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Wow! It’s getting hard to keep up with the releases at WordPress.

No sooner do they release one update with various fixes, than they release another one a few days later with even more fixes. It used to be that you could update to the latest version and then relax for a little while. Now, it almost seems like you’re better waiting for a week or so after a release to see if they offer a newer version still!

What do you do? Do you update as soon as a  new release is announced?

General

If I listed all the things I never knew, well the things I now know but didn’t before, it would be a very, very long list.

What’s most surprising to me is that there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. I mean that every time I learn something new I turn around and find that there’s something else waiting to trip me up until I learn about it.

I’ve just learned that in WordPress you shouldn’t use a permalink structure that I’ve been using for every blog I’ve ever set up! It seems that WordPress operates more slowly if you use a permalink structure like www.myblog.com/my-post-name

Thanks for telling me in advance! I stumbled on the information recently. If you have a lot of posts on your blog then it will impact you far more than someone who only has a few posts, but since it can make a big difference, why on earth isn’t the information made clearer on the permalink settings page?

It’s probably too late for me to change my permalink structure now. I don’t want to go to the trouble of setting up 301 redirects for existing posts (I’m lazy) and in all fairness on a lot of the blogs there will never be thousands of pages – so the impact may only be slight. But it’s something that I’m now aware of and I won’t be making the mistake  again.

Talking of blogs, I’ve just seen a promotional email about a new way of using blogs to generate landing pages and sales pages, primarily for PPC campaigns, but they can be use for anything. I don’t want to repeat the post here, but you can read it on my product blog at   sublime-products.com

If you’d like to use a WordPress blog to build clean, unobstructed sales pages then it’s worth taking a look at that post.

Recommended

So, just how stupid do some marketers think we are?

I’ve just received an email from someone who tells me I can get a piece of software for just $4.95. It’s a July 4th Special. Seems a good deal and I have a July 4th Special deal coming up myself. But my deal will be a deal, not an exercise in obfuscation, like theirs.

What's the real price of this?

So if they offer it to me for just $4.95, how come they really want $47?

The only reason that price is mentioned is to get someone to click on the link and take a look. So from that point of view it works. But in terms of credibility it’s just stupid. It means I won’t believe anything that marketer says again. His emails are now going to be history. I have a feeling that I won’t be the only one with that view, so how many people does he ‘churn’ through from his list?

My guess is that it’s impossible ever to calculate properly what he’s earned by doing this, compared to what he might have earned had he not used this tactic. So chances are good that he’ll use the same tactic again. It’s no wonder the internet marketing community has such a bad name.

What’s even worse, is that the software is good software. It’s worth $47, but being hoodwinked into paying that when the price was touted as $4.95 is just terrible. Here’s what the pitch was:

All this for just $4.95.

Not a sniff, or hint that another payment is due in 3 days time.

I already have this software – I paid full price originally – and I’d have liked a copy for my wife to use, so the offer seemed attractive. But as soon as the real deal is made clear, there’s no incentive for me to rush to get it. My previous good impression has been whittled away by – at the very least – confusing pricing information.  It’s not enough to say that the sales page makes it clear what the full price is. The promo email doesn’t – that’s the point. The promo email goes to great lengths to make it look like a $4.95 item, which it plainly isn’t.

I just unsubscribed from 6 lists that I’m on for that marketer. Smart marketing I get, but this kind of thing just sticks in my craw.