With 2007 being a breakout year for InternetMarketingSucks.com, one could assume that internet marketing did indeed suck in 2007. The question is, how bad did it suck?

Here’s a rundown of some of the bigger events that occurred:

The MillionDollarWiki launched, got publicity from John Chow and Shoemoney, and made lots of money. Now the site is forgotten.

StumbleUpon got bigger and more popular, and obviously, got more spam. Although my stumbling experience is still enjoyable.

Sphinn launched. Good thing, because Digg sucks.

DealDotCom, a copy of Woot, launched in the internet marketing niche. It sucks.

BlogRush launched… and sucked. But nevertheless, a competitor popped up.

WidgetBucks launched, got praised and criticized, but finally paid out.

Then after all that, Joel Comm revealed it to the masses. A couple months late, but what do you expect, as we also found out about his sites that employ what some may call “dubious” Adsense placement tactics.

All the while, Google dished out penalties to anyone that was trying to make money with their site using anything other than Adsense. TLA really got hit hard. Google also screwed with David Airey a number of times.

No wonder Google gets a bad rap.

AuctionAds went to shit. Then ShoppingAds launched. And people were smart enough to avoid it.

To top things off, I’m still getting link exchange emails like it’s 1999.

That’s not even all the stuff that sucked, so I guess 2007 did suck quite a bit!

What do you think was the worst part?

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It’s times like these when internet marketing sucks so bad that it’s not even funny. I mean, it was pretty bad when David Airey got a big Google penalty earlier this year, but guess what happened now… someone hacked his Gmail account and stole his domain!

Talk about getting screwed over by Google!

There’s no reason for me to explain this further, other than saying that everyone needs to read the story:

http://www.davidairey.co.uk/google-gmail-security-hijack/

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The local favorite Joel Comm has hit yet another home run today. As if the confusing Adsense placements weren’t doing enough for him, today he emailed me about about a new service that works out great when used alongside Adsense. He says it’s “something new which pays off INSTANTLY!”

Well, are you excited??!

Me too. Now get ready for the shocker…

It’s “called WidgetBucks, and it is probably the most sophisticated and ingenious contextual product unit I have ever seen!”

Holy crap, look at that. WidgetBucks. Really, I’ve never heard of that one before. I can’t wait to go and be the first to post about it at the Digitalpoint forums!! I will be so cool, totally pwning those n00bs that only use Adsense.

There’s also a $25 bonus, which is great for Christmas. But I wonder if it’s the same $25 bonus I got back in October? The same one that you only get when you earn enough for the minimum payment that is certainly higher than $25…

Nah… couldn’t be.

I’m sure that this is a brand new service that no one has heard about yet, let alone written about before. Why else would someone call it “something new which pays off INSTANTLY!”

If you want $25 for nothing, keep dreaming. But if you want to join WidgetBucks, put lots of work in, and then get a $25 bonus when you get paid a month or two later, take a look at WidgetBucks.

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As if the Million Dollar Wiki wasn’t bad enough on its own, a bajillion knockoffs have since popped up, including the Million Euro Wiki, 5 Buck Wiki, One Buck Wiki, Quarter Wiki, I.O.U. Wiki, Peso Wiki, Barter Wiki, and the most shocking of all, the First Born Child Wiki. The trend is really absurd and hopefully dead (which is likely, because the Million Dollar Wiki is now valued at about $10,000, nowhere near the “million” it claimed…)

But just when I thought we were in the clear, some genius got the bright idea to bring back the dreaded pixel advertising site. Yes, a new knockoff of the Million Dollar Homepage has arrived. It’s not exactly taking the internet by storm, but the aforementioned genius is doing enough advertising to catch my attention (i.e. piss me off.)

The funny part though is this one is called BlogClutter. I guess it’s supposed to be a niche version for bloggers, but the “clutter” part is what gets me. Take a look at the site…

Where’s the clutter?!

Other than the header logo, the site is clean, organized, and clutter free!

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If you’re not careful when you’re messing around bad neighborhoods, someone might just attempt to bust a cap on yo ass.

That or get you a Google penalty. You can decide for yourself which is worse.

But there is a new type of neighborhood watch out there. It’s called the Bad Neighborhood Text Link Tool. Instead of watching for crooks, burglars, and sexual predators, they protect you from the most heinous of villains - black hat webmasters!

While other webmasters blindly link to these impure websites, you are wise to the hidden text generic Viagra links in the footer. You refrain from linking to them and in return, you get to survive another day in King Google’s land of the internet.

So if you’re buying or selling links through TNX or doing sketchy link exchanges with someone from Nigeria, do a background check first.

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Ever wanted to bust a cap on a domainer, either out of jealousy or spite?

Maybe so, because chances are they already own the domain name you were looking for. But there’s a way to get a prized domain name without resorting to violence.

And all you have to do is bust a name (not a cap!)

I’ll even give you some instructions and an example so you can see how it works. For the example, I’m looking for a domain name for a new ‘make money online’ ebook.

Step 1: Enter in some words.

We’ll start by entering some words and grouping them. So I’ll type in blogging, affiliate, make money online, seo, website, wordpress, blogger, classifieds, and internet marketing and hit enter.

Then I’ll add a group and drag all these keywords into Group 1.

Then I’ll add a group and call it Group 2, and the next set of keywords I enter will be placed into Group 2.

These keywords will be secrets, top secret, discovery, money, riches, success, how-to, mastermind, instant, and project.

(I’m looking for domains like “bloggingriches.com” not “bloggingblogger.com” so the grouping prevents this from happening.)

Step 2: View the list of words.

Step 2 requires no work as steps 1 and 2 are the same thing when you’re actually using the site…

Step 3: Available domains

Look at that, the site automatically generated a list of names for me!

I like the sound of “bloggingdiscovery.com” and “wordpressriches.com” and “instantblogging.com.” I might just put together a get-rich-quick ebook on one of those domains!

Hopefully you can make use of this domain finder in markets other than the make-money-online crowd!

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Sphinn, if you didn’t know, is the Digg-like website all about SEO and affiliate marketing stories. It’s a great refuge from Digg, where all the users love to bury anything that looks like SEO stuff. So there’s no need to game Digg when you can spam Sphinn legitimately and reach your perfect target market!

I noticed the easiest way to do it is to use this Wordpress plugin, the SphinnIt button.

That adds a nice Sphinn button to each post and it updates if your story is already on Sphinn. It’s at the bottom of each post here on Internet Marketing Sucks, so feel free to sphinn my stories to test out the button.

The button is nice, but how good is Sphinn? Is it really worth it?

It depends. I’ve had some stories on there that got a few sphinns. Never made it to the home page though…

Even so, it has sent me a few visitors. And Sphinn visitors seem to stay an average of 1:20. Not bad, especially because it was 97% new visitors. However, most referrals were better, and even StumbleUpon users (over the same time period) stuck around an average of 1:35.

Hell, Digg users stayed an average of 3:32! Digg beating Sphinn was a real surprise in that regard, but Digg barely sends me any traffic at all, so Sphinn still wins in the end.

Let’s see if anything changes if one of my stories makes it to the front page… (hint hint *cough* vote for me *cough*)

P.S. Did I mention that every time I visit Sphinn, I get sucked into reading every single story on their home page? It’s not that they’re any good, just that the titles really suck you in.

P.P.S. Did I mention anything about that blue Sphinn button at the end of each post? It just says “click me” doesn’t it??

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