Internet Business Blog

One simple reason…  It works!

One of my websites offers an information product using the 7 Dollars script and anyone can promote it without needing to sign up to anything.  All they need to do is to append their PayPal email onto a special version of the website URL and then they receive the proceeds of any sales from their referrals.

One particular affiliate decided it would be a good idea to spam a large number of people with his affiliate link. Judging by my website stats, if only a single-digit percentage of people actually followed his affiliate link then at least tens of thousands of people would have received his spam email.

Of course, this kind of action goes hand in hand with being reported to blacklist controllers such as SpamCop and eventually my host came knocking on my door asking me to deactivate the affiliate’s link.  This, I duely did.  Anyone following his link was then greeted with a message informing them of the situation, but also giving them an unaffiliated link to the products sales page just in case they were interested in it.

This resulted in a number of sales of which the proceeds went into my pocket instead of the (spamming) affiliate!

As his emails had been reported, I got to read a copy and was surprised that anyone would actually click through and buy, but they did.

So, there you have it.  Spam pays.  Period.

Not so long ago, article directory scripts were sprouting up all over the Internet marketing scene along with promises of AdSense riches using nothing but other people’s content. Adopters had seen the success of the likes of EzineArticles, ArticleCity and GoArticles to name just a few and now was their chance to sit back for an easy ride on semi-autopilot.

What these adopters didn’t realise was that maintaining the type of article directory that authors and publishers would visit again and again took hard work.

First there was the set-up. Unless the directory was customised, it would look and function just like any of the hundreds of other directory based upon the same script.

Then there were the bugs. The people who had sold them their article directory systems were marketers and not programmers who appreciated the importance of concepts such as testing and maintenance. Their primary concern was to get their scripts developed as cheap as possible and ready to market as soon as possible. The signs were that the pent-up demand was about to be met by a wave of similar scripts so time was of the essence. Thorough testing would have only slowed things down and the rush was about to begin.

Of course, this eventually led to the inevitable; exploits. Like dominoes, the directories succumbed to the will of the web hosts who pulled down directory after directory as they were being compromised through the same weaknesses. Instead of distributing syndicated content they were sending out masses of spam and consuming large amounts of server resources in a runaway fashion. The fact that so many directories hadn’t been customised and so could be searched for by the default text made it almost too easy for the crackers.

Those who were determined enough to get their systems fixed or to seek out better supported systems were then faced with another hurdle; the articles! With so many people wanting to syndicate their content, owners of directories with even a whisker of PageRank would quickly become swamped with an endless number of submissions.

At first, the novelty of reviewing articles was enough to keep them going. Once this had worn off, the process of reviewing would become a chore that would ultimately culminate in a number of choices:

1. Open the flood gates and accept articles without a thorough review.
2. Abandon the directory for something less time consuming.
3. Stick with it. Perhaps even hire some people to carry out the review process.

It’s my opinion that most people who rushed into the directory business settled for the first two options. Those were the easiest choices, but also the ones that would sound the death knell for the directory. Publishers weren’t interested in empty directories or those filled with articles spun so many times over that they read like they were composed by soul-less machines. And genuine authors didn’t want to submit content to sites which wouldn’t result in their work being read and so all that was left was the automated, spun content submissions.

So, if you ever feel like complaining about article directories having quality requirements that are draconian, remember that maintaining an article directory isn’t easy and that maintaining a directory where people will keep coming back is even harder.

If the review processes are keeping your articles out then perhaps they’re doing their job as they were meant to!

It’s meme time!

Jon Lee has tagged me on another meme that’s currently doing the rounds. The aim of this one is to help fellow bloggers by increasing exposure to their blogs whilst trying to avoid the icy glare of Google by ensuring links in the train use the nofollow attribute.

The 4-hour Work Week is a book that’s up for grabs by any participants.

To get involved, just see the rule section below.

***** Start Here ******

Prize

1. Free 4-Hour Workweek Book.
2. A chance to have a permanent link on front page of Blogging The Movie dot com.
3. Sign the Records Book as it travels to 10 different winners.

Contest

This contest is sponsored by BloggingTheMovie - A featured documentary about Bloggers. This contest contains no-follow links. So it is Google friendly and by creating an original introduction you won’t be dinged for duplicate content. This is an ongoing marketing campaign. There will be 10 winners at which each winner will be able to host their own contest which will be sponsored by Blogging The Movie. 1st Winner: Susan Suarez | 2nd Winner: Investing Adventures | 3rd Winner: Can be you!

Rules

1. Write an original short snippet introduction to avoid duplicate content.
2. Just copy the section between the start and end.
3. Add your 3 favorite blogs with rel=”nofollow” in the link on the code page.
   

   <a href=”http://url.com/” rel=”nofollow” target=”_blank”>URL.com</a>

   This is extremely important to ensure that Google won’t ding us. Make sure you contact the bloggers and insist they participate so they can keep this going.

4. Email your URL of your blog post to Free4hourWorkweek@gmail.com[Deadline: 12/31/07 ]

Favourite Blogs

Betshopboy | DerekSemmler | Enkay Blog | MsDanielle | JimiMorrisonsHead | Siteguide.us | Darin.cc | JonLee.ca | Samanathon | MrGaryLee | KellyCho | SusanSuarez | RobertaFerguson | Bloggrrl | TheKingKongBlog | TheBeefJerkyBlog | LifeisColourful | MarketingDeviant | MaleWail | RomanDock | 40hourstogo | TylerCruz | JonathanVolk | Egonitron | SuncoastScribe | Gnaka | WorldOfAngel | MyBlogContest | TheGeekBoys | JoyceBabu | JakelDaily | Internet Marketing Fool | Thatedeguy | PimpMyPageRank | AIS by Sarah | Add your 3 Favorite Blogs here (it is important that you change the link to rel=”nofollow”)

If you were not tagged, you can still copy the list and add yourself on. No worries, it’s a win-win for everyone. So lets get ready. Get on the list to become the 3rd winner on the Train Contest

***** End Here ******

To be honest, I’ve not really tried BlogRush so I’m not really in a position to offer an opinion about it. All I know about it is from what the email ‘newsletters’ that arrive in a special part of my inbox say and from what a few others, whose opinions count for more than those sending those special ‘newsletters’, have written about it.

From the description of the features and benefits that others have provided (not their opinion of it, but what it actually does), I’m not in any sort of a rush (no pun intended) to try it nor to be cheated by others bent on exploiting it.

What I am keen to try out is Sarah’s new What Others Are Saying (WOAS) WordPress plugin that offers similar functionality, but without any of what puts me off BR i.e. it’s a PHP plugin that reads RSS feeds and displays them on my blog, but it only takes the feeds from websites I specify, websites which I am fairly certain won’t be making inappropriate posts.

Nicer and more useful than a blogroll, WOAS offers readers of my blog the offerings of other blogs I read myself, but most of the benefit goes to the other blogs as it generates real, direct links to them and introduces their blog posts to a wider audience.

Should I include your blog?

I’d like to add a few more blogs to my WOAS list. If you think posts from your blog might be suitable, drop a comment or message and I’ll check your blog out.

Ever since its inception in January 2005, the (now infamous) nofollow attribute has caused quite a stir amongst webmasters. When applied to an outbound link, it’s a method of restricting the benefit that link provides to the destination website.

At a very basic level, direct hyperlinks usually offer two types of benefit to the website being linked to:

1. As a recommendation or vote in the eyes of a search engine thereby boosting the apparent popularity of the website being linked to.
2. As a source of visitor traffic as people click through from the linking website.

Developed to tackle the growing problem of people deliberately abusing the popularity benefit by placing junk comments with links on other peoples blogs, the big three search engines (Google, MSN, and Yahoo!) quickly agreed to support the nofollow attribute to a degree.

Wikipedia has a write-up on how it’s thought the different search engines respond to the nofollow attribute. Whether or not it’s an accurate representation of the truth is anyone’s guess.

The nofollow attribute isn’t unique to blogs, however, and webmasters can no longer turn a blind eye or plead ignorance to what websites they’re linking to as these search engines have placed the responsibility for using the nofollow attribute squarely with them and it’s not difficult to see why. Since it’s the webmasters who control the websites, they also control the links too.

As well as a means of controlling the dispersion of search ranking boosting benefit to external websites, Google have also indicated that it can be used for internal links. From SEOmoz,

Rand Fishkin: Does Google recommend the use of nofollow internally as a positive method for controlling the flow of internal link love?

Matt Cutts: Yes – webmasters can feel free to use nofollow internally to help tell Googlebot which pages they want to receive link juice from other pages

So what does the nofollow attribute mean to you?

Well, if you link to a website from your own website then you’re expected to use the nofollow attribute such that paid links are clearly identified as such to search engines who can then treat them according to their own policies. Practically, that means changing your links from this,

<a href="http://www.example.com/">Visit My Website</a>

to

<a href="http://www.example.com/" rel="nofollow">Visit My Website</a>

So, for example, if you sell text links on your website then you are expected to apply the nofollow attribute to any links sold. The consequences of not doing so and being found out can mean some form of penalty being applied e.g. black flagging your website so that no links provide any search engine benefit. That’s not to say that this is actually what happens, but you should be aware that it’s possible.

If you’re using website software such as WordPress then you may already be using the nofollow attribute without realising as some applications come pre-programmed to apply it to certain links. WordPress, for example, applies the nofollow attribute to all links in comments.

If you’re a webmaster who purchases links for their search engine benefit then you should be aware that some link sellers will follow the nofollow guidelines set by the search engines so always consider the traffic benefit that a link can provide.

There are plenty of people who think that the likes of Google are asking for too much control of how websites are run and have taken steps to defy such restriction, for example, by installing the Dofollow plugin for their WordPress blog.

Do you think nofollow affects you? Do search engines have the right to set such guidelines for webmasters? Do they have the right to issue penalties if their guidelines aren’t adhered to?

Technorati Tags: nofollow, dofollow, Google, MSN, Yahoo