Peter Egan: Why I Blog
 I can only speak for myself, but... I worked in print media journalism since age 17, starting our as a sports stringer, eventually working my way up to beat writer and feature columnist for a local newspaper.
I attended a prestigious liberal arts university often referred to as "the Harvard of the South", where I studied media arts, specializing in journalism and minoring in marketing.
Upon completion of my college days, I quickly realized that the journalism field was not what I expected. It didn't take long before it was made perfectly clear that stories were covered and reported on in a manner consistent with how the editor demanded it be done, truth and accuracy be damned. Essentially, there seemed to me to be very little journalistic integrity in much if not most of print media at the time I began seriously contemplating what I would do for a living upon the realization that I couldn't stomach working for a newspaper.
I found that in blogging, I could put my investigative reporting skills to good work, covering stories covered elsewhere in the news but doing a much better job of writing them, particularly as it pertains to translating the abstract of a clinical trial into terms regular people can understand, while keeping the story interesting and the facts straight.
In health news (mainstream media), in my opinion far too often the story reflects inaccurate data as a result of the story's author lacking the fundamental ability to comprehend what was said in the abstracts, as well as how to phrase that same information so as to maintain factual accuracy while making it readable to a general audience.
Blogging affords me the journalistic license to report the truth without an editor getting in the way, putting my name on a factually inaccurate story that I was told to write if I wanted to keep my job.
Competitive Sabotage in Online Business: What to Look For and How to Protect Your Company  I recently encountered a discussion in a forum on eBay in which an eBay seller described a scenario I was all-too familiar with: that of a competitor engaging in a sabotage campaign by pretending to be a buyer and placing orders, demanding refunds and writing bad reviews about the company.While I've observed this at eBay, the problem is far worse on eBay's competitors' websites (like Amazon for example - which is the main reason we do not sell there), it is not an uncommon practice for some unscrupulous sellers to engage in a tactic known as competitive sabotage as a means of preventing a new entrant into the marketplace from becoming established.
What they do is create faux accounts from which they make one or two legitimate purchases of items they most likely would buy anyway in order to establish some measure of credibility with the account. Then, they buy something from a competitor and either attempt to cancel the transaction after it has already shipped, or find something wrong with it and demand a refund. Of course, they also demand that the seller pay for the return-shipment, and even if the seller agrees to all of this they'll leave negative feedback (of a negative Seller Review, as is the case with the other marketplace mentioned above).
It's a catch-22 for the legit seller. Even if you adhere to their unreasonable demands, you lose money by paying for not one but two shipments, not to mention the time required to process the order, prepare the shipment and deal with all the emails exchanged between parties. Then you've got the negative feedback/review to deal with.
If you stand on principle and fight back their attempts at bullying you out of the marketplace, it gives them the ability to create doubt as to which party is really the nefarious one.
"What should have been a simple return turned into a nightmare..."
If they're really sinister (we're talking complete sociopaths, but in business one must be prepared to not only encounter but deal with people like this - both in the form of customers and competitors), they'll badmouth you all over the web at every third-party business directory, review site and so forth.
The best way to fight back is to keep meticulous records so that you can win the chargeback dispute should you decide to refuse the refund request, which is highly advisable that refund requests (they're really more like demands) from suspected competitors be refused. Otherwise, they'll bleed you dry with them, taking up all of your (or your employees') time dealing with preparing their orders, replying to the emails, processing returns/refunds, etc.
Also, make sure your online store has a blog to accompany it. A blog is a great way to get your company's name out there, and provides a forum whereby you can control the content and the nature thereof. You may even want to consider having more than one blog.My company has two blogs:
If you're a small business, the resources simply aren't there to continuously absorb those blows (shipping fees do add up, as does the human capital which could otherwise be used to grow your business). Additionally, they want you to issue the refund, and by doing so you're enabling and encouraging them to continue the fraudulent activity.
To fight competitive sabotage, here's what to do:
- Learn how to identify it when it occurs.
- Don't allow the competitor to bleed you dry: Don't give in to their demands for refunds, returns, postage and time spent dealing with them. All of this costs you money - money that your company needs in order to meet financial goals on time.
- Get good at managing your own reputation online: If this requires hiring an SEO / Reputation Management firm, be sure to properly vet them and make sure they abide by Google's Webmaster Guidelines in doing so. This applies as well if the reputation management / SEO is done in-house as well. Never engage in anything considered to be "black hat" in terms of tactical procedures.
- Open an eBay account and preferably also an eBay Store: eBay is generally pretty good at weeding out those members who engage in such tactics as those described herein. If our company were to be the victim of competitive sabotage and defamation (we've dealt with it in the past), all we'd have to do is point to our eBay feedback score of 99+ percent customer satisfaction in order to establish that either the bad review was at worst an aberration, or more likely the product of a sabotage campaign. For anyone interested, our medical equipment eBay store is located at the following URL: http://stores.ebay.com/egan-healthcare.
- Actively monitor your own reputation: When they post negative reviews, if the site allows the seller to respond, do so and make clear that the review was written by a competitor. If the site does not allow seller responses to negative reviews, ask your legitimate customers to go to the site(s) at which the review(s) were written and counter them with reviews written by real customers. Don't ask for a favorable review. Simply request that they be totally honest, and if you're good at what you do the customer will write a review that reflects well on your company. Enough positive reviews eventually will make the negative one appear to be awfully suspicious.
- Create (or claim) a profile at every third-party business directory available: Pay for featured placement at those in which doing so creates additional links to your profile from within the same site, thereby increasing the strength of the profile as it pertains to search. For every such profile you create, you get one more web page that is under your control that can appear within the first or second page of search results whenever someone runs a search for your company. Ideally, you'll have control of every page customers can conveniently find should they search for information about your company (sure, they'll be able to find the negative stuff if they spend enough time looking, but they'd have to be specifically looking hard for something negative associated with your company name in order to find the reviews written by competitors).
- Don't let them get to you: If you become discouraged because your company's name is being unfairly ruined by competitors deliberately seeking to crush you while you're still small enough to do so, ultimately they will succeed.
- Make a decision to stay the course and endure: Sure, it is extremely frustrating to have to deal with, but in this era of global commerce conducted online via the internet, one must be prepared to stare adversity right in the eyes and refuse the temptation to blink.
- Put it into perspective: The fact that your competition has dedicated an employee to harassing your business by placing fake orders with a refund demand (and possibly provoking a response that legitimizes a bad review in the minds of objective readers) being the whole point of the order is ultimately a compliment to your efforts thus far. They wouldn't be devoting time, energy and resources to damaging your business if they didn't genuinely believe that your company poses a legitimate threat to their own status within the industry and within the marketplace in the long-term. Keep that in mind, and use that as a means of remaining positive throughout the ordeal.
- Remember that this too shall pass: Remember that their efforts to destroy you are costing them money too in the form of human capital. However, since they're presumably larger and more established, they can afford to take the short-term blow if it means preventing a new entrant from becoming an established competitor long-term. That said, they can only get away with doing this for so long. If it doesn't work after enough tries, they'll eventually have to give up. Don't assume that your business will have to deal with issues like this forever. It won't. Make clear to the competitor in your dealings with the "customers" placing the fake orders that you're here to stay, and ultimately if you play your cards right they're the ones that lose the money (by having to pay retail costs for products they presumably sell and by wasting employee time attacking a company strong enough to endure the assault.
 (Abandoning Print in Favor of Digital Only Works if You Understand How Digital Works...) With all due respect, the Times Picayune, Nola.com and the web technicians who run the site are beyond clueless with regard to the proper manner to construct a web page and encode links with a given page so that the page appears as high in search results as humanly possible when a given user searches a word, term or phrase relevant to the content of the given page.
The Times Picayune will file bankruptcy within 3 months of its reduction in publishing days unless it learns how to compete in search. As a reader of your paper for 26 of my 30 years on earth, I am inclined to at least offer to share my expansive expertise in the subject with the proper TP staff, employees and/or contractors in hopes of saving the organization.
In return, all I ask is that should my advice if acted upon quadruple traffic from search (and subsequently quadruple revenue originating from content published online), that the Times Picayune return to publishing seven days a week.
I work on a computer, and I cannot enjoy anything I do on one. I want my news the way I've been getting for the last 26 years, and am willing to offer the TP a half-million dollar consultation for free in order to make that happen.
If you're wise enough to take me up on this indescribably generous offer, you know how to contact me.
Sincerely,
Peter Egan
Author's Note: The screen-shot displayed atop the post illustrates a perfect example of incompetent website development, the very likes of which is confining Nola.com's visitors to for all intents and purposes the same people who subscribe to the print-version (or buy it at newsstands if not subscribers).
The fact that the red encircled hyperlink is coded in Javascript is a prime example of why the paper's move to digital will be an unprecedented failure unless the organization allows myself or someone with my knowledge and experience to stage an intervention.
The image is linked to the page at which this example of a complete abomination of webmasters' best practices can be witnessed first-hand for all to see.
 Shi Cheverie I came upon a brief but profound post recently on the blog of an online buddy of mine named Shi Cheverie. The post is entitled, "Courage to Grow Up", and is a lesson about the fact that everyone has those people in our lives who attempt to live vicariously through us, using bribery, manipulation and/or coercion to control our thoughts and actions such that they are consistent with those of the person doing the controlling. The day we make the conscious choice to listen to our own inner voice even when it conflicts with the sentiments of the most influential figures in our lives is the day we truly become ourselves and finally get to experience true freedom. I distinctly remember (the most significant of) my personal independence day(s). I had made a decision following Hurricane Katrina, which wiped out Tulane University (which I had been attending prior to the storm) to continue to pursue the online retail business I had began in May of 2005 which at that time largely consisted of selling stuff on Ebay. The consequence of that decision was that I did not return to college, which did not sit well with my parents. I became the black sheep of the family, and up until as recently as early 2012 they were strict adherents to the belief that I was a loser, and that they were failures. Unbeknownst to them at the time was that the two thriving businesses my mother had recently founded (one around 2006 and the other in 2010) were outperforming all of their local competition due in no small part to the pro bono marketing I had done online on her behalf and without her knowledge. She was (and in most cases still is) the very first to appear anytime anyone searched for any product or service (or any euphemism thereof) provided by either of her companies. I cannot say exactly how I got her all the business because doing so may get me in trouble, but suffice it to say that some of it came at the direct expense of former collaborating physicians who'd wronged her in the past. Working for a United States Senator, my state's Governor and being asked out-of-the-blue to host a fundraiser on a 120-foot yacht (a miniature cruise ship) for a congressman I'd never met nor spoken to prior to his call requesting that I "do him the favor" of hosting the event --- as though I were doing him the favor. It was there (on the aforementioned cruise) where I met the Secretary of State, with whom I later met to discuss an idea to help balance the state's budget without making cuts or raising taxes, in a manner that draws in money from outside the state by individuals and corporations gladly willing to pay it (I can't disclose any more than that at present) that the SoS himself thought was "ingenious". All that combined with the fact that I eventually gave in and began doing for my father's businesses that which I have done for my own as well as my mother's businesses. This year and last my efforts contributed to the highest volumes my dad's companies have experienced since the first of them was founded in 1988. In other words, the very people who tried so hard to influence the course of my life, only to declare themselves failures as parents when I embarked down a path that was not of their choosing are doing far better now financially and professionally as a direct result of my defiance of their orders to complete the remaining six or eight credit hours necessary to obtain my degree. They'd be far better still had they heeded my advice in 2004 to sell off all real estate and stock market investments and put it all into gold... But what could an early 20's college student who had never owned any real money much less invested know about what the future would bring to investors who did as he instructed? Anyway, back to Ms. Cheverie, the lady is absolutely right in stating the following advice to her readers: "It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you choose, what you think and what you do is who you become. Your time is limited so don’t waste it living someone else’s life or up to someone else’s expectations. Stand in your own truth and dance to your own tune."Amen to that sister! Her post reminds me of the lyrics from an Incubus song that I've thought about in-depth perhaps more than I should. The lyrics to the song can be found at the very bottom of the post.
Maybe that's why I like her (Shi) so much --- a considerable amount for a person I've never and likely will never meet in person, and with whom my relationship is entirely causally professional (if that seems like an oxymoron, you've probably never founded an internet-based business).
I encourage all my readers to check out Shi's blog and her product!
Anyway, here's the lyrics to the song:
-------- BEGIN LYRICS --------
Incubus - Make Yourself
If I hadn't made me
I would've been made somehow
If I hadn't assembled myself
I'd have fallen apart by now
If I hadn't made me
I'd be more inclined to bow
Powers that be
Would have swallowed me up
But that's more than I can allow
But...
If you let them make you
Tthey'll make you Paper-Mache
At a distance you're strong
Until the wind comes
Then you'll crumble and blow away
If you let him %$!@ you
There will be no foreplay
Rest assured, They'll screw you complete
Til your ass is blue and grey
You should make amends with you
If only for better health
But if you really want to live
Why not try, and Make yourself
Make yourself (Make yourself)
If I hadn't made me
I'd have fallen apart by now
I won't let them make me
It's more than I can allow
So when I make me
I won't be paper-Mache
And if I %$!@ me
I'll %$!@ me in my own way
%$!@ me in my own way
%$!@ me in my own way
%$!@ me in my own way
%$!@ me in my own waaaaay
You should make amends with you
If only for better health (Better health)
But if you really want to live
Why not try, and Make yourself
Make yourself
Make yourself
Make yourself
Make yourself!
---------- END LYRICS -----------
I like to think I've done a decent job of that anyway. It appears my good friend Chi has as well...
I recently found myself at the website of a Joel Comm, a professional blogger who is contemplating a change of profession. I can definitely understand this, as I once attempted to make a living via content sites and found the competition too fierce for my feeble fingers (as in typing).
Anyway, the following passage caught my eye while reading his post, which was primarily a request for the opinions of his readers as to what his next step should be:
"I believe every person is created by God with a unique set of passions, talents, skills and personality."
I believe the same thing. There was a specific day when I surrendered my life's path to the Lord and asked for His guidance. Instead of me trying to decide what I wanted be when I "grow up", I instead asked Him to direct my life such that it follows the path for which He created me.
Since that day, circumstances well beyond my control (Hurricanes Katrina and Rita flooding Tulane during my final semester, forcing me to move, destroying all my earthly possessions including my home, which did not have flood insurance; and leading me to start my own business while awaiting Tulane to reopen) have taken me in a direction I never imagined myself in, and I would not ever have decided on my own to pursue my current career, which is definitely my passion and a job I truly and genuinely enjoy doing.
My advice to you Joel is to simply ask for and allow the hand of God to guide you down the path of your destiny, whatever that might be and wherever it may lead you.
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