I knew something had to be wrong with the “deal” I talked about in this post here. I just KNEW it!

Well, the other day, the other shoe dropped over on ABestWeb. Seems that they just weren’t satisfied with having that content on only the sites they paid to have it on!

So they stole it.

And then offered it out “free” to all their other affiliates.

Now, obviously, that’s lowdown and rot. But it’s also probably the STUPIDEST most idiotic move I’ve seen in ages!!! What’s stupid about it? Oh where do I start?!?

1. The type of affiliate links they have don’t pass any page rank. Having more of them will STILL not pass Page Rank. So their apparent desire to improve SEO value remains unsatisfied.

2. It’d be duplicate content. Know what Google does when it spots that? IGNORES IT. Which does not mean “they’ll miss it.” It means, “they will only list one version of it in any remotely findable position.”

2a. If the merchant doesn’t have the highest PR, one of the sites that’ll be booted for dup content will most likely be THEIRS!

3. Their name is now MUD! Affiliates demanded their content removed, or else. (Which it then was.) Then their affiliate management service quit in protest of the theft (and to keep affiliates willing to work with their other clients). And, their affected affiliates are GONE. There’s also now a thread on ABW that’ll come jumping right up into the face of anyone who searches on that merchant name.

3a. That merchant was doing a branding campaign, which will probably be shifted to a different branding campaign now. What happens from a branding campaign? People search on the merchant’s name! See last line of above. What those searchers are going to see, is that that company is a content-stealing, copyright infringing, bunch of no goods. That oughtta convert reeaallll well. Not.

I’m glad my fish-o-meter went off when I saw that deal. I would have just had to buy a domain name to come up with a “qualifying site” and make a profit…but something told me not to do it. Now I’m glad I didn’t. The last thing I would have needed would have been to see copies of my pitch all over my competitor’s sites!

Now I’m just waiting for when that merchant realizes it doesn’t want to fork up those 50 bucks-es and starts reversing. Many people on boards would show a popcorn icon now (getting ready to watch the show)–but I think a big stick of marshmallows is more appropriate. There’s going to be a hell of a bonfire.

WordPress has announced another release candidate. Usually I think they do too many updates, and I ignore most of them, but this time I think it could be worthwhile.

They don’t say they’re going to do anything different with the reader’s side, but the backend screenshots look like they’ve improved a lot of the admin-side. First, it appears that they’ve stopped using the Dashboard as their personal free ad space! And they’ve de-uglified it, too! Yay!! (Whoever thought that grid of ugly gray squares was a good idea for the last version’s dashboard had better not go into the decorating business…)

The new write screen only displays the information that you’ll use most often. (…) Additional options are hidden away…

The quoted aspect is one of those “MAYBE it’s good, but it COULD really suck” kinds of things. What one person considers “simplified,” another will consider “they hid all the stuff I use all the time, and made it into a real PITA!” So–time will tell whether I think it’s simpler, or if I end up finding that what *I* use has been buried under 10,000 “more–>” screens.

The one thing I know just from the screenshots is that they’ve switched to wussy, pastel colors. Blargh!! Fortunately, they say the old color scheme is also selectable.

Check out their announcement of the WordPress v 2.5 Release Candidate at their blog, and if you’re the beta-ing type, download it and give it a test before the release to the general public!

Current Mood: Erm…

Yesterday, I saw an offer from a merchant that’s really lucrative for affiliates. But, since his specs aren’t something that fits me, I can go ahead and say my real opinion of it…

He’s smoking something.

Not the guy that they stuck into publicizing the offer, but the actual merchant. See, this merchant is paying $50 for ONE PAGE of boring info-content dreck. Er…I mean, a “content rich” page on either a content site or a site that’s dedicated to promoting his category of stuff. And, the site must be on its own domain, or “loved by the search engines” (or very similar wording), too.

Clearly this merchant is after branding:

The merchant knows this kind of a page is nothing but a branding page, hence the $50. But since he’s making this offer to affiliates, he’s also promising double commissions! So what’s wrong with that? 2×0 = 0, that’s what. If they want to make any commissions, they’d better put a real sales page up. If affiliates just wait for the branding effect to kick in, their cookies will be long expired!

So what’s “smoking something” about this merchant’s plan? He seems to want branding and possibly a pop in his own search ranks. But:

1. Branding Takes Ages.
It could be months before he sees an increase in type-ins.

2. Branding takes a LOT of exposure, over a long period of time, before anything happens!!!

As in hundreds of sites of exposure. At $50 a pop, that’s going to get damned expensive. I’m sure they’d say they were rich enough to afford it. But from what I’ve read in the Wall St. Journal, NO company is “rich enough” to keep wasting money. Financial inefficiency adds up!

3. He’s paying WAY too much. Doesn’t he know he can get people to post for way less? Granted, 90% of those aren’t “loved by the search engines.” But not banned is good enough, as long as they’re getting some traffic.

4. He isn’t getting any SEO value from those “SE loved” sites he’s after: Affiliate links go through the network’s server before redirecting to the merchant–leaving the Googlebot on the other side! Check the robots.txt at the affiliate network. Usually bots are banned from their redirectors.

So, I pronounce his plan to be made of lose.

Still, it’s worth $50 to anyone willing to put a page of not-salesy-enough c*ntent on their site, so if you’re interested in parting that merchant from his money, leave a comment to that effect, and I’ll drop ya a link to the forum where they’ve got their affiliate manager peddling this. There’s probably a deadline, so look at the date on this post first. (If it’s a year later, I’m not going to try to refind that link.)

Current Mood: Cool

Just tested the TV after leaving it off for 3 days. It works! So, at least that isn’t shot.

(See previous post to find out what *that* was about…)

Current Mood: Angry

Two years ago, at a cost of $17,000, we had a new roof put on by Roof-Rite. Obviously, this wasn’t just a tear-off…there was a lot of rotten wood replaced, and the roof ended up being completely replaced along with it. At first, it was fine…the rain finally rolled off the roof instead of through it!

And this year, when it finally warmed up, the snow was melting off the roof…

And then last Friday, to our utter dismay, a big bunch of snowmelt came THROUGH IT like it used to!!! On top of that, it went through INTO THE TV. Now. It’s bad enough that I had to invest in a fricking TV in the first place. I may have even mentioned how I hate TV! So obviously I didn’t buy the thing for ME… My mother, however, loves the brain-destroying machine and has been pouting ever since the box turned to static.

So if it doesn’t go on now that it’s had a chance to dry up, it’ll mean buying another TV.

Needless to say, she called the roofing company and had their guy come out. But they DIDN’T FIX IT–instead, they claim that it’s some kind of problem with the masonry in the chimney. Which has indeed come to end-of-life…BUT, the claim that it would make a ROOF leak is a rather dubious proposition IMO.

And they made several other excuses and WILD, WILD scenarios that it sounds like just more BS. For instance, he said that maybe a kid got up on our roof and poured a bucket of water down the chimney! At 2:15AM. Without making any noise (yet you can hear a CHIPMUNK run across this roof!). And without tripping on the saplings around the house. And, somehow this “bucketful of water” miraculously warped out of the chimney and ended up coming through the roof!!! LOLOL if it wasn’t for the cost involved, it’d be both funny and pathetic. But at $17,000, it’s just pathetic.

So we’re going to get a mason’s opinion.

I can’t say for sure that Roof-Rite sucks or are crooks who aren’t honoring a valid warranty claim YET, but that’s the way I’m betting unless the mason says otherwise.

For the record, this Roof-Rite roofer serves the areas of: Commerce Township, West Bloomfield, Milford, Novi, Pontiac, Farmington Hills, and the rest of Southeast Michigan.

Current Mood: Ecstatic

I knew he was up to things! And I’m SURE this is just the tip of the iceberg!

Spitzer hired whores!

The better question is, where did he get the money to pay for these super-high-priced prostitutes? Did he really spend something like 1/8th or more of his yearly Governor’s salary for ONE DAY with a 5-diamond practitioner?

Or did he divert the funds from the public treasury~?

I’m betting on Option #2. These holier-than-thou types who like to attack others with the law-hammer always think the law somehow doesn’t pertain to them.

His prostitute-hiring is a gleeful revelation in itself. I’ve never been able to stand this guy even though I’m states away. Just reading about his antics always made my blood boil. He’s nothing more than a jealous ass and used his time as NY’s Attorney General to twist the law in order to invent “violations” against successful businesses and individuals who WERE abiding by the real law. In one case, the NY Legislature actually said outright that they had intentionally worded a law to ALLOW acts which Spitzer was claiming were prohibited by it.

Burn, baby, BURN.

Update: BURNT! The scum has resigned!

Where’s my “Oh Good Grief” icon?! I seem to have left it somewhere.
Anyway. Mood: *Rolling Eyes* Oh Good Grief.

My mother’s computer just started popping off. She calls up to me whining that it’s making a long series of beeps, but then goes to a black screen.

Immediately when she described the beeps, I think “Stuck Key Error.” But this odd black screen doesn’t say that. When I get there and take a look, it says something like:

Error with Drive A.

I then spend the next 15 minutes trying to make it skip Drive A (the floppy drive) on startup. It won’t accept my commands. I’m starting to get irked… To avoid blatantly staring at the ceiling, which I often do when a machine is making no damned sense, I look down at the keyboard.

And then what do I see…

You guessed it. A stuck key.

I unstick the stupid key, and put in the command to exit setup without saving changes.

Sure enough–computer’s fine. Nothing’s wrong with the floppy drive.

Gah…

Current Mood: Erm… & Playful

Today I decided to look over some items at a wholesaler, since I need to do some restocking. And amazingly, they have an item that actually matches what I’ve been getting quite a few searches for! I realized that since that industry is affected by certain fashion aspects, that they actually update their offerings by the season. And, it’s about to be spring, so stands to reason that all the new stuff would be available now so retailers can start flogging it, right?

Wronggg!!

Apparently they think the particular colors in question are fall colors, or at least summer colors, because they’re not going to actually HAVE the things until JUNE!! Argh…

And never mind that similarly subdued colors, in a different pattern that won’t get half as much customer interest, will be available in March. As in, probably in a few days from now.

Wholesalers: Denizens of their own little worlds.