The Honest Way

The debate is still being hotly disputed amongst bloggers from all directions, flavours and niches. Do you carry on writing reviews in your blog and risk losing your page rank, or do you stop and find some other way to monetize your blog?

I was commenting in Liudmila’s Diary about this earlier today after reading her post about the ethics of writing reviews about online casinos. Should a blogger who initially stated that he’d never write a review about them turn tail and then take the money instead. Would that action devalue his blog and his reputation?

Was that post aimed at me?

Maybe. I do remember writing that while I’m happy to write reviews in this blog, I wouldn’t go off topic (which is broadly internet marketing based) and write about anything not in some way related to my niche. That would include the topics of online casinos and gambling, which I have to say carry a fair few paid reviews.

But I also stated that I wouldn’t write them in THIS blog.

I have other blogs.

Two of them were created specifically with a view to making money. They are even called Make Money and Make Money Blog respectively and their niche is purely how to make money online. Their reason for existing was for me to promote them until they reached maturity (three months is the standard acceptance period for paid review sites) and hopefully attracted some page rank in that time to make them eligible to carry higher paid reviews.

Well, they achieved exactly that in the time I set out for them and now I am doing exactly what I planned to do with them, and that is to write paid reviews to make money for me.

Sort of payback for all the hard work I’ve put into all of my blogs, websites and lenses and all the free information I’ve divulged since I got all this going nearly a year ago.

So I don’t feel guilty for reviewing online casinos on those two - it’s what they were created for. I’ll review anything that pays well on those two and thank the review sites that have approved them for their business.

Here, I’ll keep things to Internet Marketing, finance and online business related reviews and over time write fewer reviews and more informative and I like to think interesting normal posts.

So I haven’t sold this blog out - that’s for the ones which it was meant for.

Terry Didcott
The Honest Way

          

It never ceases to amaze me that there are bloggers out there who still, despite my earlier exposee on this subject, come to this blog and copy my articles and then publish them on their own blogs. Some are nice enough to credit me with writing the article and link back to me, which I don’t mind.

Others annoy the hell out of me by simply stealing my article and posting it as one of their own.

Well, on the one hand, using my stuff and linking back to me is ok as I benefit from the additional exposure. But to blatantly steal someone else’s work an be so ignorant as to try to palm it of as their own simply beggars belief!

Do they think this will help their blog and get them lots of traffic?

Think again.

By using someone else’s work, you are not only publishing duplicate content on your site but many blog readers read many different blogs and there’s a very good possibility that they’ll come across the same article in more than one blog. Then they’ll start wondering who published it first.

Well, some people get curious enough to go consult Copyscape or even one of the search engines to see which blog posted the article first - thereby discovering the true owner of the article. Guess what they’ll think of the blog owner(s) who have that article on their front page with their name on it?

Yep. They will at the very least never go back to the blog of a content thief. At the very worst, they may well report that blog to the owner of the original article or to Copyscape who can escalate things - if the blogger is using a free blog service, they can have their blog deleted. If they are self hosted, for one they should be professional enough to know better and two their host can be contacted with the details and they could find themself being blacklisted.

Not only that, the search engines, Google in particular absolutely loathe duplicate content - and when (not if) they find duplicate content on your site, they’ll slap you down so fast you won’t know what hit you.

Maybe you’re sitting there with a free blog and no page rank and you think, “Who cares? Ive got no page rank to take away in the first place so I’ll just keep on doing it.”

That doesn’t do you any good either, as it just means that if you are indexed, you’ll be de-indexed and if you’re not already indexed you’ll be sand-boxed for a very long time - until you remove the duplicate content!

So to sum up - Don’t Do It!

Terry Didcott
The Honest Way

          

When I was at school there were certain teachers that would punish a whole class because one boy broke the rules.

To my mind those teachers were ignorant.

They were ignorant because there is no fairness or justice in punishing a whole classroom full of innocent kids because one boy broke the rules. I personally grew up with a very strong sense of justice and fairness and I positively boil when I see injustice being done by anyone in a position of power. Especially when that person has a choice. The choice to be fair or to be ignorant.

Google in their position of immense power are not being fair in their slapping down of small blogs that write paid reviews to make a few dollars. Maybe they don’t care, after all, they make billions of dollars so why should they care that one blogger who, for whatever reason might rely solely on those few dollars they make with their blog.

What if that blogger is disabled and can’t make any money by working at a normal job?

Do they even stop to think about that?

So they have put their foot down and by doing so will punish everybody because a few people break their rules. Take no prisoners, right?
Is it so bad that small bloggers write reviews that include a little link juice (and I mean little - I’m not talking about high PR blogs here) to the sponsors who want to pay for them?

It’s not like they’re simply putting up a link and getting a regular monthly payment for it. Reviews are one-off and the link gets buried in the blogs archive. Reviews take some time and thought to write and provide relevant information about the product or service they’re reviewing. If the blogger gets paid for writing a quality review isn’t that fair? If that review contains a bit of link juice as a part of its reason for being isn’t that also fair? To write a review about a product that you think is really useful and then link to the owner of that product and NOT get paid for it - is that wrong too?

Or is it the getting paid part of it that is perceived as wrong?

In all fairness, the ones to punish should be the ones buying their way to the top!

There will always be a system of supply and demand and as long as there is the demand for link juice, there will be people who will want to make a few bucks for supplying this. It works in any industry. People like to drink a certain brand of fizzy drink, so companies produce it. They don’t get penalized because those drinks rot people’s teeth and their insides and make them obese and curtail their life expectancy. Ok, I’m getting a little off track, but you see the comparison?

Google have a very sophisticated system that knows about pretty much every published site on the world wide web. They know who is buying links to get to the top.

Well hammer those guys! They are the problem because they are the ones trying to game the system by getting high placement in the search index, which is exactly what Google are trying, rightly to stamp out.

They are the sites that will make their owners a lot of money by artificially getting to the top of their niches. So hit them where it hurts - in the pocket!

The little guys writing reviews and including a link are not trying to game the system to boost their own placement in the SERPs because they are only low PR blogs to begin with. They shouldn’t be punished by taking away their small source of income directly because it is not fair!

And didn’t I mention I cannot bear unfairness.

I’m sure every disabled blogger who has been or is about to be slapped down because they make enough money to eat by writing some paid reviews will be happy that Google are stomping on them in order to get the bad guys.

If anyone thinks that the saying “Life is unfair” applies here, they need their head examining. Life is only unfair when someone who wields a lot of power makes it that way, when they don’t actually have to. Google don’t have to make life unfair. They have the power and the technology to make life very fair. I hope they see reason.

Terry Didcott
The Honest Way

          

Ok, I admit it, I’m getting a bit carried away with this writing paid reviews thing.

Why?

Well it makes money for me, for one thing. And considering the theme of this blog, that’s a very important one thing! The other reason is I suddenly find that I have access to a much better (for better read better paid) and larger selection of reviews to write. Obviously I can’t write them all in here, or this blog will end up looking like an advertiser’s retreat!

But I think it’s fair to take advantage of this spate of income generating writing gigs (which is what they are, after all) by using my own writing skills and the medium of this blog. To add some weight to the plus side of doing this is some of these reviews are actually of interest to other internet marketers. Who doesn’t buy domain names and wouldn’t be partial to a discount if they could get it? See what I mean?

I agree that some of these paid reviews can be taken with a pinch of salt by some readers and that’s fair enough. I wouldn’t write anything that I thought would really upset anyone. You won’t find me promoting online gambling, or any other unsavoury topic here in this blog.

I’m not saying I wouldn’t review any online source of making money in my other blogs that are primarily concerned with, ahem, making money! But The Honest Way will stay true to its main topic of being an internet marketing and online business seat of learning and information, so anything in that vein is, I believe fair game.

While I’m waiting for PPP to approve the first of my Make Money blogs which will take the heat off this one, I still have to make money by writing paid reviews while the opportunities present themselves to me, so there will be a few more to come over the next few days at least. Then things will calm down a little as the other blogs take over the main money making function and The Honest Way can concentrate more on information and general interest in the world of internet marketing, working from home and online business.

Here’s to all of your success!

Terry Didcott
The Honest Way