I like to keep a fairly professional and level head when I am discussing various issues on this blog but unfortunately I have just listened to the pre-recording that Shoemoney did with Rand Fiskin about full disclosure when blogging, and quite honestly whilst I empathise with some of the points both made, I think in many ways both are missing at least a few vital points.
Read more on Blogging Full Disclosure Debacle – Grow Some Brass Ones…
If an affiliate created a blog and fed a datafeed to that blog, a large proportion of the blogosphere would regard that blog as a splog, especially if it was on blogspot.
How many people are using Twitter for more than saying what they just ate or where friends can meet them? Lots of people are certainly using Twitter to express their ideas, and often link to blog posts that are related to their business, or opinion.
Twitter is thus being used for WOMM (Word of Mouth Marketing), and should be subject to the same ethics rules and recommendations as blogging. (note: I am not a lawyer)
I came across an interesting piece on the WOMMA blog that unfortunately falls well short of what you would expect from such an organisation.
As always I am not a lawyer, and this is just for entertainment purposes. I am sure WOMMA have some lawyers though, so they really should take a lot more care with what they state and how they state it.
Read more on WOMMA Should Watch Who They Quote And Especially Who They Link To!…
There are a number of fatal, hypocritical or naive flaws in almost every attack on paid posts by A list bloggers and it is time to show them their Achilles heel(s).
Read more on A List Bloggers in Crystal Palaces Shouldn’t Throw Stones…
PayPerPost’s Ted Murphy sent an email to Valleywag asking if they would be interested in doing paid posts. As would be expected the email was posted, and drew some criticism.
Read more on Is PayPerPost The Only Subject Nick Denton and Jason Calacanis Agree On?…
Lots of controversy over V7N and their new contextual links program.
I watched this video last night… slept on it, and listened to it again today.
This video was originally posted on the Google Adsense blog, and the presenter is Laura from Adsense Support.
Now I should point out that Google have been very clear in their wording with all the recent correspondence relating to Adsense changes, which in some ways makes this even more extraordinary.
The interesting bit in regard to financial declarations starts 1min:30 from the start.
It should be noted that this wasn't recorded live, as you can see from the out-takes at the end, is in response to
It is five years, almost to the day that Yahoo started charging $299 per year for a listing in their directory as this article on Pandia clearly illustrates.
The main benefit of being in the Yahoo directory isn’t traffic, it is pagerank / trustrank. Who actually uses the Yahoo directory for anything other than listing their own sites?
It is many years since I went to Yahoo to lookup an entry for anything other than a competitor in a niche.
I have been offline for a few days, so time to play catchup.
Techcrunch and Pay Per Post seem to have a love/hate relationship. Who will Techcrunch write about now that Pay Per Post with their requirement of disclosure can no longer be pinpointed.
I was honestly so caught up in other things over the last 36 hours, I totally missed this and it is highly relevant to my Disclosure Policy Plugin.
I am not a lawyer, thus any interpretation of the situation I am going to leave in the hands of lawyers who I have a great deal of respect for, and who themselves are involved in the internet marketing field.
The site is live, the plugin available for download.
I’m exhausted…
There are still a lot of things that need tweaking on the site before I promote it but thought I would at least mention it here before hitting the sack.
Read more on Disclosure Policy Wordpress Plugin Now Available…
Here are some more links discussing the use of NoFollow for SEO purposes.
Seo Blog has a solid overview of how each search engine treats nofollow.
I am not sure the final conclusion regarding Yahoo and treating nofollow for ranking purposes is correct. I know many people who have done well with blog comments with Yahoo search, even on blogs using nofollow. I haven’t got any recent data.
Michael Arrinton has made quite an outburst regarding DisclosurePolicy.org, but I think he might be slightly blinkered in his analysis.
A disclosure policy is a much better option for a site that features affiliate links, or is Michael looking to encourage commission stealing?
Read more on Techcrunch and Disclosure Policy (picking straws)…
Payperpost have launched a new site DisclosurePolicy.org, which features a very simple disclosure policy generator.
They provide you with a series of example phrases which you select, and eventually generate a final Disclosure Policy.
FTC Fake Bait & Disclosure