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Spam, Beer, and Black Hat Affiliate Marketing

June 6th, 2007 · Comments

Thanks for visiting the Affiliate Tip blog. Subscribe to my RSS feed or enter your e-mail on the top right to get updates by e-mail.

Affiliate Thing welcomed Mark Wielgus of 45n5.com this week.

Topics discussed included Mark leaving his job to work online full time, spamming SERPs, alcohol at conferences, and aspirations to build a white hat site.

Example of an affiliate spam site
Example of a “spammy site“

We also touched on the LinkShare acquisition of Traffic Strategies.com, zanox.TV, Apple moving from LinkShare to CJ, and the “Donut Guy” that got a job at Think Partnership.

Listen to this episode now. The Affiliate Thing show airs weekly on Wednesdays at noon EST. Tune in at http://www.WebmasterRadio.FM.

If you’d like to call in to the Affiliate Thing show, dial up 866-345-6631 between 12:00 pm and 12:30 pm EST on Wednesdays.

Subscribe to the Affiliate Thing RSS feed or send a blank e-mail to affiliatething@aweber.com to get each podcast delivered by e-mail.

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Tags: Affiliate Resources

Viewing 3 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    It's too kind to suggest that this guy is a black hat. There is a certain prestige and competence associated with the title.

    He doesn't even have the sense to hide his cheating methods.

    I hereby confiscate his black hat and replace it with a dunce cap.
    • ^
    • v
    This guy Mark is a joke. He's rambling about adults legally having a beer while his whole business is based on scamming people.

    Perfect example is that screen shot - he's spamming search engines with an ebook on black hat "tricks".

    And then on the podcast he criticises other people for spamming search engines; and say's he's never heard of the ebook and isn't promoting it.

    I think the affiliate gene pool needs an overhaul when I see cases like this.
    • ^
    • v
    I was just giving the latest episode a listen and thought I'd comment on Mark's following quote...

    Spam is subjective, which means it means something different for me or for Shawn.

    And I didn't know if Shawn disagreed that spam is subjective or not.

    I mean it could be anything to anybody really.

    You know, I called Shawn a spammer when I came on here. If you ever do a search for a product that isn't mainstream, like CNET has covered it, what do you get on there?

    You get the Shopping.com's and the big affiliates, and then after that you get the smaller affiliates.

    I mean, it's the biggest pain in the rear to find some decent information, because people like Shawn and other mainstream people are promoting data feeds and using merchant copy.

    They're filling the search engines with spam just as much as I am. Maybe scraping directory listings or whatnot.

    So, I guess, ultimately what I was saying is that spam is subjective really.


    As I stated on the show, I don't work with data feeds and I think a lot of data feed sites are worthless, and that they should have a unique value proposition.

    So your characterization of "people like Shawn" is completely without merit.

    The thing that "people like Shawn" do is to create unique content and play by the rules.

    On the subjectivity of spam, I disagree here, too.

    An example of absolute spam is the screen shot I included in my post from Mark's site.

    I've enlarged the area where keyword stuffing is taking place on that page:

    <img src="http://www.affiliatetip.com/keyword-stuffing.jpg">

    Given that example, I don't think there is any ambiguity. It's spam and it serves no function other than to trick the search engines.

    "People like Shawn" don't do this sort of thing.</img>
 

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  • Doing Your Thing

    June 6, 2007 at 3:53 pm

    [...] subscribe to the RSS feed or email alerts. Thanks for visiting!I listened to Affiliate Thing with Shawn Collins and ...

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