DISQUS

I assumed it was meant to be Stayin' Alive, "stay and alive" doesn't make sense does it...?

Just being pedantic sorry. On the subject of your post, very interesting reading that's going to have quite an impact on users of some of the tools you mention. They don't come cheap either. I think that used with care, things like Hummingbird can be very beneficial, but too many people want "a gazillion followers right now" so they can bombard them with futile sales messages and they just end up upsetting the apple cart.

It's not much due to a lot of medical bills lately :-) but I hope it demonstrates my support in some small measure. I'll get around to blogging about it too as soon as I can. Good luck with your fight Vlad - I can't imagine how stressful it is for you and yours but admire your determination to stand up for yourself and bloggers in general.

Mo

This is good advice but there is another alternative that I have used successfully for some time and cloaks links very securely. Cloaker Buzz software is free and I have posted about it on my blog in the past. It enables secure cloaking and will even allow you to set cookies. It also prevents viewing of the page source code.

The one thing you can't get around with Clickbank is the payment page which will always show your affiliate ID of course. Those who already have a CB account may still then decide to buy through their own link.

If any readers are interested in the software you can get it from the following page on my site
http://www.thecaymanhost.com/cloakerbuzz/

It does sound like a pretty good idea and I went over to have a look and signed up. Although you can add multiple blogs, it seems that only Wordpress sites can be included at present.

For the vast majority of bloggers that's not a problem, but I'm hoping that it will be extended to serve other platforms at some point in the future so that I can use it for this non WP blog as well as my WP sites.

But you do have the power of celebrity Andy ;-) and I'm glad to hear they took enough notice to contact you.

I think the DoFollow folks are pretty wise to this kind of thing but highlighting them does a world of good.

I encountered these very poor quality, badly spelled comments cropping up on my blog and posted about it back on April 7 - it was only a short post but it seemed to do the trick and the commenting stopped

I suppose ultimately that all these people will achieve is the celebrity of membership to the likes of the Akismet and Spam Karma filters. Let's hope so because they may not get away with it on blogs with good moderation but there are probably plenty that get through on non marketing/seo/tech blogs.

Glad you mentioned them anyway. the more bad publicity the better.

A timely reminder/education for many WP bloggers and those on other platforms - there are many things you can do to make things more secure including protecting your admin areas through IP restrictions and password protection of admin directories.

Much of what I have learned about this was through other blogs and forums dealing with PHP security - the backup advice is still one of the most important though - being lazy can be very costly.

Hey Vlad,

Interesting. I guess like many marketers that means I have fallen foul of the TOS myself - but they do have a "marketing" category which is where most of my stumbles end up. If a user Stumbles something to promote a third party website that is commercial in nature but in which they have no financial I don't see the logic of labeling them as an "abuser" of the system.

I know self promotion is frowned upon but I've stumbled several of my own blog posts in the past if I think they are deserving of the exposure. I don't do it to excess. The thing is, where do you draw the line? The Internet is commercial in nature, so by the anti commercial/marketing crowd's standards, any website or blog carrying even one advertisement should be banned from places like SU along with any person who thumbs that site up? Ok I'm exaggerating, but we're discussing illogical reasoning and that is a logical opposing argument.

There are too many haters on SU nowadays and too many people who seem to feel that nobody is interested in any kind of commercial or money making online ventures just because it offends their own strange sensibilities. It's a shame, but it's going the way of Digg and after seeing one particular attack on a female internet marketer involving truly unpleasant verbal abuse it made me wonder just what kind of people would want to play in that environment. After all, if you're not interested in a site it takes a fraction of a second to pass on to the next.

I don't think if I ended up with a ban that I'd lose too much sleep over it. Most SU users spend less than 30 seconds on my site so I can only conclude that my content is not what most SU users are looking for.

Ah, those were the days eh Bill? Ever the politician....a time...or was it two? Monica didn't inhale either apparently :0)

Hi Vlad

Well, I got to this a bit late but I'll stick around my friend :-) Affiliate marketing and making money gets a bit wearing sometimes so reading about your new direction and passion will make for a refreshing change.

Good luck and keep on writing - I'll keep on reading what you have to say :-)

Mo

Hi Vlad,

I echo the sentiments on your bold decision. I'm sure your existing readers will continue to read and promote your blog via all available means - I will certainly continue to do so FWIW :-)

We do all rely a little too much on the bloated beast that is Google, and the argument that they are "just a search engine" no longer holds any water. There are few bloggers prepared to consider alternatives to so many of their services, and thus they grow and continue to stifle many rival providers.

I shall watch your experiment with keen interest and wish you continuing success. Your page rank slap was an injustice, and I think everyone but Google would agree with that.

Looking forward to seeing how you get on with Yahoo, MSN Live et al.

Hi Vlad,

I echo the sentiments on your bold decision. I'm sure your existing readers will continue to read and promote your blog via all available means - I will certainly continue to do so FWIW :-)

We do all rely a little too much on the bloated beast that is Google, and the argument that they are "just a search engine" no longer holds any water. There are few bloggers prepared to consider alternatives to so many of their services, and thus they grow and continue to stifle many rival providers.

I shall watch your experiment with keen interest and wish you continuing success. Your page rank slap was an injustice, and I think everyone but Google would agree with that.

Looking forward to seeing how you get on with Yahoo, MSN Live et al.

A more insidious piece of spyware would be harder to find ;-)

It always struck me as odd that hundreds of thousands of internet users with anti spyware and anti adware applications running on their computers, happily installed it in the first place. Then again, if it says Google, it can't possibly be evil - silly me!

Good decision Mr Beard :-)

Sick or not, I've always wondered why so many internet users were happy to download such a rotten piece of spyware.

It says Google on it, it must be trustworthy? Removing it is the wisest move you could make IMO.

Hi Vlad,

Glad to hear you enjoyed your trip to the South :-)

I must admit I'll follow this with interest. I don't want to cut myself out of the Google SERPS, but, I have made my choices regarding a move away from most of their services, and so far without too much pain ;-)

There ARE some good services available that they haven't yet bought!

Hi Vlad,

Glad to hear you enjoyed your trip to the South :-)

I must admit I'll follow this with interest. I don't want to cut myself out of the Google SERPS, but, I have made my choices regarding a move away from most of their services, and so far without too much pain ;-)

There ARE some good services available that they haven't yet bought!

I've been using WB for a short while and although I read Andy Beard's post about the hidden link I didn't see how it would be harming me - as Jim says, surely it's more likely to hurt them in the SERPS than anything else if they upset the great God Google. This is likely as they are in direct competition for Adsense dollars ;-)

I'm happy enough with the way the widget looks and performs so far and have some signups too. I can't see what's so suspect in some people's eyes, although I respect anyone's decision to participate in any program, PPC or otherwise. I don't understand the reasoning behind the T.O.S. either, but why does that make the program unethical?

Like Jim I'm curious to know if I'm missing something that could be important. T.O.S. is odd, but hey, Adsense contains some real gems too :-)

I've been using WB for a short while and although I read Andy Beard's post about the hidden link I didn't see how it would be harming me - as Jim says, surely it's more likely to hurt them in the SERPS than anything else if they upset the great God Google. This is likely as they are in direct competition for Adsense dollars ;-)

I'm happy enough with the way the widget looks and performs so far and have some signups too. I can't see what's so suspect in some people's eyes, although I respect anyone's decision to participate in any program, PPC or otherwise. I don't understand the reasoning behind the T.O.S. either, but why does that make the program unethical?

Like Jim I'm curious to know if I'm missing something that could be important. T.O.S. is odd, but hey, Adsense contains some real gems too :-)

I've tried all the programs you mention, but eventually settled on Post2Blog which I prefer over all the others.

Sometimes these editors can be very fussy with lesser known platforms like NucleusCMS but it's very simple to set them up with the major players.

I first started using Post2Blog as it made adding tags to my Wordpress blogs so simple. With the advent of WP2.3 that's maybe not such an issue anymore and although there are plugins for tagging, it was still simpler to use the Post2Blog editor.

@Josh I've no doubt of the veracity of your predictions Josh :-) Someone made me laugh on a post somewhere saying that the name BlogRush somehow translated in her mind to "BogBrush" (tr. toilet brush) and it remains to be seen if it (BR) will ever be as effective at doing what it was designed to do as that little implement!

Your comments about marketers are spot on, successful at what they do for sure, but somehow trying to emulate some of what they do makes you feel a little 'unclean' for want of a better word.

@Vlad Wow, I was beating your stats by four at the last count :-)~ aren't we the dogs!!

@Josh I've no doubt of the veracity of your predictions Josh :-) Someone made me laugh on a post somewhere saying that the name BlogRush somehow translated in her mind to "BogBrush" (tr. toilet brush) and it remains to be seen if it (BR) will ever be as effective at doing what it was designed to do as that little implement!

Your comments about marketers are spot on, successful at what they do for sure, but somehow trying to emulate some of what they do makes you feel a little 'unclean' for want of a better word.

@Vlad Wow, I was beating your stats by four at the last count :-)~ aren't we the dogs!!

I think it's encouraging that they have responded to the criticism levelled at the idea. I still don't believe BlogRush will send me a "massive wave of laser targeted traffic........" blah blah.

However, on face value, it's going to stay in my sidebar even though traffic through the widget has been slow, it has sent some visitors and if it keeps doing that, I'll give it a fair chance at proving its worth.

I'm with you on the hypey (is that a word?) language, it's not needed, but it's a marketing sickness we'll never cure! I think the green widget looks good where you've placed it btw.

I think it's encouraging that they have responded to the criticism levelled at the idea. I still don't believe BlogRush will send me a "massive wave of laser targeted traffic........" blah blah.

However, on face value, it's going to stay in my sidebar even though traffic through the widget has been slow, it has sent some visitors and if it keeps doing that, I'll give it a fair chance at proving its worth.

I'm with you on the hypey (is that a word?) language, it's not needed, but it's a marketing sickness we'll never cure! I think the green widget looks good where you've placed it btw.

OK Vlad, I'm all done and thanks for the tag :-) For what it's worth I think your blog is very well written and always keeps me coming back, and I love the design too, so I usually pop out of bloglines to read your posts!

OK Vlad, I'm all done and thanks for the tag :-) For what it's worth I think your blog is very well written and always keeps me coming back, and I love the design too, so I usually pop out of bloglines to read your posts!