Due to certain advertisers having policies that ‘prefer’ that I do not disclose specific income from them, I will just generalize and say that I earned $503.27 US funds for the month ending April 30th, 2009.

This month marked the first time that advertisers approached me and asked to directly advertise on my site. I am taking that cash and investing it back into silver.

Speaking of silver, and precious metals in general, I am seeking a precious metals company to partner with. As of yet, I have not found one that will pay a small affiliate commission for sales I send their way. I thought that I had one a while back but they would not pay commissions on bullion sales, just on their commemorative coins and other trinkets.

So the opportunity exists to some one to hook me up with a reputable precious metals company that has a proven track record and allows the buyer the option to take personal possession of their precious metal purchases.

Email me at chiefape@gmail.com if you have a lead.

Technorati Tags: income, john chow, advertise, precious metals, silver bullion, silver, affiliate programs

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But if you are interested in learning how to transform your online presence from zilch to success then please watch. After that read the rest of this blog entry.

So now that you have been shown how easy it is to get all of your content and promotions automatically submitted to all of the social networking sites, social bookmarking sites, podcast sites and search engines, what is your next step?

I won’t throw this pitch at you again any time soon but will say that this is powerful stuff. Traffic Geyser will save you time, save you money, get you higher rankings, increased targeted traffic, increased sales, and increased profits. Guaranteed!

If you are still not convinced then click here and view the rest of Mike’s video series.

My Special Offer:

To anyone who becomes subscriber to Traffic Geyser, you will get 10 entries into The Mad Ape Silver Bullion Give Away Contest. All you have to do is email me at chiefape@gmail.com with proof of registration.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE – Register today and you can test drive the system for free (they will send you a detailed email explaining how to do this)

Technorati Tags: Free Silver, Mike Mike Koenigs, Traffic Geyser, Increased Leads, Free Traffic Geyser

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If you are new to Internet marketing, new to ClickBank’s affiliate program, or a small affiliate who makes a few dollars here and there…then you will see why you should dump the toxic waste program known as Clickbank.

Click here to visit a new site: TheClickBankMafia.com

In my entire life I have never seen a company use such sleazy tactics to claw back my income, only because of their Mafioso style policies. You have to be an Olympic Hurdler to get at your money. One can only imagine the amount of money they have stolen over the years.

I can’t remember when it started but I had read ‘Guru’ advice that ClickBank offered a great affiliate program for Internet Marketers. I was told that people who used their own site and/or Google Ads to peddle the products available on Clickbank could make good money.

Well off I went on this little adventure thinking I could make some great passive income with a few hours per week blogging and running Adword Campaigns.

It started slowly but I made a sale and received a $6.15 commission. A good start but on my ClickBank statement I saw status message called ‘THRESHOLD’ next to the commission saying that I had not reached my payout threshold. I can accept that…it is typical of a lot of companies to hold back your earnings, only processing payments when a certain level is reached. Fair enough. But that is where the fairness ended.

I made another sale and earned a whopping $51.91 commission. WOW…threshold obtained and now I could claim my money. WHOOOOOAAAA hold the bus WTF? There was a new status message next to my commissions called ‘CDR’. Clicking on the hyperlink here is what is said:

Customer Distribution Requirement

ClickBank accounts cannot be used for the sole purpose of collecting rebates or otherwise extending credit to yourself or others. In compliance with US law, ClickBank will withhold payment of any account balance until the following criteria is met:

* Sales made with 5 or more different credit card numbers and

* Sales made with two different payment methods (either Visa, MasterCard, or PayPal). Note: PayPal purchases do not count toward the minimum 5 different credit card numbers.

Dormant Accounts

Accounts with a positive balance but no earnings for an extended period of time are considered dormant. Dormant accounts are subject to a charge of $1 per pay period after 90 days of inactivity, $5 per pay period after 180 days of inactivity, and $15 per pay period after 365 days of inactivity.

To say I was pissed off at this point was an understatement. I don’t get MAD too often, but when I do I go ballistic. I immediately ceased active promotion of any ClickBank product and canceled my Adsense Ads. There are probably ClickBank-related ads on my site from old blog entries but I have not the patience or the time to go and remove them all.

Meanwhile 1 month later…

Out of curiosity I access my ClickBank account and see I have been penalized $1.00 due to lack of sales. So I read the fine print leagsleeze BS and notice that these crooks claw back money if you do not make a sale. Further they begin to claw back at ever increasing amounts. Currently I have had $5 per month for each of the past 2 months stolen from me by these POS’s

CLICK IMAGE TO SEE DETAILS

So as of this blog entry ClickBank has clawed back $16 of MY MONEY. A legitimate affiliate program would not punish you for slow sales. A legitimate affiliate program would not have you jump through hoops that rule out multiple PayPal transactions as counting towards your CDR.

ClickBank is anything but legitimate. Stay away from them.

The following is an email sent to ClickBank Customer Service on November 29, 2008:

I read a blog entry by your Supreme Commander, Brad Wiskirchen, CEO. In it he talks about the phenomenal growth of Clickbank.

No wonder you are experiencing such growth. Clickbank is nothing more than organized gangsters. You have been slowly stealing my money because of your bullshit policies and accounting practices.

I have spent my hard earned money and countless hours promoting products on the Clickbank Network…and for what? So that you can steal my money back?

Minimum credit card transactions outside of PayPal? WTF is that? I met your payout threshold and then you hit me with this?

Next, because I have not been promoting products on your service as much, you start taking the money back. You start slowly at first and then ramp it up in ever-increasing amounts.

You should be ashamed of yourselves. I am fed up with Clickbank.

As far as my money and account are concerned…You can shove them up your collective asses, I will not be promoting anything except negativity about your sad-sacked excuse of a company!

I waited until now to write this article because I was giving these weasels a chance to respond…but they did not bother. Guess I am unimportant to them.

I wonder how many other people out there have been gouged by this company? Can you say class-action?

Technorati Tags: ClickBank Mafia, ClickBank stole my money, ClickBank Scam, ClickBank Customer Distribution Requirement, Brad Wiskirchen, ClickBank sucks

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Check out the Myanmar Man’s Diary. His install caused all kinds of problems. The one to note is that WordPress 2.7 deleted all of his static pages. Poof they were gone…

Last evening, I log in again and everything went fine. Then I look at my Myanmar Man’s wordpress blog, and here, all my static pages were gone! No where! I look into my admin area and there also, all my static pages are completely gone! I was shock! I really have no idea where all my static pages were gone. Then I look into my blog carefully, and found that my pages were republished as posts into my main wordpress page. It is funny as well as crazy. I found out that, when I clean up and repair my wordpress database, the wordpress database clears all the information about the pages. As the pages use the same IDs as posts, they appeared as posts instead of pages. Finally I cut the contents of these posts, pasts them into my new pages, delete the old ones, and republished the new ones. That resolve the problem. Now my wordpress blog is up and running again, without any problem. Or at least that was what I think.
Another problem again comes up later, as I check the pages, and found out that the Archives page returns error. It says something like this:

“Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 82 bytes) in /home/bamarlay/public_html/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 814″

That’s not all. Check out N 82 50 24 / Nat Arem Blog He reports that the visual editor is crashing faster than a Kamikaz:

So, if you just upgraded, have you noticed that the Visual Editor no longer works and a lot of the javascript functions (ie, the drop down menus) on the left aren’t working? You aren’t alone. This has happened to a lot of people.

Had enough yet? Sucks to be you cuz here are some more: Blank Pages being reported by BlogsDNA.com, how about HeyChinaski.com…he is reporting that RSS feeds are screwing up.

Will these problems be fixed? Yes of course they will. The creators of plugins need to have time to upgrade. WordPress, realizing a need to address bugs, will be releasing version 2.7.1 ASAP.

Until then stay away from WordPress 2.7. At this stage it is just too quirky and has not been tested thoroughly. Wait until the blogoshpere is reporting less problems and then go for it. Until then let the Lemmings jump of the cliff for you. Their rush to have the latest and greatest will help us because they are being our beta testers.

Technorati Tags: WordPress 2.7 Problems, WordPress 2.7 Sucks, Problems with WordPress 2.7, WordPress 2.7 Bugs, WordPress 2.7.1

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Grand Poobah Andy Jenkins, has issued a public apology, in an attempt to right the ship. Is this is a good sign? It appears that things are heading in the right direction. Although I feel that he is at least one month too late…better late than never.

Hi, Andy Jenkins here.

I’ve never had to write an email like this before – and it’s
one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do at StomperNet.

Back in September, we launched our print journal, The Net
Effect, and offered you a chance to receive our top-of-theline
SEO training program, Stomping the Search Engines 2.0, for no
more than the cost of shipping. Nearly 18,000 of you took us up
on that offer, and although the vast majority of our customers
received the products they ordered without incident, some of
you did not. For that, I apologize.

At this point, we have reshipped thousands of products and every
problem that we are aware of has been resolved.

We’ve heard some folks out there on the forums are saying that
our customer service team didn’t respond to them. While it’s
possible that a few emails slipped through the cracks, our team
has responded to X thousand cases since September.

If you are still experiencing any problems at all, you can
reach our support team by email (escalate@stompernet.com) or
call our new 24×7 telephone support line at 404-348-4401. All
issues will be handled promptly.

1. The Short Story

At the end of this email, you’ll find a download link for a PDF
file that contains the full story, in agonizing detail, of
everything we did wrong, everything we did right, and what
we’ve learned from this experience.

My hope is that by sharing this information, we can help some
of you avoid the kind of problems we experienced. In the
meantime, here’s the short story. In August, before we made
our offer public, I placed advance orders for 5000 copies of
the Stomping the Search Engines 1 & 2 DVDs, and 5000
copies of Issue 1 of The Net Effect.

We hired what we thought was the best fulfillment house
available, based on recommendations from a lot of other folks
in the online marketing space. We tested the shopping cart. We
had inventory on hand. When we opened our doors for business on
September 5th, we honestly, sincerely believed that we were
ready.

2. How It’s Supposed to Work

The process was supposed to be super simple. Our customers
would place orders, the fulfillment house would ship their
orders, and we’d produce additional inventory as needed if we
had underestimated the demand.

Our worst-case scenario was that it might take a couple weeks
to ship orders out, even if we sold out our original inventory
on the first day.

After giving our customers 35-40 days to evaluate The Net
Effect and cancel if they chose to do so, we would begin
shipping issue #2 to our subscribers in mid-October. (* Note:
Although our sales copy described it as a 30-day trial, we
allowed an additional 5 days for domestic and 10 days for
international shipping.)

3. How It Went Wrong

As I said, for the vast majority of our customers (well over
90%), everything did go more or less as it was supposed to.

But when you’re dealing with 18,000 people, that’s not nearly
good enough.

We could blame it all on the fulfillment house letting us down,
but that doesn’t do a darned thing for our customers, and
besides – I’m the genius who hired them. When you do hire the
wrong fulfillment house, that bad decision gets magnified big
time.

You see, when you’re shipping physical products, it takes about
3 weeks to even have the slightest inkling of a problem,
because for the first 2-3 weeks, your products are supposed to
be on their way to the customer. By the time you find out that
a whole lot of products were *not* shipped on time, or not
shipped at all… well, the damage is done.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

4. I’m Sorry

I could go on all day explaining everything that went wrong,
but that wouldn’t be fair to those readers who just wanted to
hear me say “I’m sorry.” I am. Profoundly so. But I’d like to
tell you the rest of the story – and I think I can make it
worth your while to listen.

So, here’s what I’ve got for you: a 23-page report (PDF) with
the entire blow-by-blow story. Everything that went wrong. How
our team responded. What we learned. The steps we’ve taken to
make sure that this *never* happens to our customers again.
I’ll explain how *you* can avoid making the same mistakes,
and a few things that just might help you do truly amazing
things for your customers.

There are some real gems in this report for anyone who does
business online – including an amazing solution to speed up
international shipments.

You can download that report here – no opt-in, no nothing,
just download it and read.

Thanks for your interest in StomperNet and The Net Effect!

Andy Jenkins
CEO, StomperNet

P.S. For anyone who thought we were going to just disappear…
Not a chance. Issue #3 is shipping now, and we’ll be ready to
take on new subscribers in a couple days.

He seems sincere in his commitment to this never happening again. Let’s hope he is right because their credibility, their very future depends on it. Actions speak louder than words so Andy and gang…please live up to your words or you will only be screwing yourselves in the long run.

I will consider opting back into my subscription if they live up to their word. I will take a wait and see approach for about a month or so.

Technorati Tags: StomperNet, StomperNet 2, StomperNet 2 Scam, StomperNet Scam, The Net Effect, Take Back The Internet, Andy Jenkins, Andy Jenkins Apology, StomperNet Apologizes

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With all software upgrades, and new releases, companies in a rush to get to market, release their software to the market when it has not been beta tested thoroughly.

There are many reasons for it, but the biggest is the profit-driven nature of the beast. When bugged software is dumped on to the masses, it makes us all become their beta-tester. There are times to be at the forefront and times not to be.

With the new release of WordPress 2.7, do yourself a favor and hold off from the temptation to upgrade. In particular you should be especially cautious if you are using a non-default WordPress Theme and/or Plugins.

I will publicly predict right here, right now, that there will be bugs and there will be non-compatible Themes and there will be non-compatible Plugins.

If you are patient, and wait for bug fixes, theme, and plugin upgrades, you can make the transition a better experience and save yourself the stress, and embarrassment caused by lost sales and lost traffic.

I bet you are thinking: “If everybody thought like the Ape, then no software product would ever have a chance to succeed.” You know something, you are 100% correct.

I know human nature and there will be enough suckers people non-voluntary beta testers out there to ensure that the kinks are worked out. I will just hang out and watch all of the people bitch and complain when their blogs go down and gleefully say “I told ya so”

Technorati Tags: Don’t upgrade to WordPress 2.7, Stay away from WordPress 2.7, WordPress 2.7 Bugs

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On her site she offers almost 10,000 royalty-free fonts. To quote her…”If you can’t find the font you want on my site, then you are too damn fussy!” How is that for attitude? She does not care what you think about her. She just wants to share her site with the blogosphere and has asked me to introduce her site to you.

The user-friendly layout displays the most popular fonts on the main page, showing popularity, and most importantly, a sample of the font.

Other features on her site include the ability to browse alphabetically,  search by categories, or search by name.

Sure, it is a rather plain and ordinary site, but it comes with a lot of substance and no fluff. It offers an easy-to-use interface for locating the font you want.

Lastly, Amy wanted me to let you know that she offers this site for free in another way. She has no conditions attached and does not require any registration. You can download anonymously and as much as you want.

Please bookmark the site FontChick.com because this FREE resource is perfect when you want to create a great looking blog using her product.

Technorati Tags: Free Fonts, Free Font, Download Font, Royalty-Free Fonts, Royalty Free Fonts, Amy Bizarre, FontChick.com

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Video Blogging Creates Buzz

I did this because I have been slowly getting into video blogging here at Tatumba. There is a huge benefit to using video as a means of social marketing. Video sells, video creates ‘buzz’ and drives traffic to your web site. It really does not matter what the video is about as long as it is good content and generates interest.

For example, I recently created and produced a video using some simple but powerful video/photo production software. With this software I am generating new traffic for Tatumba.

So you created the video. Now what?

Once the video is created you need to be able to distribute to all of the popular video sharing sites. If you find it to be a pain in the ass uploading the same video to every site you could use Traffic Geyser and do it all at once.

Click Here to turn your Videos into Ca$h

Technorati Tags: video file sharing, upload videos, create videos, video blogging, top video sharing websites, best video sites

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Now here is a leap I bet you won’t take … If you follow good advice you will end up in exactly the same place. You will be watching from the sidelines in ignorant bliss saying “This should be me” to yet another success story that plays out like a broken record deep within your physce.

Even though you won’t admit it, I bet you have been described accurately in the above paragraph. I doubt that you will admit it publicly as it would be a tad self-degrading. Perhaps even admitting it to yourself may be degrading, but you are only degrading yourself if you don’t step up to the plate and take charge of your blogging life and start thinking for yourself.

Too many people spend too much time following others advice. Sometimes we have to use our own brains and think for ourselves. Everyone will jump on any bandwagon and run with it just to try and make a buck or two.

We hear things such as ‘Do this’ or Don’t do that’ to be successful, but when you follow someone else’s self-serving advice on a continuous basis where does it get you? Deeper in debt? Filled with anguish? Pissed off at yourself and the world? Ready to quit?

So now that I have ripped you out a new one what do I do? Well how about this for an ironic twist of fate … You need to follow, you guessed it, the advice of a Mad Ape for a few minutes. When done following my advice never follow anyones again…EVER. That’s right EVER.

Advice is only an opinion and opinions are like assholes…everyone has one, and in the competitive blogging world everyone is trying to make their mark. The people that provide the advice are the ones making the money. While you spend everyday surfing the web trying to learn how to make your mark, the so-called gurus are cashing in and in a big way too.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I could go into a big long rant and give names of people who have others flocking to their sites for their advice and opinions but why bother. The people going there to seek their fortune are clueless lemmings. Ready to jump of the first cliff and plunge into the deep dark cesspool of the blogging abyss.

I really do not care what other blogs say or do. I only care what I say and do. And you should too. No not me twit…you should care about you. Man it is hard knocking this into your thick cranium.

From this moment forward, I want you to go. Leave. Go away. Grab a notepad and jot down where you want to be in 5 years. Now write down, step-by-step, what you are going to do to get there. Not just some Mickey Mouse BS job either. You need to use color-coded flowcharts to make this easy to follow. I want you to record each step on a daily basis making each successive step build on the previous. You know like day 1. Decide on my niche. Day 2 Establish a target audience. Day 3 Marketing Plan etc … Get the picture? … Good. So now you need to get busy with this as you have to plan for the next 1825 days of your life.

Once complete you need to refer back to your notes and write a daily follow-up showing how you stayed on your track to success. I would recommend using a journal. It would be best to write it all on paper then follow it up with a digital version. Perhaps you could keep a track using a daily blog entry on a separate private blog. This will help keep you focused.

Now go on. Get! Scoot! You have a lot of work to do if you want to be the next dot com mogul.

Technorati Tags: Affiliate Darwinism, blogging, blogging advice, marketing, planning, make money blogging, opinions, guru, mogul

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This is chalked full of great info to help you improve sales and profit. Normally he charges for this type of content but he is following the growing trend of providing high-quality freebie content.

STEP #1. Get your graphics from SalesLetterGraphics.com
STEP #2. Get testing and tracking (FREE 2-week trial)
STEP #3. Get building your email list
STEP #4. Get Michael Cheney’s Adsense-Video Series

The big thing I have learned from him is that I have to reveal an actual photo of myself and my name. Hmmm that is a big leap for me. I had always wanted to do this blogging thing under the name of Mad Ape.

There is precedent on a large scale. The Rich Jerk is a multi-million dollar web enterprise developed under the site name moniker. For now I will remain in the closet…in a non-gay way…

Technorati Tags: Michael Cheney, Make Money Online, Internet Marketing

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I found a good one. No..not good but great. It is even better than scribd. hubpages.com is the new site and it is full of functionality delivered in a easy-to-use interface.

If you already have or are about to watch the video, just substitute hubpages.com every time you see the site scribd.com mentioned.

<RANT MODE>

Now remember don’t load up that site with useless crap. Use your best stuff. If you don’t have good content yet then be patient. Remember, you are trying to set yourself up as a reputable on-line resource for whatever niche you are carving out. If you want respect be respectful. If you want to be treated as a professional then be professional. If you want to be looked on as an expert, don’t blow it by posting a bunch or re-hashed crap that will just turn people off!

</RANT MODE>

Ok, now that I have gotten my rant out of the way, here are some cool features on hubpages.com

1) You can publish and share your online content with their community and build a following there, driving traffic back to your site.

2) You can embed outgoing links into your documents, again driving traffic to a product or service. Remember my rant. Crap content will yield crap results!

3) With the high page ranking of hubpages.com, you will get more traffic of a better quality to your site.

4) You can embed your Google AdSense, Google Analytics, Amazon.com, and eBay.com information and share in the revenue from traffic you generate on their site.

5) Further you can earn money simply by referring others to the site. You get 10% of hubpages.com share so this can be very lucrative. Again I stress…remember my rant. You mess with them and they will cut you loose and you will lose your chance at making some serious coin!

 Note: You have to allow hubpages.com access to the non-personal area of your AdSense account. Don’t worry, Google ensures that they will not get at stuff that can compromise your account in anyway.

In all honesty, after reviewing this site, they blow scribd.com away. I don’t know how scribd can even compete with this because they have cut themselves off at the knees by preventing outgoing links.

Sucks to be them. Sign up for hubpages.com and start your journey by working on the goals outlined by StomperNet.

Good Luck!

Technorati Tags: scribd alternative, hubpages.com, stompernet no secrets video, don crowther, outgoing links

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I am game to try it and they tell me to ‘rip them a new one‘ of I don’t like it. So here is my blog post and here is the code I have been asked to place so I get my free stuff:

I’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

Next I had to enter my site address so they could come and verify that I blogged about it. So Simple-ology it seemed simple to me!

I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.

Note: Once you sign up you have to scan through a sales pitch…I chose to skip their ‘never to be repeated’ offer, and then you are asked to download a variety of pieces of software for your browser…I skipped that too. I think there was 6 steps to pass through before I got to the course material.  

Technorati Tags: simpleology, simple-ology, free stuff, free blog training, free blogging course

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The reason I say less is because from the time I said I was going for a double listing up until this blog entry, I had been sleeping so it could have been earlier.

Sometimes traffic comes from situations that you have no control over, but you can use it to your advantage by grabbing a develoing story and running with it. I sort of feel like a News Reporter. Maybe that is my calling?

Anyway, it is interesting to see how using a real-world story, that falls in your lap, translates into building traffic and sharing my experiences with all of you. If you want to learn the details on how to get to the top of Google with a double listing, please check out my article: How I Got to the Top of Google in Less than a Month

Technorati Tags: double listing on Google, StomperNet, scribd, top of Google

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It looks as though Scribd is blaming StomperNet for the banning, in particluar Don Crowther. WOW…I wonder if he will end up being the scapegoat on this. Apparently his so-called white hat tactics were pretty dirty. A head may roll on this one.

An important thing to remember is that you must read the TOS of web sites you join. We all get so used to just checking off and agreeing to terms, that we get caught in messes like this. I think Don did not read the legaleeze.

At the end of the Scribd response, they claim that they will be offering a service for ‘legitimate’ marketers…probably will be a paid service…something that I eluded to yesterday on another blog.

Jason Bentley to me, contact

show details 4:11 AM (5 hours ago)

Thanks for contacting us.

First off, it’s important to understand that we have never allowed the use of SEO tactics on the Scribd website. Such tactics, along with hidden linking, deep linking, and malicious JavaScript have always been a violation of our Terms of Service. Despite this, we’ve been highly tolerant of marketing documents that make use of one or two links to another site. This is because we felt it was important to provide our users with an option to display their document in HTML instead of FlashPaper. For a long time, marketers on Scribd represented a small – and largely responsible – percentage of our community.

The number of documents that crossed the line from “marketing” to spam dramatically increased toward the end of 2007. We’d already started to reevaluate our HTML policy when suddenly, over the holidays, Scribd was flooded with thousands of garden-variety spam documents and still many more innocent-looking “informational” documents that were a cornucopia of malicious marketing: hidden links, browser-jacking JavaScript – the works.

After considering our options, we made the difficult decision to enact both a zero-tolerance policy toward HTML marketing and a temporary no-link policy across the board. We disabled HTML uploads, and because of the deluge of new spam-oriented accounts, we were forced to ban most of the HTML marketers already on Scribd.

As expected, we received a storm of complaints, and of course, many mentioned the StomperNet video. After I watched the clip, one fact stood out to me: whether through ignorance, carelessness, or malice, the guy instructed everyone watching to actively violate Scribd’s Terms of Service without any kind of disclaimer to that fact. This was reflected in the common threads were consistent throughout the many complaints and apologies we received: “I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong” and “I never read the Terms of Service.”

So one thing I would stress to your readers is: never base elements of your business on services for which you have not read the contract or Terms of Service. It’s as simple as that. Business ain’t for lemmings. Don’t follow the advice of a disembodied voice in an online video without doing your due diligence.

With all that said, legitimate and responsible marketers will soon be able to again use Scribd to drive traffic. We’ve been working on a solution that will let legitimate marketers place working links within documents, but without the mechanisms that left our site and our users vulnerable to predatory practices. Look for it in about two weeks, give or take, once we get everything in place.

Best regards,

Jason

–
Jason Bentley
Director, Community Development @ Scribd
jason@scribd.com

http://scribd.com

Finally, I have asked StomperNet for a response to this statement from Scribd. It will be interesting to see their response:

Hello

I am the Mad Ape and am investigating the banning of outgoing links on Scribd and would like to get a response from Don Crowther of StomperNet. In particular I would like him to respond to the following statement from Scribd:

“As expected, we received a storm of complaints, and of course, many mentioned the StomperNet video. After I watched the clip, one fact stood out to me: whether through ignorance, carelessness, or malice, the guy instructed everyone watching to actively violate Scribd’s Terms of Service without any kind of disclaimer to that fact.”

- Jason Bentley
Director, Community Development @ Scribd

Mr Crowther could you please answer the following:

1) Did you read Scribd’s Terms of Service?

2) Do you think that Scribd is unfairly singling you and your company out?

3) How do you intend to deal with this matter?

4) What will happen to the SMARTS program?

So as not to be claimed that I took this out of context, please see the entire Scribd statement on my blog at http://www.tatumba.com/blog/archives/324

Thank you for your time,

Sincerely;

The Mad Ape
www.tatumba.com

So until next time…

Technorati Tags: scribd, stompernet, seo tactics, scribd blames stompernet, jason bentley, don crowther

No related posts.

From the FAQ section of their web site

Can I include links in my Scribd documents?

No. Due to abuse from search engine optimizers and internet marketers, we have adopted a no link policy. You may place one link in the website field of your profile page. You may not add HTML links to documents on Scribd.

I was hoping to use outgoing links at scribd.com to send traffic to my blog. This would have probably doubled or tripled my traffic. So now I must seek out a similar site that is at the popularity level of this one. Suggestions anyone?Now being a rather curious ape I decided to seek out the truth behind the rumors. Today I sent an email to scribd.com asking them to explain their actions. Whether they take me serious or not, is anyones guess…Time will tell!Here is a transcript of my email:

To: Head Honchos contact@scribd.com

Hello

I am the Mad Ape and am seeking clarification to the rumors
surrounding your recent cessation of outgoing links from scribd.com
by your users.

Can you confirm this to be the case? Further, can
you confirm whether or not this was a direct reaction to the
abnormally high increase in outgoing link (traffic) activity resulting
from people using the advice contained in a video by StomperNet called
“No Secrets”?

I am writing a review on this and would appreciate your input, so I can
report accurately on this matter.

The video can be reviewed on my site at
http://www.tatumba.com/blog/archives/293 if you have not seen it yet.
Thank you for your time.

Sincerely;

the Mad Ape
www.tatumba.com

Maybe scribd.com was threatened by Google? Maybe they felt that they had a hole in their system and decided that they would close it. Maybe it is all coincidence.

Technorati Tags: scribd.com, StomperNet.com, No Secrets Video, Block outgoing links

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Going in fresh with my new found knowledge, makes it easier to build my social media presence properly. Up until last week I, like most others, have always thought that Facebook and other social media was the realm of teenagers.Boy was I wrong! When I saw that Social Groups are dominated by middle aged, high-income people with a propensity to spend a lot of time and money online I took notice. So the question is how do I enter the social marketplace? A two word answer is ‘Very Carefully’. Every move I make must be calculated.I must start by offering something of value to people. Satisfy a need or a want of some kind. I need to carve out a variety of niches and establish myself as the go-to guy when people think of ‘X’. At this stage I am not tipping my hand with respect to what I am doing as someone could copy me. Over time I will show in greater detail what it is I am doing behind the scenes but for now here is an overview:

I bought a new domain today, making sure to grab the .com, .org, .net TLD’s. The site will be targeted at one specific monetization method for website owners where I will be offering expertise through free advice and a paid service. Once I get it up and running I plan on building my reputation within the Social Networking Community. I plan on incorporating video as a marketing tool as I see that as the future for online marketing.

Technorati Tags: Social Marketing, Facebook

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It is a daunting task but if I do this right I can position myself for ongoing residual income for years to come.

Start with some housekeeping

Word Counts and Duplicate Content

One of videos from StomperNet says that duplicate content will be the slow death of my site. It tells me that I have to make sure that my blog posts are unique and have a word count that is, at the very least, the same as my static word count.

By static word count, I mean the actual text that can be hi-lighted with my mouse and exists on every page of my site. That is considered duplicate content.

I need approximately 527 words per post to avoid being tanked by the search engines. It may seem like a lot, but in the time that I have been writing this blog post I have reached 298 words. IS THAT ALL?

Remove Some Fluff

Hmm well I know I can’t maintain that level for all blog entries, so do I need to trim some fat off of my static pages? You know…remove some fluff? Well I can’t find any. I have my site up the way I like it, and removing some of the text will hurt navigation and negatively affect my monetization methods.

Barring removing text, StomperNet told me to substitute imagery with the duplicate text. That is easier said than done because almost all of the text is generated by WordPress widgets, WordPress scripts or affiliate scripts. That makes this a non-option.

So I am going to have to commit myself to writing longer posts, while at the same time not putting people to sleep. Nodding off yet? WAKE UP!

Getting back to the video, it did have a short blurb that coming in under the static word count may work and that the ‘jury’ was still out on how the bots processed a site. but they strongly suggest that I keep my word count equal to or better than 527?

Did Video Kill a the Blogging Site?

StomperNet had mentioned that producing my own video blogging content will be an excellent tool. I have to agree as I was very impressed with their stuff. I plan on implementing that strategy BUT I wondered what will happen with a bunch of video segments in my blogs. Writing a 500+ blog entry to avoid duplicating a content will defeat the video. What the hell would I write about? The contents of the video? Seems like a waste of time.

BUT then again YouTube gets more traffic than Google, so will Google ranking become less relevant? I am so confused now that my head is going to explode.

Remove Duplicate Page Titles

The video said that it is a no-no to have duplicate titles. I think I got them all. This was easy to do. I used the ‘All In One SEO Pack WordPress Plugin‘ and edited a couple of titles that were close to being the same.

So the journey begins

With the site as fine-tuned as I can make it I am ready to go forward with entering into the Social Networking realm.

PS. I am at 718 words counting the title, content, and this PS…I made my quota!

Technorati Tags: avoid duplicate content, avoid duplicate titles, word count is important, StomperNet

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Why the Humble Pie?

A while back I shared with you about how I made it to the top of Google in less than 30 days using my Effective Income Strategies For Bloggers example.

What I had thought were some pretty creative and original strategies and techniques turned out to not be entirely correct.

Creative..Yes. Original…No. When I discovered a video by Don Crowther of StomperNet yesterday I had one of those ‘eureka’ moments…one where I felt as if a veil had been lifted off me.

Being inspired by the video, I decided to research StomperNet some more. What I found is another fantastic video, this time by Andy Jenkins, co-founder of StomperNet. In it he talks about the exact same strategies I used to get to the top of Google.

One big difference. His presentation is in a slick and informative video that covers the topic in much more detail than I did. Humbled I am. These guys are truly awesome.

You have to watch this guy. Simply great content! I know I am setting myself because I may be driving traffic away, saying that these guys are better than me…but…these guys are better than me.

And that is what will keep me going…inspiring to be as good as these guys!

I am going to explore if they have an affiliate program to see if I can make a buck or two off of these glowing reviews. The only reason I have not yet is because I want to get out what is on my mind and speak from the heart while it is still fresh.

Watch and learn my young grasshopper…

Technorati Tags: Andy Jenkins, Income Strategies for Bloggers, StomperNet, How I got to the top of Google, Don Crowther

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No I am not dyslexic!

You may have noticed a new widget on my right sidebar titled ‘Are You In My Top Spots’ It is from a new site, scratchback.com, that has launched this widget in beta version. The site is owned by Jim Kukral, long-time online marketing veteran, speaker, author, web entrepreneur, and blogger.

If you are lucky enough to have a version of Internet Explorer that works correctly, or smart enough to be using FireFox, then you can watch a video clip of Jim that I added to the top right ad slot.

The widget is a fancy schmacy tip jar that allows donors to get a link on my blog for giving me a tip. I liked its ease of use and the flexibility the user interface gave me to set it up. There were multiple templates to choose from and it let me control the number of links, the cost of the link, and the duration that the link is displayed for.

Currently I have the cost set to $1.00, which was the minimum. I created slots for 5 donors, and set the slots to auto-rotate. Meaning, that as a new one is added, one gets pushed down a level.

Problems I see:

1> Cost

scratchback.com takes 10% of the tip value during this beta period but has hinted that they will be taking a lot more than that when it officially launches. Somewhere between 40-50% was hinted at. That is too much and will make this new site sink quicker than the Titanic.

I will drop the program if it goes beyond 20%. And I think that amount would be too high but I will live with it. I mean if scratchback.com starts processing thousands of transactions per day 10% is more that fair. The site owner will still make a fortune…no need to get greedy.

2> No affiliate program

If the fee taken was 20% of the tip, with the site keeping 10% (or less) and distributing the remainder through an affiliate program, the higher fee would be easier to swallow. This would make the widget viral in nature and allow it to grow exponentially.

3> Google Eyes = Googleized

Call it what you want, but Google will probably attempt to bitch slap people using this widget. They will see it as buying links and you all know how pissed they get when you do that. We shall see.

Here I am promoting it and may be shooting myself in the foot with Adsense. Oh well I can’t let Google stop me from doing what I do. I know someday that I will probably be turfed by them as I do not see many top blogs running their ads.

Sucks to be them as there are many more options available to us blog folk!

Technorati Tags: Scratchback.com, Jim Kukral, blog tip jar, blog tips, buying top spot, buying links

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With this new theme I have a lot more space to monetize my blog, while at the same time it does not look as cluttered.

This new theme came from BloggingExperiment.com at a cost of $75.00. It has 7 sidebars built in but the most visible one, the right sidebar, is not widgetized. I had to add everything you see there by hand – a real pain in my blue monkey butt.

All-in-all I am happy with it, and it should accommodate me for the next year or so. I intend to create my own theme from scratch and I will be learning as I go. Should be fun.

Technorati Tags: tatumba 2.0, wordpress theme, bloggingexperiment theme

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