A discussion of earning with Affiliate Programs, SEO, Wordpress Blogging and General Motivational Ideas for Internet Publishers

Following up on my last post about choosing affiliate programs wisely, today I wanted to warn any of my fellow promoters out there about a few programs that are to be avoided. If you read my previous article about Google sending me an email that one of my blog categories here was suspected of delivering spyware or scumware and although I was a bit peeved with Google for trying to be a virus or spyware protection agent instead of focusing on search, the actual incedent caused me to act as a responsible webmaster and investigate the possible causes in case Google wasn’t finding a “false positive”.

Considering the fact I serve dynamic ads through several providers, I had to take each one into account and analyze them one by one. Start at the top… The 728×90 banner at the top of this blog was served by a combination of providers. The main fill source is ADSDAQ (by ContextWeb) which is a CPM network and if my available banner space is unable to be filled by ADSDAQ, my backup ad provider was Google Adsense. I had believed ADSDAQ to be a very reputable source for my primary source and I’d even wrote a favorable article about them.

While I was checking for the source of the potential “spyware”, I reloaded the page several times and all of a sudden an Adbrite interstatial ad popped up and completely froze my browser and I had to to close and restart it. I don’t use Adbrite on this blog and I certainly have never used their interstatials (those annoying ads that pop up as you land on a page that say “this page is sponsored by”). I find the concept barbaric and akin to pop-ups or pop-unders. However, I did have an Adbrite publisher referral banner on the sidebar of the blog. I got rid of that thinking Google must have counted what Adbrite pulled as malware plus, I wasn’t too thrilled that an Adbrite referral banner caused an interruption to my site’s loading. In fact, I was so upset with Adbrite, I went to remove their ads from the few sites I run them on and I found several cases of Adbrite ads causing pop-ups or pop-unders and interstatials. Goodbye Adbrite.

Unbelievable what you catch when you’re serving third party CPM ads such as I was doing with ADSDAQ. I thought my findings with Adbrite were upsetting enough but when I reloaded this blog to make sure the Adbrite referral button was gone, bingo !! Another pop-up, this time an ADSDAQ banner was showing for a company called Polycom and the pop-up window took me here (http://www.nomorebuzz.com/Register.aspx). The banner matched the popped up site so I was more than certain that ADSDAQ had use the javascript code they deliver to mess with the visitor’s browser. Not on my site. Goodbye ADSDAQ.

I don’t appreciate these type of ads being served on my website without my permission. I have far too much respect for my blog readers and website visitors to slap them with pop-ups or spyware, malware, etc…

I’ve removed both Adbrite and ADSDAQ from my advertising space inventory.

         

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I’ve seen a few people promoting this program on Code4Gold Forums so I joined up with Smorty and submitted my blogs for review and after my initial dealings with them, I’d have to say this program is a definite “no go” and gets a big “thumbs down” in my opinion. Smorty claims to pay bloggers for posting reviews on their blogs but what they’re really doing is selling text-links on high quality sites for low quality advertisers. My first issue with this program is that they are apparently oblivious to what they’re doing or how websites, blogs and how Google views the selling of text links. From their publisher Rules, here’s a sample of the stupidity of this program’s operators :

You can only apply for a blogger account with a root domain. e.g. www.domain.com you can not use www.domain.com/myblog , however you can use subdomains e.g. www.myblog.domain.com

This is probably on of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen in an affiliate program. Do these people even realize that after a few blog posts that the reviews done on a blog are going to slip onto subsequesnt pages or blog archives so what difference does it make if a blog is an extension of a website and is located at www.domain.com/myblog? Smorty’s staff declined my two most active blogs, that are both PR5 simply because they are at www.domain.com/blog ? These are not intelligent business people we’re dealing with here. Just this fact alone is enough for me to give up on Smorty, but hang on, it gets even worse.

Here’s some more inane text from their Rules section.

5. Blogs that are not indexed, have little or no content, are banned from search engines or contain hate related and crude content may be rejected or put on Probation until corrected. 13. Smorty does not allow pornographic/adult oriented blogs at this time due to paypal rules regarding adult content. 14. Anchor texts with backlinks to advertiser must not contain “no follow” tags.

In rule #5, it’s quite apparent what they’re looking for especially when you combine it with #14. They’re looking for high Pagerank, well indexed blogs to sell text-links on. They’re not looking for “reviews”, they’re looking for “paid links” that pass Pagerank, just as with the sleazy “ReviewMe” and “PaytoPost” programs, this is not about bloggers reviewing a site or product, it’s about gaming the search engine ranking of shady websites using legitimate sites. Any blogger with a clean record, high PR and a well indexed blog would be a fool to risk those credentials especially when you look at the majority of the reviews Smorty has to offer. Here’s a sampling of the offerings available today.

As per Smorty Publisher rule #13 above, they do not allow adult oriented blogs due to Paypal, however, the last time I checked, Paypal did not allow casino and gambling related sites, which Smorty is pushing bloggers to write about and link to without a “no follow” tag. Not only that, any blogger stupid enough to write an article and link with a “no follow” to a casino or site will risk violating Google’s “bad neighborhood” policies and could have their site de-indexed and/or their Pagerank reduced.

So, for all you people out there reading my blog for information and recommendations on programs to join and programs to stay away from, I apoligize for the negative review of Smorty today but if it helps one blogger from having their site put in potentially harmful situations with the search engines, let me tell you, it’s not worth it for the small amount of money Smorty is offering. On the other hand, if you already have a blog that deals with gambling, autosurfs, hyips or any sort of “bad neighborhood” content, then Smorty may be a perfect way to monetize your sites. For me, this one is a thumbs down.

Peace Out
Dave

         

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I woke up this morning to find that my Digg account has been terminated. I have to say the people at DIGG are the biggest bunch of bungholes ever and that they continually terminate accounts that for no valid reason. I have submitted only the highest quality articles, made comments on others blog posts and generrally been an exceptional contributing member. I even wrote a popular post about how to add a Digg button to your Wordpress blog. The whole concept of a “social networking community” is to make friends and have those friends “Digg” your articles. I had over 60 friends in my account and I do publish high quality original content which seems to get dugg rather quickly by my bloglines and RSS readers.

As of this point I would never use Digg again and promote their site by having the icons on my site. This is just a warning to all of you out there. Digg doesn’t want quality, they want crap from their little circle of Diggers. Again, I thought the purpose of “Social Networking” was to build friends and network with people through whatever means. Digg obviously doesn’t see it that way.

Screw Digg - If anybody has any alternatives to them, please post a comment with the info.

thanks.

         

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