Have you ever had someone that you dont know come to your blog and instantly like your recent posts?
Initially you think “Wow, someone other than my friends has found my blog. And how cool is it that they actually like what I had to say? That’s soooo cool!”
Here at WordPress you get an email alerting you that someone has liked your posts and in the email it also suggests that you check out their blog as a way of reciprocating traffic, as well as expanding your reading habits.
Heck, you might actually find someone who thinks similarly to you or has something unique to say on a topic that interests you. That’s what the WordPress Reader does, so I always made sure to click on anyone who liked my posts because I know how cool it feels when you see your traffic rise. Everyone likes to be popular and having a popular blog is one of the alluring factors of starting one up in the first place; that people want to listen to your thoughts.
However, what I have found particularly in the past few days is that multi layer marketers are using blogs to try and reach people to convince them to join up to the schemes. Multi Layer Marketing (MLM) sounds pretty cool right? NO. It is just another iteration of pyramid selling.
These people like your blog, you receive the notice from WordPress, you click on the links in the notice to their blog and when you get to their blog there is a pretty naked hard sell to convince you that they earn massive amounts of money just by blogging online.
There are countless photos of them skiing in the mountains, swimming in the sea or sunning themselves on the beach in very exotic locales. They tell you that you too can make money just from blogging and they will tell you all about it if you sign up to their newsletter.
I was wary from the get go, but I thought I’ll play along and see what these guys are up to.
I got sent a link to a video that talked about how awful it was to have no money, how they did it all for their families, how they managed to turn it around and make massive sums of money and now lived in a mansion on the beach. That all sounds pretty cool. No one likes not having money and everyone dreams of making it big time, earning heaps of money.
But they never tell you what they are selling, only promise rivers of gold and all you have to do is pay $25 and they will tell you everything that you need to know.
If someone is trying to get you to part with your hard earned quickly without telling you what it is that they are selling, then your scam alert sensors should be going flat out!
Beware fellow bloggers, dont get sucked into paying or giving your credit card details without a clear indication of what it is that you are getting for your money.
Golden rule of the internet: If it sounds to good to be true, then it probably is.
[…] my recent post Don’t get scammed on WordPress and other posts on technology topics like Why companies don’t really get social media, I have […]
I wrote one “commercial” post about a Disney movie that I saw recently and since then I have had a whole PACK of these scammers following and liking both of my WP blogs. I have reported each and every one of them (Gravatars and blogs) to WP and filled out the DCMA form and NOTHING! On various WP “help” pages a number of fellow bloggers are complaining to deaf ears about the VERY SAME PEOPLE I reported… it’s been weeks and WP has done absolutely NOTHING!
What can we do? Cave to these ever-reappearing pyramid scammers?
Hi there Tucson Blonde, great to read your comments!
My two posts on affiliate marketing scammers have both been very popular… particularly with the people that I actively critique in the posts strangely enough. I actually got a like from one affilate marketeer who’s email alert I used as an image in the post where I complained about him (without naming him) and his ilk!
In my other post The seedy underbelly of Internet Marketing I talked about WP’s possible complicity in perpetuating the scam. While they have “stds” that prohibit affiliate marketing blogs on WP.com, it is quite acceptable for affilate marketing people to set up self hosting blogs using WP infrastructure and then groom potential marks via the “like” function and freshly pressed areas.
I am not sure how WP balances that small distinction in their minds, but as we all know businesses only care about dollars unfortunately.
The scammers MO is to do keyword searches and then just make a whole heap of comments or likes to try and pull people into their web of deceit. The best way to defeat these scum bags is to speak loudly, clearly and incessantly about the issue.
As another poster commented on my second post, there is the groundbreaking work of Salty Droid @ http://saltydroid.info/ that we can point people to.
Thanks for dropping in Tucson, I will repay the favour and check out your blogs too!
Cheers… Dacka
Thanks for your reply!
The same thing happened to me… my very next post was called “Spammy Blogs” and that’s REALLY when I picked up a following (of the very people I was complaining about!) (see: http://tucsonblonde.wordpress.com/2013/03/24/spamy-blogs/).
Thanks for your two posts. I read them both and, though I had already heard of Project AWOL, I didn’t know who/what they were till I read your posts.
Actually, I made a suggestion to WP, on one of those help threads, regarding these sploggers and mentioned that it would be an easy fix, if they just allowed us to “moderate” who gets to follow our blogs, similarly to how we get to moderate who gets to post comments. Then all we’d have to do is to turn off likes to keep their gravatar image from showing up on the blog and that would get rid of them in no time!
Yes, it would be sad to not see how many other legit WP bloggers like a post (esp. for newbie bloggers, who want to know if what they are writing about is any good), but to be honest, I much prefer it if the blogger actually comes to my site and reads the post, before making a judgement, and then rates my post… which also keeps track of the number of ratings, besides telling me how well the post was received across voters.
I also think that you are correct in assessing that allowing splogs on the WP.com free-hosted sites plays in WPs’ favor, because if we upgrade (and pay them) and self-host, there are numerous plugins that we can purchase to maintain a splogfree blog. But what a bummer! I haven’t really looked at other free blog hosting sites to see what they do about sploggers, but honestly, I’m getting ready to leave WP for this very reason.
It’s too bad actually, because I really like the community of people I’ve found here in the past five months, since I started attending to my blogs again.
Your posts were really informative and I wanted to thank you for responding to my comment, too! I look forward to digging around on the Salty Droid site, too, next!
Cheers,
Jess
Ha! How funny.. that’s exactly the same pathway that I took to a sense of enlightenment.
At the time I had just left my professional job after a serious run in with my manager.
I suffer from pretty full on depression (borderline manic / bipolar) so the whole experience left me feeling pretty down and out, and after trying unsuccessfully to find a new job I was considering any and all options.
My background is in digital marketing and web development so I started to play around with WP and that’s when I stumbled on the Empower Network.
One of their adherents liked a post of mine so I checked out his blog and it was full of make money online deals. I thought heck, earning money blogging sounded pretty cool. I watched their video and while I was tempted the little voice in the back of my head said it was too good to be true.
So i tried a dry run and just entered my email on one of the sites that I found and BAM! I was inundated with more likes than I could imagine. That’s when I clicked and started to really check these guys out. Scam central here I come because that’s what these guys are.
The SCAMWORLD video really shows how it is a MASSIVE syndicate that runs these scams and the reason why I got inundated was because they all share email lists. If your on one, your on them all.
I like your idea of moderating followers, kinda like Facebook friends or LinkedIn colleagues really isn’t it? But being the ingenious little blighters that they are they would find a way around that too eventually.
You touch on another thing that irks me and that is the false hope that the attention gives to aspiring bloggers. The biggest thrill is having someone who you do not know validate your thinking and it is this that they prey on.
I am looking to self host soon mainly because I am launching my own business but also to get access to the more involved elements of the platform and to take more control of my site (advertising, cool plugins and themes)
Don’t leave because I firmly believe that this is an issue EVERYWHERE on the internet so moving to another provider is like swapping deck chairs on the Titanic IMO 🙂
I think it comes down to the types of content you post really. I don’t get any sploggers (I LOVE this term!) liking my posts that don’t include keywords such as internet marketing etc.
But I think having sploggers frequent my blog is a small price to pay if I save just one person from making a decision that could cost them dearly.
Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom that I am willing to pay.
Good luck with your blogging, you have one more REAL fan who will frequent your blog, be interested in what you have to say and interact with you… Because that’s exactly why I got into blogging in the first place.
Cheers.. Dacka 🙂
You are too nice! I enjoyed reading your comment! Oh, and you are right about *massive syndicate* … if you recall I found out about “link farms” and “link mines” and these sploggers work in a similar fashion I suspect… in order for the scam to work, then need to create a massive net*web* for people to fall into!
It’s true too, there is no escape! And learning to let go of *ego* when the number of likes goes up and up on my posts (most of which comes from sploggers) has been a practice for me in the past month. It’s very odd that the like my poetry at 108plus.wordpress.com since I never use SEO language over there…. 😀
Good luck on your business! Mine has picked up in the past six months (editing and writing) and I too started blogging, because sitting at a computer all day long (editing and writing) is a very solitary endeavor and it’s nice to connect with people from around the globe on the serious and the silly!
cheers,
Jess
My pleasure, Jess 🙂
Yes, I found out about boiler rooms but hadn’t heard of link farms but coming from the digital space I have a fair idea what they are about. I’m in the process of reading those articles you linked to.
Yep, it’s all connected… but in a bad way!! It is the reciprocity of their system that fuels the scam. Hopefully more people educate themselves about using the internet but I am not holding my breathe on that one!
Chasing likes and micro-monitoring traffic is futile yet such a rookie thing to fall into isn’t it?
I did it BIG time after I wrote a post on politicians not featuring party logos or anything that identified which party they were representing.
I sent that post to Australia’s leading political blogger and he featured it on his site. He gets millions of page impressions a year so suffice to say my traffic went through the roof.
That was a pretty exciting day!! I ended up with over 1500 visits in a day which blew my mind. Having worked in digital I know that this is chicken feed but for an aspiring blogger I felt on top of the world!
Funny but my business is going to be about copywriting, marketing and web dev so there is a definite synergy between what we are doing respectively.
As you would know, content is king so focussing on developing great content is the key to success I think, especially when i read the other day that companies in general are looking to increase their digital marketing expenditure by 25% in the next year or so… that’s a lot of demand for good copy, so hopefully lots of work for people like us!!
OK got to actually do some work now!! Great chatting, look forward to more in the future.
Cheers,… brett
Thank you because I almost fell for this scheme. I can’t believe that in this day and age when people are living hand to mouth and praying to survive one day to the next, these scumbags prey on unsuspecting people who actually think they are doing something about their situation. WHAT CAN I DO TO HELP THE CAUSE??!!!
Reblogged this on Deal Closers Corner and commented:
We need to spread the word that the working man is under attack! Don’t let these two- bit hustlers get over!!!!
Reblogged this on Emotive expression and commented:
The world of online scams. Related blogs I found of interest.
I get tons of these guys on my blog. They’re like flies that won’t go away.