Comments on: Why Forum Seeding Can Sometimes Backfire!

By: jane

jane — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 10:28:02 +0000

I joined win4now did their form filling added friends and filled out their forms for a particular competition for a large supermarket. To say I am less than happy is an understatement. I thought I was entering a competition it was really a questionaire that resulted in spam spam spam and more spam, no notification of the competition entry and difficulty in getting any responce from them to any contact attempt.
I have myself run competitions etc from our web and understand the set up, the point of this being that I missed the catch, I suspect because I wasn’t looking for it.
The relevance of this post just to add weight to the argument. The fact is that bloggs are not the only scam they are trying.

By: So You Want To Run a Forum? | One Little Duck - Affiliate Blog

So You Want To Run a Forum? | One Little Duck - Affiliate Blog — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:51:24 +0000

[...] users are the biggest hassle! Spammers and seedy marketeers are easy to deal with. They come along, dump their spammy posts and usually vanish forever, however [...]

By: Blog Comment Spam aka How Not To Get Featured On Affilate Sites

Blog Comment Spam aka How Not To Get Featured On Affilate Sites — Sun, 18 May 2008 11:13:00 +0000

[...] Jason Dale at One little Duck recently wrote about agency’s and merchants who go to extraordinary lengths to promote themselves on forums by pretending to be something they are not here is the article Why Forum Seeding Can Sometimes Backfire! [...]

By: Ultimate Forum Guide » Blog Archive » What do forum moderators need to know about spam?

Wed, 14 May 2008 14:31:43 +0000

[...] of the many blogs I read touched on a relevant topic the other day. The one little duckblog provides the story behind a “competitions” site, like many successful sites it has [...]

By: jdmobile

jdmobile — Wed, 14 May 2008 09:43:31 +0000

The best way imo would be to contact the forum owner and discuss it with them – see if you can come up with a strategy that works. They may not be bothered if you post, on the other hand you might find an opportunity for a business relationship (e.g. you can offer them a discount or a competition as a tradeoff?)

The other way is to go for the long haul and become involved in the forum – but that’s not always easy.

Personally I’d say be upfront and honest though… mainly because I’ve lost count of the number of siteowners who have just discovered their own sites,.

These people shouldn’t have sites if they lose them and then just stumble upon them without realising they own it.

Jason

By: Zak

Zak — Wed, 14 May 2008 09:29:05 +0000

Nice post sir!

This isn’t something we do to promote Prezzybox, but we are looking at doing something similar (but not underhanded!!).

So, for example, we sell an Elvis Bathrobe which I’m sure loads of Elvis fans will absolutely love. Therefore I was planning to post on an Elvis forum and tell people about the bathrobe.

Is this a bad idea?

Or, if we do post on the forum should we be honest, say who we are and then say why we are posting?

I’d be interested to know what the best way to go about this is mate…

Zak.

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 13 May 2008 15:30:25 +0000

Good spot! One of my fellow mods on a large gaming forum I administer is a total IP slueth. One thing to point out is sniffing out each and every new registration can take a long time! But then the satisfaction of such a bust is pretty rewarding. I also wonder if such people will get more sophisticated in time, start using proxy accounts, etc! But that said, we find that its the opposite – for example such spammers often post with the same nicks across different forums making it very easy to call the out!