www.venturedirect.com

[DoubleV]

anybody ever heard of them?

[DoubleV]

they sent me a power point presentation and all looked pretty until i came to this page:

Contact Creation : search Optimized landing Pages
- creating content that is ideal for all search venues
- content-rich pages target specific keywords and search engines
- replicating the look & feel of your site
- built for both human and spider traffic
- creating viewable pages, not search engine spam.

isn't "replicating the look & feel of your site" means creating a doorway page???

they are gonna call me in half an hour and i gotta understand what i am dealing with.

we receive such an amount of marketing calls/emails these days from "submit your site to 300000 search engines' (yep, you read it right - it is 3 followed by five zero's!!!) to this kinda stuff from venture direct.
it seems that everybody is out there to get us. they are truing to get us into some kind of scam. am i being paranoid?????????

what they said in the email is that "Bottom line is that I can feed your companies site to the "Looksmart" feeds on page 1 of MSN for only $0.40 per click as opposed to $8.00 for the number 2 listing you are currently getting with Overture!"

how???

[scottiecl]

I'm sorry- I just can't take any company seriously that is using telemarketing and spam as lead generators. Why are you talking to them, Valeria? Is this a service you need?

[DoubleV]

because my manager makes me "investigate" every stupid email and call of this kind and give her a report!!!
:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
*grrrrrrr*

the only one that had actuially been serious and not spam was business.com
it was the only time i told her it might be worth it, but she never followed up.

all the others are ... uh well. looks like i am not paranoid, but just being realistic. right, scottie?

[DoubleV]

and you know what's freaky?

the marketing manager that used to work for our company and left 3 years ago, now works for them!!!
:eek:

[DoubleV]

ok,
so they said they'd take our pages' urls and submit them to looksmart, inktomi, fast and teoma.
i asked why i can't do the same thing myself.
and they said i could, but since they have a "special relatioship" with them their submissions would get a priority. what?????????

and we'll only pay them $.40 per click and maintain our position on the first page. if we drop their program, our position will drop as well. now, if they just submitted our urls, why would our position just drop like that???

sounds like another case of ... :rolleyes:

[DoubleV]

oops, sorry double post

[scottiecl]

Not paranoid... just good instincts kicking in

[ihelpyou]

Tell that manager to 'stick it'.

Tell her you are tired of tracking down SPAM email solicitations. That's what they are Valeria. Pure Spam. That's what that email was as well.... pure spam. They are a scam/sham/spammer who needs to be locked up.

Your type of company is LOVED by the spammers. They love to read forums like this and see your company welcoming them to call or email. Those types feed off of this.

[Bernard]

Originally posted by DoubleV
i asked why i can't do the same thing myself.
and they said i could, but since they have a "special relatioship" with them their submissions would get a priority.

LOL! And I'm sure L$, Ink, Teoma will all vouch for that as well! :D

[Mertu]

That's my first thought: Ask them for phone numbers at said companies they're so cozy with to confirm the claim.

Then ask why they aren't on said companies' list of partners.

Then ask about how this special treatment works in the face of the FTC warnings.

Then ask...

Ask enough probing questions and they'll probably ask for your e-mail address and/or phone number and manually remove it from their list. :)

[ihelpyou]

LOL. Yes, the Intkomi partner page clearly does not have that company name on it. Even partners have zero special priviledges. They cannot get you ranked higher.

[DoubleV]

Originally posted by Mertu
That's my first thought: Ask them for phone numbers at said companies they're so cozy with to confirm the claim.

Then ask why they aren't on said companies' list of partners.

Then ask about how this special treatment works in the face of the FTC warnings.

Then ask...

Ask enough probing questions and they'll probably ask for your e-mail address and/or phone number and manually remove it from their list. :)
Guys,
you are cracking me up!!!
:lol: :lol: :lol:
they got their "technical guru" on the phone and i asked him:
so we have 3 pieces out web site, msn, you. would you give me a technical explanation of how they all come together? and he just went on and on and on with his marketing talk about how we will be listed on the first page etc etc. i was trying to politely interrupt, but he was unstoppable. when he finished i was like "i've already heard the marketing speach. give me the technical one". *lol*
something's gotta be fishy here. if all they do is submit our web site, then how do we end up paying them for clicks???
Then ask about how this special treatment works in the face of the FTC warnings.
excuse my uneducated self, but what is FTC?

scottie, thanks. i was starting to worry that i was going nuts. *lol*

Doug,
i really am tired of this. it just started recently, a couple of months ago. not sure if she was just ignoring all of them previously or what, but lately it is crazy. one day my patience will run out and i'll tell her what she needs to do with those emails/phone calls. :mad:
anybody has a job opening for after i do that? :slywink: *lol*

[DoubleV]

Originally posted by ihelpyou
LOL. Yes, the Intkomi partner page clearly does not have that company name on it. Even partners have zero special priviledges. They cannot get you ranked higher.
Doug,
this gets even better. they actually guarantee that your listing will appear above inktomi results on msn. which means looksmart, right? why submitting to inktomi then???
*gee*

[ihelpyou]

I sure do. Right here in pretty Charleston, South Carolina. :slywink:

[ihelpyou]

Yep. You all could submit to Looksmart yourself.

[Bernard]

I was recently corrected in another thread regarding Looksmart listings. Looksmart listings on MSN are ranked for display. Do these guys have some magic that ensures their suggested ad copy will rank on the first page of L$ listings? Doubtful.

DV - FTC = Federal Trade Commission. They regulate broadcasting, enforce truth in advertising, etc.

[Mertu]

but what is FTC?

Federal Trade Commission. :)

Last year the FTC created some buzz in the search-engine-world after releasing a report/warning about paid listings appearing with regular search results without clear labeling.

Basically, it was saying "this could be a problem; fix it yourselves so we don't have to step in."

Honestly, the FTC report has no bearing on getting listed higher in the paid results. However, the person you probably talk to will have no idea what the report is (even though it directly relates to his/her job), so it doesn't matter. :D

[DoubleV]

thanks for clarifications, Bernard & Mertu.

Doug,
I always knew I could rely on you! :D

I sent this out in the morning:
"I appreciate the time you took yesterday to talk to me.

there are different kinds of SEOs, and those that simply register a site with the search engines do not get paid per click. They get paid once for their service. Unless you can prove your "special relationships" (not by showing me your clients' results on the web) and explain exactly what you are going to do and how, I will give no further consideration of your services and will not be recommending your services to my management.

Valeria"

It's been a couple of hours, and no reply so far. I hope they never reply.

My boss just told me this morning that the same company kept almost harrasing her offering other kinds of services until she rudely threatened them to **** off. I wished I asked why then she wanted me to find out about other srvices from the same company??? :eek: :confused:

[haystack]

...and we'll only pay them $.40 per click and maintain our position on the first page. Sounds like they're making a nice 166% commission on every click they generate for your site using LookSmart and/or Overture without providing any value to justify the additional costs. They better have some great sales people with a good list of naive web site owners.

Unfortunately for them, you know too much about this stuff to cough up the cash.

[foghorn]

Any person or company sending out spam like this should be automatically and immediately excluded from any consideration for you ever paying them money. Or, wasting time reading, opening or even noticing their email.

It's a little like brain surgery. Would you allow someone to perform brain surgery on you if they emailed you a good sales pitch?

Ok, it's been al ong day...

[ihelpyou]

Unfortunately for them, you know too much about this stuff to cough up the cash.
Yes. And equally unfortunate is the fact there are people out there who DO cough up that cash to them. Sickening.

[MakeMeTop]

They are obviously selling a Trusted Feed service. This is not to be confused with standard submission. The Feed will list multiple URLs in L$, Inktomi, Ask/Teoma and FAST - so what they are saying doesn't sound innacurate - apart from the 'guaranteed first page' and 'special relationship' bit. Trusted Feed means that they are paying the above engines a per click price which may vary depending on the industry. 40 cents may be a good or a bad price - depending on the competitive nature and search volume. So they would have to charge on at a per click rate. A good feed should rank well - but a guarantee - That's rubbish :)

And - yes - you could do a feed yourself directly with the engines if the volume was correct and were able to set one up. It's a commercial relationship that anyone can have, provided you are willing to pay!

Just checked out their site and they sell a combination of PPC via Overture, AdWords and Feeds. The example they show is a L$ Feed result. They are not doing any form of 'natural' SEO as far as I can see.

[amica_webmaster]

Originally posted by ihelpyou
Tell that manager to 'stick it'.

Ah, the motto of the self-employed.

Seriously, DoubleV, is there a chance that you could make some sort of presentation or write a report for your manager explaining the proliferation of such "services" and the reasons for avoiding them? It sounds like this is soaking up a lot of your time.

If not, you might want to start shopping around for your next position anyway, because you're not getting much ROI on your time doing this.

Meta

[pielover]

As a one-man marketing department, I used to get calls from Venture Direct. Mostly they sold mailing lists and postcard decks. The postcard deck business is drying up, so I imagine they are trying to replace it.

They always had an aggressive telemarketing department. Our agency warned me that their mailing lists are not audited like other lists, so should be less worthy of consideration.

I've never gotten a call from a real SEO up until now, BTW.