Tuesday Tumbling Term ~ Spam

It's that time of the week again for the term of the day for indie and regular authors. Today I'm talking about spams...

Spam
1. Trademark. a canned food product consisting especially of pork formed into a solid block.
noun
2. ( lowercase  ) disruptive messages, especially commercial messages posted on a computer network or sent as e-mail.Spam
1. Trademark. a canned food product consisting especially of pork formed into a solid block.
noun
2. ( lowercase  ) disruptive messages, especially commercial messages posted on a computer network or sent as e-mail.

I'm not talking about the canned meat variety as you may have guessed. Although I've come to think of it as canned BS. Now to take it a bit farther...

 spams , spamming , spammed
1. to send unsolicited electronic mail or text messages simultaneously to a number of e-mail addresses or mobile phones
 — n
2. unsolicited electronic mail or text messages sent in this way

This is what I'm really talking about. Go into any website on the internet and it registers your ISP (internet service provider number) that in turn is linked to your email. There are companies that collects and sells this data for a price.

Sort of like those companies that promise to email the release of your book to 50,000 readers as promotion. Nine times out of ten, in my humble opinion, this is a sucker's bet. What guarantees that the recipient of their email really reads their emails? 1 out of 1000 or 10,000, possibly. Why spend your hard earned buck on possibilities? Yes, these companies operate within the law. Buyer beware. Know what you are actually getting before you pay out a cent. Do your own research. Don't depend on their testimonials and figures. Dig deeper.

It's the old self-publishing stigma coming back to haunt indie writers. They prey on the desperate writer. That's another reason I pulled Adsense off my blog. Fly-by-night companies were advertising their services on my site and I just didn't agree with it. Sure an extra few pennies doesn't hurt, but I couldn't justify it with my conscience. I actually looked at the ads. It was another sort of spam and I won't be a party to it.

As I said yesterday, Spams have a purpose in life...mainly to be deleted. It's an irritant, but it is also a fact of life via the Internet. I've never said I was single. I'm an old married lady, but what kind of spams do I get? Singles ads, dating sites. What Einstein thought I was a good candidate to visit their site? The whole thing about spams is that they are nondiscriminating and also useless. What ever happened to target marketing versus blanket marketing? Blanket marketing just doesn't work.

Why post a spam for handbags or penile implants to a writer's blog? And yet, I'll bet I've delete forty or fifty of them from my filter folder or my blog in the past month. What moron thought, "Let me see...the three finger method of posting my advertising on which spot. Somebody might click on my ad."

Spams are not only irritating but they are the death toll of my computer. Spams are now synonymous with viruses.Nobody in their right mind would open a link if they didn't know the person. If I didn't care about my livelihood, because that's what my computer is, I might click an unknown link. Yes, I use links on my site that link to other blogs and articles, but I know those sites and their authors. And honestly, have you ever gone into a site and been directed to site after site? I have. After the first two redirects, I back out and close down my internet.

I look at buy-my-book tweets the same way. The same with FaceBook and a few other spots online. It's spam people. If I didn't buy your book the first time I saw it, chances are I won't when beaten over the head with it.

How many of you hit the mute button when a television ad you've seen more than twice come on during the commercial break? Come on, raise your hand. I'm raising mine and waving it wildly. Even if it's cute, you may watch it twice max.

I used to run my "spots" on various sites once a week for six months just to see what would happened. Did my sales increase? Not a smidgen so I stopped. As much as spams irritate me, they irritate others. I actually got a better response with my hat from Zazzle...mostly "Where did you get that?"  "I want one!" "You wrote a book?" The first two were from other authors. The third was from a friend I hadn't seen in years.

So as an indie author, do you promote spam?

Keep writing and loving the Lord.