Don’t Spam Me Bro’!
Spam, everybody hates it…well, almost everybody. We all get spam in our emails. There is also web site spam which is a completely crap comment just to get a link. As a website owner with comments, you get people spamming your web site, forum, or blog. These people who spam your site don’t really consider themselves ‘spammers’ like in emails.It is spam non the less. They are trying to use the ‘newest shiny thing from an old thing’ of creating backlinks to get traffic. So they either do the comments themselves or pay someone on Fiverr to do it for them.
You can spam FaceBook, Twitter, LinkIn, and any other site. It will eventually cause these sites to change terms to combat the spam. It will make sites you love not so fun anymore. I am sure you have seen this yourself. A few bad apples ruining it for the rest of us.
If you have kept up with the changes Google is making with the new Panda update (well, not so new anymore) you would know this isn’t going to do anything for you. It will tick off many blog and web site owners though. WordPress has many plugins to deal with spam. They do a good job for the most part.
Are you familiar with the term, “Pouring sand down a rat whole”? It means you are doing something that won’t help you in the short run or the long run. The sad fact is that there are plenty of people ready, willing, and able to take your money for courses and ebooks on things that just don’t work. They are making a fortune too.
It would be comical if it wasn’t so sad. Google has seen what the Internet marketing industry has been doing. It has seen what their customers get when searching for different things. They didn’t want their entire first page full of ‘affiliate offers’ that provide no real value to anyone. There are way too many sites that are set up with the entire intent of ‘gaming’ the system.
Link rings, blogging networks, auto-blogging, PLR, and all the rest Google is out to eliminate. Google is like the Terminator and these things are on their hit list. If you go to the Warrior forum, you will see many product to do all of these things and people are still buying them.
There are all kinds of junk products for getting backlinks. Don’t get me wrong, backlinks are important to your web site ranking. A ton of junk backlinks will get your site blacklisted and not even show up on Google. Believe it or not, Google has actual REAL people who look at your sites and rate them. They actually read your articles and comments. If they deem it ‘bogus’ – you are toast.
I could never understand why people go for the short-cut. I guess it goes back to that laziness thing. It also goes to the ‘spend no money and make a million overnight’ myth that is so prominent on most products in the ‘make money at home’ niche.
If you are wanting to get good quality backlinks by commenting on sites or forums – you need to provide QUALITY! You want your site to rank higher in the search engines, you need to provide QUALITY information and articles. Something people are really wanting to know. People use search engines to find information – not another article that is the same as the previous 10 articles they read. They don’t want another ‘fake’ review of a product. They don’t want to go to a fake news site either.
Original, OWNED content is what it will take to be a success. PLR will not do anymore. You can spin articles until you are blue in the face and not get anywhere.
As I have mentioned in previous posts, copyrights and licenses are going to be your down fall if you don’t heed the law. I have purchased a few ebooks recently that were under a ‘personal use’ license. This means they couldn’t be sold. Worse yet, they had bonuses included the license specifically stating they couldn’t be given away as a bonus.
I have seen people who used images from Star Wars, Marylin Monroe, Calvin and Hobbs, Spiderman, Iron Man, and many others I know didn’t pay the thousands of dollars required to be able to LEGALLY use them.
So if you are backlink spamming, web site spamming, blog spamming, forum spamming, or just stealing images for your own purposes – it all is the same. You are doing no one any good, especially yourself. Unless you are a VERY skilled hacker and can remove the EXIF data from images, hide your IP address (yes, Virginia – you leave that behind in every spam comment), use shadow networks, and all the rest; you will get caught eventually.
There are many law enforcement agencies that actively hunt these things down.
Don’t believe me?
A little story for your entertainment. Back in 1995 (long, long time ago) it was a year after Yahoo! was founded. There were social sites for all kinds of things. They are not new. Anyway, just like today people put their stuff and information online for friends and relatives to interact with them.
My wife and I shared a computer; I worked days and she worked nights. In the time between we would share interesting things we found and it was fun.
I got a phone call. It was an agent with the DOD. He asked if I would be willing to meet with them at a McDonald’s near my house. They wanted to discuss my Internet activity. They implied it would be better to meet them than for them to get a warrant. So I agreed.
They were waiting for me and knew who I was when I walked in the door. It was man and a woman. They asked if they could speak with me about my Internet activity. They were from a military base 3 hours way from where I lived.
They had a large folder full of stuff on the table. We sat down and they and they began to question me.
They showed me a picture of a woman and asked if I knew her. I told them I didn’t. They asked if I was sure and I told them I was. They then asked my activities on the Internet 2 days ago. I told them I had no idea what I was doing 2 days ago. They then ran down EVERY site I had been to, including a site for anonymous surfing. It was a site I went to out of curiosity and a vaguely remembered going to it.
I told them we only had one computer and I was not sure what sites I went to or what ones my wife had been to. They instantly got on their cell phone (a very large bulky thing at the time) and asked if the ‘profile’ could fit a female. They then demanded to see my wife. I told them she was at work and and they had me call her on their cell phone. We made arrangements to meet with them at our home later.
To say the least we were scared! We had no idea what was going on and then the knock came at the door. It was them and they sat down and started questioning us and showed my wife the picture. She didn’t recognize her either. Then it hit me! That was the woman she thought I went to school with! You see, she had found her on a social site and asked me if I went to school with her. I didn’t as she was from a different school. That was it! A few seconds on a site was all it took to become a suspect!
We explained how she found her, I looked at the site, and didn’t know her. After some more questions for an hour, they were convinced we had nothing to do with “it”. The “it” was the same day we went to the site and I looked at the anonymous surfing site; the woman in the picture began getting threatening emails. Her husband is in the military. The military takes these things very seriously. They looked at every hit to the site and I fit the ‘profile’ they compiled for a suspect.
They thanked us for our help and warned us if they found we were not honest; our computer would be forensically studied and they would be able to find EVERYTHING we had ever had on it. Talking with the agent, I learned that they had ways to pull things off a hard drive you couldn’t believe. I told him it was a used hard drive I got from eBay. He said I could have a problem if it ever was forensically studied; whatever the previous owner had on it could be recovered. If it was illegal content – my butt was grass!
Now, that was 1995. Almost 20 years ago. Don’t you think they have better stuff now? Do you actually think you won’t be found? The other lesson I learned is you NEVER get a used hard drive! You NEVER get rid of your current hard drive either. If the person who bought your hard drive has the skills, they can access EVERYTHING that was on it – even if you formatted it first!
What could be worse than not only making no money, but being arrested or fined for spamming or using something you had no right to use? I know these things are rampant now. Do you want to be the one that is singled out?
Just sayin’.
