Shady Warcraft Marketing

I honestly hope this becomes my most popular post to date. It seems that there are people out there that are trying to dupe their readers just to make a buck. This just sickens me.

I was recently reading a post from the Greedy Goblin that bothered me enough that I had to write this article. It seems that Marcko from Just My 2 Copper has been trying to market his gold guide in some pretty shady ways. He has a few other tidbits of filth, such is fake donation causes.


Quoted from Gevlon's article:

Here’s how you could sell the guide and not put up a single ad: Create a post about gold guides and how you hate them. Give examples of guides and then at the very end start talking about my gold guide and use my blog as credibility for the guide. Perhaps you can mention that this guide is the only one you will even consider tolerating. Leave a link to the 20kleveling.com site with your clickbank hoplink encrypted inside of it.

I can guarantee that if you did this you would make $500-$1000 the first day it was posted. You’d maintain your ‘street credibility’ and at the same time make some great money. What’s more that post will continue making you money for as long as it exists because it will always have traffic hitting it and users clicking on the link. Just think about it, if you need help setting up the clickbank id and the link let me know.

Markco

PS: If you don’t want to do I won’t bother you any more with my sales pitches. I don’t mean to disturb you, I honestly want to open your eyes to the power of affiliate marketing online and reward you for your work on greedygoblin.blogspot.com.

You shouldn't have to try and trick people to go to your website or buy your product. How can anyone even ask for an endorsement like that?

It continues with another message after Gevlon turned him down.

You completely misunderstood my email. I don’t want you to ‘risk being caught’, I want you to honestly and truthfully advertise the guide on your blog. Let’s say you put a 100x100 ad next to your subscription box. That alone would make you money, and you wouldn’t have to lift a finger as the money rolled in every single day. You wouldn’t even have to write a post! What’s more it wouldn’t upset the page balance of your site in the least (there is just white space to the right of the subscription box currently).

I have a salary that most 24 year olds won’t see till they hit 30, there’s no reason to be snide with me and brag about your day job. Not to mention the internet marketing campaigns I run that go well and beyond world of warcraft. We both write blogs for the fun of it, why not make some FREE money on the side?

You think your readers will really care about a small 100x100 ad next to your subscription box? Are you that scared? When are you going to wake up and say “Hey, I could of made another $30,000 this year if I’d put that 100x100 ad up.” If you’re so wealthy that you look at a FREE $30,000 and think it’s not worth putting up an ad in white space at the bottom of your page then I’m stunned.

Tobold was just as stubborn as you, and he made the same argument with his ‘day job being amazing.’ You both act as if your readers are going to hang you for putting up an ad. NEWS FLASH: They might complain, but they are on your site for your unique information which they can’t get anywhere else… they aren’t leaving over a small 100x100 ad!!!

Now please, don’t respond with an e-thug one liner. I’m not a child and I expect you to act like an adult. Or you could just put an ad up and make that every week for the rest of your life with no cost to your time.

Honestly and Truthfully? Didn't he just get done asking for a shady/tricky endorsement? This just bothers me. This is a person who completely disrespects the readers of any of these blogs, much less his own. I understand affiliate marketing, but doing it in such a shady way is just wrong. If you honestly want to make money from your website and from your ideas, at least be honest about it. "We both write blogs for the fun of it" MY @$$!
The story continues:

Posted at Blog Azeroth

Hello there I'm new to these boards but I have run a successful blog for 8 months called

(removed by Triv)

Recently I've gotten into online marketing and have been tremendously successful thus far.

I'd like to share with you a quick list of ways you can make money with your blog and it

can even benefit your readers as well.

1. Use the built in adsense features for blogspot and wordpress. You can place links

between your posts on blogspot if you click the edit feature inside of your post body while

in the layout tab.

2. Create EHow.com articles which list your blog as a resource at the bottom of each

article. You'll get more traffic for your site and hopefully get some money on the side

from EHow advertising.

3. Sell wow related ebooks. I highly recommend my gold guide (sorry shameless plug here but it is a way to make money on your blog!). The guide is called (removed by Triv)

4. Create a forum for your users. I took this one step further and created a premium

membership as well as placed ads on the forum area for non premium members.

5. Write your own wow related ebook on clickbank.com and sell it on your blog.

6. Sell wow related books from amazon.com with their affiliate program.

7. Become a member of CJ.com (commission junction) and sell their products if they are related to your blog. These products are much bigger name companies than the single owner startup companies you'll find at clickbank.

8. Place a donation button on your blog in a prominent location and make sure you give a reason why your readers should donate. Just leaving the button there naked is a waste of space. If you're going to beg do it in style!

9. Sell t-shirts and other paraphenalia with sites like printmojo.com.

10. Get advertises for your blog or even individual posts. It takes some time fishing for these sources but once you get big enough they will sometimes just come to you. Charge them either once for a inside post advertisement or monthly for a permanent ad on the site.

My next blog will be about making money online, and you can view it here:
(removed by Triv)

I hope you found this information useful! Goodluck with your blogs

At first glance, his recommendations seem fairly sound. Read a little bit further and you'll find that he is tricking his readers into making a donation. If I take everything that I've seen him write in context, it only leads me to believe that he is completely disrespecting anybody who happens upon his page. Now I don't begrudge anybody trying to make money, but this is ridiculous and shameful. This is lacking ethics. How can he, in one post ask someone to join him on shaky ethical ground and the next deny it and try to then guilt them into doing it anyway?

How could I, or anyone else, plug a website like that? Just for the money? I may put advertising on this website in the future. However, at no time will I post anything as blatantly wrong as this. I will never ask for donations for fake causes. And, I will never endorse anything I don't believe in. I write this blog for the pleasure of writing it. I appreciate the readers and the feedback they give me. I cannot imagine ever disrespecting myself that much.

You'll notice that I haven't provided very many links in this blog and have removed several. I do this because I feel that the links to the sites are unneeded as his own words speak loudly enough. I'm sure if any of you want to visit them, you can find them via Google or from the link to Gevlons article. While I may not always agree with Gevlon, I say Kudos to you. Kudos as well to Tobold.

NOTE: Sassafrass from WowStability has retracted their endorsement article and has posted this article in it's stead. Sassafrass has assured me that the article was posted of their own volition and NOT in league with Markco in any sort of deal. I am taking Sassafrass' word on this and ask that you do as well.