More Fun with Yahoo!

You know what I love about the Internet? It's the way our stressful workaday lives have been eased through the valuable assortment of online tools that deliver information to our fingertips. Compiling sales and marketing reports used to require wading through piles of data and converting it into a usable form. Now, one merely needs to set the date range and all becomes clear.

Unless, of course, you're using Yahoo! Search Marketing, hereafter to be known as Boohoo! Search Marketing for the anguish it causes each time I dare to make sense of its bewildering interface and substandard tools.

Today, I made the mistake of trying to figure out what my pay-per-click keywords have been doing over the past year. Simple enough in Google--just set the date range, and the data magically appears. MSN's AdCenter won't let me specify a date range, but they will give me year-to-date data, which is just as useful. Truth be told, that functionality might be there, but there was a friendly dropdown menu offering me a good approximation of what I wanted, so I used it.

I saved Boohoo! for last, expecting, rightfully so, to be frustrated and defeated by their interface. Their 20-minute automatic logout "feature" also turns every Boohoo! adventure into a fast-paced game of Beat the Clock that I need to postpone until late in the day out of concern for the well-being of my coworkers and anyone else who might be in earshot.

For a change, clicking on the "Reports" link actually took me someplace helpful, and I could find the account report I wanted. I entered my date range, and waited for the report to appear.

Instead of getting a report, I received the following error message:

The date range is limited to 95 days.

Wow! A whole 95 days of tracking! Just what I needed for those quarterly reports. Unfortunately, I'm working on an annual report, so 95 days doesn't do me a damn bit of good. Had I known that my reports were limited to 95 days, I might have set up a system to download and compile them every quarter. I also might have done the smart thing and never gotten involved with Boohoo! Search Marketing.

This lack of functionality is a joke, right? There's another link somewhere I can click where it says, "We were just kidding," and gives me the data, right? No? Well at least it should be fast when I request my quarterly reports, right? One 90-day date range later, instead of a report, I get this message:

Your request is currently being processed. To obtain your report, return to this page and enter your request again. If the request has been completed, the report will be displayed at that time.

Awesome! Low functionality and slow response times! It's like tripping back in time to the 28.8 modem days. And the best thing is, every time you click on the little calendar icon to change the date range, it defaults to today's date! Think of the fun you'll have trying to figure out what the heck you're trying to do as Boohoo! error messages fill your screen--and by "fill," I mean appear in tiny, almost unreadable text.

And to think Boohoo! is working overtime to release the new and improved version of Search Marketing. Guys, you can't make a diamond any more perfect. Please, I beg you, leave the damn thing alone, subcontract to Google!, and let the rest of us get some work done.

Lowering Your Cost of Living

As Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve meet over the next few days, everyone will be focused on the rising cost of living in America. Here at 1-800-Bakery.com, we're doing something to help.

Thanks to our growth, we're able to negotiate discounts with our suppliers, which allows us to offer $19.95 Overnight shipping on all of our cakes and tarts from Bittersweet Pastries. That's a savings of seven dollars and change over our old Overnight rate, and one of the best values on the Web.

To compare, the FREE shipping liars offer their nine-inch cake for $69.99. Our ten-inch cake, which serves more people, costs $68.90. These prices will be in effect until Second-Day Air shipping returns, assuming it ever cools off around here, anticipated for late September.

You can take the seven bucks you save and buy some more gas, knowing that you're getting the same great cake, customer service, and reliable shipping, just for less money.

It's our way of trying to help lower your cost of living. Our hope is that Ben Bernanke will take note of our efforts and leave interest rates unchanged. If he does, you can thank us for helping to stabilize the American economy, and there's no better way to do that than by buying a nice cake or tart.

The Heat Goes On

Have I mentioned that there are Portuguese Man O'War stinging people off the coast of New England? That's how hot it is. Over the weekend, temperatures rose over 110 degrees in parts of California.

The heat's proven too much for our Petits Fours Package Collection to bear. We sent some to Yuma, Arizona. Some of them melted. We sent some more to Yuma, Arizona, (free of charge, because we offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee) and some of those melted. Between the two boxes, the customer had enough for her party, which was good. Temperatures were well over 100 in Yuma at the time, and while that isn't the case everywhere, it's hot enough in enough of the country that we've decided to keep them off the site for a week or so.

If you need petits fours, our Demitasse Party Petits Fours are still available, and they're durable enough to take the heat. They're what we in the business call "shelf stable," which means they can be stored for a time without refrigeration.

The Package Collection is still available, but we're shipping them on a case-by-case basis until things cool down. If you'd like to order some, please call us at 1-800-287-9870 and we'll see if we can get them to you. If you're placing an order for Septemeber 1 and beyond, no problem, just give us a call.

If, like me, you're wondering when this scorching summer will be just an upleasant memory, you'll be happy to know that our Back to School Mini Cookies return on August 1, a sure sign that autumn is coming. That also means that our Spring Mini Cookies will soon be gone, so if you're in need of flowers and ladybugs, be sure to order some soon.

Is Yahoo! Editing Your PPC Campaigns?

I'm beyond frustrated right now as I find myself in Day 2 of undoing the damage that Yahoo! Search Marketing editors have done to my PPC campaign. I wasn't even aware of this until yesterday, when I started modifying our existing PPC ads with new conversion tracking code.

There, among the ads I'd written, were things with titles like, "Affordable Gourmet Gift Baskets" and "Buy Great Cookies at Low Prices." If you're at all familiar with this site, which Yahoo's "editors" clearly aren't, then you know that we don't use words like "affordable," "low prices," or "discount" to sell our products.

In fact, we told Yahoo! this when they sent us a proposed list of keywords, which included the above offending terms along with the ever-popular "cheap." Who wants cheap gourmet cookies? Anyone? Anyone?

Compounding the problem was a series of ads I don't recall creating with URLs pointing to our home page instead of the appropriate category pages on the site. Here's an example:

Buy Great Cookies at Low Prices
Visit 1-800-Bakery.com for great birthday cakes. We also offer pastries,
chocolates, candies, cookies, desserts, bread and more. Amazing prices. Order
online.
http://www.1-800-bakery.com/?src=overture

That conversion code doesn't work with any of our tracking programs. Every one of the suspect ads featured this URL, so my advice to anyone out there running a PPC campaign is to sort through your ads (good luck with their terrible interface, which sets a new benchmark for lack of usability), look for that URL, and see if they've been playing with your campaigns.

I'm infuriated about this on two levels:

1. Yahoo! has misrepresented our site with claims of "amazing prices" and directed potential customers to the home page instead of appropriate landing pages. We paid money for every click generated by these fradulent ads, so we handed somebody cash to make us look bad.

2. I now have to spend my valuable time undoing the damage caused by this editorial tinkering. The deeper I look into what they've done, the more problems I discover.

Once I saw what was going on, I sent them the following e-mail:

Dear Yahoo! Team,

If you want to continue having us as a customer, I would like answers
to the following questions:

1. Who is editing our ads?
2. Why are they editing our ads?
3.
How do I get them to stop doing this?

When we were first approached by Yahoo!, we made it very clear that
terms such as "low cost," "affordable," and "inexpensive" were, under no
circumstances, to ever appear in any of our advertising. Yet there it is.

I've also noticed a number of ads with incorrect URLs and conversion
tracking code. This is, quite frankly, unacceptable on any level.

If these issues cannot be addressed, immediately, then I will take
actions to suspend our account with Yahoo! We will also be reviewing our recent
bills to determine whether or not we paid for misdirected links provided by your
editorial staff.

Sincerely,
Derek Gerry
Senior Producer
1-800-Bakery.com

I did get a prompt reply, as follows (edited to remove identifying account information):

Hello ,

We have reviewed your account per your e-mail concern about your ads
being edited. Your ads are being edited by members of our editorial staff. They
are being edited in order to help your ad get approved. We can stop your ads
from being edited by notating your account. We do apologize for any
inconvenience this may have caused you. Per your request, we will notate your
account internally, for no changes to be made to your title and description in
your account.

If your URL's and tracking codes are incorrect, we apologize for this
inconvenience as well. We can change any part of your ads to whatever you want
us to change them to. You can submit these changes via spreadsheet in your
account, through the edit listings function in your account or you can call us
or e-mail us to inform one of our Gold specialists, the changes that you want to
make.

Once again, we are truly sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused
in your account. For assistance or questions with your account, please call us
at 1-866-YAHOO-SM (1-866-924-6676). Our hours are Monday - Friday: 5:00
a.m.-8:00 p.m., Saturday: 5:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m., and Sunday 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.,
Pacific Time.

Sincerely,
Mark Taylor
Customer Solutions
Yahoo! Search
Marketing

Gee, thanks, Mark, I'll be sure to put a spreadsheet together for you guys. If I'm putting that much effort into it, I might as well make the edits myself. Here's a better idea for future reference: Don't mess around with my campaigns. I don't have to take this aggravation from Google or MSN, and if an ad agency or PR firm ever did this to me, I'd fire them on the spot and sue for breach of contract.

We're in the process of reviewing our logs to determine how much of this unqualified traffic came to our site, and I'm considering whether or not we'll continue to maintain a relationship with Yahoo! Search Marketing.

To the rest of the marketing folks and Web masters out there, let me again advise you to carefully check your campaigns and make sure you're getting the traffic you're supposed to be paying for.

UPDATE:
I've taken 29 listings offline because the descriptions and/or titles contained "low prices," "affordable prices," or "amazing prices," three phrases I would NEVER use to drive qualified traffic to the site.

Consistency Is All I Ask

Today's daily task: Letting DMOZ off the hook, maybe. I was blessed enough to have an actual editor from The Open Directory Project contact me, thanks to some things I've said in my blog. Said editor told me that 1-800-Bakery.com was not eligible for inclusion, and pointed me toward the Editorial Guidelines.

After a thorough read of the guidelines, I couldn't find a single thing that would exclude us. So I wrote back, asking for further explanation.

It turns out that we're the scourge of the Internet. A filthy, evil, insidious, disgusting dropshipper. You thought we were just a nice baked goods gift site, but no, we're unwashed pagans unworthy of entry into the sacred tower that is DMOZ, lest we sully it with our proscribed partnering ways that provide visibility to small bakeries that couldn't afford the online promotion on their own. Mere parasites feeding off the good fortunes of innocent bakers as we help their businesses grow.

All this time I thought my lack of cocktail party invitations was just an oversight on the part of busy friends. Now I wonder, do they know that I work for a dropshipper? Do they avoid me for fear that I might corrupt their children with promises of outstanding customer service and a 100% money back guarantee? Or do they fear that their own will power isn't enough to keep me from seducing them with unique products and one of the largest varieties of any bakery site on the Web?

And where is all this spelled out? The closest thing I could find to the obviously well-advised decision to exclude verminous dropshippers from DMOZ was this sentence in Editorial Guidelines, filed under the ominous heading, "Sites Not to Include:"

Sites devoted to the sales and distribution of a single product should be avoided if they are affiliate sites or if the site is merely a distributor for a manufacturer already listed in the Directory. The purpose of the ODP is not to replicate the individual listings of an online shopping catalog.

I don't see the word dropshipper in there, I suspect because DMOZ is afraid to write it. What I do see in the directory, however, are several sites that carry the exact same products that we sell, such as:

• Macy's--they sell the same cookies we carry
• ProFlowers--they also sell the same cookies
• Home Shopping Network--they sell the same cakes
• Cooking.com--let's say you're Delightful Deliveries, and you can't get listed in DMOZ because you're a dropshipper. You can always sell through a site that isn't a dropshipper, right? Right!
• Future Memories--who would ever think that this site was a dropshipper?
• Bunn Family Gourmet--we can't expect the Bunn Family to make everything they sell. After all, they need time for sleep and family dinners gathered around heaping plates of USDA Prime steaks
• efendos--or as I like to call them, "eFiendos." Not just a dropshipper, but a "FREE" shipping liar

My editor friend went on to tell me that carrying unique products isn't enough. So it seems dropshippers need to be segregated from the rest of the online community, for the good of us all. I was told that I could file a complaint at the DMOZ Resource Zone, but I don't want to ruin someone else's DMOZ good time, and I find something unsettling about DMZ and Zone in the same sentence.

DMOZ is a private entity, and they're free to run the directory any way they want. That's their right, and I support it. Getting as much as they have out of a group of volunteer editors is commendable, but a little more vigilance across the enterprise would leave me far more gruntled.

The bigger issue is the decision by search engines to rely on outside sources to do their work for them. I can understand anyone not wanting a bunch of editors and writers hanging around the office--we're a general nuisance, and we take all the free food.

But by outsourcing, what should be a level playing field is skewed in favor of those with the money and the influence to get coverage from DMOZ, CNN, Associated Press, and the other "expert" sources. Small businesses face enough of this oppression in the brick-and-mortar world; we don't need it carried on to the Web.

Place Cake Outside, Bake for 30 Minutes

And now the latest from Accuweather: It's freakin' hot out there. Actually, their current headline reads, "Heat stretches from sea to scorching sea." If I was running the site, I'd take everything down and run the following:

Freaking hot.
Stay indoors.

Plus the ads, of course, because they've got to pay the bills.

Extreme heat is the mortal enemy of many a baked good, in particular the cheesecake, which wilts like the Red Sox pitching when Oakland is in town. Our customer research indicates that our customers prefer a cake-shaped cheesecake to a box containing a puddle of cheesecake goo, so we're suspending shipments of them until things cool down a bit. Once the temperature gets below 85 degrees in Chicago, we're all set.

As for the rest of our products, feel free to order them with confidence. Our tarts and layer cakes ship with dry ice, so they stay nice and cool in transit. Most of our cookies and all of our breads and croissants laugh at these rising temperatures in a way that I wish I could.

You can help our baked friends during this hot spell by having them sent to a daytime address where someone will be available to receive them and take them to a cool place. We're still waiving signature on all of our shipments, but the super-perishable stuff, such as tarts and petits fours, will be happier if its not left outside for a few hours.

Another Loss of Confidence

Seems I'm not the only one wondering about the whereabouts and welfare of the editors over at DMOZ. The nice folks over at MarketPosition included an article in their last e-mail explaining how to get MSN to update your site description in their search engine.

Of note in the article is this lovely quote: "But what if you've been trying unsuccessfully to get the Open Directory to update your listing?" Should you send a search party? Alert the FBI? Perhaps, but if you want some results, there's a new meta tag that works with MSNbot to update that tired old description.

Author Scott Goodyear closes the article by saying, "We can only hope that other engines will follow MSN's lead."
And there it is, a mass-media scourging of the hard-working, overburdened DMOZ editors, who will soon fear to look upon other Web sites in their fleeting nanoseconds of downtime as the tide of mildly disgruntled Web masters continues to rise.

DMOZ now joins the President, Congress, and our legal system in losing the confidence of the American public. What can we belive in anymore, if we can't trust a group of unpaid volunteers to provide free indexing for multibillion-dollar behemoths like Google and MSN? The very core of the Internet is starting to fail, and I can only hope it doesn't cause a cascade like the Y2K virus almost did. Imagine a world where search engines are forced to use the meta descriptions written by biased, manipulative Web masters instead of the fair and balanced descriptions created by Starbucks-fueled volunteers, whose only mission in life is to point people toward what's relevant and genuine.

Let's hope that this slap from MSN encourages the powers that be at DMOZ, assuming there are any that can be found, to break out the whips and demand 26-hour days from their underperforming editors, because I don't think I could live in a world where DMOZ didn't guarantee those lucky enough to have their submissions actually reviewed an extra point or two of PageRank.

A number of people suggested that I become a DMOZ editor after my last post on this subject. "Just post your site and then resign," was heard more than once. I don't approve of those kinds of shenanigans to begin with, and to me, becoming a DMOZ editor because they won't list your site is like going into the kitchen and getting your own food because you can't find your waitress.

Summer Shipping FAQ

In case you haven't noticed, it's wicked freaking hot outside. Hot weather is my natural enemy, as is cold weather, rainy weather, or any weather that isn't 75 degrees and cloudless with nighttime lows in the 50s.

Hot weather is the mortal enemy of baked goods, cakes in particular. That doesn't mean we can't ship them to you, it just means we have to be a little more careful with them, which we are, which is why Overnight is the only shipping option available on some of our products.

We get hit with a lot of questions about that, so I thought I'd take some time to answer them and offer some general tips on shipping that you might find helpful on any site where you shop.

1. Why is Overnight Shipping my only choice?
Because it's wicked freaking hot outside. We've got tropical depressions forming off the coast of Maryland (not actually part of the tropics, the last time I checked) and Portuguese Man O'Wars floating around off the coast of Rhode Island. Maybe they came for the Sweet Bread.

If you're ordering layer cakes, cheesecakes, or petits fours, Overnight shipping is the only way we can get them to you before they melt. If you're in New York City, Chicagoland, or Boston, it only costs $6.95.

All of our other products, including cookies, breads, croissants, and English muffins can still be shipped via Second-Day Air, and they'll arrive fresh and tasty. We guarantee that. Second-Day Air shipping will return on our cakes, cheesecakes, and petits fours by October 15, maybe sooner if it decides to cool off out there.

2. Is it safe to ship bakery foods in the summertime?
Yes it is. We've been doing it for a few years now. We use ice packs and dry ice as needed to keep things cool.

3. Do you deliver to (insert city and state here)?
We deliver throughout the continental United States, or the Lower 48 as some folks call them, even though Hawaii is just off to the left. We cannot deliver to U.S. territories or protectorates because of the extra time it takes to get our products there.

Our Saturday delivery range is very limited. We can reach the major cities in the continental United States and some suburbs. Where we can't go is sometimes surprising, so I recommend checking with us at 1-800-287-9870 before placing an order for Saturday delivery.

4. Can you deliver to military bases/universities/my kid's summer camp?
We can, but we'll need complete information to get the package there, which includes a physical mailing address where the package will be delivered, usually a front gate for a military base or a mail center for a school or summer camp. UPS and FedEx, our two primary shipping partners, won't deliver to P.O. Boxes and can't deliver to internal mailboxes, so all deliveries need to be sent to the mailing facility for the base, school, or camp.

Finding that information can be very tricky. I recommend calling the school or camp directly and asking for the mail services department, which should be able to provide the address. You can also try calling the FedEx or UPS office near the base, camp, or school, and asking them for advice.

When shipping to bases, camps, or schools, always try to allow an extra day for delivery and avoid shipping on Friday. Experience has shown us that not all internal mail services can deliver on the same day. Some of them are great, some of them need a little extra time. In general, summer camps and military bases are great at getting packages to the recipient the day they arrive. Some schools, especially the larger ones, get so much mail that it takes an extra day to process it all. If the package arrives on Friday, it might not get to the recipient until Monday, which can be harmful to our cakes and cheesecakes.

5. Do I need to give my phone number and e-mail?
Please give us at least one, and make it one where we can reach you during the day. Sometimes we have questions about a delivery date, sometimes there's a problem with the address. If we can't figure it out, we can't ship your order. We will only call if we have a question, and we use your e-mail to send out tracking information, so you know the package got there on time.

Summertime doesn't mean you need to go without our delicious bakery treats. Every week, we deliver cakes, breads, confections, and pastries to addresses all across America to rave reviews from our customers. This year, we've even added several Summer Shipping Specials to help take the bite out of those overnight shipping costs.

If you've got any other questions, feel free to call me at 617-331-0929 or e-mail me at derek@1-800-bakery.com.

A Pathetic Anniversary

My thoughts go out today to the hard-working staff over at DMOZ, the Open Directory, for their tireless efforts to keep the public at large informed about what's happening online.

They must be overwhelmed with the constant addition of new sites to the Internet, and all the requests they get from Webmasters to add sites to their directory, which is still considered an authority site by no less than the mighty Google.

Indeed, working at DMOZ must be a ceaseless Sisyphusian struggle against the rising tide of e-commerce, with the sleepless nights toiling at laptops and desktops willowing relationships with family and friends.

So busy are the all-powerful DMOZ volunteers that they lack the time for basic social interaction, regular television viewing, or even the fleeting calm of a coffee break. I say this because today, the Summer Solstice, marks the one-year anniversary of my submission of 1-800-Bakery.com to DMOZ, and after one year, we're still not listed.

Despite assurances that our site would be listed in weeks, three months at the most, visitors to DMOZ are denied the knowledge that our humble baked-goods emporium is available for thier high-calorie snacking and gift-giving needs.

I can only imagine the nightmare that must be the life of the Top: Shopping: Food: Baked Goods editor, his or her fingers a gnarled and withered mass flopping from carpal-swollen wrists, glazed, owllike eyes peering from sagging eyelids drained to alabaster by too many hours spent indoors. The miniscule feeling of accomplishment at adding a new listing erased by a heartbeat spiking at the sight of so many bakery sites waiting for inclusion. The growing sense of doom that normal life has been swallowed by the morass of sites silently piling up in the In Box.

Only the ignorant would dare to call these brave soldiers of Web organization lazy. If they ignore our pleas for inclusion, or our repeated e-mails to addresses that don't really go anywhere, it's only because their passion for completing their task of listing everyone in a timely fashion prevents them from pausing, even for a moment, to acknowledge our concern.

I salute you, tireless Top: Shopping: Food: Baked Goods editor. Your efforts have not gone unnoticed, and your dedication is an example of the spirit that made America great!

Now can you get my freaking site listed already?

Same Discount, Different Products

Here's some good news for everyone in Chicagoland: You can now enjoy $6.95 overnight shipping, Tuesday through Friday, on cheesecakes and layer cakes from JR Dessert Bakery and cookies from Supercookie. Order the cake today, you get it tomorrow. These cakes are served in some of the Chicago area's finest restaurants; now you can have them at home for less than you'd probably pay in gas, and a lot less than you'd pay for a dinner just to get a slice of cake.

To those who say these discounts are exclusionary, I say wait a minute, we've got savings for you, too. Did you know that you can order up to three boxes of petits fours or any two of our tarts, truffle cakes, or sugar-free cakes and only pay shipping for one? That'll put at least an extra $25 in your pocket, and the discount is available nationwide.

Still not satisfied? You're a tough case, my friend, but I'll offer you the same discount on all mini cookies from Supercookie. Order up to three tubs and pay $9.95 for two-day shipping. If you're planning a big Fourth of July cookout, a few tubs of July 4th or Picnic mini cookies will be a welcome treat for your guests, and that much less work for you to do.

I dare you to find better values anywhere online. Go ahead, check. It's too hot to play outside, so you might as well do some Web surfing.

Start Spreading the News...

As promised, friends and family in the New York City area can now enjoy $6.95 Overnight shipping on cakes, tarts, and pastries from the site. As with our Boston discount, this does you no good at all if you live in Ames, Iowa, unless you know somebody in the area. Between those two cities, that's around 14 million people, so the odds are high that you've got someone special there who would like a dozen croissants for $39.90, including shipping, which is less than Williams-Sonoma charges for just the croissants. Granted, you get three more croissants from them, but you only get to pick one flavor and you pay more. Granted also that Oprah Winfrey loves those Williams-Sonoma croissants, but unless you're Bill Gates or Paul McCartney, Oprah has more money than you do and doesn't care about paying the extra $8.55.

Maybe you know someone in one of those two cities who's celebrating a birthday. We'll send a 10-inch cake that serves 16 people and comes with plates, napkins, forks, candles, and a cake server for $55.90. The "FREE shipping" liars charge $79.99 for a 10-inch cake, and they offer a lot less variety than we do. I'm sure you can think of something you could do with $24, like sending a gift along with the cake, or putting some gas in your car for a summer roadtrip.

How to Beat the High Cost of Shipping

I've been talking a bit about how some folks like to lie about FREE shipping to try and convince you that you're getting "a deal." I know you're smarter than that, which is why I've asked you to comparison shop and see who's got the best values.

I'm about to make our competitors very sad, because we've found a few ways to save you a lot of money on shipping.
First, let me direct your attention to our Boston Shipping Discount Coupon. Order any item on our site from Bittersweet Pastries or La Patisserie, and we'll ship it Overnight for $6.95.

Let me say that again: Overnight Shipping, Tuesday through Friday, for $6.95. You'd probably pay more in gas going to the store and buying the cake than you would in shipping costs from us. This discount only applies to items shipped to Greater Boston, including all those suburbs that surround it. But I'll let you, my faithful blog readers, in on a secret: It can actually be used for any part of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, except for really rural sections and the tip of Cape Cod. Sorry, Truro.

Similar discounts will be rolled out next week for the metro-NYC area and the Chicagoland area.

At a time when everything else seems to be getting more expensive, isn't it nice to find something that costs less? As we move into the last quarter of the year, more of the country will be able to enjoy these discounts, so keep your eyes out for more details.

Meanwhile, if you're in need of large amounts of Petits Fours or Tarts, and you're shipping them anywhere in the United States, you can save on that too. Check out our Summer Shipping Savings page for more details.

Liars Get More Cakes

It finally happened. The single-cake site that lies about free shipping (you might know them as gocakego), got more flavors of cake! They've got FIVE, count 'em, FIVE whole flavors now (we've got 18 flavors of cake, and that's not counting the cheesecakes or the coffee cakes). And all of those new flavors come with FREE shipping, which for some reason costs more than our cakes. Their 10" carrot cake checks in at $79.95. Our carrot cake, including express shipping, is $60.65.

Now to be fair, they do include plates and napkins and candles and such with their cakes. But if you saved $19.30 with us, I'm sure you could get your own plates and candles, maybe even have a little left over for some soda or a moderate bottle of wine. Or if you've got those things lying around the house, you could get the birthday girl or boy a DVD.

So let's review: Gocakego, with their much-ballyhooed FREE shipping, costs $19.30 more than we do. For the extra money, you get some plates and napkins and candles, and everyone gets to send e-mails to the birthday celebrant. I suggest that you rush out right now in a buying frenzy, because that's a great value. No, really, it is. Like that time you paid $20 for mint-on-card Star Wars figures because they'd be a great "investment."

It's days like this that I feel like an idiot. Here I am, trying to figure out ways to LOWER our shipping costs, when all I had to do was raise our prices and claim that we have FREE shipping. This is why I'm just no good at business.

Make Mom Proud

Don't even tell me that you're giving Mom anything with the word "bouquet" in it on Mothers Day. I don't care if it's flowers or cookies. All the moms called me over the weekend and told me they've had it with bouquets. It's as cliche as giving a necktie on Father's Day.

There's 364 other days in the year you can give mom flowers, and she'll be surprised and delighted. Especially if it's a random Tuesday. Remember those old AT&T commercials where the mother was crying because her son called just to tell her he loved her? That kind of reaction.

A Mothers Day gift should show your appreciation for everything she's done. Moms are very special people, and they deserve a nice present. Since mom probably spent most of your childhood baking cookies, brownies, and the occasional cake for you, shouldn't you repay that favor with some fine pastries, cookies, or a tart from 1-800-Bakery? You'll show mom that you've got good taste, and if you order anything from Mother Myrick's, like a fudge sampler or a Lemon Lulu cake, you'll save 10%.

Yes, we're having an actual, genuine, real sale, which we don't do that often. That's how much we love mom. We'll even give you 10% off stollen, gourmet cookies, croissants, or biscotti, because we want mom to have a delicious gift. We should charge you more, because it's for mom, and you can't put a price on her love, but we know it makes her happy when you save money

Mom doesn't want you to go out of your way for her sake, and with gas prices so high, she's got a point. How much of that sale price at the mall is going to be eaten up by fuel costs? And all the moms who called told me they don't want that "Worlds Greatest Mom" sweatshirt anyway.

Show mom how much you've matured by ordering ahead, and by remembering that Mothers Day is Sunday, May 14. Our sale prices are in effect until 2PM Eastern on Wednesday, May 10, and we'll deliver on Friday the 12th.

There were two more things the moms wanted me to pass on: Stop slouching, and eat your vegetables. And don't forget to call.

Myspam

I'm on Myspace, because if everyone else jumped off a bridge, I'd want to see the blog that made them do it.

Actually, I'm on Myspace to promote my weekly radio show, which airs on 91.5, WMFO, and has little or nothing to do with baked goods and everything to do with comedy and politics. It's called Hbee Inc. Radio, and it airs on Thursdays from 6-8 PM. It's also simulcast on the Web, and if you decide to tune in, be prepared for shouting, eclectic music, and the occasional joke that goes too far.

Myspace is a good place to promote this sort of thing. It gives me the chance to post four free MP3s and reaches millions. I suppose it was only a matter of time before the spammers caught on to this.

On Monday morning, I received an invitation to join a group from MySpace. These invites don't always tell you what the group is, and I know a few folks with groups, usually based around a comedy show, so I clicked the link and found myself in the "Get Paid to Take Online Surveys" group. Unlike all the other "Get Paid to Take Online Surveys" links I'd seen, this one promised to get me access to the surveys that really pay, complete with testimonials from folks who had quit their jobs and were now raking in $300 a day by filling out forms in their pajamas.

Man I'd love to have that gig. Too bad it's fictional. Folks, if you want to make $300 a day for an hour's work, here's how you do it:

1. Be born really funny.
2. Learn to be a great writer.
3. Spend 10 years losing your dignity and confidence five minutes at a time in comedy clubs.
4. Promote yourself relentlessly.
5. Develop an hour of material and hope that bookers and audiences like you.

If you can do that, you, too, can make $300 for a night's work, although it isn't really a night's work, more like a lifetime. That's how standup comics do it, and precious few succeed, though more people are actually making a living by doing this than by clicking on online surveys.

Myspace seems to be doing a good job stopping the spammers, as the group was deleted by midday. That didn't stop the spammer from setting up another group and sending me another invite, but that group was also deleted.

It'll be interesting to see how long Myspace can keep the spammers at bay. My guess: Not long. They always seem to find a way. At least I haven't been asked to join the "Help me transfer $10 million from Nigeria" group yet. That would be hard to resist.

Deadlines, Closures, and Such

Pretty holy week coming up for the Christians and the Jews this week. Passover begins on Wednesday, and the Easter celebration starts on Friday. If you haven't ordered something for Easter yet, do it soon. We're closing orders for our Easter specialties at Noon Eastern tomorrow (Tuesday, April 11).

This is another one of those busy shipping cycles, so if you need something by the end of this week, please try to order by Tuesday.

From Wednesday, April 19, through Monday, April 24, we will be unable to deliver products from Steve's Mom Bakery, Bittersweet Pastries (except for the Vanilla and Chocolate Birthday Cakes), and Solomon's Gourmet Cookies. So don't panic if you see a lot of "Out of Stock" labels floating around on the site--those items will be back at the end of the month.

Nothing really to report as far as our Top 10 Sellers are concerned, except for the growing popularity of our Demitasse Party Petits Fours, which were recently featured in both Shop Etc. and In Style magazines.

Chocolate Birthday Cake still has a considerable lead on Vanilla Birthday cake, but as I was breaking down the sales, I noticed that for February and March, Vanilla was outselling Chocolate, save for one week when it seems that half of America needed a chocolate cake. Is it possible that the time of year you're born has some influence on your preference for chocolate or vanilla? Why isn't our government spending our tax dollars to learn this invaluable information? I certainly can't afford it.

The New Deceivers

There are two truths about new technology:

1. It won't work the way it's supposed to.

2. Someone will find a way to use it to deceive people.

In the past, I've exposed the Free Shipping Phonies and the Dubious Discounters, and today I'd like to add the Customer Confusers to the list, in the form of shopping.com, who don't get a link because they're a bunch of hooligans.

Shopping.com is basically a giant pay-per-click (PPC) shopping site that tries to recruit online businesses to be listed in their directory. If they can't get a popular site legitimately, they're apparently not above doing an end-run to deceive people into visiting their site. This gets a little tricky, so pay close attention.

Google provides two outstanding online services: AdWords, for my money the best PPC value online, and AdSense. AdWords lets you create those little ads that you see to the right of your search results. AdSense lets you run AdWords ads on your site and get a commission every time somebody clicks on them. There are people online attempting to make a living off Google's AdSense by creating gateway pages for popular search phrases and filling them with AdSense ads. They're called "Scrapers," and they're universally loathed by people looking for actual information online, because their sites contain no content.

Shopping.com has developed a variant of the Scraper tactic. If you search for 1-800-Bakery in Google, you'll see a Shopping.com ad. I've said this before, but I'll be as specific here as possible:

We are not affiliated with Shopping.com.

What they've done is created a search gateway page linked to our domain name. When you click the link, you're shown some products from our competitors (that will cost more than what we offer) and our AdWords ad, among others. No matter what you click, shopping.com gets a commission. Never mind that you're confused as to where you are, they're making money by leeching off our domain name.

I tried to solve this problem with an AdWords campaign that said the same thing as the bolded text above. Google won't let me do that, because Shopping.com is trademarked.

If I ever start deceiving people, remind me to trademark my domain name first so that nobody can fight back. In the meantime, I'm sure that shopping.com will be happy to see the phrase, "Who needs a directory?" every time somebody clicks on their AdWords link.

Answering a Common Question

Here's the question that's asked the most by folks who call our Customer Service number: "Do you deliver to (insert city or state name here)?"

Yes, we do. As long as it's in the Continental United States, we'll ship it there. We'll even send stuff to Alaska and Hawaii, if you ask, but that's more expensive. I can even recommend a few things that we can ship to Canada, despite the customs delays.

This seems to be a tough concept for people to understand, and to me it's one of those collision points between the world we knew and the world as it exists today. Times were when any place worth inhabiting had a local bakery, and if you needed cookies or bread, you went there. Maybe they offered a regional delivery service, but you'd never expect a cake to travel from one side of the country to the other.

In the new online world, we deliver products from one end of the country to the other every day, but the experience creates an intimacy that makes the process seem local. If I'm in my house ordering croissants on my computer, they must be coming from someplace nearby, right? Not necessarily, but it's a good practice for online retailers to make it feel as if you're doing business with someone who's across town, ready to respond to your needs instantly.

That sense of closeness, combined with the traditional bakery/customer relationship, breeds the shipping question. I'm sure that most if not all of the online bakeries deal with the same question each day. I don't mind answering it, because it tells me that the customer understands that my site is a collection of local bakeries, and not a giant nationwide corporation.

Confused? So Am I

And I haven't even started drinking yet. Not to fulfill a stereotype, but it is St. Patrick's Day, and I am Irish, and it's Friday anyway. I'll be enjoying some Guinness before the day is through.

There's two sources of my--and potentially your--confusion. One of them is the nice folks at The Boston Globe. They ran a nice piece on our Swedish Dream Cookies on Wednesday, which they called, "...deliciously old-fashioned." They printed the story on their Web site. They even provided a link. Unfortunately, they didn't put our full URL in the link, so everyone who wanted to learn more about the cookies wound up at bakery.com, which is a supplier of bakery equipment and supplies.

Fortunately for us, the nice folks at bakery.com were kind enough to put a link to the product on the home page. They'll be getting some of those same Swedish Dream cookies for their trouble.

Order Up, Celtics

I'd be remiss if I didn't remind you that if you want to get some St. Patrick's Day Petits Fours or some St. Patrick's Day Mini Cookies, you'd best order them before noon Eastern on Wednesday. After that, they're gone, and no amount of bribery or crying is going to get you any. Get the Fours. They're minty. And chocolate. And that's a good combination.

Like Yahoo! search but can't stand all that stuff on their home page? There's a simpler version available now at search.yahoo.com. Looks suspiciously like Google to me.

And speaking of the big G, could you guys please do something about that Google Desktop ad that sometimes appears in the search results? For years, you guys have been the standard for clean and simple design. Now you've gone and mucked it up with this giant ad that gets in the way of the search navigation at the bottom of the page. Make it a little smaller, at least, or find a better place to put it.