Looks like Neil is doing an OK job so far of increasing the search traffic to Calacanis.com over the past two weeks. He's only been able to push about 10% of the changes he wants to do to the Blogsmith software (the amazing software my blog runs off of--and that we sold to AOL) and my blog, but the results are solid so far: a 21% increase according to Niel.

Now, we don't know that this result is:

a) sustainable
b) because of the changes he made

I could be going up because Google likes my site more because so many folks have been linking to me in the past month. The Fatblogging.com (TM) movement and the payperpost wackos have both sent me hundreds of links during the same time period. Thoughts on this Neil?

That being said, I think Neil will be able to increase my traffic when he does all of his changes, and my position has always been that ALTHOUGH SEO can work in the short term it is NOT a good long-term strategy. The best long term strategy is to just make great content in my mind--BUT I COULD BE WRONG.

All of these changes Neil makes would have cost me $10-20,000 in consulting fees with an SEO firm from what I understand (correct me here if I am wrong), and these kind of changes do NOTHING for the reputation of you site. They get you a quick, free hit of traffic.

If you're a site owner I still maintain you're better off putting that $10-20k into hiring a great writer to do original research, video, audio, photos, services, etc. to help people.

All that being said.... I must admit that the SEO crack hit feels good. I can't wait to smoke the rest of Neil's SEO crack and watch my stats go through the roof for things like HIIT training and HDMI cables--of course, it makes me feel very, very dirty.

Neil: You said you would explain the changes... would you do a followup post about the two or three changes you made and why they worked? Also, I'd love to hear Google, Ask, Yahoo and Microsoft search folks comment on what we're doing.

This is an important discussion for our industry and I thank Neil for taking the time to explain his changes and educate me. Also, thanks for the Blogsmith team--Gavin, Alex, and Brian--for helping out. Side note/Plug: Alex and Gavin has an amazing side project called Emurse.com that I'm hoping they ask me to join the board of if they ever blow it out.

I still check the traffic stats on the Weblogs, Inc. blogs and I was shocked to see this massive spike at Autoblog.... way to go AOL Autos and Autoblog!

It seems from all the posts that Microsoft made a huge blunder by trying to pay folks off with free Ferrari laptops running Vista. Everyone in the blogosphere is trying to figure this out, but Peter, Brian and I figured it out day one at Weblogs, Inc: WE DO NOT ACCEPT BRIBES. Period, end of story. You want to be respected you pay your own way in life, and you don't take payola. That's it, there is nothing to discuss.

Any free product or service is a bribe, with very few exceptions. It's wrong, and bloggers are simply new to the space and they don't know what to make of this very, very obvious situation. I don't blame bloggers, for most this is their first time as "media people," and their going to make mistakes and learn things the hard way. The bloggers who go down the road of free products will learn, over time, that their credibility takes a hit. In some cases folks might get away with it, but in the long term most folks will get caught and their reputations will suffer.

At the end of the day your reputation is all you have, and life is too short to blow it on some free stuff. As I told my team, better we stay in $99 a night motels and fly coach than take people's money for a junket and have people think we're in their pocket (note: Microsoft likes to fly bloggers around as well--something I think is low rent as well).

Nice people make mistakes all the time. PayPerPost was a horrible, evil, and stupid idea by what seems to be a naive group of kids (at least by their really silly and self-absorbed reality show). On a side note, if I was their VC's and they wasted my money--and their time--on doing a reality show I would kill them. Literally.

The PayPerPost folks got their beat up by bloggers, Google, and the FTC before it finally sunk in: covert marketing is very, very bad. Nobody likes to be deceived. So, nice people I'm sure, but really, really clueless and it took a lot for them to finally require basic disclosure (note: I think their disclosure policy is still a joke. I think they should be forced to put "This is a paid post" at the top of every single post. However, I'm not going to give them any more attention because it's very obvious that they are going to fail based on the low-rent advertisers and unknown bloggers they are drawing to their site).

So, I give the PayPerPost folks no credit--zero--for getting to the ethical baseline we all live our lives by (i.e. not lying to people). PayPerPost has stopped pissing in our well, forgive me if I don't say thank you.

Anyway, back to receiving free products. Free products are not cool, except in very few circumstances where the product has little value and can't be returned (i.e. a free movie screening, but not a free vacation). For items with real value, like say a $3,000 laptop, you only need to look at the New York Times code of ethics to know what to do:

• Returning Borrowed Equipment
  76. Staff members who borrow equipment, vehicles or other goods for evaluation or review must return them as soon as possible. Similarly, items borrowed to be photographed, such as fashion apparel or home furnishings, should be returned promptly.

There you have it folks. You don't accept free products, and if you need a product for review you give it back as quick as you can. If for some reason they don't accept it back you can give it away (but not to your spouse or something).



Note: For the idiots who say "you paid bloggers to post, why are you complaining that PayPerPost is paying people" let me explain one last time so your very, very small brains can have a chance of understanding this: we paid people to blog but didn't tell them what to blog about. That is called church and state, or the Chinese Wall, in journalism, and it referrers to the fact that editorial and advertising are completely separate. Yes, we paid people to blog on Engadget and TVSquad, but we never tell them what to blog or how to do. That is the difference between PayPerPost and real journalism or ethical blogging. At PayPerPost you HAVE TO blog about the thing they are telling you to blog about, and in most cases you have to say something positive (hello!??!).

Did a quick podcast last night to talk about how I'm feeling. I've got a bad cold, so excuse my coughing/hacking.

CalacanisCast Beta Four... MP3 file.

If you want to subscribe go into iTunes and hit "Advanced -- Subscribe to Podcast" add this feed:

http://podcast.calacanis.com/rss.xml

Pete Wright of PayPerPost tries to defend the covert and deceptive marketing platform he is building at PayPerPost on his blog. I respond in his comments, but also wanted to post my thoughts here as well.

So folks ask me why I care and why I take such offense to people doing covert and deceptive marketing on blogs. There are a couple of reasons:

1. I love the blogosphere and everything it stands for. I love, love, love the transparency, authenticity, honesty, and passion found on blogs. It's unique in the media landscape, and as someone who's fallen in love with it and helped it grow, I feel the need to defend it from the forces of evil.

2. You have to stop cancer quickly or it spreads. Too many smart folks I know look at things like PayPerPost and say to me "oh, those losers are never going to get anywhere... why waste your time." A couple of folks I know are not going to blog about it because they are friendly with the VCs and don't want to ruin their relationships. Well, PayPerPost has raised millions of dollars from a very big name: Tim Draper. That validates them big time. They can walk into advertising agencies and brand managers offices based on Tim's name. Now, I think most marketers will laugh them right out of town, but if no one speaks up and Tim's voting for this service with his very large checkbook then these guys might get some traction. They get traction WITH THEIR CURRENT MODEL and they undermine the blogsophere. (NOTE: I'm hoping they take a stand against covert marketing and change their current "market forces" excuse).

I have to ask Tim Draper: how can you endorse deceptive marketing? This isn't the TD I know... I know you're "just and investor" and it's "the entrepreneur's company" (and all those other lame VC excuses), but you gotta step up to the plate and tell us if you condone deceptive marketing. Do you?!?!

Side Note: I'd really love to hear what smart folks like Seth Godin, Fred Wilson, Adam Curry, Mark Cuban, Esther Dyson, John Battelle, Cory Doctorow, Xeni Jardin, Rafat Ali, Joseph Jaffe, Brian Alvey, Kevin Rose, Tim O'Reilly, Doc Searls, Jeff Jarvis, Steve Rubel, Dan Gillmor, and Nick Denton think of covert marketing coming to the blogosphere. Heck, I'd even love to hear what Valleywag has to say! :)

----------------------------

Some quick corrections to your post.

You say: "If you go to Jason's site, you'll find, as I just did, that he 'recommends' no less than 10 products/companies on the side bar of his blog."

My response: I get paid NOTHING for those recommendations. I do them to share with my questions, comments, and concerns with my friends.

There is nothing COVERT about what I'm doing there. What PayPerPost does is enable folks to get paid for doing COVERT marketing.

No one likes to be tricked or deceived--do you?


You said: That's including the 'powered by' link, and not including the HUGE props to Netscape Video, which of course he has a financial interest in.

My response: The syndicated headlines from Netscape are voted up by users. That has nothing to do with the issue at hand. There is nothing DECEPTIVE about linking to the top 10 headlines on digg, NYTimes, Engadget, Boingboing, etc.


You said: Now, as for having 'nothing to gain' by going after PayPerPost, just wander over to Weblogs Inc and click on Marketers More Info. Now Weblogs Inc...

My response: I just looked at the sad, sad advertisers using PayPerPost. We don't sell ads to losers like this. We sell ads to the top 100 advertisers on the Internet. PayPerPosts link farm and covert marketing tools will NEVER put a dent into high-end display advertising. Advertisers like Apple, Microsoft, etc. are not so desperate that they have to pay for people to blog about them-far from it in fact. As far as I'm concerned PayPerPost can keep their loser advertising base. I don't want to-and would never--work with that level of covert marketer.


You said: WebLogs Inc markets products through blogs, so does PayPerPost. Difference? We're cheaper.

My response: No, the difference is that we don't allow deceptive advertising and you do.

All advertisement are clearly labeled as advertisements on our blogs. PayPerPost on the other hand creates the marketplace that allows people to get paid for DECEIVING their audience.

No one likes to be deceived--do you?


You said: We're a marketplace - we put advertisers in touch with bloggers. How is that deceptive?

My response: It is deceptive because you don't have any controls in your marketplace to fight deception. Google forces advertisers to carry the "Ads by Google" line for a reason. The NYTimes, Boingboing, Federated Media, Gawker, and WeblogsInc (and just about anyone with any level of integrity in this business) put systems in place to prevent COVERT and DECEPTIVE marketing. We ban advertisers who do bad things-not enable and profit from them like PayPerPost does.

You guys are making a choice to allow covert marketing. You could say on the site today that:

a) all paid posts must start with a note explaining that they are paid

and

b) be transparent on your site about the bloggers, blogs, blog posts, advertisers, and ad campaigns that are involved.

You are not doing this because we both know that you would have no advertisers left if you did.

The bottom line is that people chose their lot in life. You guys have taken the low road and you are falling back on the very lame excuse of "market forces" to determine your ethics.

You guys know in your hearts that deceptive marketing is, in fact, evil. I know there is some god in you--I can sense it. Take the high road. Sure, it's not as easy to be one of the good guys, but you will sleep better at night and you will get much further.

Ten years from now do you want to be remembered as the place were covert marketers got their claws into the blogosphere and undermined the integrity of good bloggers everywhere? Well, in the .0001% chance you succeed at what you're doing that will be the result-people will lose their faith in blogs. We spent years creating the blogosphere and educating the market of the value blogs-I'm not going to let you walk in here and destroy years of work.

You guys need to take a company retreat and think about what you want to be in life: evil, covert marketers or innovative participants in the blogosphere.

Right now you're a cancer.

I just spent an hour on other people's blogs commenting about their reactions to my PayPerPost thoughts. It hard to have the argument when folks who are getting paid by PayPerPost are doing it out of financial hardship, but I will try.

The key issue here is one of deception. PayPerPost is currently a platform for marketers to do covert and deceptive marketing. Now, you can disclose you are using the platform, but no advertiser has to date (at least according the founders who wouldn't list ONE advertiser during their interview with Mike Arrington on TalkCrunch).

The fact is no one in the world--NO ONE--wants to be covertly marketed to. Add to that the fact that PayPerPost enables people you consider your friends--or who you thought were your friends--to covertly market to you for profit. That's really evil in my book.

The fact that the investors and founders of PayPerPost will not take a stand against deceptive marketing shows what a horrible idea this is. They could easily make their process transparent. If they are so proud of what they've created (and invested in) why not list every advertiser, advertising campaign, participating blogger, and their blog posts on the PayPerPost site? I think you know the answer to that question: they would lose 99% of their advertisers. What advertiser wants to look so desperate that they have to PAY PEOPLE to COVERTLY write about them.

The best products and services in the world get written about because.. ummmm... they are the best products and services in the world. What about the average and bad products in the world you ask? Well, they either get better or they go away. No amount of marketing--covert or transparent--is gonna make people think a bad product is good.

Now, I wouldn't have half the problem--in fact I would have not problem--with PayPerPost if they did the following:

1. Made a transparent marketplace as I've described above.

2. Forced bloggers to start each PAID post with a disclaimer saying "I've been paid to write the following blog post by INSERT-ADVERTISER-NAME-HERE as part of a PayPerPost campaign. For more information on PPP and this advertiser click here."

Until PayPerPost takes a stand on deception and disclosure they, their bloggers, their investors, and their advertisers should be ostracized by the blogosphere. We should out the covert advertisers and bloggers and explain to them the mistake they are making.

I'm all for innovation in advertising and blogging, but I'm 100% against deception.

We didn't build the blogosphere to be a playground for deceptive marketers. We built the blogosphere as a place for people to share their thoughts honestly and transparently. We built it as an alternative to the shortcomings of the one-way nature of MSM (mainstream media). In fact, the currency of blogging is authenticity, and for my money the opposite of authenticity is deception.

Hold the line everyone... we're better than this and we should not give up this beautiful city that we've built just so some VCs can make a quick buck. There is NOTHING innovative about deception.

---------------

PS - Are there any lawyers out there who can speak to the legal issues around covert and deceptive marketing in other mediums?

Update 1: Peter Wright, Director of Software Development for PPP, deflects the very serious issue in a comment below. Peter: Let's have a real dialogue about this--it's important.

Update 2: PayPerPost's desperate advertisers are already being outed. PayPerPost should just end this issue and force transparency on their system. Will their system work with transparency? Well, the current advertisers--the ones who many folks think are doing it to game Google and Technorati--will run for the hills. As many folks are saying, $10 for an inbound link is $150/$250 less than SEO companies charge. PPP would have to do a LOT of hard work to make their model work transparently... however, I know exactly how to do it.

I've been begging various product managers to start blogs at AOL, and many have started. Some folks I talk to at AOL--and other companies--tell me they don't have the time to blog.
Great point about blogging every day Ryan. It's true, you need to be out there on a regular basis.

Here is what I say to product folks who tell me they don't have the time to blog:

If you are in the Internet industry and you don't have time to blog about your product then you should quit. Go home, give up, and find another career. Your competitors are blogging about their products and talking to the market, and there is no way to compete if you don't engage the discussion. So, by not blogging you basically are giving up and telling the market that you don't care. That's the honest truth.

Blog or die!

You can't compete in the web-development space without a blog any more. Period, end of story.

Awwwww... this is nice! Someone made a list of the top 10 CEO blogs and I'm on it.

The funny part is that I'm pretty good friends with six of the other nine people on the list--and have been since *before* we all started blogging. What does that say? I think it says either that a) I know a lot of folks or b) that certain folks are primed for blogging. Certainly Craig and Mark are.

We've started our first local blog... BloggingOhio.com. It's a work in progress, but I think it could be the start of something big.

Someone is writing a story about comment spam... they asked me some questions, and as I normally do here are the answers to their questions:

> - Could you tell me more about the experience of dealing with a spam
> deluge, forcing you to shut down comments. When did this happen, how
> often did this happen?

It's happen like twice in our two year history. Floods of spams come in, we shut down for a couple of hours and block the IPs/emails, flush out the trash, and the bastards go away.

It's not a big deal.

> - Also, does spam affect the business of blogging in actual $$$. You
> mentioned that you have developed technology to combat spam, that
> doesn't come free. Can you share anything in terms of economical,
> financial impact?

Zero financial impact. Comment spam is a non issue for us since we, unlike MoveableType, built Blogsmith (our blog software platform) with advanced comment spam protection.

As I mentioned, the only spam that can really get through our defenses are the ones that are hand rolled by a person, and we catch most of those.

> - Would you compare this blog spam and trackback spam to the world of
> e-mail, where spam fighting has become normal and also a normal expense?

It's not a major expense.

You're making it into this major problem. If you have the right software and you put in simple rules it's not a major issue. The problem is the software makers, combined with blog owners, have not done a horrible good with their software. If you put in simple controls the problem goes away. Folks just don't install the tools to block comment spam.

-- Looks like the WSJ does link to blogs directly... sometimes.
-- Lost was great the other night... Dave agrees. Collective unconscious anyone?
-- Looks like the trolls have taken over Wikipedia. I've been trying to take a hate/stalker site out of Xeni's bio with no luck. The criticism sections of wikipedia pages are the new slander sections... things that are totally insignificant are being included for folks on the same level as important stuff. The wisdom of the masses my ass.
-- Looks like we picked the right verticals to go after. Well, duh?
-- XBOX 360 press conference!

Seth replies to my "Newsvine/Squidoo doing the MLM thing" post.

Seth says "Neal is correct. This isn't MLM, not by any definition (not that there's anything wrong with that.) You are entitled to your opinion, whether I like it or not, but your facts are wrong."

Squidoo's email offers:

"2. Refer a friend, get $5. When someone you've referred earns her first $15, you and she BOTH get an extra $5. Find out more here: http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/refer"

Wikipedia defines MLM as:

"In a typical multi-level marketing or network marketing arrangement, individuals associate with a parent company as an independent contractor and are compensated based on their sales of products or service (as well as the sales achieved by those they bring into the business).

I rest my case.

Seth does say he doesn't have a problem with MLM, so I'm not trying to pull a "gotch," nor can I. I'm just saying I don't like the talent that MLM programs draw.

Being the brilliant marketing maven Seth is I'm sure he loves MLM stuff (of course Seth is the same guy who defended the Buzz companies who's contractors were involved in deception back when).

As a publisher I *hate* MLM programs (schemes) because they draw the wacky people of the world. I'm all about the long tail, we based our business on it, however you get way down that tail and things can get really scary. There are a lot of freaks at the end of the long tail. The best producers don't need to play MLM games because they can command straight up fees. Why would they produce stuff for contingent/MLM compensation? I don't see it. In fact, Seth had a post yesterday about folks not being motivated by money.

Seth gives a couple of Squidoo sites saying "There is nothing on gizmodo or about like this, is there?"

http://www.squidoo.com/teajunkie/
http://www.squidoo.com/reymysterio/
http://www.squidoo.com/moleskines/

Nope, you won't find niche blogs/publications about one brand of notepad or individual wrestlers. However I'm sure there are some solid tea publications out there (anyone know the leading tea pubs?).

The problem with hyper-niche pubs is that they don't change enough and the readers don't need them often enough. Now, I'm sure Squidoo can make a nice business out of getting tens of thousands of people to make hundreds of thousands of these--provided that they are indexed well into the Google. However, it is doubtful that these tiny pubs will ever make any serious money for the folks who build them. Of course, the folks building these are doing it out of passion in large part (I guess).

I'm fascinated by Squidoo, it's a great mashup of a bunch of models (Wikipedia, About.com, Webogs, Inc)... I'm just don't think MLM stuff will work.

Update: Hugh's take on all this:

I targeted three people to blog for us when we started WIN: Peter Rojas, Malcolm Gladwell, and Elizabeth Spiers. Peter signed up, Gladwell wasn't into blogging (at the time), and Spiers told me she was done with blogging. She made the Gawker brand before disappeared at New York Magazine for a while . Then she doubled MediaBistro's traffic *instantly* with her FishBowl series of blogs (you can check the Alexa charts on that one).

Now she's about to launch her own Weblogs, Inc/Gawker.. the first blog is called DealBreaker and IWantMedia interviews her about it today. In the interview she calls out Denton's publishing philosphy: "Turn up the level of harshness and make it meaner, and people will pay more attention."

Anway, if I could buy stock in a person I would buy EZSP... (insert Jim Cramer's back-up the truck sound from Mad Money).

I can't say I blame him... blogging is a grind and it takes over your life. In some cases it even becomes your life.

Burn out is, of course, an issue too. Dave blogs everything, and I'm sure as a result of that a significant portion of his communication occurs via his blog. This can get very alienating over time. Fred and I spend more time blogging together than we do hanging out. We got to hang out at eTech, and it's much better to hang in person.

On top of all this is the undeniable fact that blogging is at it's best when there is conflict. Debating on blogs is just so effective in terms of moving ideas forward and drawing people into the discussion. Of course, you can easily get caught into this trap of only blogging when you feel strongly about something--it's polarizing for sure. Heck, I have to remind myself to throw in five non-aggressive posts for every passionate one I do.

I encourage folks to use the "say it to my face" rule when they post, or place a comment. You simply ask yourself "would I say this to the person in public and to their face?" If you can't answer that question instantly with a yes you should hold off on hitting the publish button.

The best moment in the history blogging was Mena Trott, from SixApart, giving a passionate speech calling for civility in blogging. During the talk she goes postal on someone on the backchannel, calling them an a-hole to their face and saying "what the f$%k!?!?!" Ahhh.... the irony. Mena really sweet of course, but she proved the point that blogging is about mixing it up not civility. A recap here.

Did a fun interview with Ewan Spence at BarCampLA Sunday.