Hello Henri,
Let me start with the language problem. As you see, I’m writing in English and especially using this time to improve myself, to exercise, and not only to waste time for this angry discussion. I promise that I would delete the answer, before reading it, if it is written in German. All the time I tried to communicate with you in English in the written form it was very rare that you answered in English, but also my English things was often answered in German. After some time, I gave up, unfortunately also for the last letter. It was also such a part of time-consuming without having any advantage for me. And for your argumentation with respect to communicate verbally with you, we had the intention or the plan to make weekly online discussions. And my first disappointment was that you delayed it up to the middle of September. I don’t think, even when you have been in China, it was a reason not to start it. At the time being, my most important English communication partners living in China and I have very good communication with them.
It seems to me it’s a contradiction if you say, on the one hand, you were needing time because you are glad to have more contacts with your wife. That’s quite understandable. But on the other hand, you propose restaurant visits, which cost a lot more time than having online communication for some minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, as many as you like. We agreed that our first test for online communication was very good. You understood me and I understood you too. I don’t know why you are now claiming it wasn’t optimal. It was far more optimal than any other online communication I have been having all over the world now. So, it seems to me it’s like a diversion from the original problem: you didn’t want it, for reasons which I don’t know.
Coming now to the insult problem. I didn’t claim that you had the intention to insult me. The problem is that you didn’t notice this insult. If you offer me a money-present for a working performance, that’s an insult. But I see that you haven’t any feeling for it. It’s like alms what you want to give to me. It doesn’t matter how big or how small it is. I didn’t care for money all the years I was working with and for you. Have I ever asked you for money? And now you offer me a money-present for my performance. That’s insulting me. Over all the years, I took it as a friendly gesture when you invited me to a dinner evening, and I enjoyed it. It was a reference for my performance, and highly acceptable, and I was sure you would have seen it in the same way, as a gesture and not more.
Very often I have the impression you think I have nothing to do because I’m retired. I know I’ve not spoken what I must do, and I don’t have the intention to tell it now. But especially after my surgery, which has been miserably done, I’m overwhelmed with tasks. A part of my obsession for the English language (which consumes a lot of time and is part of my effort for staying mentally healthy), way more of the time I have to do with my physical exercising. And there are some things more, I don’t want to complain about it. But if you send some posts, some WhatsApp messages with “urgent, urgent, urgent”, “you have to”, and “you should do” and very, very urgent, then I was smiling and angry at the same time. Perhaps you find it urgent, I can understand it, but it’s not urgent for me, there are some other things. I think it’s very important that you accept this difference.
Coming to your website, first the problems of advertising. I now remember, after reminding me, that you make the offer 50-50 for gains by advertising. I forgot it because I never believed in it. The kind how to offer advertising places are totally counterproductive. Everybody with advertising intentions will look for a website which is well linked to and has a lot of real traffic. And I never proved how many links there are in the internet to your website. But there are mechanisms to do it. You can ask, for instance, ChatGPT how to do it. And then I guess you will find a very small set of links which lead to your website. And this can be seen by everybody. And everybody who wants to spend money on advertising would have such a tool to prove it and would decline your offer for advertising. I can understand that it is very simple for you to show free places for possible customers where you would place their advertising. But the first question such a customer would ask you—or politely not ask—is why these places are not occupied currently. If you need suitable arguments for placing advertising, we can talk about how to do it. But in any case, not by pointing to free places that would be the last ones a customer would care about.
So, the best advice I can give you for advertising is to delete all the advertising parts from your website. They destroy your content. They destroy the value of your website. At the beginning of our co-working I told you I am not an SEO expert, and I wouldn’t do anything in SEO support. In any case, this is the problem of the owner of the website and not of the web designer. Some hints I gave you about this were ignored. I can understand it. I myself ignore every hint for SEO because I’m not interested in it. All experts say the best way to make gain with a website is having good content. I am sure your content is very good, and you have a lot of content and this should be the basis for your website not offering spaces for advertising. You will find spaces if you have a demand and not offer empty spaces for something hypothetical.
Besides all the quarrels we have had, I’m ready to work furthermore for you, but only on the basis that I want to set. And that is the following.
First, you accept if I don’t follow your proposals. That’s not in any case the reason that I found them bad, but that I’m not able to realize them because my health makes it impossible to sit for hours to create a design which I’m not able to manage or don’t find reasonable.
Second, nothing is urgent, especially at our age.
Third, dropping any empty advertising and the movies; I don’t accept it anymore working on such a ridiculous structure.
Fourth, all our communication should be taking place in English, with mutually agreed exceptions. I accept that you don’t have time for regular English communication, so you can see this as a kind of substitute.
Have a nice Weekend
Dietrich