SOLD! Cash Quests sells for $15,000
Holy cow. Well if this isn’t the biggest news to shake the blogosphere I don’t know what is. Cash Quests has sold for $15,000. Check it out for yourself on Sitepoint.
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Humility is a virtue
For the past couple of weeks, the talk of the blogosphere has been about Scot Smith. He’s the guy behind RSSXplosion.com, which is a service that offers bloggers the chance to buy RSS subscribers. Bloggers around the world have been outspoken in denouncing the service as uber-evil, but is it the service itself that people are against or is it Scot?
Scot’s RSSXplosion offers a service that some people want. Despite many bloggers publicly lambasting this service, some have quietly taken Scot up on his offer. The problem is that Scot’s service is all about misleading people.
Scot left a comment on a blog inferring that I was a hypocrite because I’ve sold text links before, but the business of selling text links and passing on Page Rank is open and in the public. Doctoring RSS numbers is closed and conceited. No blogger who uses Scot’s service is going to come out and say they have a fake RSS count, whereas almost all bloggers are very up front about selling links.
The real problem with Scot is that he’s acted so aggressive throughout this whole ordeal. His defensive reactions to criticism have been childish at best. Scot’s lack of people skills and common sense will ultimately be his downfall. Using bloggers’ names to substantiate his claims was a mistake too.
If a blogger’s RSS count is to become the new Page Rank, as many have suggested, there will be increasing demand for services like RSSXplosion – it’s inevitable. This isn’t something that is going to just disappear. 45n5 wrote recently that an RSS subscriber is worth about $30. While you could theoretically buy 1,000 RSS subscribers and put your blog on the market, you have to remember that a large RSS count on its own is worthless. You also stray into fraud territory by selling a blog with fake RSS numbers.
You won’t get anywhere by buying RSS subscribers – you’d be better off spending the money on links or advertising space. We’ve seen it time and time again recently when bloggers have been called out only to act with hostility toward the whole blogosphere. That’s not the way to do business.
Sometimes you have to watch your mouth
Most bloggers like to think that they can write whatever they want without consequence. There are times, however, when a blogger will get called up something he or she has written. It happened to John Cow recently when he used the “C” word. It wasn’t written with malicious intent, but that single word caused such an uproar that some readers vowed never to return to the Cow’s blog. This begs the question: how much should you self-censor your blogging for your audience?
It happened to me recently. I have another blog that focuses on Thailand and my life here. I wrote a post about how Thai people have started wearing pink shirts in honor of His Majesty the King of Thailand. Just to bring you up to speed, His Majesty the King is universally revered in Thailand – and I mean in a big, big way.
The problem came not with my post itself, but with one of the comments that a reader had left. The comment was written about His Majesty the King and Thai people in a derogatory manner, which is as big a no-no as you will find in Thailand. I let the comment slide because I’m not in to censoring other people.
Two days after my initial post was written, I got a call to my office in Phuket. The call came from the Ministry of Information Technology (MICT) in Bangkok telling me to remove the offending content. Naturally, I obliged, because the MICT has the power to block certain websites. YouTube was blocked for months due to offensive videos posted about His Majesty the King.
There are certain topics that I can never write about as a blogger in Thailand. There are some topics I wouldn’t even discuss in public except with close friends. It goes back to the idea of self censorship. For me, if I write about some issues, at best I might offend my readers, but at worst I could end up with my blog blocked.
In more general terms, there are some opinions, words, whatever, that are best kept to yourself. You have to understand your audience. I’m not saying you should try and appease everyone, but sometimes you have to hold your tongue.
The number on rule I live by with my blogging is: don’t offend feminists. I’ve done it and I regret it to this day.
They are watching you.
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