Everybody wants to get ahead in this game, but you can’t get something for nothing. You can’t just spend $20 and expect the world to come to you. There are people making an absolute killing selling packages on the Internet that offer the world but, in actuality, deliver very little.

You may have seen them on webmaster forums.

Get 1,000 back links for $5

Sounds great doesn’t it? The deal is that you pay a sum of money, usually between $5 and about $50, and you get a number of blog posts, with links, on blogs across a blog network. The selling point of such packages is that the blogs have a respectable Page Rank and are on multiple IPs blah blah blah.

So what’s the catch?

The catch is that the Page Rank these blogs may have does not trickle down to the links you put in your post. You have the option to delay the postings, but the most interesting feature is the ability to spin one article into a number of unique articles. What you actually end up with, though, is dozens of articles that are absolute gibberish on blogs made up of hundreds of articles that are absolute gibberish; they have no value to you, search engines, or the Internet in general.

I can tell you these packages are a waste of you money because I bought one out of curiosity. I spent $5 for the sake of an experiment. Firstly, few, if any, of the blogs in these networks are indexed by Google. This means that your links are worth nothing. The blogs are mostly not listed on Technorati too.

For my $5 I got 50 blog posts spun from one post that I wrote myself. It included three links, but these are of no value because the blogs are dead weight. My Technorati rating stayed the same and nothing changed in Google. I didn’t use this blog for the experiment, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. I may as well have bought a pack of Pringles and got some satisfaction that way, ‘cos these services fail to deliver big time.

Don’t use them.

Don’t take my word for it; have a look at one of the blogs in such networks and tell me it has any value to anybody. The real kicker is that these blogs are on dropped domains, which are domains that have expired and not been continued by their owners for one reason or another. While the PR may hold up in the future, the chances are slim, and buying the links now will really not help you in any way. Remember: If a girl calls you “sweety” on the Internet, it’s because she’s after something. People are making thousands of dollars selling posts on blogs like this. Let’s put an end to it. Spread the word.

Tags: Blogger rant by Angel
3 Comments »

You don’t realize how much you live on the Internet until the day you find it’s not there. My trusty IBM Thinkpad has broken down. What I first thought was a problem with power adapter has turned out to be something else entirely. A girl from one of the local computer stores came to check it out, and the verdict was decidedly uncertain. Given that she didn’t speak much English (I live in Thailand, don’t forget) the problem could be anything.

So the situation I’m in is that I have to wait until Saturday before I can get my laptop fixed. I can turn it on, but I just can’t use the power adapter, possibly due to a problem with the socket at the back of the computer. The problem itself was caused by my good friend Mother Nature, who chose to throw down an alarmingly-on-target lightning bolt right at my friends house, thus tripping the switchbox, but not before a power surge found its way to my still-plugged-in IBM.

So I’m out of touch. I can’t check emails, I can’t read blogs, I can’t even blog myself. And here is my blog, wondering where its master has got to. It’s a sad state of affairs, but it’s only now that I understand just how much I use the Internet. Although I like to preach about how I could never work from home, I still spend far too much time on the Internet.

A few days away from the web, however, is good time for reflection. The blogs I have on auto-post with pre-written articles will tick over during my hiatus, but the ones I’ve not had time to write in advance for, like this one, could suffer. Let this be a lesson to us all, that if you blog daily, you must prepare for unforeseen circumstances. We’re all trying to make money online here, and so it pays to always be a step ahead of yourself.

Of course, I’ve found myself in situations like this before, and I always vowed that they would never happen again, but such is life. Sure, I can use the Internet while I’m at work, but strictly speaking, I have work to do during office hours.

Have you ever gone without the Internet for a prolonged period? I swear it’s like loosing a limb.

Tags: Blogger rant by Angel
2 Comments »

Bloggers can be devious people sometimes. If they aren’t out “borrowing” content, they’re trying to get ahead one way or another. The blogosphere is a cut-throat kind of place, but I think the line has to be drawn at taking from others without permission to mislead an audience. Sure, we all want to make money, but some blogger go too far.

No tactic could be said to go too far if it works and makes money, unless you are outright lying to your audience and trying to get ahead by stealing. I came across a blog called The Affluent Blogger. I had a browse through the content and didn’t find anything too inspiring. My confidence in the blog was boosted by the large number of RSS subscribers: it was at over 500, so I thought that this guy must be doing something right.

Then I noticed that the number of comments was strangely low, and the posting was sporadic. Nothing about this blog stood out and said “subscribe!” to me. I right-clicked the RSS button and, to my amazement, The Affluent Blogger is using the Feedburner button of My Two Dollars, a blog that discusses various matters related to making money.

I haven’t contacted either of these bloggers about the matter because there’s really no need to. They’ll both see this post and can act upon it as they wish. Maybe the blogs are run by the same person (although this looks unlikely), or perhaps the two bloggers are friends (again, unlikely), but the fact is that one blogger has taken something from another to deliberately mislead his audience.

It goes beyond content theft and into new territory. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to trust new blogs, like mine, because too many bloggers are going out of their way to destroy any sense of trust that might have once existed. This works in the favor of John Chow, Darren Rowse, Kumiko, and anyone already established in the field of making money online, but it pisses me off.

What are people stealing from you? Probably more than you think.

Update: The blogger in question removed his fake RSS counter already without so much as a comment here.

Tags: Blogger rant by Angel
5 Comments »