Comments on: On theMoneyBlogs.com: A Message to Other Bloggers

By: frugal

frugal — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 20:40:51 +0000

Brice,
Good luck to TheMoneyBlogs.com. I’m not sure whether it was hard-sell. For me personally, I was okay with your emailings.

frugal

By: Brice

Brice — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 18:53:39 +0000

Hello All-

It’s Brice from TheMoneyBlogs.com. I saw this thread and would like to take a moment to respond to a few comments, in no particular order…

First, to LA Money Guy: the reason you never got any traffic is because your blog was never posted on TheMoneyBlogs (TMB). You asked me to take you off before we ever put it up.

To Chris at InvestorGeeks: I created a login to TMB for you because someone at your site–I don’t recall if it was from you or someone else affiliated with InvestorGeeks–asked me a couple of questions indicating some possible interest. I was just giving you the opportunity to take a look at the back end posting area so you could decide if it was for you. At no time–ever–was your content actually posted.

To those to whom I sent the same e-mail more than once, I apologize. There was one case in which I know the second email was sent by mistake, but in most cases I sent a second email because I wasn’t sure if in fact the first one was received.
To Frugal, who says: “no one can take away your writings without permission.”

We received permission from every blogger to re-post, in advance, and yes, every blogger still owns their own content.

Responding to Jim, who said the page “looking pretty shoddy,” we are still in beta and are working on improving the site every day. We should officially launch after Labor Day.

Finally, in response to Chris, who referred to “hard-sell” tactics, I’ve never considered myself to be the hard-sell type, and anyone who has ever known me would probably agree with me on that point.

Thanks for the opportunity to share this.

Brice
TradingMarkets.com/TheMoneyBlogs.com
(818) 449-7461

By: frugal

frugal — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 07:21:05 +0000

Oh, I forgot to say:

To Mapgirl, yes, I like pfblogs.org too.

To InvestorGeek Chris, I really appreciate you offering a fair deal to the newcomers of InvestorGeek. And that’s why I also applied too. I think any blogging newbie like me should definitely take this rare occasion to apply.

By: frugal

frugal — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 07:16:49 +0000

Jim,
Thanks for adding all these important thoughts. Frankly, I never thought of things related to hackers & being a scraper in relation to this matter. Yeah, I know about forums.moneyblognetwork.com, and I guess you’re right indeed. It does sound to be a pretty good topic for that forum.

By: jim

jim — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 04:02:51 +0000

It’s cool that pfblogs.com is rotating ads around but that’s risky with so much unregulated content because what if someone gets hacked, starts posting all this porn, and google catches it just as your adsense id is rotated onto the site? (actually it may catch it every time because you load up a script) It’s risky, just something to chew on.

As for themoneyblogs, when i loaded it up the page looked pretty shoddy and so I passed. Then he emailed me again, with the same emails, and honestly I don’t like getting spammed with the same letter. He might as well made it a gif and sent it to me.

I don’t mind my content appearing on other sites, I think that as a larger site with more PR, google likely crawls my site more frequently and so my site likely won’t be seen as the site displaying duplicate content – the aggregating site is. However, if you’re a smaller site, say a PR0 just making a name for yourself and your content appears on a more popular aggregator … google might think you’re a scraper blog and penalize you for it!

I don’t mean to plug MBN Forums (forums.moneyblognetwork.com) but this sounds like the perfect discussion…

By: mapgirl

mapgirl — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 18:24:22 +0000

Oh. Brice. That rings a bell. They contacted me too. I didn’t like the whole tagging articles thing. That seemed like too much bother for me who is already overburdened. He tried to explain that it was for folks to write directly for them or something like that, but my content = my control.

This is why I prefer PFblogs.org. They don’t try to profit off me. They give me lots of traffic and the organizer is someone I consider a friend in the community. For me, it’s a winning situation that involves minimal financial support on my part to keep the operation running smoothly. I get a lot more benefit from it than I put into it.

By: InvestorGeek Chris

InvestorGeek Chris — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 02:09:53 +0000

Brice at MoneyBlogs contacted me as well. He also, without our approval, created an account for us on their site. I guess I was turned off by the hard-sell tactics. Traffic is important, but the terms of the deal are: you provide traffic, they make money. InvestorGeeks is opening the site to new authors on Friday, but for us, we plan on paying out a big chunk of our ad revenue to our authors, in addition to help drive page views. I guess it's just a difference of respecting your partners enough to share in your successes, which is basically what it comes down to. This Money Blogs site is basically a blog network with a shady business model. (Shameless plug: if you're interested in becoming an InvestorGeek by the by, find out more here)

By: frugal

frugal — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 00:08:31 +0000

Thanks Flexo for adding your thoughts. There are many new bloggers (including myself) that could take their words & deal. Having you to add some words will be more meaningful for many others.

By the way, I must repeat my legal disclaimer message here: PLEASE TAKE EVERYTHING IN THIS POST & AT THIS SITE “AS IS”. I assume no legal responsibilities for any personal decisions that you take. All advices are provided “AS IS”. Readers are advised to think for themselves, use their own judgment, or consult their advisors.

By: Flexo

Flexo — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 23:41:55 +0000

I was contacted by them as well; the deal they want to create leaves the blogger with the short end of the stick. The email promised the site would become the “biggest money blog on the internet” or something and the guy told me a big PR push was up and coming.

Hey, I’d like to build a site with varied, free content, slap up some ads, and make money off of other people’s work, too. Sure.

By: frugal

frugal — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 22:37:43 +0000

Thanks Ceicilia,

Every blogger that I’ve known have all worked so hard on their blog. I simply hate to see any people being exploited as a free content generator. By law: by default, everyone has the copyright on anything that he or she writes, so no one can take away your writings without permission. You don’t need to do anything special. Copyright is automatically granted even if you don’t put “copyright” on your site or in your article.

Thanks for your comment, so that others can benefit from your experience.

Regards,

frugal

By: Cecilia

Cecilia — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 22:02:25 +0000

Thanks for the tip! You’re right; I’m not much of a fan of theMoneyBlogs.com either.

By: frugal

frugal — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 22:00:10 +0000

This is from LA Money Guy at It's Just Money in response to my email subject titled as "question about themoneyblogs.com": My question to LA Money Guy: Just wonder whether you're really getting any traffics from themoneyblogs.com His Answer: No noticeable traffic whatsoever. I forget that I even agreed to this. I should request to be unlinked. Thanks.