Randy Cassingham, a friend of mine and full-time internet marketer, is the author of The True Stella Awards, a new book “Honoring real cases of greedy opportunists, frivolous lawsuits, and the law run amok.”

It’s named after Stella Leiback, the woman who sued McDonald’s after spilling hot coffee on herself. Some of the true stories in the book:

The man who who legally changed his name to Jack Ass, then sued MTV for $50 million because their TV show and movie Jackass infringed on his trademark and demeaned his “good name.”

The diabetic, obese man with high blood pressure and heart disease who sued the fast food industry for not telling him that it might not be healthy to eat McDonald’s every day.

Check it out on Amazon.

Randy’s weekly newsletters have over 120,000 subscribers at StellaAwards.com and ThisIsTrue.com.

I hate to pass on evil ideas, but if you haven’t heard about Google Bombing, you probably should.

For Search Engine Optimization, some links count more than others. And Google gets better all the time at calculating what constitutes a more important link.

Generally, the more good links you have, the better. But we never used to worry about “bad” incoming links.

Things have changed.

Over the last year, Google has started penalizing sites with too many “bad” links.

As it result, this begs the question, “If you can take down your own site by getting too many of the wrong kind of links, is it possible to take down a competitor’s sites by linking to them in certain ways.”

I used to tell people not to worry about incoming links. I figured that if people figured out that they could take down their competitors’ sites by linking to them in certain ways that the whole internet would break down in a week.

Now it appears that this may be the case. And there’s already a term for it — Google Bombing.

Click here to read the discussion on ThreadWatch. And here for the take of Michael Pedone and others.

I was quoted today in an Associated Press story picked up by several newspapers and web sites, including the Miami Herald, BusinessWeek and CBSNews.com

The story was about online retailers getting ready for Halloween and the particular site, buycostumes.tv, that I blogged about earlier. Some of the comments are interesting if you want to check them out — and feel free to add your own.

If you’re new here and you want a copy of my book mentioned in that story, Creating Customers Out of Thin Air: Secrets of Online Marketing for Offline Businesses, you can get it here. (It’s free.)

A couple of points about the story and how it relates to internet marketing are worth mentioning.

First, if you look at the Yahoo News and Google News results for the exact same story, they’re quite different. More so than you might expect.

Second, it’s pretty interesting how the author, Ryan Nakashima, linked to all the sources used in the story at the bottom of the story. It includes a direct link to MyWeddingFavors.com and BradFallon.com.

Not only is this really great for link popularity — who wouldn’t want a link from CBS News and Forbes — but it’s a great example of how blogs are changing more than the anchor chair at CBS.

One of the reasons that bloggers influence the news as much as they do is the fundamental concept of links.

For quite awhile now, it’s been common to see links to web sites in newspaper stories. But the idea of just including all the links from the sources that went into a story in the story itself feels more like a blog post than a traditional newspaper article.

In Hugh Hewitt’s new book, Blog, Hugh presents the very compelling case that a relatively small number of bloggers are influencing the national conversation. Despite some claims from traditional media members that bloggers are not as credible, much of their influence comes exactly from their credibility. And that comes, not just from their own content, but from their links.

Bloggers usually link not just to their sources of information, but the entire chain of ideas that led to the formation of their opinion. Other bloggers can see the same information, and poke holes or bolster the argument based on their interpretation of the same data.

Any mistakes or errors are usually caught and fixed quickly, usually by other bloggers following those links.

By the way if you haven’t read Blog yet, you should. But don’t blame me if it gets you all fired up to start blogging yourself. It probably will — and you’ve been warned.

And if you are ready to get started blogging or take your blogs to the level, your timing is perfect.

Dave Taylor and I are finally ready to start taking signups for the eight week telecourse and private consulting program. Since it includes private consultations with Dave and I, class size will be limited. More information and the signup form are at BusinessViaBlog.com.

Also, if you’d like to know why and how I came to be interviewed for this AP story — and got all of those great one-way links from top domains all around the internet — it wasn’t just the old SEO/PR strategy of submitting press releases on PRWeb. It’s an entire strategy and one that Dave and I will be teaching in detail in our Business Blogging course that starts in a couple weeks. Click here and join us!

Hat tip: Jayne Hallock

Funny — Google’s PageRank (the one that displays in the Google Toolbar anyway) just updated and MSN.com is showing up as a PR2. Heh.

This one will make you think.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has found, and decoded, secret hidden “dots” that many color lasers are imprinting on every printed page.

Information includes the make and model of the printer as well as the exact time the printout was made.

No more “I finished the report last week and just forgot to give it to you.” Now, anyone who knows the code can see what printer you used and when you printed it.

Interesting!

Check out the story of how they cracked the code here. And see the current list of printers that do this here.

Hey Hey,

I meant to tell you when I emailed about the ‘QVC Online’ website that
Brad Callen of SEO Elite has big news today for all of us trying to get more
QUALITY backlinks to our web sites — which of course is critical for higher
rankings.

I added this post to my blog, and you can already see all the comments from
those who agree Link Metro is great, but the new AUTOMATED version is very cool.

Brad Callen has gotten to be a good friend of mine and he is really an expert on
link building and link analysis. Brad is the creator of a search engine optimization
program (SEO Elite) that Andy and I use to optimize all of our websites. But that’s
not what I want to tell you about. It’s this:

http://www.bradfallon.com/linkmetro

Brad told me that he just released a brand new program that will completely
automate your entire link building process. He said he has to actually keep an eye
on how many links he gets daily, because he could easily get over 100 links in one
day!

I took a look at it and have to admit, it looks really cool. You have complete
control over how fast or slow you want to get links, but I won’t go into all of
the features in this email. I will tell you that I have employees doing nothing but
link exchanges all day long over at LinkMetro, and know for a fact that this system
works well.

You can also read the comments from people using the automated and
non-automated version. (Automation and time saving is key!)

Now, not many people know about this program…yet.

So I strongly urge you to take a look and get a jump start on your competition
while you have the chance. I know you’ll like what you see.

http://www.bradfallon.com/linkmetro

Until next time,

Keep on Stomping!

Brad Fallon
www.bradfallon.com

Amid all the talk of the “convergence” of media, like television and the internet, this has to be one of the best examples yet. Despite much handwringing and navel gazing, it must happen.

Just today, the Wall Street Journal announced on page one that Comcast (TV) is building its own mini internet — a “TV version of the internet, stocked with movies, archived television programs and other interactive features, including a search function.”

Yes, it’s television, but it feels more like an internet.

What’s more, the largest cable provider is now in talks with Google to buy a $5 billion stake in AOL.

Just more ammo to try and fight off the internet players that will allow you to download everything from movies to college football not available by satellite to $2 video iPod downloads of Desperate Housewives.

In the end, it’s going to be great for consumers, or really, those who have time to sit around watching TV. And of course it will be great for those businessses that figure out how to take advantage of the new technologies faster.

For this example, visit www.buycostumes.com. This is a very nice e-commerce site that sells Halloween costumes.

But no big deal.

Now go visit www.buycostumes.tv. It also sells Halloween costumes. But this one I’m calling a big deal.

It streams a 24-hour video just like the Home Shopping Network or QVC. Except it’s online.

And except that people can watch it all over the world.

And except that you can see all the products that aren’t on right now, and you can click to buy any of them right now.

Fifty percent of online shoppers already have broadband, either at work or at home. In 2010, it’s doubtful that any e-commerce site won’t have audio or video product demonstrations, testimonials, or video product pitches.

I think this site works. The idea of QVC online is a virtual nobrainer. And this site is “only about Halloween costumes” in the same way that eBay is was just about Pez dispensers.

I plan to keep watching this site — and the ideas for any e-commerce site are obvious.

In my book, Creating Customers Out of Thin Air: Secrets of Online Marketing for Offline Businesses, I wrote that the internet was invented 1844 — by Samuel Morse. Because that was the first time that humans could send information electronically. Ever since, the only difference is that bandwidth has gotten better.

(By the way, if you don’t have a copy of my book, you can get it free here.

And like the telephone’s improvement over the telegraph, broadband internet’s improvement over the telephone (and television) is as profound. Indeed the “internet QVC” is a big improvent over the original QVC on two counts: the audience is 100% worldwide, and it’s interactive.

Specifically, the difference between the internet and the telephone is the essence of interactive marketing, viz., a two-way conversation independent of time and place. And the consumer controls the time and place of the conversation.

Online, the viewer can choose the exact product they want to see, when they want it see it — and if they’re not enamored with your offer, they’re gone with the click of a mouse.

By the same token, those businesses that can create a better interactive experience, a better two-way conversation will be the ones that thrive.

Businesses that plan to be around in twenty years should be thinking about this a lot.

Your thoughts?

Normally I wouldn’t send another Stomper Update for at least three months. (Just
kidding, but who has the time and sit down and write newsletters anymore?)

Seriously, I wanted to show you a really, really cool web site that many people
haven’t seen yet. If you are at all interested in interactive marketing you really must
check out this new video ecommerce site. It’s like QVC, but on the internet.

Very cool. (And the little kids’ and baby Halloween costumes are great.)

(continued online at http://www.bradfallon.com )

If the link doesn’t work, just go to http://www.bradfallon.com/2005/10/discuss-ecommerce-tv-is-here.html

And don’t forget to post a comment with your thoughts, too!

Brad Fallon

Funny…now there are multiple sites listing all the pixel ads, like the pixelwars.com and pixellist.com, and now one of them has an affiliate program: halfmilliondollarpicture.com.

Amid all the charity scams, many online, related to Hurricane Katrina, now you have to watch out from the one from eBay. Here are the details on eBay’s “Giving Works” program. Nice work, eBay (and PayPal).