Archive for the ‘Opinion’ Category

I don’t know how many readers are familiar with the notion of content aggregator based websites? Put simply these are sites that pull content from others.

Some are useful sites, say, drawing news content on a particular subject, and others are sites which abuse the hard work of others. One such site is one that has appeared in the last couple of days is “all-things-lanzarote.com” (no link for obvious reasons)… I should point out this imposter is nothing at all to do with the established site allthingslanzarote.com.

This site has been aggregating content from our Lanzarote Relocation site, and have also got the backs up of at least two other well known sites on the the island, one of which it would appear the domain name is emulating. I’ve not mentioned the other sites as I haven’t asked them for permission at this stage to include their names. However, they will be made aware of this post and a more than welcome to comment here with anything they wish to say on this matter.

It is possible to leave a comment on the site that has copied our content, but I’m guessing the comment I made will not last very long … Here it is…

Paul – put very simply. Your lifting of our content breaches all of the unambiguous copyright notices at the bottom of all of our sites, and those of our clients. I ask, very simply, and very clearly, that you remove ALL duplicate content and ensure ours and our clients sites are not ‘farmed’ in future. Is this clear enough?

I reiterate Paul (if that is your real name of course). All of our own – and our clients sites, carry clear and unambiguous copyright notices. You have not been granted any permission to reproduce our content in any way shape or form.

Your activities, now I and the other involved have brought our disapproval to your notice, are, on this basis illegal under the terms of the Berne Convention.

I would normally have mailed the site owner. But as might be expected by someone who is unscrupulous enough to steal the hard work of others. The site owner has not included an email address, and has chosen to hide his true identity behind the privacy options on the who is information.

Domain Name: all-things-lanzarote.com

Registrar: WILD WEST DOMAINS, INC.
Whois Server: whois.wildwestdomains.com
Referral URL: http://www.wildwestdomains.com
Status: clientDeleteProhibited, clientRenewProhibited, clientTransferProhibited, clientUpdateProhibited

Expiration Date: 2011-01-28
Creation Date: 2010-01-28
Last Update Date: 2010-01-28 Read the rest of this entry »

Well, it’s the time of year again that we are expecting a run of traffic on our Lanzarote Relocation site – a site that offers information for people thinking of moving to Lanzarote. With all the New Year resolutions and the new year – fresh start attitude that goes with the beginning of the year we always see a spike of traffic in January.

As ever we’d give anyone the same advice as usual;

• Take off the rose tinted glasses – becoming an ex-pat in Lanzarote, as anywhere else, is not as easy as it first seems, especially if you need to make a living.
• Don’t buy immediately, make sure the move is really for you. Rent for at least the first six months, get to know the areas, get to know the property market, and spend time to find out which are the reputable estate agents before considering buying property.
• Follow personal recommendations – but also be aware that not everyone are as genuine as they seem. Earnings are not what they are in the UK, so a ‘kick back’ culture is exploited by many to generate business/supplement poor earnings.
• Try to learn at least a little of the language – it’s a basic courtesy to our Spanish speaking hosts…

We’ve been here some years now and have seen all sorts of people come through the Lanzarote Relocation site. Dreamers who will never make the move, people who try but are not fully committed, some who really want to but it’s not the right time just yet, people who try with the best of intentions yet don’t succeed – and of course some real success stories!

For us the site has been a real success for its visitors – and we think the main reasons are that we are honest and open about who and what we are, and the advice and information we offer is free. We make very little money from the site – and we have no wish to. It  pays for its costs with affiliate advertising – and certainly doesn’t even come close to paying for the large amount of time spent on it. But money was never a part of our thinking behind this site. We simply wanted to pass on what we have learned from moving to and living on the island to others.  The site has gone from strength to strength, and continues to grow. We’re very proud to be able to say we are not part of the ‘kick back’ culture that so many are as we take no financial incentive for recommending any of the companies on it.

Yes – Lanzarote has suffered from the recession – despite what some will tell you, the property market is still pretty stagnant from what we see – which on the upside means there are bargains to be had. Many ex-pats are heading back to the UK as it has become increasingly harder to make a living or find jobs in Lanzarote. Bars have closed, as have many other businesses, tourism numbers have been down – though the island has seemed relatively busy over the Christmas period… It’s probably not the best time to move out here right now unless you have money or real confidence in your ‘plan’. If you’re going to be dependant upon finding a job – it may be best to shelve your ideas until the global market changes.

We’ve been very lucky with our business – we’ve continued to grow and are still growing with website builds for clients on the island and in the UK. We’re fairly confident in saying that with over 150 active clients in Lanzarote, Gandy-Draper is most likely the largest English speaking web design business on the island – with our client base being made up of English, Spanish and German clients.

Our Canary Nightlife site continues to grow with new clients signing up in Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria and Tenerife over the course of 2009 and shows great potential for further growth.

Thankfully, it’s been a fairly good year all round for us – life is what you make it! Make no mistake though, we work hard for what we have – life on a holiday island isn’t necessarily a holiday…

Happy New Year to everyone on and off the island!

Yes – I do – I hate it with a passion… But today I’ve linked some of our Lanzarote sites to it through an automated process. I guess if it’s there it may as well be exploited – as long as it takes little or no effort.

But really, what is Twitter in terms of web promotion? It’s all but pointless to any serious small business . Yes, I can see it as a bit of fun for kids sharing their daily lives – but it strikes me as much like the days of CB radio – a bunch of sad individuals screaming into the ether hoping to make contact with new ‘friends’.

Everywhere I see ‘reports’ with ‘advice’ or ’secrets’ (sic) about how to use Twitter, all for sale of course. They are not telling you anything you can’t find out for yourself with a bit of common sense and a few Google searches.  The get rich quick whilst selling you freely available information types really annoy me…

You see so many people boasting about how many Twitter followers they have – and that it brings them so many new hits. They put many hours into building this up – but in reality, there are so many ‘friend collectors’ out there, their efforts, and the resulting (low quality) hits are all but worthless. Their value doesn’t even come close to rivalling organic search visitors.

In conclusion I don’t mind automating this – but don’t expect to see me on there a great deal – I’ll leave it to the kids, the amateurs, and the get rich quick merchants. I prefer to spend my time on things that add real value to our business

If you are sad enough to take Twitter seriously and would like to add us – the user name is Lanzarote1971.

We hadn’t used Moneybookers before, having always preferred PayPal. Until one of our recent clients who had used them in the past – and really liked the system – asked us to incorporate on-line payments into the site we built for him. The client offers airport transfers in Lanzarote, and he was keen to find a low cost and reliable merchant account option through which he could accept credit cards.

Moneybookers has in the end turned out to be an excellent choice – as always opening the merchant account took a bit of time, they wanted to see the working site, and of course – lots of bits of paper related to the business – as anyone company working within the law is bound to do. It took a bit of time to get going but the way the system work it doesn’t stop working on the site as you can add your buttons which apply to the standard account and the credit card options are added when the merchant account is approved.

Opening the merchant account was FREE (always a good thing), and Moneybookers commission rates are low at only a  1.9% compared to PayPal’s 3.4% (plus a €0.35 transaction fee) that saving alone was enough to persuade us to open an account!

On the downside – As web designers we didn’t find their site either particularly user friendly, there’s a learning curve when you are used to using PayPal – and support wasn’t particularly quick when needed. However, the advantage outweighs these minor gripes, the reduced fees are enough for us to suggest that anyone give them a try….

Seems I spend a lot of time on this topic – and I suppose the upside of it is that plagiarism is a form of flattery – but hell, it is annoying when we put so much work and time into our business and our website content.

It’s a small island – so plagiarism isn’t that hard to stumble on here…

This one completely takes the biscuit for bare faced cheek – it’s lazy, it’s unprofessional and frankly – pathetic. (I’ve twice contacted the site owner without a response…) Read the rest of this entry »

Today we got spammed – nothing new about that in Lanzarote, or anywhere else with the address lanzarotesociety-dot-com… We also had some complaints, and questions from clients – relating mostly to the fact that they had used the address elle@ as their Playa Blanca contact. Our clients were questioning whether we were involved in any way. We decided to do some digging.

Before I go any further with the results of that digging, let me state categorically we have not, will not, and will not ever have any dealings with the site or those behind it.

Apart from being a really shabbily designed website, it;

• gives no indication of its owners
• is selling membership to unwitting tourists who might want to ‘feel part of the island’
• it claims to be non-profit making (sic!)
• offers people the opportunity to work for them for the investment of £2000
• the whole thing stinks…

The whole site and its related domains are written in a style of language many reading this will be familiar with… It includes the phrase “Simon says” throughout…

Yes, you guessed it. It’s an old favourite – it’s the inimitable Simon Harris again. Simon and Jenny Harris and Quills Wills may be down and unable to trade here (his words on the Gazette forum as I recall), but it seems they are not out.

The evidence?

The name of the domain owner – Melanie Ross (click on her name for the Google search which demonstrates clear link)

Companies House information…

LANZAROTE SOCIETY MANAGEMENT LIMITED
HARBRO HOUSE
CROWN LANE
DENBIGH
LL16 3SY
Company No. 06661107

and…..

THE QUILL GROUP (1986) LLP
HARBRO HOUSE
CROWN LANE
DENBIGH
DENBIGHSHIRE
LL16 3SY
Company No. OC328567

The same address is also the Registered Office of… THE QUILL GROUP COMPANY SECRETARY LLP
and THE QUILL GROUP TREASURER LLP

There’s plenty more where that came from – but I think you’ll agree it’s pretty clear as to who is pulling the strings on this baby! Of course, I have emailed and asked that any links they have included on there to our sites be removed – we have absolutely NO association with this venture.

The really worrying thing is that on the site it says that one of their aims is to represent the island and it businesses… Think about that one!

A note to tourists who may be reading this at this point – there are many good sites in addition to our own Lanzarote Nightlife if you are looking for information on the island – just Google, you’ll find plenty. And you certainly don’t have to pay to feel a part of the community – you are always welcome on sites like our own forum at Canary Nightlife, the forums on Discover Lanzarote and at the Gazette.

Now, of course, I’m not saying Simon Harris is a conman – I do however have an opinion based on all I’ve seen and read about him. What I would strongly urge anyone who is reading this – if you are thinking about doing business with him, or any of his companies, make sure you do thorough research – hopefully there’s enough in this post to get you started. That research may end up saving you thousands…

Caveat Emptor….

As web designers, and marketing professionals we don’t rest on our laurels. It’s important to us to prove to our clients that we can deliver the kind of results they are looking for. How better to do this than to establish some decent web properties of our own. Since moving to Lanzarote we have established a couple of hugely successful sites. Without divulging our statistics it is safe to say that both sites generate a lot of hits.

Canary Nightlife (launched in February 06) – is a site promoting bars, pubs, clubs and restaurants in the Canary Islands. It’s a very busy site (hits are measured in the many hundreds of thousands every month) which we have proven delivers business to our clients at a very reasonable cost. It also includes a busy forum.

Lanzarote Relocation (launched September 07) – is our guide to moving to Lanzarote. It’s simply a blog of our own experiences of emigrating, our musings about life on the  on the island and other general Lanzarote information, including guest articles. As far as we know this is the only independent site of its type. Again this is a very busy website and features well in Google searches.

As we have written about elsewhere both sites have been imitated – more than once  – as is so often the case with many businesses on Lanzarote. But, we’re confident in our ability to stay ahead of the game – after all this is what we do for a living, we’re not doing this as a hobby or as an after thought!

Cue more insults from our friend “Bob in Cyprus”!

We currently have a number of other projects in the making – watch this space!

We find it amusing when we read guides on what to look for in a web designer, as we have on our home page, when we see the phrase “make sure your web designer can ‘hand code’. It’s quite an absurd notion really, when you take a moment to think about it…

Web design programs and the other tools at the disposal of a professional web designer are just that, tools… The phrase should  read something more like “make sure your web designer understands code”. A web designer should be able to read code in much the same way as a musician might read music. However, would you expect the musician to write all his own sheet music by hand – or perhaps an author to use a pen and paper rather than a word-processor?

Here’s a challenge for you. Next time you take your car in for repair, ask your mechanic to make sure he fixes it without the use of spanners and screwdrivers… And wait for the reaction! . Maybe he can do it, but the extra time is surely ‘going to cost you’.

We were highly amused to receive the following comments from an anonymous source…

It’s all rather pathetic, but entertained us nonetheless. Of course we could easily have deleted these messages but thought instead, for the amusement of our visitors it might be more entertaining to respond.

To set the scene here’s how ‘Bob’ came to visit our site (from a UK IP address)…

First off, ‘Bob’ visited Google and did a search for Elle Draper which landed them on Elle’s personal Blog (unlikely behaviour for a random ‘Bob’ in Cyprus) and viewed 4 pages over 24 minutes

From that ‘Bob’ then clicked a link to another Blog site of ours about moving to Lanzarote, he viewed 5 pages in there over a couple of minutes, before finding a link to this website.

After hitting this site ‘Bob’ viewed 28 pages over the course of 22 minutes!

The first message was this one in response to our article entitled ‘Internet Thieves…’ (profanities have been removed, which is the only change made to the originals) Our answers follow…

Author : Bob (IP: 90.194.38.250 , 5ac226fa.bb.sky.com)
E-mail : bob@bobstuff.com
URL :
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=90.194.38.250
Comment:
What a load of fu**ing rubbish. You are just promoting a poxy little business on a rock in the middle of fu**ing nowhere. How many web designers are on your sh**ty island? JUST YOU at a guess (or I bet that’s what you claim!). Jeez … little fish in a little pond slagging off anyone trying to make a living? You c**ts make me sick … if you are going to use negative marketing it isn’t a good advert for you and this sort of prose just makes you come across as a very small outfit trying to build a reputation quickly by appearing knowledgeable and smart. F*CK you’ve only been in business for what .. 18 months??? I live in Cyprus and we see twats like you arrive here all the time … big ideas, big mouths, and gone in three years. TW*T.

There’s not really much to comment on is there with the first message? Nothing more than a string of insults…. The second comment, below, was in response to an article called How not to build a website.

Author : Bob (IP: 90.194.38.250 , 5ac226fa.bb.sky.com)
E-mail : bob@bobstuff.com
URL :
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=90.194.38.250
Comment:
Go on then .. name a reputable competitor .. still get the feeling you are the only company there and you won’t recommend a genuine competitor…. cyprus has twenty good companies … how many you got there? Still reads like it’s just you and you are trying to stop anyone else getting a foot in “your” market … point me to a URL I can trust and I’ll get a quote from both of you. I’ve got three in mind on the island for my new estate agency … are you telling me via your page that you are the only one … or you have done a deal to get a cut from the “competitor” (who is probably a business partner of yours) you recommend .. come on … have it out on a public page not a “private email”.

You come across as protectionist and arrogrant – name your competitors so your potential clients can make a fair “online” comparison. BTW- stop bleating about search engines when your competitors seem to be higher than you (even golanzarote.com scores higher than you!)

Anyone else ?

Okay, now we actually have some comments that amount to more than a string of insults so we’ll answer the key points directly to ‘Bob’.

1. If someone wasn´t coming to us we´d suggest Timanfrae Media. We have NO financial arrangements with them or anyone else. Not sure how you conduct business ‘Bob’, but we pride ourselves on our professionalism.
2. Yes, there are few good web companies here, and many people who do it part time.
3. In number one on this list we answered your request for us to point you at a reputable alternative, can we look forward to receiving your quote then?
4. Now here´s where we got confused – you say you are looking for two web design companies to quote you for an estate agency website, so presumably you’re opening up as an estate agent here in Lanzarote if you are looking at web designers in Lanzarote. In your other message you referred to our island as a shit*y little rock in the middle of nowhere? Hardly the attitude for a prospective Estate Agent is it? Not sure that’s the way to sell houses.
5. As regards to the comment about us appearing big in our little market – we must be doing something right! Thanks for the compliment… If you care to look at our portfolio ‘Bob’ you may see that our clients tend to like our style of business – our profile has a knock on effect for them.
6. We make no apology for what you describe as ‘protectionist and arrogant’. We welcome healthy competition, it provides us the opportunity to prove our promises are more than just words. Again ‘Bob’, look at the portfolio on our Gandy-Draper site. Our clients love us – which isn’t something we feel warrants an apology!
7. On the same note, nor can we find it in ourselves to apologize for appearing ‘knowledgable and smart’. Thank you again for the compliment ‘Bob’!
8. We don’t really see the point you are trying to make about searches as any of the following searches – Lanzarote web design, web design Lanzarote, Search Engine Optimisation Lanzarote, Search Engine Optimization Lanzarote will usually put us within the top five , and you may find one or more of our other sites on the first pages too.
9. The mention of golanzarote.com (who as an information site is not a competitor) suggest more than a passing interest in Lanzarote.

The big question now is, who is ‘Bob’ in ‘Cyprus’. Anyone got any ideas?

• Is he Elle’s stalker?
• Is it just an attack on us for whatever reason, be that business or personal?
• Is he one of the competitors with a poor reputation elsewhere?
• Is he a ‘wannabe’ planning to move to island and trying to mix things up?
• Is he one of the sharks in Lanzarote we have talked about elsewhere?
• Is he actually ‘Bob’ in Cyprus? (In which case why is his original search on the name of Elle Draper? And, why would he be so sad as to post such comments on the site of a web design company on, in his words, a “shi*ty little island”. “a rock in the middle of fu**ing nowhere”, thousands of miles away?)
• Is he something or someone else? We’d love to hear your ideas…

You decide…!

The simplest advice of all is if you want to protect your Intellectual Property and don’t want it to be copied, stolen or abused – don’t publish it on the Internet. Be your work words, photographs, websites or anything else that can be described as creative this is the only sure way to protect yourself. However, it’s nigh on impossible these days to run any business without making a certain amount of examples and information about your business easily available. (The same can be pretty much applied to your private life too with the prevalence of Social Networking sites like Facebook!)

Now, here’s a short story for you by way of example; After a somewhat ‘entertaining’ evening I knocked together a little t-shirt design for a bit of fun on a site I use – I am not going to mention the site here, for the simple reason that despite feeling let down by them, it remains one of my favourite sites and I have no wish to get myself banned… Read the rest of this entry »