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.