Anyone who spammed Squidoo is on the lookout for Squidoo clones where they can expand their spamming efforts for even more links or Adsense sharing.

But it’s pointless, as there are only two outcomes for any of these Squidoo knockoffs:

1) It remains a small site and delivers a bit of traffic to your site.
2) It gets huge, Google notices, and then penalizes the site due to too much spam content.

Option 3 would involve the site getting big and not getting penalized, but the catch in that case is that it would be heavily moderated. So your spamming efforts would be wasted.

HubPages looks good so far, but don’t hold your breath. Oondi, on the other hand, is worthless. (Note: Worthless to spammers that is )

First off, I don’t see where you can list a URL. Not even in an author profile.

And you can’t spam them in your article, because everything has to be approved by a moderator.

It’s really just like an article directory with a bit of revenue sharing. So I guess it doesn’t qualify as a Squidoo clone in the first place.

In that case, it might only be good for real authors to share their work.

I actually thought about signing up and getting some good page names (like I did at Squidoo,) but it’s not built like that. So I’ll just sit back until the site’s PR and Alexa rank get real high. Maybe then I’ll jump in.

If you want good links and lots of traffic now, you’ll need something different. Something more like a good site with existing traffic and a good TrustRank in Google.

I don’t think we have that right now. The Million Dollar Wiki certainly doesn’t fit the job description. Wikipedia is heavily moderated and uses nofollow. Squidoo isn’t what it once was. HubPages isn’t all that huge. DMOZ is corrupt.

Maybe we should come up with ideas that don’t involve spam? That’s bloody brilliant!!

Almost as genius as my idea to build websites with a goal of making money!

Bookmark This Page or Email It To a Friend

Most proxies used to have names like proxy.com, webproxy.com, etc. Anything with “proxy” in the domain. But that trend hit a big road block whenever filters were developed to automatically block any URL that has “proxy” in it.

People then came up with ideas like bypassfilters.com and unblockmyspace.com, but even those are obvious.

So what do you do?

Get a URL that looks like something kids should be looking at in school. A couple good examples are apenglish.info and apchemistry.info. They are regular proxies, but the domain names will probably fool most school administrators!

If I were you, I’d pick up any domain names like that while they last.

P.S. School is starting this week all around the world - now is the perfect time to get your proxy network going!

Bookmark This Page or Email It To a Friend

While there are many things that really irritate me, Blogspot blogs are in the running for the most irritating. It’s not just that all the templates are the same and that there are so many crappy ones, it’s that they’re a total pain to comment on.

I saw a post at SiteFever last week entitled Blogger Users - What Are You Thinking? that really got me fired up, so I had to post my full rant here!

If I’m visiting a normal blog, like a self-hosted Wordpress blog, I can read the entry and leave a comment on the same page. Then the page refreshes and like magic, there is my comment staring back at me.

Contrast that to a Blogspot blog, where I can read the entry normally, but I have to click a link to comment. Then I’m taken to a page just for commenting. Well, what if I want to reference something in the article? It’s nice to know what I’m commenting on while I’m commenting…

Or sometimes the comment box conveniently pops up in a new window, that is not resizeable…

To top things off, Blogger’s comments are sent over an SSL Encryption for some strange reason. That wouldn’t bother me except for the incessant security warnings as I switch between secure and unsecured pages. After dealing with those, I forget what I was going to write, and I have to click the back button to review the post…

As if that’s not enough, there’s a real kick in the nuts some bloggers use… they don’t allow non-Blogger users to comment! Talk about prejudice!

Certain bloggers require that you sign-in with your Google account before continuing to comment. So by now I don’t have a clue as to what I was going to write in the comments, not that it matters anymore, because I’m only there long enough to click the “X” and close the page for good.

Why these bloggers discourage comments is beyond me…

I’d love for you to leave a comment, and you can do so below, quickly and easily!

Bookmark This Page or Email It To a Friend

Have you ever wondered if you have a soul mate?

I have, but I think I found her! Suckered.us is not only my potential soul mate, but the place to go to warn the public about someone that has suckered you.

As much as I love to expose scams and make fun of the self-proclaimed gurus, I can only do so much on my own. That’s where you come in - by filing a report at Suckered.us.

Just take a look at their home page and you’ll see the top 10 list of complaints, along with 10 new complaints. For example, Bush.Suckered.us hold the top spot!

(Sorry if you’re a Bush supporter, but I couldn’t resist!)

Anyway, Bush got his own subdomain. Anyone that happens to visit it will see a nice mug shot and a little story about how Bush suckered all the US citizens into a war against terror just so he could take control of oil reserves in Iraq.

Slightly less popular are people like Fergie and Britney Spears, although they are still represented for tricking people into thinking they look good!

Godaddy made it on there too. (It’s a good one!)

So it doesn’t matter who you have a problem with. If someone suckered you and you want to stop them from suckering anyone else, just post the story online right now. Your complaint will get its own subdomain and maybe even be featured on the home page!

Bookmark This Page or Email It To a Friend

It seems that after reading about all the domaining stuff on TropicalSEO, I keep running across all these domain name generators and expired domain finders.

I’m not complaining, though! It’s certainly getting harder and harder to get a good domain name.

Which is why I was lucky to find a site called MakeWords, which somehow generates words in your preferred language and puts them together. It’s got a nice, clean design and works well.

It looks like it will work great for finding some Web 2.0 style domain names. Actually, it could be the best Web 2.0 style domain picker I’ve used. There are other ones that are funny, but this one actually works.

To prove it, here are some available domain names I found:

• dersti.com
• fluelo.com
• octobat.com
• outwi.com
• pedobia.com
• regarki.com
• shatio.com
• soign.com
• tuberl.com

Sure, they sound funny now, but just wait till someone establishes a brand around one. They’ll laugh all the way to the bank!

*Tip* If the English words aren’t doing it for you, try another language:

• botnin.com (Norwegian)
• siebst.com (German)
• spangos.com (French)
• tripota.com (Spanish)

*Bonus Tip* As good as the domain names are, I would think twice before picking my baby’s name off one of their lists…

Bookmark This Page or Email It To a Friend

Some time ago, the “DoFollow” Wordpress plugin got a lot of buzz amongst bloggers who wanted to reward their commentators (or just from sneaky webmasters who wanted to encourage comments as much as possible.)

I thought it was a neat idea, but I wondered why you needed a plugin to do that. I mean, all you’re doing is removing the rel=”nofollow” from your template. It’s kind of like that optimal title plugin. There’s no point in adding yet another plugin (which will slow down your blog) just to handle a one-time fix you can do in Notepad.

So I just went ahead and removed that code myself. If you want to do the same, I recommend reading this post on Blogstrokes. It should give you all the info.

Now we’ll see if this blog gets included on those “Blogs that DoFollow” aka “Spam These Blogs!!” lists that are popping up. It shouldn’t matter though, because Akismet takes care of all my comment spam so I don’t even have to see it. Take that spammers!

Bookmark This Page or Email It To a Friend

For just a moment, I’m going to put aside my usual rants make fun of the gurus like I always do, but follow up with something good for you.

On second thought, I’ll do all that with the usual rant thrown in, too.

And that rant would be, what’s the deal with the huge sales letters for people giving away a free ebook? If it’s worthwhile, people will see that, right? They’ll download it without hesitation.

And why waste your own time? If you’re not getting paid for this, why do all that writing? You could at least save some time by using less highlighting, bolding, and red font.

But they’re the gurus, so I’ll just trust them and do what they do…

Which means that I’m going to write a testimonial. Normally it would be a fake testimonial for my own product with someone else’s name and picture to increase sales, but this time it’s because I want to do a favor for a fellow blogger.

See, John from SiteFever.com wrote this huge guide to getting blog traffic for free. And I read it, so I’m going to give him a testimonial. And if he is as smart as the gurus, he’ll put this testimonial on his squeeze page.

John, your new PDF article about getting massive blog traffic without paying a penny was so awesome! You revealed crazy secrets man. I know lots of other bloggers are going to be fuming mad though, because they wanted the secrets to stay secret! Even crazier, you’re giving it away for FREE. That blows my mind. I swear you could charge $67 and it would still be a bargain!

There it is.

The funny thing is, there’s no squeeze page or upsell. Just click here and you can download it.

So maybe he doesn’t need the testimonial after all.

P.S. The best part out of all 22 pages would have to be John’s “personal trick” in the promotion section. I have used variations of it before, and they worked great, although this exact method is the cream of the crop!

(Even if he doesn’t need a testimonial, I figured I’d throw in the “P.S.” trick for good measure… )

Bookmark This Page or Email It To a Friend