Do Url Shorteners hurt SEO?

Note: Cross posted from The World According to Suze.

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picture courtesy of dev/random

Anyone who regularly posts links to places like Twitter or Facebook, or anywhere really that has a character limit, is well aware of how vital a good url shortener program is.  If you’re just regularly posting pictures of your lunch, well maybe you’re not too concerned about the effect of using these services on your backlinks and SEO.  For bloggers and marketers, on the other hand, it could be hugely significant. I’ve been wondering for a while now about the effects of url shorteners on the links  I post, and while poking around the internet today, I came across a couple of different blog posts about it and this video by Matt Cutts, explaining that url shorteners do not hurt your SEO if the service uses a 301 redirect.  The page rank and anchor text do flow through from the shortened link.  ...

How To Use Windows Live Writer to post to Tumblr

I don’t have the time at the moment to do a fully detailed write-up about Windows Live Writer specifically, but I just wanted to post something quick about my newest discovery.  Since I’ve just recently started blogging again, I haven’t kept up on a lot of blogging-related things, so I’m pretty late to the Windows Live Writer party, but I just discovered it 2 days ago. It’s pretty freaking awesome!  The only thing I was disappointed about was there was no support for Tumblr in Windows Live Writer, so that’s what I wanted to write about here.   ...

Well, whatta ya know!

It seems while I was busy doing other things, Blogger finally got its head out ohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giff its ..well, you know..and gave me back my blog! Shortly after my last post on this site, I got a notice from Blogger saying http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifg this blog had been shut down due to suspicion that it was a splog..aka spam blog..set up just to post crap for the purpose of collecting Adsense cash. I immediately wrote to them telling them that, no, it wasn't, it was my blog, but I got no response. I was shut down, couldn't post here, couldn't edit anything, couldn't moderate comments, which left the spammers free reign to post their crap to my comments..grrrrr. I periodically checked back and finally gave up, figuring it was a goner for good. Then today I happened to check again, expecting it to still be locked and found it was BACK! Thanks, Blogger! I don't know what about this blog would make anyone think it's a spam blog, since I made regular posts, written by me, not trying to sell anything to anyone. The only thing I can think is that maybe someone I posted something about didn't like it and reported me for spam? Oh well..now that I have it back, I might actually start posting here again. In the meantime, I've got another blog now, a Wordpress blog hosted on one of my own domains, at , and I've been making lenses over on Squidoo.com and you can follow me on Twitter or on my Tumblr blog.

Data Entry Job Scams

Grrrr.. I'll never understand why people don't do research and check things out, Google for information, read forums, do some form of due diligence before they plunk down their hardearned cash for ridiculous scams. I did an article on Gather.com a while back that I'm still getting comments on, about rebate processor job scams, from people who did decide to check into it before joining anything and are really glad they did. Rebate processor, data entry jobs and survey database sites that charge you money ARE SCAMS!!!! I'm writing this because in the last two days I've run across three posts from different people saying that they did pay for one of these BS things, and they're a ripoff..which they would have known without losing their money had they done some serious research.

For those who don't know what rebate processor and data entry scams are all about, the jist is this. You pay these scumbags anywhere from 39.00 to 197.00 for access to their "database" or job bank or list of companies that are supposedly willing to pay you for placing ads or proceesing rebates, etc. Once you pay, you get access to their site that tells you how to join Clickbank, pick a product/products you want to advertise ..which they term as the "companies you want to work for"..and you then go to classified ad sites or launch PPC campaigns with Google or Yahoo,etc. and when someone clicks your ad ..aka buys the product you advertised..you get paid. Well, you can join Clickbank, launch a PPC campaign or place ads to sell the products all on your own without paying these sleezebags your money. They do, to be fair, explain a lot about Adwords and how to do a PPC campaign, which can be helpful, but the same info is free all over the internet as well.

How do I know this? No, I DIDN'T pay for any of these scams..I just have talked to people who have been scammed..and did research on my own. This is a list of free classified ad sites you can post ads to, if you do want to join Clickbank, pick some products, and post some ads on your own.

http://www.interking.com/ Kingdom Classifieds
http://www.homeworkads.com/Homework Ads
http://www.bizclassifieds.com Business Classifieds
http://www.classifiedsforfree.com Classifieds for Free
http://www.bestmall.com/class/submit.html Best Mall Classified Ads
http://www.1second.com/freead.htm 1AmericaMall
http://www.theadnet.com/ The Ad Net
http://www.5starads.com/ Five Star Classified

As far as the survey sites are concerned, they are a scam as well. They don't give you any information you can't find on your own on multiple sites for free. One person who signed up for one of them told me that half the sites were BS, a lot of them paid in sweeps or points, and some of them weren't even active anymore..so the site was outdated.. and I think he said he paid 99.00 for this information. I've seen these ads claiming you can make 75.00 and up an hour doing surveys. It's NEVER GONNA HAPPEN!! I have a survey directory right on my website http://www.starrbrite.com/surveys.html, that lists which ones I know actually pay cash, which ones are BS sites pretending to be survey sites, etc. ..you can send your 99.00 to ME at... lol

I know it's marketing, and they do provide information, which they have a right to be compensated for and charge whatever people are willing to pay for the info, but it just irks me to no end because the ads are so deceptive, and they target people who are searching for something to do at home, usually because they're disabled or can't work outside the home and need to support their families..they can't afford to be scammed..and they also encourage them to choose THEIR program as the program they should choose to advertise..which gives them that much more of an opportunity to scam even more people.. !!

If you're looking for LEGITIMATE work at home jobs, try www.westathome.com
or http://www.alpineaccess.com/external/careers/become_an_agent.html.. these two companies hire people to work at home answering phones for things like infomercial calls and taking orders for various companies. I know for a fact these are legitimate, actual jobs and they don't ask you to pay anything.

Stephen Ducharme, ContactThem scam

While surfing the other day, I saw an ad someone had posted about a program called "ContactThem" which claimed that they would pay you $4800 to add their links to your website for one month. That sounded like a great deal to me! I have a website..and I like money.. especially free money! Anytime someone wants to pay me lots of money for doing something as simple as cutting and pasting a link onto my page, I'm there! Of course, being the skeptical soul that I am, I decided to do a little investigating before rushing in to claim my $4800. I clicked the link and it took me to a website for a product called "Contact Them" that asks you to sign up and download their software. After my big Zangdo virus fiasco, I'm pretty darn careful now about what I download, plus they asked you a few questions before you download it, so they can "personalize" the software to you. Meaning, make sure they send you the right hype and scam page, targeted towards telling you what you want to hear based on what you're looking for. The questions are 'what describes you the best:", and lists choices, like "I'm an internet marketer interested in promoting affiliate programs" or some such thing, and "Main reason why you want the Contact Them software" again with some choices. They also ask for your phone number along with your other contact information, and it is marked as 'required". It says "your account will match your phone number". Hmmm.. this made a few bells go off.

I Googled Stephen Ducharme, "Contact Them scam" and "Virtual Contact, Inc", and what I found out is that Stephen Ducharme is the self-proclaimed "Free Ad Guru" and claims he never pays for advertising. I also found out that, while his website claims this is brand new software they spent four years developing, there were several complaints on a few message boards from around 2005 for a product by this name, and also something called "My Affiliate Finder", which by the name sounds like it may be the same type of software he's now calling "ContactThem". In or around 2003, there were complaints about other products from Stephen Ducharme , in particular one called "How to get 1million visitors on your website without paying a dime in
advertisement" The complaints said that his promised customer support is pretty much nonexistent, and they do not answer emails or phone calls. In addition to that, after you purchase something from this guy's company, they call you and try to talk you into bigger things, like "coaching"., with high-pressure sales tactics. They ask you questions about your credit cards and available balances, and what you end up paying is the amount of your available balance! YIKES! Read what happened to this poor guy http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/072/ripoff0072066.htm.

These complaints are all a few years old, and I didn't find any complaints recently specifically geared towards the ContactThem software, so maybe he's cleaned up his act.. or maybe it's just too new, since he says it just launched.

The ContactThem offer has two parts.. the software program itself, and the affiliate program...which is the part where he claims you can make "up to" 4800.00 your first month for simply placing their ads on your site. Of course, you have to read the disclaimer at the bottom of the page

"These figures of earnings are examples to help you understand the earning potential - You can make more or less. There are no guarantees of income. *You are NOT paid per click, per impressions or for the period of time our banner is exposed on your website; you are paid per sale generated. You receive a sales commission when members join our paid membership upon your referral or your sub-affiliates'. Recurring monthly commissions are subject to members' renewals. By default, 2 levels of commissions are paid; to access levels 3 to 10, you need to meet each level qualifications. Please take time to consult the qualifications for each level inside the affiliate area that explains everything in details."

This means that you can join as an affiliate for free, and promote the program on your own and try to get people to sign up by marketing it through whatever channels you can find..and possibly make some sales or get people to sign up and upgrade...get them to UPGRADE is the keyword here. You don't get paid for them signing up, they have to upgrade and pay the 49.00 a month before you make any money. Of course, you won't make any real money unless they not only sign up and upgrade, but they then get people under them who sign up and upgrade, etc. Or...you can UPGRADE and pay 49.00 a month to be able to use the ContactThem software to find people to send your ads for the affiliate program to ...and/or promoting the actual software. using their program.. Either way, it's not a simple matter of put the banner on your website and sit back and make tons of cash, like the ads would have you believe.

I will say this for him, he's REALLY, REALLY good at the smarmy sales copy. He knows exactly what to say to make people want to sign up...but he neglects to tell you that it ain't half as easy as he makes it sound. If you do sign up to be an affiliate and you can manage on the free option to find some people who do sign up and actually upgrade, that would be fine. However, we all know it's not that easy. Anyone who has done or is doing internet marketing or affiliate marketing, knows that you have to promote something. You'll have to actively market it. Unless you have a huge mailing list or tons of traffic to your site, you'll need to place ads. Chances are, even if you choose to upgrade and pay the 49.00 a month for the chance to market to the leads they provide you with using their software, a small percentage of those who actually sign up will do anything with the program. Some may upgrade and pay for a couple of months, but most will give up after a few months when the profits they were promised in the ads don't materialize magically. There's nothing wrong in this, it's marketing, and A LOT of programs do it the same way, but it's deceptive, and if people do sign up and attempt to market this affiliate program, they need to be aware that their earnings will most likely, for probably 99.9% of them, never be more than a couple hundred dollars.. if they can manage even that.

This is an FAQ page about the affiliate program...http://www.contactthem.com/affiliateprogram3.php?

Up to this point, one would think there's really nothing wrong with this program, aside from the smarmy and deceptive advertising tactics.. but..

Here's where the scam part comes in:

As a free affiliate you are qualified to earn commisions on your first 2 levels with no qualification, no strings at all.. but from level 3 on you have to qualify to earn commissions by being an active (read: paying) member who has reached $1000 commission earned. A legitimate "affiliate program" does not require you to "qualify" or pay anything in order to collect your commissions. This is not an "affiliate program", it's just a glorified ...and deceptive.. MLM scheme.

What's your compensation plan?

Level 1 = 20%

100% Free - No qualification required
Level 2 = 10%

100% Free - No qualification required

Level 3 = 5%


(To qualify for this 3rd level of commission, you must be an active member of ContactThem software (minimum is $49.95/month)
+ You must have reached $1,000 in commissions earned.)
Level 4 = 2%

(Qualification: Active member + You must have signed up 10 members)
Level 5 = 1%

(Qualification: Active member + You must have signed up 20 members)
Level 6 = 1%

(Qualification: Active member + You must have signed up 30 members)
Level 7 = 1%

(Qualification: Active member + You must have signed up 40 members)
Level 8 = 1%

(Qualification: Active member + You must have signed up 50 members)
Level 9 = 1%

(Qualification: Active member + You must have signed up 60 members)
Level 10 = 1%

(Qualification: Active member + You must have signed up 70 members)

This brings us to the ACTUAL program.. the software.....

What is ContactThem?

It's software that claims it can find the names of, and allow you to contact with a personalized email, virtually every affiliate marketer of every affiliate program on the planet. It sends emails to these people telling them how much you like their site and would they be interested in becoming an affiliate for your product or service and placing your links on their page. Of course, you don't have to actually go to any of these affiliates's sites, so how do you know if they are even active affiliates? or if they even have a website? Most do, but some do not and market through email or other venues. It does make mention somewhere on the site about "Internet marketers/list owners/affiliates/website owners/promoters/resellers", and it says it will tell you the marketer's stats and activities, so I suppose the program knows which type of marketer they're contacting and everything about them, and tailors the emails to each individual? It claims you won't get SPAM complaints, because it's a personalized email. So what? I get lots of SPAM that's personalized, and unsolicited email trying to sell you something, last time I checked, was still SPAM, and the complaints may very well come.

His sales page claims that you will find lots of "tire kickers" talking bad about him on the internet because they "don't understand him", he's ahead of his time. LOL Well, that's a CYA statement if I ever heard one. Though it is true that a lot of people will cry "scam" if they buy something and don't immediately make a million dollars with no effort, becasue they don't know how to work the program, the majority of scam complaints tend to be true, and I'm betting Mr. Ducharme deserves his reputation.

In theory, this software could actually be really useful in helping you make lots of money, if you can find a bunch of affiliate marketers who are stuck on stupid or complete newbies. If I understand it correctly, the way the program supposedly works is that you find a 2-tier affliate program and sign up, and then you send emails to all of these other affiliate marketers from these other programs that the software finds for you, promoting your affiliate program, and they become your subaffiliates in the program. I don't know about you, but if someone who is not the owner of a product or a company contacts me, asking me to promote their products, I'm gonna know they're an affiliate of that product/program. If it's something I'm interested in, I'll go sign up as an affiliate on my own and get full commissions DUH! I could be wrong. The reason they have subaffiliates is because people to sign up to be one, but I just don't see it happening a lot when you're marketing to current affiliate marketers.. On the other hand, suppose you sign up for the service, you do manage to sign up a bunch of sub affiliates under you, and they put the links to your products on their sites..and nothing happens..or only a few sales happen. This wouldn't be a big deal in normal circumstances, but it is a big deal if you're paying $12,000 a year for the ContactThem service! YEP, you read that right.. $12,000 a year.. payable in convenient monthly installments of just $997.00!! DOUBLE YIKES!! Of course, if you can't afford that, they have the limited version that will allow you to contact 200 marketers every day instead of 1000. There are some marketers who wouldn't think twice about paying that much money per month for leads.. but for most people, that's just not an option.

BOTTOM LINE: I don't think you can really classify this program as a scam per se. It is, however, deceptive marketing, and it is not an affiliate program, it's just a MLM scheme. The whole thing definitely falls under the hype and air category. I am willing to bet also, that once you sign up as a free affiliate, the high-pressure, very persuasive emails will be forthcoming quickly..and A LOT of them. Whatever you do, if you do sign up for this program, whether for free or as an upgraded member.. when they call you, and they almost definitely WILL CALL YOU.. don't TALK TO THEM.. do not let them talk you into ANYTHING, and under NO circumstances tell these people, or anyone associated in any way with this company your personal information, including the balance on your credit card. If they call HANG UP!

Proofreading is Your Friend

PROOFREAD, PROOFREAD, PROOFREAD


I know this is the internet, and grammar and punctuation, and basic communication skills, like proper spelling, are sometimes woefully lacking in the things people choose to post. It’s just for entertainment, and who cares about proper spelling and grammar. This is true in most cases, but when you’re publishing something to your blog, or an article, or an ad page, would it be too much to ask to proofread what you're writing, use proper grammar and run the spellcheck? If you're chatting with your buddies in IMs or chattng casually in a group or forum, it's not such an issue, but in any kind of writing where you're attempting to sell something or teach someone something, taking the time to proof read and spell-check will go a long way in making the difference between people thinking of you as a real writer, a wannabe, or worse, a complete idiot. I know it's nitpicky, but it's a pet peeve of mine, and I know I'm not the only one. I'm not perfect, by any means, and even I am bad about not proofreading sometimes. When I go back and read some of the things I’ve posted, I see glaring typos, and I cringe! Let's review! It's "Let's go there", not "Let's go their". Their is possessive, there is a destination. It's "we were going", not "we was going". Read over what you write before you hit the send button. I read an article the other day by a woman who said she was a technical writer and made so many thousands of dollars in her job, and there were several typos and instances where she used the wrong word. She had obviously gone back and changed something in the article, but didn’t proof read after the change to be sure it made sense. I thought to myself that I hope she has an editor for her professional work. Even though she is probably great at her job, the errors in her article lowered my perception of the value of what she was saying. I know I'm not the only one who thinks this way. It's about image. Do you want people to think you know what you're talking about and are well-educated, or some hack spitting out garbage? To be fair, I know English is not the native language of many who publish online, and a lot of errors are inevitable and forgiveable in those cases, but for the American and English-speaking world, not so much.

I'm not suggesting that you should always use completely proper English and be absolutely perfect in your punctuation, etc. You have to write in your own style, in your own voice, and be real and connect with your readers. In some instances, your blog for example, it's perfectly fine to say "gonna" and start your sentences with but or and (even though it's wrong), and end your sentences with a preposition on occasion. Just be sure you spell the preposition right (not write) and that your sentences make sense. Spell checkers are your friend, and you should learn to use them! This will ensure you won’t end up with a post like this one I found on freelancing.

I was going to put the link to the blog so you could see the whole article, but it's a splog, so I won't. Maybe it doesn’t much matter what the article says, since it’s obviously only there for content purposes to pull in traffic for their Design Quote affiliate program links, but even splogs should be readable. The beginning of the article starts out great, with helpful, pertinent information on how to increase your freelancing income and manage being a freelancer.. but the end is where it goes horribly wrong..

This is what it says
Freelance Writers: Double Your Income

“Double your income by effort earnest most your business. Yes, if you impact as a worker writer, you are streaming a business. And as a business, you requirement to verify things seriously. Can you rattling threefold your income? Of instruction you can. Just ingest your instance more expeditiously and intend more and better-paying clients. We every undergo we hit likewise some life when we don’t intend as such impact finished as we should. That’s dustlike if you poverty to analyse yourself as a unaccompanied ‘artiste’ struggling with writer’s block. But it won’t revilement the condiment if you analyse what you do as a earnest business. Use your instance efficiently. Get the impact done. And encourage your services. If you are genuinely likewise unsure to garner up the sound or intercommunicate in face of a crowd, at small ingest your composition skills and create a promotional income collection you crapper beam discover to likely clients. And here’s the easiest artefact to threefold your income: intend meliorate clients and discuss higher fees. In fact, the meliorate the calibre of client, the more unstoppered they module be to negotiation, and the more they module knowledge your work...

and it goes on from there..

What’s up with that?? It looks like they may have used one of those article spinner programs that they claim will re-word your articles for you to make them different enough that you can submit them to several different places without duplicate content. Maybe it was one of those that you plug in your keywords and basic ideas and it writes the article for you. Whichever it was, the software, apparently, has a few bugs that need to be worked out.. and the poster needs to learn to proofread before he/she publishes. LOL

The point is, if you’re going to write things and publish them for the world to read, take 2 minutes of your time and proofread and spell check, so you don’t end up publishing things that look like the article above. You may think that noone cares, and maybe a lot of people don't, and are only interested in the information and ideas, and not so much how well you can write, but a lot of people do care. They will judge you on not only what you say, but how well you say it, and judge your business in the same way.

Thank Gawd for Spyware Doctor!!!!!

You wouldn't believe what I've gone through in the past week. I have spent the last week going crazy with the most aggravating and annoying virus ever known !! That sucker just would not go away! I stupidly downloaded an application from some list or traffic exchange or other. actually, I think it was from a solo ad from some safelist.. for something called Zangdo. The page said it was a "get paid to" type program..something along the lines of Treasure Trooper or Cash Crate, etc.. and it sounded like a pretty good program, and I'm always signing up for crap just to kick the tires and see what it is, so I went ahead and signed up I should have known something was up when the page said it was 100% spyware and adware free..like, come on..it's safe..you can download me.. YEAH, RIGHT! Well, I downloaded it and waited for the usual welcome email so that I could verify my account, etc, and it never came. Next thing I knew, this program had taken over my browser..the stupid thing was a particularly virulent browser hijacker that would redirect my page to ads and give me these annoying popups every time I tried to go anywhere online. It only affected certain pages, which was kinda weird...like Ebay and Netwinner and Gather.

I have Avast and AVG on my system and neither of them caught it..so I went searching for something that would remove it. I only found one website ANYWHERE that had any information about this Zangdo virus and it had many, many people posting to request help in removing it. They recommended downloading about 15 different programs and running them all..AVG, Avast, Kapersky's, Panda Virus, Superspyware something or other, Ad-Aware..a whole long list of them.. and detailed multiple other steps for people to try. I was desparate, so I downloaded them all and ran them and NOTHING found this dang program.. they all found a ton of cookies and adtrackers though..dangerous stuff! Needless to say, they were all a complete waste of time.

My roomie suggested I try something called SpyNoMore, because he said he had the same type of thing on his system and that had worked for him, but it was 30.00..I don't have 30.00 at the moment, payday ain't til Friday and I just paid my rent..and I'm not about to pay 30.00 for something that MIGHT work, after everything else I tried. Then I found a copy of Spyware Doctor ..let's just say not through your regular retail type channels..it was more of an acquisition than a purchase..but I installed it and ran it and wooohooo IT WORKED!! All I can say is Thank GAWD for Spyware Doctor, because I was getting ready to say screw it and reformat my computer. That wouldn't have been a major tragedy, because I have a 300 gig external drive, so I could back everything up and not lose anything, but I really, really hate having to go through reinstalling all my crap. Now I don't have to worry and I can get back to my normal surfing habits. YAAAAY.

If you ever see anything called Zangdo..or anyone sends you an invite to join..DON'T DOWNLOAD IT.. and tell all your friends too!