28
Mar

Have I scammed anyone?

Posted in Blogging> Off-Topic

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or get your blog updates by email. Thanks for visiting!

This is a blog reply to one of my readers posts, who has made a video in response to the building powerful links with a pr7 blog post I made.

Before I begin, I just want to say a few things. This post is not meant to be counter-hostile in any way, but I just feel the need to express my opinion on the matter and want to get my reader’s thoughts as well. I also wanted to thank Collin for allowing me to write my first rant post. I also wrote this “rant post” on the fly (at 12:58AM), so I apologize if there is any typos.

Here is the embedded video so you may hear his entire opinion on the matter:

Collin (the other one) made a video expressing that offering the location of the PR7 blog I found should have been a free post, much like the other 20+ link building posts in the link building cookbook. This would be a very bad idea because unlike most of those sites, a blog that manually approves comments will know something is amiss when 450+ RSS readers start posting comments with backlinks in them. The idea of selling the blog location is, A: to earn money, and B: to limit the amount of interested parties.

Firstly, as you know by now, I offer far more free link building material for my readers to use for self-promotional purposes than anyone else in the link building niche. The 20+ free tutorials that are on there now would normally cost hundreds of dollars in some junky ebook on the Digitalpoint.com forums, but I give them away at no cost to my readers.

Secondly, in response to your comment, “you don’t need to get suckered into a bogus claim that there is a PR7 site out there that is giving out a whole bunch of free links… …this site was more or less probably purchased off of Hostgator or Godaddy as an expired domain name…” — The blog is a very powerful blog and not an expired domain. The company that owns the blog has a massive business plan and the blog is updated every few days with new posts. This is not a get-rich-quick scheme about buying an expired domain, selling links, and then the site drops. This is an actual high ranking authority blog that updates often and has been around for a very long time. The links are not anchor text, and the whole point of selling the location is so that companies can build there pagerank as well as search engine’s trust so that in the long run all of their pages will rank higher in the search engines.

With most of my free link building posts, the sites are so general that they can support thousands of webmasters replicating the process, but this is a blog that moderates comments daily. If I gave the URL out freely, the blog would have 450+ RSS readers making 1-3 comments in a period of 24 hours. The site would be hammered with comments, and the chances of every single dofollow link being changed to nofollow would increase substantially.

The 20 person limit is SUPPOSED to keep the majority of the readers away, as this post was not dedicated to new blogs who are still working their way up, unless they were investing long term. This method is for large sites (or companies) who are interested in doing a massive long-term promotion campaign without running the risk of buying links and getting penalized by Google.

As for your comment that “most people that claim that they are SEO experts are full of crap,” I will give you the benefit of the doubt in assuming you were referring to other bloggers, and not me personally. In the last few months, I have given my readers so many opportunities to build links to get more search engine traffic and ultimately more money online. However, if your comment was directed at me personally, I would like to know why you (and many others) are reading my blog if you believe I am full of crap, in opposition of the many comments I receive thanking me for helping them promote their blogs. I have never sold my SEO/viral marketing services publicly, all of my clients have come through networking and word of mouth. I am a strong believer in long term credibility and authority instead of short term sales pitches, and I hope over time you will see that is true. If you (or anyone else) would like to make a guest post on the topic, feel free to email me through the contact page at the top.

In conclusion, out of the 12 customers that have purchased the location, I have seen many of their comments approved already, and I have not had a single complaint or refund from any of them. I have, however, had four people thank me after their links were approved. If you do not think that $25 is worth it for you, then that is perfectly acceptable as that is your opinion, but to accuse me of scamming readers is pretty offensive. I believe you came to a lot of wrongful conclusions far to fast, and more research needed to be done.

I do realize if I did not make this post, the video would only have been seen by 25 people and I wouldn’t need to worry about it, but I really want to put this in the spotlight and get more opinions on it. If you would make a comment stating what you think about this post, that would be greatly appreciated. If you wish to remain private, you can also send me your opinion via email.

Share This: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Mixx

RSS feed | Trackback URI

13 Comments »

Comment by Collin - Feed Flare
2008-03-29 08:44:40

Hey Man,

First things first, I have never read that you claim to be an SEO expert so that part does not apply to you, but all the other SEO experts who claim to be.

2ndly, the video was seen by far more then 25 people….your just looking at you tube stats and not the other 20 or so sites that video was submitted to. But thanks for posting it here.

I never mentioned your name or your site in the video as I do not work that way, but thats just me.

And for the reason of this post, your site has been a great help to me and to others so when you made that post about selling the location of the site I thought (and so did a lot other) ok here we go, gain our trust then hit us up for money.

and regarding the site thats pr7 - links are worth a lot more if they follow the same niche or category as your site, maybe alarms would not of gone up if your first post on this would of explained a bit more about what the link would of been more about.

Comment by Link Building Bible
2008-03-29 09:09:52

He never said he was going to stop giving away free link building tips. It is alright in this world to charge for your services. A plumber friend can help unclog a few sinks, but one time he might charge you because it costs him time and money. Although not the best analogy, it works.

It’s not baiting and switching… it’s not building trust then trying to sell. He could have started selling these tips from the get-go in spammy ebooks, made a few bucks, maybe be featured on dealdotcom.com and make even moremoney… continue to bump his spammy ebook selling thread on digitalpoint. But he chose to give them away for free. I have a link building website with a bunch of free tips. But, there will come a time when I have a service that is worth selling, and using my blog to market that idea is not only great idea, but expected.

He didn’t need to mention the specific niche, etc. He mentioned the exact reasons why he was only selling to a limited amount of people… the main one being that it protects the integrity of the site to get links from… because if everyone knows about it, stupid idiots start spamming… and that’s reality.

Comment by Collin - Feed Flare
2008-03-29 18:51:49

I am a plumber and I always charge…..lol…..but everyone knows that before hand…..lol

(Comments wont nest below this level)
 
 
Comment by Collin LaHay
2008-03-29 12:19:41

Understandable. I will try and work on getting more details out in the original post next time, and hopefully you can work on not jumping the gun on conclusions that aren’t true.

Blogging is a learning experience, so thank you for the post inspiration. :P

More (FREE) link building posts are coming this week. Stay tuned!

Comment by Collin - Feed Flare
2008-03-29 18:50:55

Good point, I guess after almost a year of blogging you tend to see all most everything and get taken by a lot of people if you don’t know what to look for.

So when you see something on a blog you regularly read that does not fit into what you normally see you tend to jump the gun.Sorry and that is again why I never said or listed who I was talking about in the video in the first place.I do have some honor,

but for the guy who called me a bozzo…….easy bro……that could easily be a two way street.

(Comments wont nest below this level)
 
 
 
Comment by Link Building Bible
2008-03-29 09:23:30

BTW, the video is no longer available.

Comment by Collin LaHay
2008-03-29 12:20:32

It still works for me…

Youtube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZI8Uxgx-1c

 
 
Comment by Romano
2008-03-29 13:30:44

Collin LaHay,
You got it exactly right by doing what you did, don’t listen to this bozo. His entire video is based off of assumptions.

Comment by Collin LaHay
2008-03-29 13:37:56

I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a bozo. He is a nice guy and is entitled to his opinion, of which I am allowed to disagree with. He has a few valid points, but on the other side, jumps to a lot of wrongful conclusions. The opinion is up to the reader to decide.

 
 
Comment by paulette
2008-03-29 23:34:45

We are all free to say our opinions. Although all of us have differences.

 
Comment by luz
2008-03-29 23:39:13

All we have to do is respect others on what they believe they are.

 
2008-03-31 00:08:40

This caught my eye:

gain our trust then hit us up for money

At what point should a user of valuable content expect to subsidize that content?

 
Comment by Bill
2008-04-03 13:38:02

If it’s a quality link, simply posting it would make it useless. It’s better to release links in such a way that it does not sends gobs of people flocking to post a link.

Selling the location of a link is not anything related to scamming. That’s a harsh analysis of it. If Collin does not agree with selling link locations, that fine. Just draw the line and lose the word scam. After all, the people that pay $25 get the link location. Hardly something remotely close to a scam.

 
Name (required)
E-mail (required - never shown publicly)
URI
Subscribe to comments via email
Your Comment (smaller size | larger size)
You may use <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong> in your comment.



Recent Posts

Recent Viewers

Tag Cloud


  Website Marketing Strategies by Collin LaHay © 2008, Mixed Market Arts