Isn’t It Time Bloggers Declared Conflicts Of Interest?

In the mid 90′s the news media was having a heart attack (behind closed doors) about the Internet. Many journalism purists believed that people wouldn’t read websites, largely because they were not trusted and Internet wasn’t far reaching. In general, the news media believed that the people behind those early websites were not journalists, didn’t have an industry code of conduct, didn’t check their facts, reported recycled press releases and the list goes on. Around 1997/98, the term blogging popped up and has since become mainstream.

Today, many bloggers have earned the trust of the public and some earn a good living from blogging. Unfortunately in some spots, the same old dodgy tricks remain. Using the domain investment industry as an example; it’s extremely easy to sit back and watch the “dance” between the companies (advertisers, parking companies, registrars, auctions and conferences) and the bloggers.

The heart of the issue is around separating out commentary (opinion) from advertising, special interests and those who seek to influence discussion.

Here are a few areas to watch out for:

Scenario #1 – The (Fake) Expert

Many bloggers in the domain investment industry pretend they are experts. Every day we read about an “exciting journey” into the world of domaining (which is fine in itself), BUT where they step over the line is providing advice to newcomers. It’s simply “the blind leading the blind”. Most bloggers are wondering blind in the wilderness, lost, without a clue, yet they are taking it on themselves to advise newcomers. Its a recipe for disaster, because when newcomers accept their advice, the results can be financially devastating for them!

Late last year I had one person call me (in tears) describing how they lost their life savings because a domaining blogger (that they met at a conference) told them to buy a LOT of domains from a specific extension. They were told to buy up big, quickly “turn them around” and flip them. I’m not going to name the blogger or the extension, but I’d note that the extension the person told them to buy, was a HUGE advertiser on their website.

Scenario #2 – Advertising Conferences

This is a textbook “rinse and repeat” that many domain auctions and conferences use as as a part of their marketing strategy:

Step 1 – Blogger writes an article (or FB post) in advance, about an upcoming conference. Banners go up on their website.

Step 2 – Blogger attends conference, gets taken out after hours (by the conference organizer) and “entertained”. eg: dinner, nightclub, the Playboy mansion.

Step 3 – Blogger hangs out with speakers, interviewing them and asking lots of questions about “how they do it”. This content is often “reused” later for how to articles, videos or a $97 PDF.

Step 4 – Blogger takes a few photos of the speakers (and themselves) during the event to post up on Facebook.

Step 5 – Blogger arrives home and reports on how fantastic the event was.

All the newcomers to the industry believe him (because they dont know any better) and sign up for the next conference. What a great investment for the conference organiser!

When was the last time you heard a speech at a conference and said to yourself:

“Wow, this is going to really increase our profits – I can’t wait to get back to my hotel room and try this on our business right now!”

It might have happened once if you are lucky. What did you do with all that info you accumulated at the last conference you went to?

Scenario #3 – Fake News Sites

A “domain news site”, simply copies and pastes press releases sent to them from parking companies, conferences and auctions. They recommend products from vendors who advertise on their site (or simply pay them $$$ directly from their marketing budget). Next time you see a domain news site promoting something, check out if there are any ads (for their blog or related products/companies) on the site they are promoting. Sooner or later you will start to see how these companies start to permeate each other.

Scenario #4 – The Paid Review

There is a growing number of bloggers who have contacted us, asking if my organisation can PAY THEM to write a story about our products and services. The answer has always been “NO” – we don’t engage in such practices. The first time it happened I was in shock! Many years ago I genuinely (somewhat naively) believed that these people were educating the market! The funny thing is – when these guys do a blog post about something, we know exactly who has paid them off. Now we can clearly see who are the ethical companies (who we will engage with) and who are the ones to avoid.

Scenario #5 – Ads That Look Like News Articles

Blogger writes a long winded over-the-top story about how someone within company X is such a great guy (insert academy awards speech and mix with lots of back patting). What they are doing is promoting the interests of their sponsors & advertisers. What is more likely is that the sponsor has paid them to write that story. Alternatively, they will receive something in return. Perhaps an increasing in parking revenue, discount domain pricing or VIP treatment at the next conference?

FTC Guidelines

To some of you, this might be history repeating itself. In 2009/10, we wrote several articles about the FTC Guidelines, including one specifically about Affiliate Marketing. The message for the domain investment industry is – Do you really want the gaze of the FTC upon you? Do you really want to tempt fate and bring about industry regulation?

Time To Get Real

Isn’t it about time that these people started telling the truth?

* Most are not experts, they don’t even come close.
* They have 9-5 jobs – the point being that they give the impression that they do this full-time.
* They work for a vendor because they simply failed when it came to actually “doing it”.
* They make “money on the side” by ads on their blog and promoting affiliate products to their mailing list.

Newcomers to the industry need to know who is “the real deal”, and who the fake, phony, pretenders are. Some people might say “too bad“, “buyer beware”, “its their problem if they lose their $$$“, but here’s the deal; our industry is still in its infancy. It needs some strong, honest people who are going to stand up to this systemic corruption and call it out. The industry needs to grow and move away from the stigma / popular perception of “domaining”. It can’t afford to continue to “burn and churn” people.

Think about this:

1. You wouldn’t get legal advice from someone who wasn’t a lawyer.
2. You wouldn’t undergo surgery from someone who didn’t have experience as a surgeon.
3. You wouldn’t get someone to build your house who “calls themselves a builder”, but has never built a house before.

Then why are you listening to these people? Make 2011 the year that YOU will change. Stop reading their blog, delete their RSS feed and unsubscribe from their newsletter.

Save your $$$ (donate some of it to charity), save your time (talk to your family instead) and go and enjoy life (get some exercise). You will be glad you did.

GoDaddy For Sale

Breaking news: it looks like GoDaddy is selling itself in a private auction. Apparently, the sale could fetch $1 billion. Now, that’s a lot of money for a domain name… er, domain name company.

So why is Go Daddy selling out? We don’t know, but for the full scoop (so far) check out the article Go Daddy For Sale, Anyone Got $1 Billion For GoDaddy.com? at Internet marketing blog, Kikabink News.

Top Level Domain Holdings and Minds & Machines Merge

Top Level Domain Holdings, Ltd has completed its merger with Minds & Machines, a leading registry services provider for web-based top-level domains. The merger follows TLDH’s 2.5M pound private capital raising (approximately US $4.1 million). For more information visit Kikabink News.

Tucows To Buy Back Shares

Tucows, Inc. (TCX) is commencing a ‘Dutch auction’ tender offer to repurchase up to 5 million shares of its common stock. This represents approximately 7.4 percent of Tucows’ outstanding shares.

Kikabink News has covered the story, providing some interesting commentary: “Companies vary in their motivations for doing share buy-backs. It can be a sign of huge faith in the company or it can be for other reasons. I won’t speculate here, but if I was an investor in Tucows I sure would want to know…”

You can view the latest Tucows share price on the right hand side of the page.  This year its gone from 0.31 to 0.56. What are your thoughts on this?