With all the companies selling “blog advertising” out there, a new phenomenon has hit bloggers - ad theft.
Advertisers will promise a hefty payment per post and then, after the work of writing has been done, they’ll deny the post and usually quibble about spelling errors, punctuation errors, or that - God forbid - there was adsense on the page.
One blogger who wrote me in confidence noted that the post that was supposedly riddled with errors. But when checked by in Microsoft Word, no spelling or grammatical errors could be found. Still, by then the ad company had rejected the post and there was nothing that could be done.
Another blogger reported that a track back from another blog - probably a spam blog - got a post rejected days later as having a “competing inline link”. What baloney!
To protect yourself -
1. Write blog posts that you’d be proud of even if you had to take out the links. Never blog ad thieves receive ongoing benefit for their theft.
2. When this happens, try to correct it if you can with the blog advertising companies. Some are reasonable, some are idiots, but some it varies by the “reviewer”. Some reviewers have a brain and others think they’re saving the world by being nitpicking idiots.
3. When this flagging happens, it can hurt your reputation with the blog ad company. Your only retaliation against the advertiser is to flag the advertiser as a crook and complain to the company.
4. Try to have a variety of blog services you work for in case one turns suicidal overnight.
Blog ad agencies are part of the evolution of blogging. But some are not fit to survive because they seem to not mind facilitating blog ad theft.
Had a bad experience? Let us know!
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