Why You Should Fly Jet Blue And Virgin Air Out Of Alaska This Summer

Jet Blue flies to Anchorage this summer from Long Beach and Seattle.  Virgin flies non-stop from San Francisco.  Their entry into the market caused Alaska Airlines to drastically lower their fares to the LA area and to Seattle.

But I've got an Alaska mileage plan and because of family obligations outside the last couple of years we've flown enough to qualify for MVP, so we have been pretty loyal to
Alaska.

But I waited too long to book a trip to Seattle in July and the Alaska Airline price was around $250 each way.  I checked Jet Blue and it was $119.  That's a no-brainer.  There were two of us going round trip.  It would have been over $1000 with taxes on Alaska for both of us and it was under $500 on Jet Blue.

I understand the hesitation of people to switch.  Besides the mileage, I know the whole routine for Alaska.  But for $500 I was going to get out of my comfort zone.  (We're all supposed to do that all the time anyway.)


You can check in one bag for free on Jet Blue, but we were just doing carry on.

It was an Airbus 320 or 321 and seemed to have more legroom, plus there were tv monitors in the back of all the seats.  AND, on this red eye flight, they gave everyone a sleep mask and ear plugs.  If you had your own ear buds you could plug in and find your tv entertainment.  I had a book so that wasn't an important for me.

JetBlue isn't perfect.  Coming back they moved us up front to the 'even more space' seats because my original seat was broken.  (They did this before we even got on the plane, so that was good.  But if it had been a full flight?)  At the new seat, the tv monitor didn't seem to work.  No loss for me, but it's an indicator of tolerance of less than perfect.  

So, why should you give up miles on Alaska Airlines to fly Virgin or Jet Blue?  Because coming back I talked to a guy at the ticket counter.  We told him we were taking our rolling suitcases as carry on.  He said, "Let me check how full it is."  It wasn't full at all.

If we want Jet Blue and Virgin to keep coming back - and forcing Alaska to lower their prices - they need to fill up those airplanes.  And Alaska needs to know that we are willing to take the other carriers if they keep their prices so high.  Just check the prices in the fall when the competition drops these routes. 

So, if you are flying out between now and the end of the summer, check out Jetblue and Virgin flights.  Show them that we appreciate their giving Alaska some competition on Alaska's home turf.  (OK, I know that Alaska's headquartered in Seattle, but their named after our state and they are the major carrier up here.)  When they have competition, they lower their fares, when they don't they have some pretty high fares. 

Overstocked.com Charges More For Alaska Shipping Because of Customs

I know, everyone has stories about people being told that Alaska is a foreign country so they charge more or won't ship something at all.  This is not new.  But this is 2013 and it's ridiculous.

The off-brand battery that I bought for my handset for my landline phone at Frigid North a while back was not charging well anymore, even though the original Panasonic battery in the other phone was still reasonably better.  Phone conversations suddenly ended because the battery would go out.

I finally decided to check on line and immediately found the original Panasonic battery at Overstocked.com.  It was less than $5.  When I put it in my cart,  a popup window said I could also buy two more batteries for under $8.  The other battery is starting to lose juice fast too, so I said ok.   I looked up the shipping options and saw that Alaska and Hawaii would be charged more.

But when it showed me the bill it was three batteries for about $12, plus $2.95 shipping. That sounded fine.  The off brand battery I'd bought at Frigid North had cost about $18.  So I clicked to go to the checkout.  I gave them the pay info and then clicked purchase.

That's when I got a receipt that showed the shipping was $9.80 almost three times what I'd agreed to.  But I was checked out already.

So I did a chat online with someone.  I explained I understood that Alaska and Hawaii sometimes had higher shipping charges, but he should get the IT folks to show that before we've paid, not after.  He sounded like he might or might not pass the word on.

A couple days later I got an email saying it had been shipped - USPS first class.  I know that the post office is pretty equitable about the cost of postage.  I got the online USPS calculator and put in their zipcode in City of Commerce and my zipcode in Anchorage.  I didn't know how much it would be, but I guessed 6 ounces.  $2.53.  [When they finally came it turned out to be 4 ounces which the calculator says should be $2.24.]

Then I repeated this and put in a Seattle zipcode instead Anchorage.  $2.53.

So, as I suspected, there was no difference and they were charging me three times as much because someone believed it cost more to ship to Alaska.

This time I called and talked to a very nice woman who listened.  At first she was programmed to say, but you're in Alaska, but I got through that.  She understood what I was saying and put me on hold.  When she came back she said, it's because it has to go through customs.

Wait.  Alaska is a state in the United States.  You don't need a passport to come here and you don't go through customs.  Customs?  That's ridiculous.  It's not true.

She put me on hold while she went back to talk to someone else.

Now she said it was more because it was shipped in two different shipments.  We have lots of different warehouses. Why, I asked, would they do that?  It was three identical batteries.  They all should come from the same place.  It would have been cheaper for me to buy four batteries (ordering the two/fer price) than three batteries because the battery is much less than the shipping.  I also mentioned my issue about not being told the correct shipping price until after I bought the product.

She got it down, wrote it up and said she'd get it to the people who could help.

A couple of days later, I got a customer satisfaction survey online from Overstocked.  I decided to leave it in my email until I got the batteries.

Then a day or two later, the batteries arrived.  All three in one package.

Next I found the email with the link to the survey and explained it all once more.  That the price was the same to Seattle as to Anchorage, so we shouldn't be charged more, that there was only one package so I shouldn't have been told there were two, etc.

The survey was clearly sent because I'd used their customer service and I'm guessing they'll be able to track the two people who helped me and give them feedback - I said they were fine, they didn't have the power to fix things.

But how long will Alaskans continue be treated like another country?  

"Covering your feet with cushioned shoes is like turning off your smoke alarms."

As I kid I spent a lot of time barefoot, so when talk came out about barefoot running, my ears perked up.  I really like to run but I could never understand why running shoes were so expensive.  My doctor would always nag me about how running was bad for my knees.  But I didn't seem to have much trouble.  I don't run all that much.  Maybe 3.5 mile runs. My goal is three or four times a week, but it's easy to let cold weather or icy trails be excuses to slow down starting in November.  Shoveling snow, cross country skiing are also aerobic exercise.  But when I visit my mom in LA, I run more often. Because shoes are so expensive I tend to keep running in the old shoes even when it's clear the cushion effect is gone.  I like being able to feel my feet again. 

When the barefoot shoes came out, I checked up on them.  The blue shoes with the toes were just too weird for me but I did ask people wearing them how they felt.  I did read about barefoot running and like people who love the idea that chocolate and red wine are good for you, I was enjoying the reports on barefoot shoes.  I looked at videos like this one and realized that my natural running form is the barefoot way - landing on my forefoot and not on my heal. 

So in January, when we got to LA and we were walking around the Santa Monica mall on the way to a movie, I found a pair of minimalist shoes at the Sketchers store.  They still look like running shoes, but they have very thin soles by running shoe standards and there's lots of room for my toes to spread out. And they weigh almost nothing.

Here they are on my first day of running in them.  They felt great.  I can really feel the ground with these.  It's like running barefoot except all the little rocks are softened a bit when you step on them.

And then, I got the email that my book club was going to read Born to Run:  A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen  by Christopher McDougall.  The book mixes McDougall's personal story of running and having all sorts of typical running injuries and going to Mexico to find the super runners for a magazine story he's writing.  It wasn't until about page 150 that he actually starts talking about the research findings on running shoes and barefoot running.  He mixes a bunch of stories about different ultrarunners and barefoot runners and races, and the people who participate in with the info on the shoes.  The kind of thing I've been known to do here on the blog. 

The basic idea is that people have been running for thousands of years.  For many this was how they caught food.  They'd just keep running down an animal until it got exhausted.   So, this argument is that running is natural to humans, that we run to get food and that running keeps us healthy

The problem with running shoes is that instead of letting the foot feel the ground and react to those messages it gets back, the cushioned feet get lulled and stop doing what they need to do to naturally cushion the the body.

Quoting Stanford's NCAA Cross Country Coach of the Year, Vin Lananna:

"I think you try to do all these corrective things with shoes and you overcompensate.  You fix things that don't need fixing.  If you strengthen the foot by going barefoot, I think you reduce the risk of Achilles and knee and plantar fascia problems." (p.a69-70)

Or this from a study by Dr. Craig Richards, an Australian researcher:

"Runners wearing top-of-the-line shoes are 123 percent more likely to get injured than runners in cheap shoes."  (p. 171)

 Runners in shoes that cost more than $95 were more than twice as likely to get hurt as runners in shoes that cost less than $40. 

 And here's one that I loved hearing:

"As running shoes got worn down and their cushioning hardened the Oregon researchers revealed in a 1988 study for the Journal of Orthopedic & Sports Physical Therapy, runners ' feet stabilized and become less wobbly.'"

Now this is stuff I want to believe.  It also fits with my personal experiences.  But I did start carefully with the minimalist shoes. So far, running in the new shoes feels great.

But I am looking at other research on this.  

Here, for example, is a Harvard explanation with photos of ways the foot hits the ground.

It's also a warning, like so many others, that consumers should be careful of the claims of companies that make lots of money telling you their product - which fills a need people didn't know they had -  is good for you. In this case, it seems to be a need we didn't have and caused lots of people a lot of pain and suffering.  There is a section of the book that talks about the Oregon coach who first created fancy running shoes and the company Nike and how even Nike got around to pushing the benefits of running barefoot, but with their minimalist shoe on your foot.

Pino's Pasta At Via Rosa 11

Once in a while I go into a shop and immediately know it's special.  That happened here on Bainbridge Island when I stuck my head into Via Rosa.  It looked and smelled just right.  And when we started talking to the owner - Pino Sordello - and we had a long, wandering discussion about mushrooms.  

Pino and customer

You can buy fresh pasta and different sauces to take home and make for dinner.  There's Italian style pizza and lots of other goodies.  

For lunch at the shop we had the soup of the day, a lentil soup like I've never had before. Along with a couple slices of pizza and a baked tomato. 

It's really more for take home.  There are only a couple of places to eat there.   We took home some pasta and his special mushroom sauce for dinner.  So good.    Just look at all the freshly made pasta.

Oh yes, it's in Rolling Bay at 11201 Sunrise Drive NE,  on Bainbridge Island.  At Valley and Sunrise, across the street from the Post Office.

Every Good Thing Attracts The Bad - Fake Blogger Endorsements

Blogs began with a certain level of honesty and innocence.  People listened to blogger recommendations because they were genuine.  And marketers noticed that and started asking bloggers to market their products.  I wrote about this phenomenon two years ago at some length and with links to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Today I got one that went beyond most of the others.  Not only do they want me to talk about their products, they'll even write the post for me, and reward me with a gift certificate.  I would note that when I looked into this in the past, I learned that bloggers who get paid for their recommendations but don't tell their readers, are breaking the law.  (See below for more details.)

So here's the email I got.  (If you sent me a private email in response to something you read on my blog, or because you're a friend, I would not post or share your email without notifying you first and seeing if you have any objections.  But this is an unsolicited email asking me to break the law for their benefit.  There are no reasons why I should keep their correspondence confidential.)

Hi

I work for XXXXXX and wanted to reach out to you. We came across your blog What Do I know? and thought you'd make a great person to work with for a mutually beneficial initiative we've started. We're looking to have a select group of bloggers like yourself pick out their favorite XXXXXXX products and then ideally mention them in a blog post. The product selection is quite varied so I'm sure you'll find something that fits perfectly with your blog. To make this really fast & easy, we've developed a tool that guides you through everything. It even helps generate a blog post title and the actual content once you've chosen your products. You can get started by visiting this url: http://XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (yes I'm sparing you the real url) It should only take a couple minutes, but we would like to offer you a XXXXXX.com gift certificate in exchange for your time if this sounds interesting to you. All the best, Axxxxxxxx

So I followed the link and I had to pick one category from a long list.  Things like holidays, animals, birthdays, trendy, religion, gaming, brands. . .  24 in all.  I picked political and went to step 2.  Pictures of the products.  You'll see they didn't check my blog too carefully.  Here's a screenshot of three of the products.

Mind you there were dozens of choices for political products but they were all anti-Obama.  T shirts, bumper stickers, baseball caps, etc.  I guess these are bargain basement now.

Then I went to the next step to see what the post they were going to give me would look like.

 Let's see, I think this promotion sucks.  It's unethical, illegal, and their politics are all wrong.  Oh wait, I'm not doing a post to push their products, I'm doing a post to warn other bloggers and consumers.

The post they had for me turned out to be very similar to the picture above.  There were three T shirts, but vertical, and with links to buy them.

There was no disclosure that the blogger was getting a gift certificate for posting this.  I don't know how much it was for.  I didn't go that far.

I did go back and check the religion category.  There were cards (Christian and Jewish), bumper stickers and stickers (Buddhist), and T-shirts (Muslim.)  The Jewish cards ranged from ok in a secular way to tacky to offensive. The Muslim T-shirts, I can't tell if any would be acceptable to a Muslim, but some were clearly offensive.


My Blogger Colleagues!  It's illegal to get paid to endorse products without disclosing that relationship to your readers.  This solicitation does not ask me to disclose, nor does it warn me that if I don't disclose I would be breaking the law.  (In the past I even had solicitations that offered to pay me more if I DIDN'T disclose.)


This is from the Federal Trade Commission website, dated June 2010.

"The revised Guides – issued after public comment and consumer research – reflect three basic truth-in-advertising principles:

• Endorsements must be truthful and not misleading;
• If the advertiser doesn’t have proof that the endorser’s experience represents what consumers will achieve by using the product, the ad must clearly and conspicuously disclose the generally expected results in the depicted circumstances; and
• If there’s a connection between the endorser and the marketer of the product that would affect how people evaluate the endorsement, it should be disclosed.

Since the FTC issued the revised Guides, advertisers, ad agencies, bloggers, and others have sent questions to endorsements@ftc.gov. Here are answers to some of the most frequently asked questions.

About the Endorsement Guides

Are the FTC Endorsement Guides new?

The Guides aren’t new, but they’ve recently been updated. It’s always been the law that if an ad features an endorser who’s a relative or employee of the marketer – or if an endorser has been paid or given something of value to tout the marketer’s product – the ad is misleading unless the connection is made clear. The reason is obvious: Knowing about the connection is important information for anyone evaluating the endorsement. Say you’re planning a vacation. You do some research and find a glowing review on someone’s blog that a certain resort is the most luxurious place they’ve ever stayed. If you found out that the hotel had paid that blogger to say great things about it or that the blogger had stayed there for a week for free, it could affect how much weight you’d give the blogger’s endorsement."

There's a lot more questions and answers at the link. 


Remember the title of this post?  Every Good Thing Attracts The Bad.  In this case I'm giving the example that when blogs started they were new and fresh and honest and people listened to bloggers' endorsements because they were genuine.  And then the marketers moved in to exploit this new source of credibility and trust.

But this happens everywhere.  Legitimate organizations always attract the illegitimate who want to use their good name for their own gain.  We see this in every field, from religion to education and throughout the business world.  Knowing how to tell the genuine from the charlatan is a skill that has been useful since humans first became humans.  It's a skill I encourage on this blog a lot. 

Back Online. ACS Message Misleading, But Sam Was Great

If you call the tech help line for ACS (611) you get a message (still, 36 hours after the power first went out) that says

"Currently we are experiencing a widespread outage in the Anchorage area.  We are also experiencing troubles in Fairbanks.  If you are not in one of the affected areas  . . . a technician will be with you shortly."

Here's most of the message:

Welcome to Alaska Communications Repair and Technical Support.
Select one of the following options.
For assistance with your wireless phones press 2.
For internet technical support press 3.

In order to assure quality customer care for our valued customers this call may be monitored or recorded.

Thank you for calling Alaska Communications.  For your convenience, there are self-help and remote assistance  options on the web at support.alaskacommunications.com

Currently we are experiencing a widespread outage in the Anchorage area.  We are also experiencing troubles in Faribanks.  If you are not in one of the affected areas and are experiencing and interruption with your internet service please disconnect the power to your modem and any router you may have for sixty seconds  . . . and a technician will be with you shortly.

It told me the wait was 21 minutes.  Fortunately I have a speaker phone option so I could do other things.


Sam answered the phone 20 some minutes later and was amazingly calm, polite, and patient.  When I told him I was sorry but I had to turn on my computer, he said, "You probably waited for me a long time, so I can wait for your computer to boot up."  Wow!

He then proceeded to get me to link to the ACS modem and walked me through various pages to  change the password to the modem.  From what he said, I understood that in trying to fix things all the passwords had to be redone.

My beef?  Why are they continuing to say that Anchorage and Fairbanks have widespread outages, but others should hold on and get assistance?  Anchorage is back on line and we need technical assistance to get our home computers connected again.

Yesterday I bought that line, thinking if there was nothing they could do, I shouldn't add to the delays by calling when they can't do anything about it.  But someone last night said ACS was working.  So today I decided to call, to check and, as a blogger, find out what the problem was, since I was able to get internet yesterday at Providence and at Loussac.

If every Anchorage ACS user needs to change the modem password - and you have to go through technical help to do that - that could take forever.  Or at least a week or two.

But Sam was fantastic.  Not only did he convey patience and understanding of my frustration, but he also was able to fix it quickly.  When we got to about the fourth screen and he said, "You should see ...." I said, "I think you've done this before."  He replied, "Once or twice."  People like Sam make customers like me feel ok even when the company has screwed up.  ACS should give him some sort of bonus.  

Benefits of Privatization - LA Style

From Friday's LA Times:

These days, bus riders at stops around Los Angeles may find themselves without a bench to rest on.

City officials say the company that provides and manages roughly 6,000 bus benches began removing them last week because it was not awarded a new contract.

Norman Bench Advertising, which for more than a decade has maintained the benches in exchange for advertising revenue, has recently come under fire from officials for failing to disclose how many benches it has and how much money it reaps from displaying ads on them.

Board of Public Works Commissioner Andrea Alarcon said Thursday that the company has been "a difficult partner" and that benches have been removed from stops in at least three City Council districts.

Calls to William Giamela, the owner of the Canoga Park-based company, were not returned Thursday.

It continues.

It says the company 'provides and manages' the benches, so it would be interesting to know whether the benches they provided were supposed to be owned by the city or the company.  And how many benches existed before they got the contract?  Presumably most stops had benches before the contract.  Is this sour grapes for losing the contract or is there more to this story? 

Bear Tooth - and other businesses - Get Bike Racks We Can Use

We  went to Bear Tooth this evening and saw a very thought provoking movie by Werner Herzog - Cave of Forgotten Dreams - on cave paintings in France.  Too much for me to process quickly - but think: 40,000 year old paintings.

Bear Tooth had new bike racks - at least since we biked there last.  BUT - they're awful. 

WHY?  There's a little place to slip in your tire.  If you have a short lock, you can only lock that one tire to the rack.









But even if you have a longer type lock, you can't get both tires locked, and I couldn't stretch mine to get the front tire and the frame without disconnecting where I've got my lock attached to the bike on the seat.

Here's J, holding the two ends of my lock, but unable to make them meet.  Since we had two locks and two bikes, I just attached my lock to her bike.  And, in hindsight, I could have parked it with the back wheel in the rack.

But there are so many much better racks on the market.  Sturdy racks, with strong metal and placed so it's easy to reach the key parts you want to lock.

I'm sure when the person ordered this rack, he (or she) was thinking how much do each of these cost per bike and picked this one cause it's a lot of bikes for a low cost.

But that's short term thinking.  Every bike is one less parking space. (Well, maybe not, we would have only used one car between us, but you get the idea.)

I know this isn't easy, but here's a site with ideas for employers who want to encourage employees to bike to work.  It has a long list of companies that supply bike racks.

Here's just one company - creative pipe - with lots of products.  

I bet there are even metal workers in Anchorage who could custom design some bike racks so they wouldn't have to be shipped up here. 

Businesses:

1. When you order bike racks, get someone who rides a bike to help out.
2. Look at the employer commuting guide at SFBike (or other online sources) for ideas about bike racks.   
3. Check with some local pipe and/or metal shops to see what they can do for you.  
4. Find a local bike organization and ask them to help out.  In Anchorage we have Bicycle Commuters of Anchorage who I'm sure would help.

This blue rack at Providence Hospital is MUCH better for example.

Former Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter coming to Business of Clean Energy in Alaska 2011 Conference - April 28-29

I went to the first Business of Clean Energy Conference in 2009 as a blogger but last year I was out of town.  Now I'm getting emails announcing the conference will be April 28-29 this year.  Governor Ritter heads an impressive list of Outside speakers coming, including Jes B. Christensen, Managing Director, Danish Board of District Heating. It's worth clicking the link.

Here are some pictures and a video I found from 2009 that apparently never got up.  The Conference is sponsored by REAP - Renewable Energy Alaska Project.



I really thought I'd posted this video at the time of the conference, but I can only find a draft of the video with Caitlin Higgins (the Executive Director of the Alaska Conservation Alliance.) It was also about the time my son was hit by a car so maybe I was a bit distracted. So here it is now.
























There were a number of organizations sharing their messages in the lobby.











There's a quote up on their registration page:

'I think really the focus on energy (in Alaska) started with the discussion that took place at this conference,'

Gene Therriault, former energy policy advisor for Alaska.

Think about it. Therriault was energy policy adviser for Alaska and he thinks the focus on energy (in Alaska) began at the Business of Clean Energy Conference! Let's assume he was talking about Clean Energy and not oil which has been a hot topic in Alaska for 40 years. The first Business of Clean Energy Conference was in 2009. So I'm guessing what this means is, the first time he was aware of clean energy was two years ago. I guess for some Republicans, you have to attach the word Business to a topic before they can get comfortable with it. I can see why the conference would want to be associated with starting the discussion on a topic, but I'm not sure why they want to imply that clean energy wasn't on the agenda in Alaska until 2009. But, perhaps, for the business crowd it wasn't.

As I recall, the hook for the business crowd was that clean energy also meant saving money, and this year with $4 a gallon gas back in town, I would imagine it might be of interest to more businesses.

I Love Ted Herlinger's Guts

It was pretty amazing to walk into the gallery with all these spheres floating in the air.  And then I started looking at individual spheres and it was even more amazing.  I know, some people think it doesn't take much to get me excited.  But these are special, especially the whole collection hanging in this lighting.

 

The exhibit is called Phase II.  The artist is Ted Herlinger.

They're made of reed, pork gut, and elk sinew.

Here's what the description said.

One more.

I was there in Out North's gallery during intermission of The Brits and their Telly, which continues next week.  While there were a lot of interesting shorts - they are supposed to be the best British tv commercials - I remember being more enchanted by past Telly shows.  I was trying to figure out why.  I remember them as quirkier and I think for more local British products.  There were too many McDonald's and other multinational ads.  I think another issue for me was that what used to be high on originality is now more focused on high production values.

They were technically better, but too many were more like apprenticeship work for Hollywood.  All that talent and money to sell junk food is depressing.  But there were a bunch still reflected the Brits and their Telly that I remember.  Out North has a video with two of the good ones on their website.  Watch for Duckzilla, for the picnic in the field, and the British Airways ads were good.  So were the ads for non-profits. The anti-smoking and HIV prevention ads didn't beat around the bush.  And I was upset with Bob Dylan for selling out until I saw what it was for. 




An Out North heads up:  Bridgman Packer will be in Anchorage April 28 and 29.  We saw them at Alaska Dance Theater about three years ago.  Probably the most superlative post on this blog ever.  This time they will be in the Discovery Theater - but still an Out North event.  Scott says they'll be performing a piece commissioned by Out North which won them a Guggenheim Fellowship.  My breathless gushing last time wasn't misplaced.  They're so good, I think even a blind person would feel it in the room.  If you read this and don't go to see them, it's not my fault.

Does Free Ever Mean Free Any More?

Here's the email subject line I got:

Make 2011 a Smarter Year and Get a Free Wireless Device at Alaska Communications!

But when you open the email it says:

Buy a Smart Phone and get any wireless device FREE*.

Oh, yes, you have to buy a smart phone, first AND there's an asterisk.  That leads to:

Purchase of a Smartphone and a new 2-year contract required to receive free device. Free device must be accompanied by a new 2-year contract. Discount taken on least expensive device if both devices are Smartphones.

TRANSLATION:  Nothing is free here.  The cost of the extra wireless device is built into the smart phone and two year subscription cost.   We're charging so much for the two year subscription that we're still making a fat profit if we don't charge you more for the second device.  You're paying for the extra device, just somewhere else.  And I think it says that you have to buy another 2-year contract for the free device. 


Here's another example:

TRANSLATION:  It's free if you spend $85 or more.  Our markup is high enough that we can absorb the shipping price and still make a good profit.   There may be a discount from what they normally charge, but it's not "free."

Even Skype's offer of 30 minutes of free calls to land line phones (normally a few cents a minute) isn't 'free.'  They were off the internet for hours and so Skype users (especially those who pay) already paid through their inconvenience.  But you don't have to buy anything to get this free 30 minutes, maybe worth $.60 - $.90 for most people who take them up on this. 

Language changes over time.  New words are created, old words are used in new ways.  But the erosion of the word 'free' has been pretty deliberate.  It's a way that public relations people trick the lazy into buying something - by getting them to believe they are getting something free. 

There are still things you get free.  Most of Skype's regular service is free. (Except perhaps for the information they collect about you.) When you get a food sample at a market, it's free for you. (Though it's part of the marketing budget and those costs are factored into the cost of the product.)

It used to be that swindlers had to hide the deception, but it seems Americans are so lazy, that marketers can put all the details out there  in black and white and still get people to go along.  And as long as people buy products that have 'free' offer gimmicks attached, marketers will plaster free all over everything. 

California's Prop 19 to Legalize Marijuana

See what we miss in Alaska by not having billboards?

Actual Billboard

Sunday's front page LA Times article about the marijuana initiative by Shari Roan begins:

"In 1969, Carol McDonald was 28, married and the mother of two young children, out for an evening of fun with a couple who smoked marijuana. By the end of the evening she was on her way to a 19-year addiction."

Then it wanders through research that finds marijuana fairly benign to studies that are more critical.  And it looks at a lot of issues.

• Impact on Mexican drug cartels?
  A:  Make them less powerful or Make them push harder drugs harder. 
  
  
• Impact on addiction? 
  A:  Addicts will be treated rather than jailed or more people will become addicted.
  
  
• Impact on driving? 
  A:  Little or moderate impact, but significant if mixed with alcohol or no lab detectable effects on driving ability.
  
  
• Impact on lungs? 
  A:  Hard to tell "because a large portion of heavy marijuana users also smoke tobacco, which muddies the picture of marijuana's effects."
  
  
• Impact on brain functions?
  A:  "Experts tend to agree that smoking marijuana causes short-term memory loss, they disagree widely on the overall cognitive effects of the drug."
  
  
• Impact on people moving up to harder drugs?
  A:  Not really, but the younger kids are when they start, the more likely to be addicted.
  
  
• Impact on school performance?
  A:  Not as bad as alcohol, but will put you behind.
  
  
• Impact on marijuana use?
  A:  No one knows, but some say use will go up, others say with legal medical marijuana and widespread illegal use, it shouldn't increase by much.

Some things are generally agreed on:

• "that marijuana should be avoided during pregnancy and that it is harmful for people with mental illness or who are at risk for developing a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia." 

•  " Marijuana is addictive for about 9% of adults who use it (compared with about 15% who use alcohol and 15% who use cocaine), according to federal data. Because it is the most widely used illegal substance in the country, marijuana dependence is more common than addiction to either cocaine or heroin despite its lower addiction potential."

"The bottom line is that marijuana is far less dangerous than alcohol and cigarettes," Gutwillig added. "It's far less addictive than either of them. People tend to use marijuana in smaller amounts. It does not have alcohol's noxious association with violence and reckless behavior. And you can't overdose."

Then there are some concerns about how the law will be implemented.  Finally it gets back to Carol McDonald.  After chronicling her years of addiction, the article ends

Even after what she went through, McDonald said she would like to see marijuana legalized so that people who have problems with the drug will be steered into treatment.

Even "as someone who has been far down the rabbit hole, I still don't think it's as dangerous as alcohol," she said. "But if I'd had any inkling of what it would do, I would have been more careful."

My take is that marijuana is a symbolic issue.  It goes back to the 60's.  If you were around then and believe the 60's represented a blossoming of freedom, opposition to hypocrisy, and the beginning of a new awareness of human rights and the environment, then you probably lean toward legalizing pot.

If you were around then and think those times began the slow collapse of the family and American tradition, then marijuana is the symbol of all that was wrong back then and you're likely to oppose legalizing pot.  (If you feel that way about the 60's, but weren't around then, you might not make the ideological link between pot and the 60's, especially if you experienced pot as you grew up.)

Alcohol brings a lot of problems to our society and one could argue that marijuana would just add to that.  But it seems to me that marijuana is far more benign than alcohol and we don't ban many things that carry risks (driving cars, owning guns, bungee jumping, etc.)  And banning marijuana (and other drugs) has spawned a huge illegal trade which is having catastrophic impacts on Mexico and the US. 

It seems reasonable to me to try this out in California and see what happens, see if we can't make things work better with legal marijuana than with illegal marijuana.  It won't be without harmful side effects, but we already have huge harmful side effects with it being illegal.

Besides, it's practically legal already according to an LA Times piece by George Skelton:

In California, selling marijuana for non-medicinal use is a felony. But possessing less than one ounce — about a sandwich baggie-full — is a low misdemeanor punishable by a fine.

Starting Jan. 1, pot smoking will be even less of a state crime. Under a bill recently signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, it will be deemed an infraction, equivalent to a traffic ticket.

Since 1996, when voters approved Prop. 215, it has been legal in California to grow, sell and smoke marijuana for medical purposes, subject to local control. A "patient" needs only a doctor's "recommendation," not a prescription.

Merely a quarter of buyers at medicinal pot shops "are truly in need of it because of a medical condition," says attorney George Mull, president of the California Cannabis Assn., which advocates "reasonable regulation of medical marijuana." [emphasis added]

But I haven't studied this proposition in detail and lots of prominent people oppose Prop. 19. 

The LA Times endorses a NO vote.

Their print version on October 10 says that both the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor (Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown) and for US Senator (Carly Fiorina and Barbara Boxer) and US Senator Dianne Feinstein oppose Prop 19.

So does the attorney for the California Cannabis Association quoted in the Skelton piece above:

Mull opposes Prop. 19, illustrating a split in the marijuana community.

And it would still be a Federal felony setting up a showdown between the Feds and the State.  Where are all those states' rights conservatives on this issue? 



Ballotmedia also has a lot of information on Prop. 19 including the full text.

Comparing the ANCHORAGE and ALASKA International Film Festivals - Real Festival? Scam?

This is the final post of  three part series of posts.  The first two parts were:

Part 1:  What's a Scam?
Part 2:  What's a Film Festival?

This post is Part 3:  Comparison of Authenticity of ANCHORAGE and ALASKA International Film Festivals.

This is a long post. To make it a little easier, here are the key sections. The links will take you to that section.


Overview
Some Background
Comparing the  authenticity of the ANCHORAGE and ALASKA IFFs.

• Question 1 Is it really a film festival? 
• I contacted some of the 2010 Winners
• Interesting Development
• Question 2 Is it really a scam?
• The 9 elements of Oregon fraud 

Conclusion


Overview

In 2009, there were two film festivals in Alaska with the same ACRONYM - AIFF. One A stands for Anchorage. Think of the ANCHOR of a boat. Something that keeps the boat secure and safe. The ANCHORage International Film Festival began in 2001 and is a winter celebration of film and film people with people coming from around the world.

The other Alaska. Think of ALAS! the word of woe when something is wrong. This festival began last year, though the original website made it sound like it had been around for years, and there actually is no festival. People send in films and money and they announce their winners in July. In fact, this year in July, after the awards announcement, they changed their name from Festival to Awards (Alaska International Film Awards.)

This post compares the two film events against standards for a film festival and against standards for a scam. Actually, I've used standards for fraud.

Some Background

This all began last November when I was preparing to blog the ANCHORAGE IFF and accidentally got onto a website that puzzled me because all the pictures were different.  I couldn't imagine  they would make such a radical change to their website a week or so before the festival.  And then I saw it.  This said ALASKA, not ANCHORAGE.  I ended up writing a post:  Film Festival Scam?  AIFF is NOT AIFF.

In March of this year I received a letter from the ALASKA IFF threatening me with a law suit if I didn't remove the post.  My attorney responded with a letter back.  They never responded.  But I've been poking around since then and discovered that there is a dark side to the film festival circuit.  These posts are intended to alert film makers to be careful when choosing festivals. 


Comparing the  authenticity of the ANCHORAGE and ALASKA IFFs.


There are two basic questions to ask:
1.  Is it really a film festival?
2.  Is it a scam?

To answer Question 1 Is it really a film festival?  I've pulled out the elements of a film festival that I put together in the post on What is a Film Festival?  and put them into this table to compare the ANCHORAGE and ALASKA IFF.

Characteristics of Film Festival	ANCHORAGE  IFF	ALASKA   IFF 2010
Gathering of people	YES	NO
Show and watch films	YES	NO
Get an audience for filmmakers	YES	NO
Let the public and critics see a wide variety of new films	YES	NO
Opportunities for the participants to meet, discuss the films, filmmaking, and distribution of the films.	YES	NO
A networking opportunity	YES	NO
Festival gives awards	YES	YES
Festival, not award winners, pays for awards	YES	NO

I contacted some of the 2010 Winners

You can see that the only film festival-like characteristic of the ALASKA IFF this year was to give out awards.   When they posted the winners on July 15 I contacted about four of them.  I told them I was a blogger who covered the ANCHORAGE IFF and that since there was no actual showing of films or gathering people for the ALASKA IFF, could they tell me what they got for their awards.  They all replied that they got a nice certificate and the right to BUY a "crystal wave" award for prices ranging from $155 to $250.

When I was researching these posts, I didn't see too much that discussed awards, but in a book called Film Festivals Secrets by Christopher Holland, there's a short section on scams (p. 19) where he mentions having to buy the awards.

So, the  only criterion the ALASKA IFF for 2010 met was the award, but the winners have to pay for their own awards.   The ALASKA IFF clearly is not what most people would consider a  legitimate film festival.

On the other hand the ANCHORAGE IFF met all the criteria of a legitimate film festival.


Interesting Development

I would note that in the time since I wrote the first two parts of this series, the ALASKA International Film Festival has renamed itself to the ALASKA International Film AWARDS.  Festival is gone.  Well, not completely.  Their web address still (as I write this) includes filmfestival.


That does change things a bit.  If it doesn't have FESTIVAL in its name, at least film makers should be alerted to some extent that there might not be a festival involved.  No showing of films.  No networking. No meeting other filmmakers, no parties, etc.




Question 2:  Is it really a scam?

Does changing the name from festival to awards mean this is all moot?  Not exactly.  Scam doesn't necessarily mean illegal, but it does mean there is some deception involved, some attempt to appear to be something that it is not.  There are still some questions about the awards, about the use of the name Alaska, and the overall transparency of the organization.   

Finding clear criteria for a scam isn't all that easy, so I've decided to take the more stringent criteria of Oregon fraud as listed on Fraudlaw.com.  We can go through them one by one.

The 9 elements of Oregon fraud are:

1)  A representation

ANCHORAGE International Film FESTIVAL - represents itself as a film festival in Anchorage, Alaska.  It has had festivals since 2001, in Anchorage, showing films, supported by local sponsors and many volunteers.  It has an Alaska business license, and the names of the board of directors are available on their website.  They have local addresses, emails, and phone numbers.  

Alaska International Film Awards - represents itself  (as of July 2010) not as a  film festival, but as Film Awards. This is their first year - first month as I write - as the Alaska International Film Awards. 

2) Its falsity;

Anchorage International Film Festival - I've found nothing false about anything the AIFF website says.  And therefore the next criteria will only consider the Alaska International Film Awards. 

Alaska International Film Awards -  Much of the text is similar to what was up when this was the Film Festival.  (I would note, that even then, it did state on one of its pages that there was no actual showing of films.)  They still have the same mailing address:

Alaska International Film Awards
3705 Arctic Blvd. #2329
Anchorage, AK 99503


As I showed in my original post on this, this is simply a private mail service box. The Mail Cache is a private company that rents mail boxes and forwards mail. There is no need for anyone related to the Alaska International Film Awards to even be in Alaska because the Mail Cache advertises that:

Our unique computerized system allows for almost any forwarding contingency possible.

For example, if you needed all your first class mail only, sent once every week to Australia,  and all your magazines every other month to New York City, we can do it!

 I cannot find a business license for the Alaska International Film Awards (or Festival) on the Alaska Corporations, Business and Professional Licensing website.

Their phone number on their Withoutabox listing has a Kentucky area code (270-675-0451)

Their two sponsors (they had no sponsors when they first posted and we pointed that out) are listed as ViewConference whose address is:

• info@viewconference.it
• Corso Marconi, 38
• 10125 Turin
• Italy

and Indie Media Entertainment (IME) which is located in California:

Mailing Address:
15 Hammond Suite #302
Irvine, CA 92618

3) Its materiality -

 Does it matter that the Awards organization is not in Alaska?

They have represented themselves as Alaskan, with Alaska in their name, with pictures of what appears to be Alaska wilderness on their webiste, and even some Alaska theme names among their Awards - Kodiak Award, Denali Award, Northern Lights Emerging Talent Award, and Best of Alaska Award. Obviously, they want people to think they are connected to Alaska.

If not, why would they do all this Alaska imagery and why not have people mail things directly to them instead of via a rented Alaska mailbox?

Why not call it by some other name, like "The Fantastic Film Awards" or "The International Film Awards"?  Why put Alaska in front?

Because, I would guess,

• Most film festivals have the location of the festival in the title and they have an actual festival in that location.  Without a location, people might check a little harder. This Awards thing called itself a film festival in its first year.  This blog and filmmaker.net called it out as not really being a festival.  Now they've changed their name to Awards.  But they've kept the Alaska name, a place most people know about, but have never been to and don't know much about. A place to which most people aren't likely to know the Awards have no real connections.
  
• Film makers would be confused. The original name had its acronym identical to an existing film festival in Alaska - the Anchorage International Film Festival with the same AIFF.  Even people in Alaska have gotten confused between the two names.  One might argue this is completely coincidental.  But it certainly sets up some confusion for film makers who aren't familiar with Alaska, and even people who are.  Award winners from this year that I've communicated with were clearly confused.
  
  
• Alaska's name and mystique sells.  

For all these reasons, they are more likely to be noticed and get submissions than if they had a name without a place in it, or even if they had some less romantic and less distant place than Alaska.  

Presumably, the existing ANCHORAGE IFF lost submissions because people confused the two festivals. 

As long as this Awards thing keeps Alaska in the name, it makes people believe that there is a connection to Alaska - even the names of the main awards have Alaska themes.  From their current website:

Awards will be presented in several categories including three main recognition levels: the Kodiak Award, the Denali Award, and the Northern Lights Emerging Talent Award.  

4) The speaker's knowledge of the representation's falsity or ignorance of its truth;

Clearly, the sponsors are well aware that 

• they have no connection to Alaska beyond the name of their Awards thing and a rented mail box. They know there is an Anchorage International Film Festival with the same acronym they originally chose.  
• they aren't a festival - and at least they had the decency to change their name from festival to award. But I suspect if bloggers - at least three of whom got threatening letters from their attorney for pointing this out - hadn't written about this, it would still be called a festival this year. 
• film makers aren't likely to know the above two facts.  Holland, in his book, Film Festival Secrets writes:

". . . and filmmakers are too focused on completing their films,  to pay much attention to how films get into festivals afterward" (p. 13)

Additionally, there is lots of missing information.

• There are no names of real people on the original website or the newly named Awards website.
• The process for judging films is not listed, nor are names of anyone involved in judging films.
• The winners of the first year are posted, but the other films submitted are not.  At actual festivals, they have to post the names of all the accepted films so viewers can know when and where to watch them.  This means there is no way to confirm that they only award a maximum of 15% of the films submitted.  [There's actually nothing to confirm here.  Even I, as carefully as I've gone through this, misinterpreted this.  It actually says 'more than 15%.'  But in my mind I couldn't imagine them saying this and so I misread it.]
• There is no information posted that the award winners must purchase their trophies.

5) Intent that the representation be acted on in a manner reasonably contemplated;

Obviously, they wanted film makers to send application fees to them. I don't know if they care about getting the dvd's of the films. I have no idea what they do with them, but if they didn't ask for them, how could they choose award winners. And from my calculation**, based on their representations, they probably made  [somewhere between] about [$2600 and] $16,000, minus the cost of the rented mail box ($10/month according to the mail cache website, though since they had one of the bigger ones, it might have been more) plus the postage to have everything forwarded.  If they're lucky, most people use Withoutabox and they don't have to pay for the postage.  And they don't have to pay for awards either, in fact, it's possible they get a cut from those too. 

6) The hearer's ignorance of the falsity of the representation;

Filmmakers have a responsibility to check out the festivals they submit to.  If they had read the Alaska IFF website carefully,

• they would have found out there was no actual showing of films, but 
• they wouldn't know there was no real connection to Alaska.  If they had spent some time googling, they might have found warnings. (when I google, the filmmaking.net story comes up on the first page and this blog's story comes on page 2)
• they also wouldn't have found out that winners had to pay for their own awards. 

There are festivals which exist like vanity press - people pay their money and get their award which they can use to impress people who don't know anything about the obscure festival.   

If someone knows that they are paying for an award, that may be a little seedy, but then the deal between the Awards thing and the film maker is transparent and everyone knows what the deal is.  But this organization advertises that

Awards will be presented to more than 15% of total applicants and only to those films that demonstrate a superior level of craftsmanship and quality. 

So this doesn't appear to be a vanity festival where all submissions win (and I have no reason to believe that is what happened, though the three Alaska themed awards had ten winners each) or where the winners would be expected to pay for their trophies as the winners I contacted were asked to do.

7) The hearer's reliance on its (the representation in item 1) truth;

The overwhelming number of festivals are legitimate.  In his book Film Festival Secrets, William Holland writes that "Fortunately, these [scams] are few and far between, but festival scams do exist."(p. 19)  I imagine that scams will increase as people begin to realize the amount of money to be made with a rented mailbox.

I'm guessing that many filmmakers, totally caught up in the time devouring activities of completing a film, do not pay near as much attention to getting in film festivals as they should.

There are many film related websites and blogs where people might learn about the reputations of various film festivals.

I have learned though my experiences just writing about film festivals is that:
1.  There doesn't seem to be any sort of vetting or regulation of film festivals.  I haven't found a governing body that verifies the legitimacy of festivals.
2.  Withoutabox, an organizations that streamlines submitting to film festivals, for many appears to be taken as a seal of approval.  But it also appears that because there are so many new film festivals daily and because they profit from people submitting to festivals - legit or not - they are not checking out festivals for legitimacy.

So, while some film makers, perhaps many, might assume being connected with Withoutabox implies legitimacy, this doesn't appear to be the case.  I couldn't find anything on their site that actually talks about Withoutabox and what they claim to actually do other than send people's films out to festivals.  However, they do have forums where people can ask questions about festivals and see what others have had to say. 

8) The hearer's right to rely on the representation;

One has to assume that the hearer has an obligation to read the website carefully.  Since there don't seem to be any governmental agencies or even industry groups that monitor festivals, there aren't a lot of options but to trust what the festival website presents.  Last year when I first discovered this, the only contact mentioned was the Anchorage mailing address.  I went to talk to the people but it turned out to be a rented mail box.  There was no email or phone number.

This year there is an email address.  Withoutabox has a phone number.  So, presumably you could get more information from the people who run this organization.

So, hearers - in this case readers -

• could have read and discovered there was no actual film festival.  And the name has even been changed in July to Awards, which reflects this more.
• could NOT tell there is no connection really with Alaska
• could NOT tell that award winners are expected to pay for their trophies

9) Damage caused by the representation.

• The opportunity costs of sending to a festival that isn't a festival.  Even this year, though, with the name changed to Awards, people will spend time and money submitting to this festival when, if they knew there was no connection to Alaska and they knew they would have to pay for their trophy, they wouldn't have submitted.
  
• The actual costs, somewhere between $30-50 for submission
• Cost to pay Withoutabox if they use them
• Cost of the whatever they submit to the Awards thing 
• Cost of postage

For individual film makers, the cost isn't great - perhaps $100 total at most, not counting their time.  But this is the  typical salami technique where no individual loses a lot but cumulatively the organization can make a considerable amount.  The FBI tends not to go after these things because the individual damage isn't great.

• The Anchorage International Film Festival stands to be the biggest loser.  As a real festival in Alaska with the same initials the Alaska International Film Festival adopted for its first year, a significant portion of the film submissions might have gone to them as film makers mixed the two festivals up.  

Conclusion

I'm only able to use information that is available here.  In a court of law, attorneys could subpoena information and take testimony that I can't get.  Therefore, I can't make any final conclusions.  But this is how I see it with the limited information I have.

The ANCHORAGE International is unquestionably a real festival, with lots of films, lots of viewers, lots of film makers from around the world.  I've seen it with my own eyes.  I've been to four or five of them and blogged three of them, so I know it's real.  It's not perfect.  But each year they learn from their mistakes and get better.  And film makers, including minor film makers, say they get treated very well in Anchorage compared to most other festivals.

The ALASKA International Film Festival/Awards is clearly not a festival, which they acknowledged last month by changing their name from Festival to Awards.  But there are still questions in my mind about their transparency, particularly on the issue of being an "Alaskan" festival and the awards.

• There is nothing Alaska about the Alaska International Awards except the pictures on their website (and some of those are questionable), their rented mail box, and their name.  To portray yourself as something you are not is clearly deceptive and what scams do to get their victims to part with their money.

• They charged their award winners a significant amount for the 'crystal wave' trophies they won.   Christopher Holland, the author of Film Festival Secrets (p. 19) lists this as the practice of film festival scams.
  
• There is no information about any of the organizers, jurors, or any people at all on their website. Most legitimate film competitions list the names of their boards and staff on their websites. 

To be totally open and honest they should

• abandon the name Alaska and take a name that more realistically represents who they are
  
• be more open about the fact that winners must pay for their trophies on the website.  If people want to submit to a vanity awards thing (a festival is a festival but what do you all an awards?), then they should know that is what they are doing.  
  
• list the names  and contact information of the key people involved in their awards event. 

**Calculation of $16,000 income from submission fees.
Their website says 

Awards will be presented to more than 15% of total applicants and only to those films that demonstrate a superior level of craftsmanship and quality.

[Update August 20:  I originally misread this and mentally put a 'no' before the "more than."  It would make sense for a film event with awards to limit the number of awards to a relatively small percent, especially since it says the films must "demonstrate a superior level of craftsmanship and quality."  How can they be sure there will be enough submissions that meet that standard?  So the 'no' would have made sense.  But this changes things.  It makes the amount they probably took in lower, but it also takes away any standards.  Reading it correctly means that potentially every film that was submitted could have gotten an award.  I'll adjust the rest accordingly.]
 
Their site lists 65 award winners for film and screenwriting.  That means they had to have at least 406 films submitted.  We have to trust that they kept to the 15% limit, since they don't show films and they didn't list the films submitted, we can't tell for sure.  If there weren't at least 406 films, then they would clearly be deceiving film makers and screen writers.

[We know that 65 films won awards (I think it's a little less because a couple may have won more than one category), so that is the minimum number of films.  So the festival could have had - according to their guidelines - anywhere from 65 films and scripts submitted to about 400 submissions (65 is a bit more than 15% of 400).]

Their fees - depending on length and date submitted - ranged from $30 - $55.  If we assume $40 as an average price in order to make a guestimate, they would have received [between $2600 and $16,000] $16,240 in submission fees.

[But this also means that they are not limiting the number of awards the way I thought and the way a legitimate award event would do it.  Rather,  they are leaving it open for every entry to potentially get an award.  As film makers around the world begin to realize this, the value of winning one of these awards diminishes because all the films could potentially get an award.  If that were the case, it would simply be like buying an award.  Because only the award winners are announced, no one knows what percent of applicants actually won. And it appears that the Alaska International Film Awards takes a cut of the award cost for themselves.]]

[UPDATE Nov 17, 2017:  It's come to my attention that in 2013 IndieWire did a two part post on film festival scams  and talked about the work on this blog, including this post.]

Link Clickers Beware - But You Can Opt Out

[Update, August 12]:  An anonymous comment provided a link to the FTC guidelines covering endorsements and testimonials. You can see the relevant section for bloggers in the third comment at the end of this post. It sure looks to me that this totally violates those guidelines.]

BloggerBuzz had a post recently announcing a new way to 'monetize' one's blog:

. . . Any time you write about a product or service, you're connecting your audience to that product. If someone makes a purchase, the seller benefits from your written word—you influenced a purchase. There are thousands of websites that will pay you a fee for any business you bring them through a form of online advertising called affiliate marketing. With affiliate ads, web publishers are compensated for driving online actions.

VigLink is a content monetization company that makes affiliate marketing very easy for bloggers. We offer a simple snippet of code you can install in your blog that automatically and transparently does all the work for you. We've catalogued and signed up for more than 12,500 affiliate programs and we collect all the performance information and deliver you a single integrated payment. In return, VigLink takes 25% of the incremental revenue you earn. [emphasis added].

There's also a two minute video.




What's wrong here?    Most might say, nothing at all.  This is the American way of life.  Nothing has value unless it has a price.  Unless we can make a buck off of it.  People who blog for free are losers.  Well, here are the problems I have:

1.  The reader doesn't know the blogger is being paid and thinks the endorsement is uninfluenced by a payoff.


When I was a cab driver in LA, a fare once wanted to go to a strip club.  When I dropped him off, the club guy came to my window and gave me $5 and told me it was always $5 per person I dropped off.  So if someone asked me if there were any good clubs around, you know where I'd take him.

This is the same sort of problem these unmarked links set up.  The reader thinks it's a genuine endorsement uninfluenced by the promise of a payoff. Currently, there are ads in some blogs, but they are labeled as such.   Readers suspect or know that the blogger gets a commission on these. 

In their FAQ's, the company writes this about reader awareness:

Will my users notice?

Likely not. VigLink does not change the user experience one bit. No links are inserted or removed on the page, there are no double-underlines or pop-ups, and mousing over a link looks "clean."

But, it's really dirty is what they seem to be saying.

This is like tv shows and movies that pay film makers to embed their products in their shows.  So buying Full Circle Farm produce no longer is an integral aspect of the character, but rather they wrote that in because FCF has paid them for this stealth ad.

I've gotten emails offering me payments if I plug a product on my blog and they will pay more if I don't say that I'm getting paid.  The advertisers believe that if the readers don't know the bloggers are getting paid, they are more likely to believe.

In the FAQ's, they even tell merchants:

Additionally, VigLink increases confidence, click-through rates and conversions by making the links to your site appear to be "natural" links instead of obviously embedded affiliate codes. [Emphasis added]

They are selling the fact to merchants that they are deceiving viewers into thinking these are natural links.

As a viewer, YOU CAN OPT out.  There's a page where if you click on the button, it says

If you'd like to disable VigLink on sites that you visit, click the button below.

I'm not sure what that means.  I have no idea how the average viewer would ever find the page, or even know there is something to opt out of.  Does it mean they won't collect data on you?  Does it mean that the blogger doesn't get his payoff if you purchase something through his link?  There's a link there to a long privacy policy which includes statements like:

We do not knowingly collect personal data from children under the age of 13. If you are under 13, please do not give us any personally identifiable information.  [Emphasis added]

How many kids read privacy policies?  How many adults read privacy policies?  How many people even know this company exists? 


2.  The blogger starts pushing products, not because he really likes them, but because they will make him money.

Behavioralism is a school of psychology that tells us, among other things, that people repeat behaviors that are rewarded.  So, if bloggers get paid for writing posts that get people to click on links and buy products, they will start writing more such posts.  And eventually, some bloggers will recommend products they don't really believe in because they know they will get rewarded.  


3.   Trust in Blogs Will Turn to Suspicion

Before this new company arrived, readers knew that if they clicked on an ad, the blogger would get some small amount of reimbursement, but if they clicked on a link in the post, there was no compensation.  They could reasonably assume that the blogger put in the link because he believed it was in the reader's interest to click on the link.

Now though, as surfers begin to understand this new system, they will become suspicious of all blogs and bloggers (and probably the websites of newspapers and everyone else will do this as well.  Maybe they already do.)

Even if bloggers, like me, post announcements saying that we do not have paid links, there's nothing to stop people who DO have paid links from putting up the same announcements. 

Note:  People should be skeptical about what they read on blogs.  But there has been a sense of innocence in many blogs that are written by people who just enjoy sharing their ideas and without the corrupting influence of money. 

4.   Bloggers are probably also being ripped off

So, if VigLinks is willing to hide from the viewer the fact that the blogger is getting paid, why should we be surprised that they are also snookering the blogger?

• Blogger pay is probably pretty tiny.  One reason putting up ads is not even a temptation is that I know I would get so little revenue from the ads anyway.  If I'm going to sell out it's going to be for a lot more than $50.   I looked into google-ads  when I first started blogging and learned that only blogs with at least thousands of daily hits are likely to make any real money.  The ads for this company don't talk about how much a blogger would actually get.  I looked through more of the links on the website.  You get vague things like:

How does payment work?

VigLink will pay by check in the United States and PayPal anywhere it is available. We are expanding our payment options over time. VigLink will ask for payment information and pay publishers as soon as their balance reaches $25. VigLink typically takes 25% on commission earned by publishers. Often publishers still receive higher payouts due to collective bargaining and high volume commission levels. We will issue an IRS Form 1099 to any publisher who makes more than $400 in a fiscal year.

What percent of bloggers will even earn that $25?  If they don't, what happens to the money?  So, we don't really know how much you get per click.   Actually, another FAQ says you get paid if someone makes purchase only.  It doesn't say how much.  Instead it says,

How does VigLink make money?

You earn a commission for every sale made on a linked site. VigLink takes a small fee from that commission and then passes on the rest to you.

Small fee?  It's true it will be a small fee in absolute cents.  But it is 25% of what the blogger earns.  Gryphen at Immoral Minority said that Tank Jones and Rex Butler's commission from Levi Johnstons' earnings is only 20%.  I don't know if that's true, but Gryph seemed to think that was a significant chunk.  This company takes 25%.

But if the blogger doesn't make much money at all, what's 25% of nothing?  Well, there's something called the salami technique:

Employee embezzles large amount of money by stealing small sums from many different accounts.

This linking scheme isn't stealing because they tell the blogger and the blogger agrees to it. Though they intentionally do not want the viewer to know what is happening.   But, the vast majority of bloggers who might sign up for this probably wouldn't make much money.  It's possible a lot won't even reach the $25 threshold necessary for them to write the first check.  And as I asked earlier, what happens to this below threshold accumulation?  Why don't I think they'll donate it to decrease our national budget? 

I'm guessing, based on talking to people who have google ads, most people won't make more than, say, $50 a year, and that's probably high.  A few of the very big blogs with  thousands of hits a day, might do well.  But if this company got a million blogs to sign up - and it's really easy to add the code - and they get 25%, and if that amounted to about $10 per blog, that would be $10 million per year. (Hatrickassociates claims there are 400 million active English-language blogs in 2010, so my estimate is probably way low.)

So a scheme like this would

• pollute general trust in blogs with 
• minor benefit to most bloggers who sign up, 
• cause deception for readers, and 
• cause companies to pay a salami slice commission for links that they had in the past for free. 

The main beneficiary would appear to be this new company, and, probably Blogspot, WordPress, and TypePad also get a cut.  I couldn't find any mention of that.  


It seems to me that blogs with stealth links like this should post a notice at the top of the blog:

"This blog may receive kickbacks from merchants if you click from here and our reviews of products may be biased because of that."