Button, Button

There was a Twilight Zone episode called Button, Button where a stranger gave a man, Arthur, an empty box with a button on it. The stranger explained that if Arthur clicks the button, someone somewhere in the world would die… and Arthur would be paid $200k.

• What are the odds that Arthur would be picked?
• What if you cannot determine who died or was hurt as a result?
• What if the offer seemed irristable?

I’m going to stretch the analogy for Linkstar, the company behind what I call link spam.

• A representative from some company (presumably Linkstar, but I’ll never know) contacted me with an offer to sponsor my blog.
• In exchange for a small sum of money (much less than $200k!)
• I would have to put ads on my site that build link quality for viagra and vitamin spam sites.

Unlike poor Arthur, I didn’t take the deal. However, had I been offered $200k….

An investigative reporter, Dan Tynan, contacted me because he was writing an article about Linkstar. I’m impressed at what he’s learned.

As far as I’ve been able to determine, Linkstar isn’t doing anything illegal or particularly shady. But its penchant for secrecy is troubling. As a general rule, I don’t do business with any online company that does not clearly identify its principals or provide its actual place of business – and I don’t think other people should, either.

Can running the wrong kinds of ads on your blog or Web site hurt you? Absolutely.

Read Tynan’s two-part series here:

Part I: The curious case of Linkstar Media

Part II: Bloggers beware: Bad ads can come back to bite you

And like Alanis’talent, there is some controversy around my claim that link spam is indeed spam. Here’s the question in a nutshell… Can it be considered spam if someone pays you to post a link to a spam term? Is it advertising or spam?

It’s the latter. It may not look like the Nigerian-viagra-big titted whores-HYIP spam you get in email, but it is spam. When someone asks you to post a link on your blog that links to ads about Viagra or [insert your favorite spam phrase here], it’s spam.

But, they’re going to pay me for the link, so it’s advertising, right?

Wrong. It’s spam. Instead of cluttering up your in-box, they’re cluttering up your — and my! — search results. Every time you link back to a page, you are enhancing a site’s page ranking. Better page rank means higher search rank. Over time, it has the insidious effect of crowding out other legitimate pages. If you scan the terms that the spammers are using…

… you notice that they’re normal words that link to spam terms. The next time you do a legitimate search for vitamins you may find a spammer’s page about Propecia (which, come to think of it, I could use ).

Will it work? Yes, over time. When enough people link back using these terms and URLs, it will have a cumulative effect. I think it will be very difficult for even the brilliant developers at Google to weed out these spam links via a search algorithm.

Therefore, please, just say no to link spam.

Hi Jon,

I recently started writing work for RN Central as a content writer. I would like to write a guest post related to medical/nursing/healthcare on your site if you’re interested in accepting such a post. If you are interested, please let me know and I can send you an article for you to look over.

The Deal:

I will write a good, useful posts/articles on medical/nursing/healthcare specifically for your website/blog, free of cost. But I will need a by-line to build up my writing career. In addition, there will be a link to the RN Central site in the by-line. So, it will help all parties concerned.

Sample posts written by me:

http://www.rncentral.com/nursing-library/careplans/how-to-get-cheaper-healthcare-without-insurance

http://www.rncentral.com/nursing-library/careplans/20-surprising-ways-wal-mart-clinics-affect-us-healthcare

Both articles were widely read and received numerous links from other bloggers.

Thanks for your time and I am looking forward to your reply.

Thanks,
Heather Johnson

It has evolved!

Hi,
I am interested in purchasing permanent textlink advertising at some specific pages of http://blogbitesman.net/ let me know if interested so that we can discuss it further. I can make a good offer to make it worth your time. Let me know!

Someone wants to advertise on my blog? Is this guy on crack? Either the blog stats I see are wrong — and I have 100x the traffic I think I have — or I have my first groupie! Or, bloggie, I suppose.

Neither is the case. Curious, I asked for more information (seriously, what are you smoking and can I have some too?). Two days later, I received an email with a $100 offer to put text ads on five blog posts. He had sent me two examples of sites that had complied with his offer for easy cash. Here’s how the ad — on a site about cooking — reads:

Viagra, anyone? Clearly it was a spammer that was looking to build a good linking strategy.

It’s going to be incredibly tough for search engine algorithms to filter out these spam links. The paragraphs are written in perfect English and the text links go to various different websites. While the example above is incongruous with the rest of the site’s content, in another example, the spam paragraph actually relates perfectly to the rest of the page. ie, it’s contextual and much more likely that someone will click on the links, giving greater validity to the ads as far as the search engines are concerned.

I did a quick Google search to find out how one can report spammers, but what’s interesting about this model is that this guy is not a spammer in the classic sense. It’s a different class of spammer, the same way a honeybee is different than a wasp; same order (Hymenoptera, in case you wondered), different species and degrees of sting. I would be paid for the ads. It’s no different an arrangement than the advertiser Text Link Ads, the latter of whom is a member of the BBB and SEMPO and who only places ads on sites that have signed into their network.

Why am I blogging about it? Is it a bad thing or much ado about nothing? I think it’s insidious. This type of linking strategy makes it harder for legitimate business owners to get decent search rankings for their companies or products. As someone trying to market great products, the last thing I want is to compete with this species.

My reply to this offer:

Sorry, dude, I just say “no” to link spam.

His reply:

About the sites I work for, they’re not spam sites. I’ve worked for some edu sites as well as for gov sites. If requested, I can also arrange a replacement for a site you don’t want to link to .

In my terms, its not spamming. You might have a different definition for link spam .

I’m not convinced. You?

From the thread:

I spent $10,000 this year on lists, email software, promotional cards etc. to promote my business and my work. You’re on a list of people who buy creative work that is sold to photographers every day. If you don’t really buy photography, why not just hit the unsubscribe button? Why give out your email?

A response to this person’s comment:

You just admitted to taking the lazy way out of everything and spam people. If you are spending that kind of money you should be checking to see if the list(s) you are getting is even of value and not have people like Chris on it.

First, no marketer ever reads all the names on the lists s/he buys; what would you look for? How would you know that, based on an email address, Chris wasn’t a good potential buyer? Second, “If you don’t really buy photography, why not just hit the unsubscribe button?” Um, right… ever considered that Chris, or most of us who get unsolicited email, didn’t opt-in to the list… to that specific list? While content providers should always ask for permission to give your name out, they don’t. Far from it. If you’re a subscriber to a magazine or a corresponding website, odds are that your email address is being sold by someone without your knowledge.

I have tried email marketing many, many times, and 99% of the time it does not work. I have purchased lists from various list brokers, experimented with HTML and text email, offered different incentives and came to one conclusion: it doesn’t work. And yet, and yet, it’s still a huge business.

People like the photographer in the first quote do it because it’s cheaper than direct mail. So-called “clean” lists contain “good” email addresses insofar as the email doesn’t bounce. But that’s all that’s good.

Unless someone opts in to receive your email, they don’t want it. Really. The chance of you sending them email when someone is (1) in the market to buy your product or service and (2) actually has time to read spam is low. Not impossible, but low.

(So, just to contradict myself, I did respond to a writer who emailed me a few days ago to let me know about his freelance business, but I’ve deleted 100+ emails before responding to this one)

Better alternatives (in a random order):

• Cold calling. As time intensive and difficult as it is, it’s better. Maybe because people are used to getting solicitations from sales reps, but it feels less intrusive to me. And provided that the sales person is courteous and aware of my time and not pushy, I don’t mind taking the call.
• Word-of-mouth marketing. There’s a whole friggn association set up around this, plus many bloggers writing about techniques.
• Google Adwords
• Advertise in other people’s newsletters. Very likely, Chris opts-in to newsletters that have ads in them. He’s much more likely to open a newsletter that he subscribed to than an email from a stranger.
• Blog. And optimize it so it can be found.
• Talk to bloggers. This is one of Chris’main points, too. If the PR folks would simply have read his blog, learned about him, contacted him through his blog (while being nice and courteous) and asked him “who should I contact,” likely he would have responded in kind.