The best thing you could have done and can do in my opinion is simply stay in consistent contact (as in once every couple of weeks at the least) with your list subscribers. That way they will be far less likely (likely never) to forget that they themselves signed up for your list such that spam complaints should all but disappear.

If I may suggest another angle on the problem of poor graphic design “artists”…it may also be that the field of graphic design has been cheapened by downward pressure on the prices charged through outsourcing or otherwise…such that the quality of entry level graphic designers is no longer very high.

Entry level graphic designers being the one’s that are readily found advertising their services all over the internet.

Accomplished designers, in my experience, seem to mainly rely on word of mouth and are not as easy to find but…they are out there.

And like the Renaissance man you speak of…they are not cheap. Michelangelo, Leonardo, and others were paid very well for their work in their time.

I wonder how much the downward pressure on graphic designers to produce high quality work for peanuts has affected the ready likelihood of finding modern day Renaissance artists in general?

The best way to find such Renaissance designers might be by word of mouth.

Carlos

Someone else alluded to this I think but I thought I would add my two cents too for what it’s worth Istvan.

A big part of the problem in how people wrongly complained of spam from you, and I do hope you don’t take this personally Istvan, may have been self-imposed.

In the sense that you did not stay in regular contact with your list.

I myself, despite how organized and analytical I am, have been tempted to label something as spam when I keep getting email that I don’t recall signing up for (it can easily happen to the best of us if we subscribe to a lot of lists). If I am tempted to do that you can easily imagine people less organized and analytical as for sure wrongly labeling lists they themselves signed up for as spam.

The best thing you could have done and can do in my opinion is simply stay in consistent contact (as in once every couple of weeks at the least) with your list subscribers. That way they will be far less likely (likely never) to forget that they themselves signed up for your list such that spam complaints should all but disappear.

Carlos

It’s Carlos (from the Warrior Forum). In addition to what you said Istvan…it wouldn’t be good to use a WP plugin to automatically replace affiliate links with one’s own as Google might wrongly come to associate your URL with spam.

Google recognizes spam not just by URL but also by the semantics, grammar used, and other factors that are outside the URL itself.

It might label the comment as spam anyway (with our without the affiliate URL left intact) and it may come to associate your URL (if you replace the affiliate with such) as spam…which you don’t want.

Just my two cents to add to the discussion.

By the way I would have signed up to receive notice of new posts from your blog Istvan but I find RSS to be a waste of time for me in that in the long run my RSS feed gets too full such that I end up ignoring what is coming into it.

Generally speaking I greatly prefer signing up by email and receiving notice of new posts by email. That way I can easily unsubscribe from any one thing that I no longer want to get not to mention that I actually pay attention to what I get notice of if it is contained in a regular email than I am if it becomes one of a number of RSS feeds that I may receive.

Carlos

I honestly did not know of you until I came across a thread about WP in the Warrior Forums.

Well I’m very glad to have met you. I’ve been scouring the Internet looking for solid, honest, to the point information on how to get started with WP. PCWPM does deliver that and more. I bet many a Novice who bought the Report, delivered a collective sigh of relief with the revelation of Mistake #1. I know that was my reaction.

You spoke in terms I could easily understand and follow. Like the teachers of old, who actually cared cared if got it. And most importantly, they let You know you could, and you got it. Those same teachers would even write you a little guide. Who knew they would later be called Mind Maps. I had only heard of Mind Maps in passing before I bought WP Mistakes, but now I know what a great tool they are, if you use them.

You over delivered and could have charged much more for the information you gave. If I had this information when I first started looking it could have saved me a lot of time and money.

Also I was pleasantly surprised when I emailed you a question and got an answer from You, not an autoresponder or a you can take out a ticket message. I got a actual personal response. I know why you receive so many glowing reviews.

Thank you. I am a very satisfied first time buyer.

Love it Just added that quote to my facebook profile

But to use a plugin to do this systematically – I don’t know. As you said, those meaningless stupid comments even with my own or aff links would just look messy and the blog neglected.

What is your opinion on something like that? It seems that people want to “hit back” at spammers, but I would doubt that anyone ever actually clicks through on the links, plus it makes the blogs seem un-maintained.