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Posted October 26, 2007 
Comments(2) Some days I find a great blog post demeaning some new website or software. Today was one of those days.
This time, it’s Website Grader that sucks!
(Although after reading that, I had to test it out for myself, and it does provide some interesting stats free of charge. I might even use it again.)
BTW, here is a link to Website Grader itself, but word going around is that it sucks 
Posted October 17, 2007 Comments(3) 
The old adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” seems lost on internet marketers.
Most of them seem to live by the motto, “If it’s broke, just give it a new name.” That way they can rehash the same crap under a new name and con people into joining, thinking it’s new and improved and all the other buzz words combined.
Unfortunately, AuctionAds is adopting that new motto.
Once AuctionAds payouts dropped and click-tracking suffered, publishers have been leaving in droves.
Nothing was getting better, and it even seemed as if they were ignoring the problem.
Perhaps they wanted to keep things under wraps, thinking that none of their publishers would notice… or talk amongst themselves…
Or maybe they were just going to launch a new product under a different name?
Yep, that was their best solution, and it’s called shoppingads.com, which is basically AuctionAds with a CPC model instead of CPA like eBay.
I for one am not buying it. (Partly because I didn’t get a special invitation, but mostly because of the whole AuctionAds fiasco…)
First, if AuctionAds isn’t working, why would I trust this new system?
Second, I only went for AuctionAds to boost my percentage earned in the eBay affiliate program. So what’s the big incentive to go with ShoppingAds?
Are they offering some special payouts over similar services like WidgetBucks and Chitika?
Who knows.
All I know is that it is getting a warm welcome at the DP forums.
Posted September 23, 2007 Comments(5) BlogRush has been getting a ton of press, most likely because John Reese started it. But, like most things in internet marketing life, it didn’t live up to the hype.
Here is the truth:
It seems all that buzz went to waste…
Posted September 18, 2007 Comments(10) We all know that the Million Dollar Wiki is over hyped, and it will probably fade out of the public eye within a few months. But could things be worse?
See, they claim that the site will be live at least 15 years.
With the initial sales, the hosting expenses have been secured for the first 15 years, and guarantee that the site will run until May of 2022. Our intention is to keep the site up forever.
But if that’s the case, why does the domain expire in 2008?
The hosting won’t do much good if there is no domain name…
That’s not the full story though. I noticed some other fishy stuff going on…
For example, the number of spam pages that they sold. I don’t mean crappy pages, because they sold a TON of them… more like duplicate word pages.
I can’t find the place I saw this, but I was sure they had specific guidelines that only one page for each topic would be sold, each word had to make sense, it couldn’t be a verb, etc.
But take a look at the index page:
I see 4 pages about 0% Interest Credit Cards and 5 pages about how to Apply for a Credit Card. Not to mention one for “Airline Tickets” and one for “Airlinetickets.”
Further down the page I found “Bestcreditcardstorecom.” You gotta be kidding me. Not only should that page not be allowed (since “Bestcreditcardstorecom” is not in the dictionary or even used as slang,) whoever bought a page using that ‘word’ has lost their mind.
Stay tuned for more…
Posted July 30, 2007 Comments(0) The thing I love about blogging is that so many experts are giving out great information free of charge. (And I mean experts that know what they’re doing, not the “gurus” who just want to scam you…)
I was hoping that with all this free (but useful) information, the fake “gurus” and their get-rich-quick scams would slowly get filtered out and forgotten.
But now I’m wondering if a new Wordpress plugin designed to turn your blog into a paid-membership website might cause some problems.
First of all, the plugin costs $25, so it’s one of the rare plugins you have to pay for. But then it makes it so if anyone wants to read your blog, they have to pony up and open their PayPal wallet…
If this company was venture-backed and had a huge marketing budget, they’d probably make a big stink like PayPerPost and (more recently) the BuyBlogComments comment spamming service. I just can’t imagine the true bloggers condoning these members-only blogs.
Fortunately, I don’t think any smart people will pay to read a blog, so I don’t see this making a huge impact. The useful blogs already out there will certainly remain free, because those smart people are happy to help others.
But the gurus on the other hand…
The “gurus” might just start getting into blogging if they can profit. The $97 ebook phenomenon might slow down, only to see a surge of $37/month membership blogs. This in turn will give blogging a bad name, much like the internet marketing industry as a whole.
I don’t want to read the “Make $16,298 overnight on autopilot just by stuffing a few envelopes” blog, but a total newbie might. And they might just get suckered in because of the marketing principle that says something like charging a price makes your product seem more valuable and/or exclusive, and in turn more people will go for it than if you were giving it out for free.
(You know those companies that charge $75 for a plain cotton t-shirt? It’s the same principle.)
Anyway, that price tag, coupled with a long sales letter, might just attract some followers. And once they get roped in, it will take a while for the experts and helpful forum members to get these innocent newbies back on track.
Posted July 16, 2007 Comments(1) 
I’m a little late to the BuyBlogComments debate, but there’s no way I could resist chiming in on such a topic…
If you haven’t heard, BuyBlogComments is a new service letting you pay people to go comment on blogs and leave your URL, supposedly increasing your SERPs. They claim it’s not spam, even though it sounds quite a bit like spam.
Blog comments help your site rank better in the SERPs. We hired a few people who go through a list of blogs in a database we set up and pick out blogs that are in your niche. They then read through blog posts and leave a comment that has to do with the blog post they read, that way it won’t get deleted. Your backlink will then be on a targeted blog, giving you more weight in the search engines.
OK, so we all know what good comments are and how to spot comment spam, and we have a good idea of what this service does. Or do we? Until we actually see case studies, we’ll never know if their comments are any good.
And that’s a big deal considering the price. It costs $20 to get 100 comments. If you are a high roller and order 1000 comments, you’ll pay $199. Yep, you save an entire $1 by buying in bulk!
While we might not like the service, being the savvy bloggers we are, we know what linkbait is - I’ll be the first to admit that this service is working as a nice piece of linkbait for this Jon Waraas character!
I don’t really need to go into the debate of whether or not this is a good idea, because Darren at ProBlogger.net already gave a good opinion on it. He has a good debate going there, so check it out.
But what I will go into is what can happen if this service doesn’t fulfill its promise 100%…
And I’ll do it by telling you a little story about what happened today…
Around noon, I noticed a weird comment that slipped past Akismet. It was a well-written comment, but it was about golf, and I don’t write about golf on here. So that gave it away that this was a spammer…
Hello Everyone,
I am a golfer myself and I like to play whenever I get a chance.
A short while ago, a very good friend of mine told me about a great golfing equipment and accessories website that has discounted prices on all their products, same day shipping in most cases and there is no state sales tax, they are paying that.
So if any golfer here is ready to save some money on quality products at highly discounted prices, you might want to check out their site at; http://hoffmangolf.com
(Click here to see the screenshot.)
This idiot pissed me off enough to go to the site, ready to complain. But when I clicked his link, that URL redirected me to GolfOutletsUSA.com, a real golf store. I was a bit puzzled… then I saw a link to their affiliate program!
I think we have an unscrupulous affiliate here that is partaking in blatant blog comment spam, trying to get traffic through his link to the golf store, so he can earn a commission. I doubt the merchant approves of this tactic. (I’ll be contacting them just to check, though.)
Now how does this relate to BuyBlogComments?
Well, let’s just consider that the commentators working for BuyBlogComments are human. And humans make mistakes sometimes.
If one of those commentators leaves a lame comment, or leaves the wrong comment by accident, your site could be in trouble!
Think about it - bloggers are going to be extra vigilant about their comments now because of this service, and if they think you are spamming them, they might just let everyone else on the internet know about it. It could be considered as publicity, but it could result in people hating you…
Your choice 
[This post originally appeared at InternetMarketingSucks.com]
Posted July 10, 2007 Comments(10) 
RSS is a great way to distribute and syndicate content to your readers, but it also makes it easy for the spammers to steal your content. One way they do this is by setting up spam blogs, or “splogs.” These blogs have no original content; instead, they pull in your content via RSS and pass it off as their own.
They’re using your content without so much as a link back to your site!
Earlier this year, this very blog was included in one such site at adwhores.com. I wasn’t too pissed considering the blog had a PR5, and if I played my cards right, I could get some nice backlinks. But then I noticed the PR5 was faked…
The good news, though, is that the splog got shut down within 2 days. Even better, I learned a thing or two about dealing with this problem (other than a typical DMCA notice to Google.)
And it’s a good thing, because that splog is back online and stealing more content than ever! They’re even stealing Shoemoney’s feed!
So here are a couple things you can do to protect yourself from splogs, even if you don’t know they’re out there:
First, always link back to your previous posts when you mention something you’ve blogged about before. Or link to one of your category pages. Whatever you do, just be sure to have links to other parts of your site within the post itself. That way, anyone stealing your content is giving you backlinks, and maybe even traffic.
Second, you can put a little notice at the bottom of each post. Something like “this post originally appeared at mysite.com.” That should get you a little link love, too. You can even use Adsense Deluxe to automate the process.
Third, make use of all the Feedburner options. Feedburner allows you to place links in your feed such as “Email this” and “Save to del.icio.us” If those are in your feed, they’ll show up on the splog. So if someone decides to bookmark the post that way or email it to a friend, they’ll be saving your URL (not the splog’s.)
(Notice my feed URL in the status bar )
And if you do know about the splog, and it is totally worthless and spammy, just file the DMCA notice along with these tips from FightSplog.
[This post originally appeared at InternetMarketingSucks.com]
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