Message : replies to questions and thoughts about emails received from online readers (via Contact Form above).

Thank you for all the emails of support and praise received from online readers of this website.

We do read them all. 

Question asked – is email marketing dead?  

No, the age of excitement of receiving an email has declined so don’t send emails – send monthly and quarterly newsletters by email instead.

Terry asked additional questions about content of emails (and website) : 

I’ve found that people prefer to talk to you about and read about things they are interested in. So the process steps above are important because you need to identify your audience, you need to identify what they are interested in and you should mostly, although there are always exceptions, talk to them and write to them about things they are interested in. 

Question asked by Cassy – Have you ever considered a video for this website?

Yes. I have deliberately chosen at this time not to include a video on this site.

Yes, I accept that inclusion of a video does help the ranking algorithm. I have helped to create infomercial videos and loaded them on other people’s websites.

Question from X – how do I trick the algorithm so that I increase the traffic to my site?

Back in 2014, Google introduced E-A-T (later updated to E-E-A-T) as part of its Search Quality Rater Guidelines to help ensure high-quality, credible content ranks higher. E-E-A-T stands for Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness

We don’t do trickery. Nobody likes trickery. Nobody wants to deal with tricksters.

Question asked – Does the choice of equipment to shoot content matter?

Yes, I believe so. There is agreement among producers of infomercial videos that they seem to have greater success with certain brand of camera phones rather than expensive film industry equipment. Their theory is that the algorithm is bias towards camera phones because their users are editing and updating content quicker – and publishing fresh content more often.

There is a difference of opinion between marketers as to whether short duration or long length videos do better.

We advocate the Must-Should-Could approach – if under time-pressure or restricted by words or video length then must is always included, then consider including should, then could.  It is better to leave out the could than the should than the must.

Question asked – should the Call-To-Action button on my website always be coloured Green? 

The colour scheme of background and buttons is something you should always confirm with your own split tests.

Most people recommend the Green button over the Red button. Saying that, our email button on the Contact Form is yellow and we have received over 1500 emails in the past 3 months. Admittedly, mostly spam sent by people with questionable tactics identifying websites like ours which have a built-in contact form… But we did receive about 60 ‘genuine’ emails of thanks (particularly for the process map above), sanity checks and offers of help so I’m not convinced the colour mattered.

The tactic of bombarding the administrators of Contact Forms with spam emails e.g. recent one from xyz?c/a with just a suspicious looking link is pointless – in response, we now ask everybody who wants to get in touch to tell us your name, your contact details and useful information about themselves.  

posted : 23 September 2026