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

          

This post is doing the rounds and I have to say, it’s a good idea to spread some link juice as well as to let other bloggers know a bit more about you.

My only problem with posts like this is they’re all similar if not exact copies of the original and as this is a long post, I’m a bit short of time to be tweaking it so the duplicate content alarm bells don’t start screaming over at Google.

So I’m going to cut it right down to size and give you the bare bones – I’m sure you’ll find more padded out info in a lot of other blogs! Ok, here goes:

What is a meme and how can one of these help you and other bloggers?

A memes in blogging terms (as that’s what we’re really concerned with here) is simply a list of questions that you answer and post in your blog. Someone else then sees it and does the same… and so on and so forth. Memes are viral in nature and are meant to propagate around the blogpshphere.

I was recently invited by Trent Brownrigg from Free Home Business Tips to join a new meme.

It was started only recently but has already spread to many blogs. Its starting to pick up with the snowball effect and has the potential to go absolutely hyper-viral by being posted on literally thousands of blogs - as long as the people who are mentioned in each blogger’s version of the meme keep it going by posting their own.

Here are the details of this particular meme…

First, you answer these five questions about the ONLINE version of YOU…

1. How long have you been blogging?
2. What inspired you to start a blog and who are your mentors?
3. Are you trying to make money online, or just doing it for fun?
4. Tell me 3 things you LOVE about being online.
5. Tell me 3 things you STRUGGLE with in the online world.

Then you “tag” several bloggers, including me. You then ask that they join in by spreading this meme on their own blogs.

When you’re done you just write a comment on this post with the link to your meme post so I can read your responses.

If everyone plays the game, this could easily end up all over the blogosphere. There is incentive to keep the meme going because we are all passing links to each other. We all win!

If you’re stuck on who to tag, just tag a blog that interests you or one you have learned from. This way you can get a link from that blog and also find out more about the owner.

If you want to join in and I didn’t tag you, just leave me a comment with your blog URL and I will add a tag to you as well.

Ok, here are my answers to the questions…

1. How long have you been blogging?

I started my first blog on the free Blogger system in December 2006. It was supposed to be about the live music scene here in southern Spain where I live and my own small part in things as the bass guitarist in the Mama Paula Blues Band. I was also teaching guitar at a local extra-curriculum music school and played acoustic guitar in a duo around some of the local bars.

2. What inspired you to start a blog and who are your mentors?

I wasn’t really inspired, it just seemed like a good idea at the time and I thought I could make some money out of it with adsense. Well, my inexperience in that department got me swiftly kicked out of adsense and cost me dearly in future revenue once I discovered how to do it properly!

If I had to choose one person as my mentor, that person is Steven Wagenheim.

He’s not well known as a blogger, but in my early days of floundering around the internet marketing scene he was a prolific contributor to (among others) the WhyDoWork forum, which was the first one of its kind I joined and which saved me from making a whole lot more mistakes! I already had my own niche website up and running when Steve asked me to review his Secret Articles. It totally changed the way I viewed internet marketing and cut a swathe through all the other rubbish that I’d been listening to from other so-called experts.

Steve was then and still is now the Real Deal – a totally honest guy and extremely knowledgeable marketer.

3. Are you trying to make money online, or just doing it for fun?

I learned long ago whilst training to become a hypnotherapist never to TRY to do anything. The word try actually implies failure, so I avoid the word whenever I can and only use it when I’m after a specific outcome.

So my answer is “I am making money online – and I intend to make more”. And that, dear reader is all part of the fun of blogging. It’s the anticipation and the uncertainty whether a particular technique or crackpot idea that I come up with will yield no money, some money or a truckload of money. I’m still waiting for the truck…

4. Tell me 3 things you LOVE about being online.

I love meeting people and socially networking

I love trying out my own ideas to see if they work – see the last answer!

I love writing in my blogs and checking the stats the next day and seeing the number of visitors ever increasing – which means people like my style of writing and I must be doing something right!

5. Tell me 3 things you STRUGGLE with in the online world.

I struggle to keep up with all the work I’ve made for myself by stretching myself rather too thinly over many websites, blogs and other projects. I have a chaotic mind that is permanently in create mode – which means I’m not happy unless I’m starting something new – which usually means I never get around to finishing anything!

I struggle with spammers – aside from all my blogs, I run a forum that gets these half-witted idiots signing up every hour of every day hoping that I might forget they tried to sign up yesterday from the same IP address and let their latest attempt slip through the very tight net. Not a chance!

I struggle with time, my greatest friend and greatest enemy. Because of a chaotic mind, my work schedule is haphazard and I often fly off from what I’m doing on crazy tangents, which cost me more time than I can often afford.

But I wouldn’t change it for the world.

People who like to organise their working day with software organisers, time management systems and suchlike are welcome to them. If it works for them, that’s great.

They absolutely do not work for me. They stifle my creativity by sectioning my work load and forcing it into time slots. I can’t work under any kind of regime like that. *My freedom is paramount* and that means freedom to work at my own pace in my own way in my own time – even if to someone else I might appear to be wasting that precious commodity. To me not a second is wasted in the creative process and if an idea takes a week to fully manifest, then a week it gets!

That’s probably why I can’t work for anyone else. A boss expects to see results from his employees and doesn’t want to hear excuses. That’s probably why they love time management systems so much – they can track how their slaves… er, I mean workers use their time. Maybe it’s fine for some people. It’s just not for me.

Ok they’re my answers.

It was originally suggested to tag five bloggers, so now to tag the following people:

* Liudmila at her blog simply entitled: Diary. We met in MyBlogLog and have kept in touch with each other’s blogs for a while now. She writes very interesting and often thought provoking stuff in her blogs and I know her popularity will continue to grow.

* Thanate Tan at Anti Eating Dogs. He writes several fascinating blogs on varying subjects. We met in BlogCatalog through our love of dogs, so that particular blog of his gets a mention here.

* Nishante at vebguru.com. Nish is a great techie and writes an informative blog about software, tips and tricks and all things computer related!

* EJ Cooksey at Make Money Online with EJ Cooksey. She’s a work at home mum who is always busy visiting lots of bloggers and writes a great blog on the task of making money - something close to my own heart!

* YC at Internet Marketing Mind. He also writes a great blog based on the making money side of things and has a lot of very valid points to make about a whole range of subjects withing this niche.

Well, that’s my meme.

To all who were tagged… Let me know when you have completed your post so I can read your answers.

Terry Didcott
The Honest Way