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 :
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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.
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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
I agree with you. I spent my time writing that pathetic review for smorty for 6 lousy dollars and it got rejected. It got rejected cause I had a “pay per post” affiliate button below the post (there is a clear seperation and its just affiliate link). Smorty has no business telling others to remove affiliate links. And your right most of the opportunities are crap anyways.
SMORTY SUCKS!
It’s a pretty rotten affiliate program if you ask me because not only do they compromise a blogger’s ethics, they compromise a blogger’s website ranking and positioning in the search engines (particularly Google) and for what? A few measley dollars? Smorty and ReviewMe are equally crap.
6 dollars is not a lousy. You can have a nice coffee and bread with it. Do i have to admit that people who don’t respect money, no matter how small in amount it is, don’t deserve to write something like this. I’m no way affiliated to SMORTY or whatever affliliate it is. My concern is that one day, i noticed about SMORTY somewhere and before i jump intoit , i was checking some reviews on google and well, i’ve to say, this review is not authentic and as genuine as i’ve thought. I’ve to look around for more.
Feel free to look around Navin because it seems like you’re looking for a positive response about Smorty, not a realistic one. Maye to you, $6 for spending an hour or more wtiting an article will get you your coffee and bread of maybe a bowl of rice but to most of us professionals, I’d hardly think $6 is worth an hour of our time. Maybe I was spoiled making over $50 per hour on salary as a programmer, so I’d never whore myself or my blog of for a paltry $6. Perhaps you might try some of those “get paid to click” or “get paid to read email” that pay you .01 per click. You can make $6 in a month of spending a few hours a day clicking !!!
[…] Smorty Review - Advertising or Selling Text Links […]
At first, when I got into Smorty, I still was able to acquire opportunities but recently, seldom get job from them. And most of their job opps are casino related… Is there any other advertisers which are not about casino?
I think they started banning casino ads. I havent seen any new one for a while.
what a funny post :) you cannot be serious about it, I think you don’t like Smorty because of you have declined post. Especially they are paying for you for this post..
@Angie, your comment is what’s laughable here. Don’t you realize that I could care less about Smorty?? I gave them and test run and I decided that they weren’t for me, for obvious reasons. Their system does suck and if you’re so happy with them, why not post the link to your blog in your comment here?
Why? because you are most likely affiliated with smorty itself and you probably don’t even have a blog. It would figure a sorry arsed system like Smorty would send ringers out to leave comments on blog posts that are critical of their program.
With so many different ways to monetize a blog or website that are available to publishers, why stick with an inferior product?
Dave , first of all thank you for publishing my comment
yes I have a blog , just I don’t like to see blog address on the comments . I was here just because to find some information about affiliate but so sorry if you are like this, I mean if there is a company you don’t like to work with you will publish that kind of post ! how can I trust your other opinion ? I am also working with some companies, sure I am a new blogger , need to know more things about blogging , but Smorty is the best for me . very easy to use their system , every week I got paid _ (for information PPP paid me 3 months later)
Anyway I hope next time you may help me about affiliate but for now I need to find some other places
Have a nice day
Angie
I feel stupid now, a few months later, because I wrote some posts for them. At the beginning it was magic that I could get money just writing in my blog. Then one day they decided that my blog wasn´t good enough because it had posts (original posts) written in Portuguese. It was the best rejection I have ever had.
My blog had already lost its PR by then, and I am glad that it wasn´t banned by Google.
Smorty is one of the best Pay Per Post programs out there, but in order to earn more with its program, not only you need a high PR site but to write quality reviews as well. Because of their rating system.