Web Marketing Strategy Update

I came across Blog Submitter Pro 7.0 through an emailed affiliate recommendation. The site headline reads:

“New Blog Submission Software Takes TOTAL DOMINATION To A Whole New Level, And Allows Complete Control Over Any Market and Any Product You Sell. — Renders All Other Marketing Methods Totally Useless by Comparison”

Quite a claim, eh? Totally ridiculous hype of course. But that seems to be the norm these days. My issue is with the software itself.

I might wear a grey hat sometimes, and Google may think I’m a bit thin in places, but even to me it’s clear that this new, “killer marketing app” crosses the line.

The goal is innocuous enough: make comments on blog posts related to the topic (or in this case, simply keywords) that your site covers. In doing so increase the value of your site in the eyes of Google (and other search engines).

The method of attaining it is the problem.

Let me ask you a question. What is the Comments function on a blog for?

For commenting on the post, right? To build on it. Add opinions. Ask questions. Perhaps create discussion.

It’s not a name card or billboard service for people to come along and say (according to the creator this is what he himself sets the software to post):

- – - – - – - – - -
“Hey, you have a great blog here! I’m definitely going to bookmark you!

I have a <.a href="http://www.my-domain.com/my-page.htm">##KEYWORD##<./a.> site/blog. It pretty much covers ##KEYWORD## related stuff.

Come and check it out if you get time ”
- – - – - – - – - -

I must have missed the bit that said the software automatically created bookmarks for you too! But lying that aside, can you imagine what it would be like if everyone made comments consisting of nothing more than this kind of self promotional junk?

Picture an automated process designed to post this stuff on random blogs, wherever the software finds any of the keywords in its user defined list, and you have the general idea of what this wonderful new marketing tool does.

I know some “big name” marketers are promoting this thing, but I like to call a spade a spade.

THIS IS A SPAM TOOL

In case you can’t see it, let me explain why.

First of all, the blog is the property of the blog owner. Just like their email inbox. Just like their physical mail box. It’s their territory and they make the rules of entry.

Blog owners give permission for people to post comments in order to add value to the site content for other visitors, or enable interaction, etc.

That’s the rule.

It might be unwritten. But it’s as plain and well understood as the rule that you don’t vandalise another persons property.

Blog owners solicit comments that add value to the blog and visitor experience. And as an added bonus, they offer a link back to the site of the comment author (for which the ultimate reason is again the idea of adding to user experience).

They don’t solicit self promotional ads that have no intrinsic value to the blog and exist solely for the purpose of obtaining a targeted link.

And as the web site selling this software makes perfectly clear, they are indeed nothing but blatant ads:

“When you post your ads on all of these blogs …”

So, putting it another way:

The comments this software sends out are Unsolicited Ads. In bulk. For commercial gain.

Sound familiar?

That’s because it’s SPAM.

I don’t object to you commenting on a post to get a targeted link, as long as you provide value in return.

“You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” is the way it works. Just like the republication of articles, only a lot less work for the person getting the link. But if you aren’t willing to play fair, you’re not welcome on my blog!

But apparently (based on extensive research, no doubt), I’m in a minority here: most blog owners are happy to be spammed. In fact, they are GLAD!

From the sales page:
“Believe it or not, the people who run the vast majority of blogs that you post on will actually very much welcome your post.”

Wow! Really?

And there’s even an email excerpt to prove it:
“I have about 20 blogs and have never received a single comment. I followed the link out of curiosity – Even though I knew it was a marketer just wanting a link back to their site – I just half smiled and thought ‘cool!’ It doesn’t really bother me in the slightest. I’m sure that Mr. Dad & Mrs. Mum would feel maybe a little bit important that someone actually ‘bothered’ to come to their website and say -’Hey, great website, keep it up -check out my site when you are free.”

Oh yes puulease Mr. Marketer! Come and post your spam comment on my site. I was feeling SO unappreciated and insecure. I feel MUCH better now I’ve been noticed by your automated software!

There’s actually a page on comment spamming on the site, which begins:
“This term, although a fiction, is a well known and widely accepted concept among the internet community.”

A fiction? A false belief that’s held to be true because it’s expedient to do so? Of course it is! Silly me. (See [comment spam->http://www.answers.com/comment%20spam] for more on this “fiction”)

It continues:
“I built this software to post exclusively to blogger.com blogs so that no one can ever legitimately accuse any Blog Submitter Pro user of ‘comment spamming’ their blog.”

Key here is the twisted definition of “legitimately.” You’ll see how in a minute, but suffice to say the implied meaning is analogous to not being able to legitimately accuse someone of sending spam email, if you haven’t switched on the spam filter provided by your ISP.

“Blogger.com is very well aware of Blog Submitter Pro! They know exactly who we are, exactly what we do, and exactly why we do it…. And They Do Not Mind One Little Bit!!!!”

That’s a bold claim. How do they know that? Did Blogger write and say so?

The fact that visible action has not (yet) been initiated does not mean Blogger think it’s fine. They could well be considering what steps to take in relation to the scale of the problem, and assessing whether the problem can be controlled without direct intervention, which would be the least favourable option to Google (owners of Blogger.com). And this of course doesn’t take into account the other side of the coin, which is of much more concern to Google — the effect on SERPS.

I guess that means Blogger also don’t mind users setting up lot’s of bogus accounts in order to trick its parent company, as suggested on another page:
“And if you don’t want google to realize that some specific user/pass combo has been posting non-stop 24 hours per day for the last “X” days, it’s a good idea to setup a few blogger accounts and let the program ramdomly select a user/pass combo to post with.”

Back on the comment spam page:
“Instead of making themselves out to be yet another internet cop, they (blogger) opted to leave the blog owner with the option of whether or not they would welcome and or accept posts to their blog from automated software.”

They have done no such thing. They have given blog owners the option of using a [CAPTCHA->http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha] to block posts from automated software.

As Blogger says about using the CAPTCHA option:
“What this does is to prevent automated systems from adding comments to your blog …”

That is not at all the same as welcoming automated spam posts. Not preventing something does not mean I welcome or want to accept it. By this logic, not locking my car means that I want it to be stolen.

“This means that every single blog that our software posts to, has by default, been given permission from the individual blog owner to do so.”

Again, that’s totally untrue.

At the risk of repeating myself, not actively preventing something does not mean I am granting permission to do it. If I leave a cash box open on my desk when I leave the room, I am not granting co-workers permission to pocket the money, even though I have not prevented them from doing so.

The truth is there are many reasons for not using a CAPTCHA. People don’t like filling them in. Some blog owners are concerned using them will reduce comments. They can slow down page load on a slow site and lengthen the comment process. The blog owner may not realise the significance or need. None of these reasons mean, “Yes, I want automated software to post spam comments on my blog.”

Here’s another gem from the software site:
“Known Annoyances::: 1. Low life’s
There are still low life’s on the internet who try to jam popups down your throat, and they hit you with ‘alert hell’ … (upsetting the software)”

So apparently I’m a low-life for having pop-ups on MY site, that belongs to ME and which no one is forced to visit, but people trying to spam MY site with useless comments to gain some benefit for THEM at my expense are ok? Yeah, right on!

Thankfully though, for the moment at least the software only targets Blogger.com blogs. Which is good in a way ‘cos that means it’s going to doubly annoy Google. And footprint or no footprint, when Google sees artificially skewed SERPS all over the place they will do something. As will Yahoo and MSN. Because it’s their bread and butter. And they have masses of data to spot and compare anomalies with.

Another positive aspect is that people will go at this like crazy, creating hundreds of links in a short space of time, oblivious to the alarm bells they are setting off that will most likely leave their sites ranking nowhere after a fleeting spell of glory.

There is also the “no follow” tag, although interestingly, regarding it the product creator claims that, “in having a large number of backlinks, not only is it no longer crucial, it truly borders on insignificants [sic].”

However, [Google say->http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html], “when Google sees the attribute (rel=”nofollow”) on hyperlinks, those links won’t get any credit when we rank websites in our search results. This isn’t a negative vote for the site where the comment was posted; it’s just a way to make sure that spammers get no benefit from abusing public areas like blog comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists.”

Whilst [Yahoo's take->http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000069.html] is, “By adding a rel=”nofollow” attribute to hyperlinks, webmasters and weblog owners can tell search engines that the links are effectively untrusted.”

And [MSN say->http://blogs.msdn.com/msnsearch/archive/2005/01/18/nofollow_tags.aspx], “Any link with this tag will indicate to a crawler it is not necessarily approved by this page and shouldn’t be followed nor contribute weight for ranking.”

But even IF the product creator’s claims are true, it simply means there will be a move to a higher level of protection in future, with links automatically routed through blind redirects or something, or perhaps the ability to add links or comments removed entirely. The incentive to spam will have gone, but it will be at the expense of genuine users.

Someone who spends time and energy to post valuable content on my site deserves a little something back, and this inter-linking is the core of the whole community aspect of blogs. Another case of a selfish few spoiling a good thing for everyone else in the interest of their short-term gain, just like email.

Don’t be taken in by the spiel. Blog Submitter Pro is a spam tool. And if you use it, I’m sorry but that makes you a spammer.

There are a lot of emails going around at the moment promoting a new service for product sellers and affiliates called PayDotCom. Here’s a taste of the marketing blurb:

I am sure you have heard of ClickBank (R)

They are a great marketplace but limited to many restrictions to sell products or earn affiliate commission…

Well, there is a new FREE marketplace to sell any product you want. Yours or become an affiliate for any item in the marketplace.

This site is going to KILL all other marketplaces and I bet in the next 3 months EVERY SINGLE online marketer will have an account…

I must confess PayDotCom is interesting concept, and fills a gap in the market. But whether it will “KILL” other marketplaces remains to be seen.

Personally, I doubt it.

I actually set about writing a piece to explain the key differences in PayDotCom and ClickBank, but whilst going over the site for more details I came across the table below and decided it would be far easier just to post it so you can see the bulk of the information at a glance:

*There is no set-up fee to open basic PayDotCom Vendor or Affiliate Account. You are only allowed one free Vendor Account to sell products. To sell multiple products you must pay a onetime $29 lifetime activation fee. ** If there is no affiliate, then the Vendor pays the fee in full.

PayDotCom charges the following processing fees per sale:

As indicated above, the PayDotCom’s fee is split between the vendor and affiliate responsible for the sale (if no affiliate, the full fee is charged to the vendor) and automatically deducted from affiliate commissions.

PayDotCom’s fee to the Affiliate is $0.50 to $1.50 for each transaction (Based on the sale price of the product/service sold.) The Vendor’s account will automatically deduct this amount from your commissions each month.

If you’re an affiliate you probably don’t like the sound of that. But the problem for PayDotCom is trying to make the cost of what is basically an “add-on” service attractive to vendors in comparison with ClickBank.

PayDotCom wants to position itself as a better option than ClickBank by claiming it offers more features and is cheaper.

From the site:
Other companies charge $1 plus to 7.5% of the sale price. All you pay is our fee plus the cost of your PayPal or StormPay fees.

So how does the service actually stack up in terms of cost?

At first glance it seems very attractive, as can be seen from this table on the site:

But let’s take a look at what you will be paying in total once your PayPal (2.9% + $0.30) or StormPay (6.9% + $0.69) fees are included.

Using PayPal:

Using StormPay:

When using PayDotCom with PayPal, the fee on the sale of a $50 product is $4.75. The fee on a $50 product sale through ClickBank is also $4.75.

PayDotCom is only cheaper for products priced over $50.

Note: These examples are for US users only. For non-US accounts, PayPal rates are 3.4% + $0.30:

(In addition, PayPal also charges non-US users a small fee to withdraw funds. Varies with currency exchange rates but in the region of $0.50-0.60)

However, the examples above don’t take into account the situation where the fee is split with an affiliate.

When there is a referring affiliate, fees for vendors using PayPal would be as follows (I’m not going including figures for StormPay, since we have already seen that if coupled with PayDotCom it’s far more expensive than using ClickBank):

But what about the referring affiliate?

The table below shows how the affiliate’s commission is effectively reduced:

What we can see from all this is that a vendor who’s sales are mainly driven by affiliates (and this after all is PayDotCom’s target market) will find PayDotCom slightly cheaper than ClickBank. They can save on per sale costs whilst (on the surface at least) still offering the same commission as at ClickBank.

Kinda like having your cake and eating it.

If you make most of your sales yourself (i.e. not through affiliates), then PayDotCom will cost you more than ClickBank for all products under $50. However, if you are not intent on building a large number of affiliates to make your sales you’ve no need to use PayDotCom at all, and can simply use PayPal alone.

Of course, there’s no set-up cost with PayDotCom. But that is only as long as you are selling a single product, so it is unlikely to apply to most sellers for very long. If you want to sell more than one product, the set-up fee is $29. Still substantially cheaper than the $49.95 ClickBank charge for a single product account, although it’s also worth mentioning that there are several scripts available that enable the sale of multiple products through a single ClickBank account.

Another plus for ClickBank users is that affiliate payments are taken care of by ClickBank, completely hands off. Whilst PayDotCom does provide sellers with PayPal Mass Pay files to pay affiliate commissions, the vendor still has to log in to their PayPal account, upload the file and go through the Mass Pay process. It doesn’t take long, but it’s still an additional task.

Nevertheless, vendors using affiliate marketing may find PayDotCom’s extra features, plus the lower overall cost per sale and cheaper setup more attractive than ClickBank. Let’s face it, there’s currently no other service at this price point that enables you to do recurring billing or sell physical goods with a 2 tier affiliate program.

It’s a different story for affiliates though.

The generally negligible benefit of 2nd tier commission potential aside, affiliates are better off with ClickBank. At ClickBank a 50% commission means half the sale price goes into your pocket, not half the sale price less $1.50 (incorrect, see comments below). I’m afraid the idea of charging affiliates for the pleasure of using a service catering for the vendors they make money for sticks in the throat somewhat.

Look at it how you want, but basically, the vendor pays PayDotCom a commission on every sale, and the PayDotCom system legitimizes the affiliate commission advertised not being the true commission paid to the affiliate.

But then the PayDotCom site makes the position pretty clear:

Vendor Does Not Pay Affiliate The Full Commission Earned.
Vendor charges to fee to the affiliate (automatically calculated) and pays it on the affiliates behalf to PayDotCom.com at no additional cost to the Vendor.

The Vendors Net Profit Stays The Same.

This is done this way because PayDotCom has a better relationship with Vendors then we may have with come and go affiliates that do not have products with us. This simplifies billing for all parties involved.

The Vendor is responsible for the full fee but the Vendor gets to split the fee with the affiliate by withholding it from their commission. This is all automatically calculated by PayDotCom for all parties involved.

Nevertheless, assuming it proves to be well run and reliable (still some website “issues” evident when I was last there), PayDotCom is likely to become popular over time. It’s a vendor driven site being heavily promoted, and inevitably the mass of affiliates will follow the products they want to promote, even if they are losing out in the process. I may even end up trying it myself if that happens and see if the pain is worth the gain. Although then again, a service that disparagingly calls one of the parties it depends on for its existance “come and go affiliates” gives me the urge to suggest affiliates simply, “go”…

Of course, if PayDotCom does start to take a significant slice of business away from ClickBank, it could well lead to the long overdue upgrading of the ClickBank offering so that it provides the services users have been requesting for years, and possibly with a revised rate structure. There’s nothing like a bit of competition to stimulate a company into listening to it’s customers and providing more benefits to the end-user.