused. Increase your monthly budget to $3,900 to reactivate your listings and continue driving valuable traffic from the LookSmart Network. "
This is a lie. The listings are still in place, and the sites are still getting clicks. So what is going on? At the moment Looksmart are just pretending to run a PPC scheme, where you only get charged if you pay, LOL.
The real problems for Looksmart and MSN will only arrive if/when they start removing listings. The first sites to go will be all of the popular websites that get lots of clicks. What will be left is a directory of the web's least popular sites. :)
Even the site that I cancelled is still there and getting clicks. So far, I would guess that we have accumulated several hundred dollars worth of unregistered free clicks. If I was a paying customer, I wouldn't be too happy about other people getting traffic like that for free.
Let us take a moment to remember Looksmart's logo:
"THE STRENGTH IS IN THE SEARCH RESULTS"
The majority of website owners simply cannot possibly afford to pay $0.15 per click for highly targeted traffic, let alone for the mixed bag of traffic we receive from MSN.
Ability to afford payment isn't even the issue. I have 6 Fortune 500 companies and 3 federal government agencies who have virtually unlimited budgets for advertising, and I will be recommending to each and every one of them that they ignore LookSmart.
Yes, the money is an issue, but not the only -- or even the biggest -- issue. The integrity issue is bigger, IMO, as is the business model.
Pardon me for quoting my own article, but this is a company who has totally changed their business model more times than Imelda Marcos changes shoes. Who's to say that they won't decide next month to charge $15.00 a click and shove it down our throats as another "upgrade"?
If they have to go through by hand and remove the sites, that could explain why the sites with expired clicks are still in the database and aren't getting booted.
Could be cause for a new monthly review fee. If you don't pay us enough to keep your site in the database for an entire billing period, you'll have to pay another 39.95 re-listing fee at the begining of every month to get your 100 "free" clicks that were arguably already paid for.
"a company who has totally changed their business model more times than Imelda Marcos changes shoes":)
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