This morning I wrote an article about Making money on the web using Ed Dale’s 30 day challenge, I partook a couple of years ago and will admit that in amongst the shite that Ed propogates I learned a few interesting things. My problem with the 30 day challenge is Ed spends too much time teaching stuff about browsers and other insignificant issues. Here is what I know works. PS I earn my income from the web directly and indirectly.
Making money on the web with Ed Dale’s 30 Day challenge is not as easy as it seems. You see making money on the web takes dedication. There are people that earn a living from the web using google ads and more but it seems to me that they are in the minority. I wonder whether the ROI on the time is worth it in most cases.I am going to break it down the the basics for you.
Ed Dale is teaching a new crop of spammers how to annoy you and me in his 30 day challenge.You can recognise their comments on your blog because they don’t use names. They use keywords like “Vegas slots” and “Car Insurance” to leave nonsensical comments on blogs. The only objective is to gain back links and thus rank on Google. Read more…
An anonymous commentor calles Sarah Smythe, I call her anonymous in the broadest sense which I will explain later, pointed me at Problogger and the article entitled Writing Good content. Now I could not disagree with Sarah about what good content is. I know good content is not neccesarily unique but what I do know is that Good content is not articles copied verbatim. That friends, romans and countrymen is outright plagiarism.
Now Sarah took offence at my article entitled Ed Dale’s 30 day challenge is not anti spam. I made an assumption that she misguidedly was defending Ed Dale because she uses the techniques he teaches. She failed to understand that this was not a broadside at Ed Dale but at the techniques he is teaching. I learned much from Ed Dale but was not very happy with a couple of things he teaches. I am not alone in these misgivings. 30 day challengers have been dumped from squidoo and other sites very unceremoniously for spamming the system.
I know that various social networking sites are not allowing posts from sites like Qassia and hub pages because of people using these sites to spam the social networking sites with commercial messages. Now many know that I have no objection to commercial messages. I am guilty of spreading commercial messages myself. In fact I have said often, Just because a message is commercial does not make it spam.
So back to the main thrust of this article what is good content. Good content is never plagiarised or copied verbatim. If you are going to refer to or quote another in your post do not copy the whole post, copying and quoting a portion of their post is permissable but only in the context of proving your own theories. For instance if I created a post like the following paragraph and that is my full and complete post.
Post starts here
Pro Blogger writes “Ultimately defining what is ‘good content’ is a subjective exercise (perhaps in a similar way to defining what is a ‘good book’ or a ‘good movie’) and so a post like this one is likely to cause a little debate as each person will define it differently depending upon their personality, their needs, the topic that they are talking about and perhaps even their ethics. Not only will bloggers themselves each have a different view on what is ‘good’ content - but readers tend to also. I know that every time I ask for feedback on ProBlogger and what I write more about I get a real spectrum of responses.”
Post Ends
A Post like this adds no value, sure I have attributed the original article to the original author, but what value have I added? Would you consider that good content? It fails in that it is not unique or even creative. Its straight forward copying and pasting. It is using Probloggers content to get traffic to your website without any redeeming features at all.
If on the other hand you wrote an article like the one you are reading and you used the ProBlogger quote to substantiate your theories, you have added value. Is this a good article, Heck, I don’t know. It’s up to you my loyal reader to decide if it has added value to your thought processes. It’s up to you my reader to decide if it’s the biggest load of tripe since the creation of the web. Is it unique? Probably not very because I bet someone else has written about this subject saying very similar things. Is it created by me. Hell yes. I wrote every word excluding the quote from ProBlogger.
Do I agree with ProBlogger. That particular quote is right on the money, Does proBlogger agree with me? I don’t know? Why not ask him. Does Sarah Smythe agree with me? I don’t know and I don’t really care, to be William (I don’t like Frank). But am I curious as to what those fine folks think? Yes I am, but I am not going to let it destroy me if they disagree.
I promised to tell you why I called Sarah anonymous, She did not leave her URL so that I could check out her splog.
Yesterday I wrote about Ed Dale and his 30 day challenge teaching people spammy techniques. This is not an apology, I still think that Ed Dale teaches spammy techniques amongst some of the really good stuff he teaches.
Here is Ed Dale’s response
“Hi Guy,
What I teach is not spam - I teach and expect people to deliver champagne content - If you don’t - a pox on your house
I also teach people to be vibrant, active participants in their community.
Painting and entire community as “inconsiderate, illiterate, uncouth cockroaches these underhanded, slimy, bottom feeders” I would suggest is a tad unfair.
Thanks for allowing me to respond
Ed”
I have a few questions for Ed Dale though about the 30 Day Challenge. As a person who learned a lot from Ed Dale, I have a problem with a few of the things he teaches. I actually like much of the stuff he teaches and use it regularly. There are a few things though that I consider to be below the belt.
On Day 23 of the 30 day challenge Ed Dale introduces you to the Content theft software from Word Press Direct as loved by sploggers all over the world. You may have to register to access this. But Ed gives you access to the software that allows you to rip off content from other websites and blogs. My question to Ed is you stated in your response that you teach people to “deliver Champagne content” Does this champagne content include content stolen from others hard work?
You say you teach people to become “vibrant, active participants in their community” but you suggest that they use keywords as a nome de Plume. Is this not just a smidge spammy? Surely you are better recognised as a “vibrant, active participants in their community” using a real name?
You next state that painting an entire community as “inconsiderate, illiterate, uncouth cockroaches these underhanded, slimy, bottom feeders” as a tad unfair. I ask if you would be happy having your work published verbatim on various content thieving inconsiderate, illiterate, uncouth cockroaches websites. Now please note I never painted the entire industry just those that are too damned lazy to create their own content. Do you still think I am a tad unfair or are those that I referred to as inconsiderate, illiterate, uncouth cockroaches and underhanded, slimy, bottom feeders a tad unfair?
You sir are teaching them these techniques along with all the good stuff that you do teach. Maybe a change to your syllabus may be in order. Let the bottom feeding scum find these black hat techniques on their own. That way I will not get as many pingbacks from sploggers with no mercy, no integrity or manners.
I won’t get stupid remarks from brain dead individuals that can obviously not read like the following. I would hope that someone that has a PR4 blog would be neither a spammer or a splogger.
“I would have loved to have backlinked your article to my pr 4 blog but it appears you would consider that spam. Shame that.”