e-junkie: The Leading Edge of Independent Internet Marketing

In the 1989 Doctor Who episode Ghost Light, a highly advanced alien being had been sent early in the life of Earth to catalogue all species on the planet. Many aeons later, this poor creature is still on Earth, frustrated because, by the time he completes the catalogue, all the species have changed into something quite different and he must start all over. Evolution has been his undoing. To review e-junkie is like that. Each time you think you have the site all figured out, some new feature is added and the site evolves into something newer and better. Like that alien being, I keep having to go back and take another look.

I am not by profession a technician or programmer and I don’t really understand a lot of the technical ins and outs of making a commerce website work. I am however, a very experienced marketer with a strong background in broadcast and print media as well as advertising and promotional agencies for more than forty years. Throughout that time, I have also been a working independent artist promoting my own writing, photography, and music as well as that of others. When I undertook to review the new e-junkie website, I decided to review not how well it is or is not designed as a technical program but how well it does or does not work as a marketing tool for the independent artist who uses it. As my own artistic focus over the past few years has been on making and selling music, I chose to come to the site less as an objective critic and more as a musician with a CD to sell.

Over the past dozen or so years, I’ve seen a plethora of new websites crop up where independent musicians can post songs to market and sell or just to present their talents to the world. As one of those independent artists (with my group Poem de Terre), I’ve signed up for and evaluated many of these sites. Some are well designed and very user-friendly, and manage to grow and prosper, helping some but not most of their musician clients to do the same. Others, like delicate desert flowers, blossom in a flash of colour and promise, then wither and die. A common theme is that, after these websites are set up initially, very little if anything changes or improves. This is not the case with e-junkie, where growth and change seems constant.

Not just with websites, but with computer programs in general, technicians who may never actually use such a program design something that’s very clever and flashy but often with a learning curve like Everest and not user friendly at all. Independent music websites tend toward either this or the opposite extreme where too little technical know-how in the initial design has led to a disappointing lack of functionality. Music is not the focus at e-junkie, and this may be what saves the site from these sorts of problems. This is a site designed to sell something, anything. That something can be digital or it can be hard-copy. Sure, it can be a music CD, but it can also be just about anything else you can imagine. This is, first and foremost, a commerce website.

Because a website has some depth and complexity, I decided to take my time in evaluating e-junkie. I just wanted to take some time to explore all facets, and I really didn’t expect much to change over time. In fact, every time I visit the site, I find something new and useful has been added. The site had and has an easy sign-up procedure, including a free one-week trial period for those who may want to check out the features first. In the beginning, though, I found that many of the instructions were unclear and the learning curve far too complex for anyone not experienced on the web. Over a couple of months, that all changed dramatically.

Besides continually adding practical, easy-to-use features to its own site, e-junkie has been busy forging alliances with related online services that complement its own. The result is an extremely flexible, easy to learn and use, universal marketing and commerce environment for the independent online marketer of just about any product or service. As an independent artist with music products to sell, I can see where this could be an extremely valuable service.

In fact, there are so many available services and tools on this website that I won’t even attempt to describe them here. However, I do recommend that any serious independent marketer should visit e-junkie and see what’s available. Some available features include no setup fee, unlimited transactions with no transaction fee, no bandwidth limit, product storage and delivery, inventory management, four different methods for your customers to pay, a variety of free shopping cart options, including use of your own cart, automated delivery of download sales, tax and shipping calculator, and much more.

According to e-junkie, through this site you can sell products on your own website, eBay, MySpace, Google Base, Yahoo Stores! and other websites. Products and services offered for sale can include e-books, mp3 tracks and CD releases, software, icons, fonts, artwork, phone cards, event tickets, posters, books… in fact, almost anything.

There is a cost if you want all this, a monthly fee ranging from $5.00 per month to $125.00 per month depending on the amount of hosting space your products will require. If your products will need more than 999 mb, then there’s an additional fee of $20.00 per gb per month. Given what e-junkie has to offer, these rates seem quite reasonable.

As with everything in life, you don’t get nothing for nothing. To use a service such as e-junkie, you have to be a dedicated marketer and self-promoter. You have to put in time and energy and probably invest a bit of money at your end. If you just sign up, add a product or two, and then wait for the sales to roll in, they won’t. The tools are there, but you’ll have to use them effectively for this service to work to full potential. This could use up a lot of your time and energy, but it could also be worth it in the long run.

Independent musicians should know that this is not like many music sites that have preformatted pages where you just paste in your album cover art and a list of songs with mp3 playback. It’s essential that you take the time to learn how to use the features on this website effectively and it would be a good idea to also develop a strong band website to complement your efforts. Reading a good book on effective marketing will also help you a lot.

I think that’s about it. No, wait! It’s evolving again…

If you’d like to evaluate this service for yourself, go to e-junkie.com. Even if you decide not to sign up, you’ll find it an education in what’s available to the independent marketer these days.

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Does Google Epitomize the New (Corporate) World Order?

Could even Marshall McLuhan or George Orwell have predicted a corporate takeover of our world on the scale The Internet has made possible, reducing not just the worker but the individual in general to a mere pawn in a massive game played by the Multi-Nationals? It’s doubtful. And, have no doubt, Multi-National doesn’t mean International and it doesn’t in any sense presuppose fair play. Rather, it’s all about large corporate organizations in certain wealthy nations fiscally invading as many smaller nations as possible. Colonialism by any other name is still colonialism.

Before I go too far with this, let me give you a better idea of who I am and from whence my comments come. I am an individual. I am not a large corporation or even a small private company. I’ve lived a lot of years and in that time have learned a great deal, but increasingly believe that doesn’t count for a great deal. I’m not a politician or a pundit or a fiscal wizard, but I’ve read a lot about history and politics and, from both sides of the fence, how those in power abuse those who have no power.

By the time I was fifteen years of age, I was reading Mein Kampf and Das Capital and Macchiavelli, and all of the great modern economic and political theorists, socialists, and philosophers. I continued to read these great thinkers throughout my life. Did I learn anything? I really don’t know, but I hope I did. I’ve been accused of being an iconoclast and an anarchist and occasionally, incorrectly, of being dishonest.

To quote television’s The Prisoner when faced with an intolerable and dehumanizing situation, “I am not a number. I am a free man.”

Recently, I had a run-in with the new corporate megalith Google. Now, I’ve had disagreements in the past with other large corporations and I have friends who’ve encountered corporate ire, so this is not new to me or to our society. In fact, over the past fifty years, I’ve read many tales of corporate Goliaths running roughshod over individual Davids who dare stand up to them. I’m going to write about my experience with Google not because this is an unique circumstance but because it is not and so will serve as an example of the widespread contemporary corporate disregard by multi-nationals of the humanity of the individual man and woman.

As some readers will know, I write reviews of music, movies, and other areas of the arts. I am also an independent artist writing poetry and songs, doing artistic photography, and recording music with my band. Like most artists I know, I’ve never really made any money from my art. On the other hand, before a series of computer revolutions eliminated the need for most writing tasks, I once made a good living writing, editing, and consulting.

Now I make my living in another field and publish my own reviews and articles online through my personal blog and, where appropriate, on Blog Critics Magazine. To maintain server space and related services, this publication process costs me a small amount of money, which I don’t mind spending.

Google AdSense is a supposedly democratic program where advertisements can be added to one or more web pages and the owner of these pages gets paid a fee based on the number of times visitors click on the links to learn what the product advertised has to offer. Google AdWords is an even more supposedly democratic program where someone with a product to advertise can place advertisements on one or more web pages and pays a fee based on the number clicks by visitors.

I decided to try Google AdSense to see if this would be a way to support my reviews blog. I decided to try Google AdWords to see if this would be a way to sell my band’s latest music CD. Previously, I had thought of Google as an international, certainly multi-national, corporation. It quickly became clear that Google discourages participation by individuals, small companies, and those who are not wholly based in the United States.

I first applied for participation in Google AdSense.

I live in Canada. My bank is in the United States, a business decision. Google refused to deposit payments in my American bank because I am a “foreigner” and they repeatedly gave that as the reason. They went so far as to suggest that I might be trying to defraud their program because I have a bank account in a country not my own. Wait a minute. Isn’t America Google’s country? And, anyway, although my bank is in the United States, it’s owned by a Canadian bank [and, in correspondence, Google consistently refers to it as a "foreign" bank]. After a long correspondence, in which Google was totally unwilling to find a middle ground, I agreed that Google would mail me a cheque from the United States to Canada which I would then mail back to my bank in the United States. I placed Google AdSense links on a number of my pages.

I then applied for Google AdWords.

Google refused to accept payments from me through my “foreign” bank in the United States, which happens to be where the U.S. dollars reside with which I would pay their fees. We’re still in negotiations about that one. So far, it doesn’t look good. My advertisement for my band’s CD still has not been placed.

Now Google has cancelled my AdSense account. Once again, Google is accusing me of trying to defraud their program. This is patently not true, and I have some doubts it’s the true reason I’ve been cancelled. As I browse the World Wide Web, I find dozens of large American online organizations routinely committing the same transgressions of which I’ve been accused, and more, yet never being cancelled. And I see many smaller users cancelled for reasons I can’t discern. What is the logic behind this inequity?

Google lists some very specific reasons that an AdSense account can be cancelled.

A publisher’s site may not have invalid clicks or impressions on any ad(s), including but not limited to clicks and/or impressions generated by: a publisher on his own web pages; a publisher encouraging others to click on his ads; automated clicking programs or any other deceptive software; a publisher altering any portion of the ad code or changing the layout, behavior, targeting, or delivery of ads for any reason.

In my case, while I had placed the Google links on a variety of my pages, certain specific pages were dedicated to support my reviews blog and indirectly the music CD. These support pages also included links to PayPal to make donations, links to CD Baby to listen to music and buy the new CD or any of three others, and other pertinent links. I had sent e-mails and made web page mentions for people to go to these pages and “click on links” to support my reviews blog. This did not seem to contravene Google’s rules. I also placed the words “sponsored links” above some, but not all, of the Google links. This also did not seem to contravene Google’s rules. Yet, in very short order, Google sent me an e-mail telling me that they were immediately cancelling my account because I was defrauding their program. I was not. There was no warning, no request to change my approach. I was out. Period. I felt like Saddam, hustled through a kangaroo court to my death in the Google marketplace.

Besides my own websites and blog, I maintain a presence on several larger “community” sites, many of which are also members of Google AdSense. Every one of these large sites breaks at least one and usually two or three of the Google rules listed above. Every one of them is a large corporate entity. Every one of them is American. None of them gets cancelled. As just one example, and not to point a finger because they are just one of many, check out MySpace. MySpace posts a large number of Google Adsense links. They prominently box these links between coloured bars and include the words “Sponsored Links” above the links. They modify the code/layout by removing all Google identification, including two Google slugs that routinely appear below the ads. Many larger, American sites also follow this practice of changing Google Adsense ads and verbally and visually promoting clicks, apparently with impunity from cancellation by Google. Not so the little guy. Not so the non-American.

The question still remains whether Google will allow me to advertise my band’s CD (which, if this is relevant and it may be, also includes a number of anti-war tracks) using Google AdWords. It will be interesting to find out.

Is this all about me? No. Is it all about Google? No. The question is whether America, not just on the military field but also on a financial and corporate basis is still indulging in 19th Century Jingoism and Imperialism. For me, the answer is becoming clear.

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