BlogWh*re – a Joke?
BlogWh*re.net – Where You Can Wh*re Your Blog For Free
Is this a joke? When I first arrived on the site, I thought that it was. It has to be. I mean… who would ever sign up as a Blog Wh*re?
(And I can just see somebody trying to go to www.blogwh*… <-- the * is just censorship so I dont attract p*rn traffic lol).
I learned my lesson when I blogged about the “p*rn wahm” and the “sp*nk me, b*te me, pull my h*ir” issue of Goldblogger. I STILL get tons of weirdo traffic from that 
Anyway…
In reading through the copy on the main page, it is supposedly a service that hooks bloggers up with advertisers. But I cant tell if they are being facetious, or serious… considering the name of the site itself. Curious, I decided to click around a bit.
The Terms of Use page: They offer to hook up a “porn site owner with businesses who want to advertise on porn sites”. The email address listed is pimp@blogwh*ore. And he closes with “I reserve the right to change these terms and conditions any time I damned well please.”
On the Bloggers FAQ page, I find:
Q: What will it cost me to join?
A: Aboslutely nothing, although I do ask that you write a short post about the BlogWhore service in your blog, including a link to the home page, as part of the registration process.
At this point, I am sure the site is a joke or a dig. 
I read on and found where they address the ‘free brokering’ model of the site, which says: “I was just sick of seeing the outrageous prices and commissions being charged by link and advertising brokers, and wanted to see if it could be done in such a way that the users are the beneficiaries.”
The site is owned by ‘Stu’, a web designer out of Australia. He also has a blog at payperpost.blogwho*re.net which is “tracking the payperpost controversy”. In fact, he featured one of my posts there: More on PayPerPost from the Blogosphere.
So the question is: Was BlogWh*re meant to be a legitimate service, or an attempt to play off of controversial topics – and perhaps as nothing more than Link Bait? And if it is a legitimate service – would you use it??
Leave your comments below – I’m pretty curious to hear what you think of this!
Technorati Tags: blogwhore, blog whore, link bait, blog joke, blog advertising
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Hi Lynn,
It’s legit and you’d be surprised how common the word wh*re is in the blogosphere, intended in a non-vulgar manner (i.e. link wh*re).
Would I sign up…well, I don’t have any blogs I wish to wh*re out right now; the ones I may possibly want to down the road, I wouldn’t publish a post solely dedicate to blogwh*re because it would be so far off topic I may lose readers. LOL
Honestly, it would be better if he allowed a blog verification process similar to Technorati’s where the blogger could write a short entry or add a link in the sidebar, both of which could be removed later.
My 2 pennies,
~ Teli
Hi Lyn, thanks for your (!) words.
Yes, I’m the owner of blogwh*re, so I can address your points:
Firstly, if this is a dig back at me because you consider my review of your post here in relation to payperpost to be too negative, I think that’s a little unfair. As you actually came to my blog, and left a comment on a post I’d written about payperpost, saying “I’ve got a new one for you
Would welcome your comments!” I took up your offer, and wrote what I considered to be an unbiased review of what I said was an excellent post. If you want to understand my position in relation to ppp, I suggest you read this thread in another of my blogs, and the 37 comments, and ensuing arguments it generated. I may be misreading this, so please forgive me if that’s no the reason for this post here.
Answering your point about offering to hook up a “porn site owner with businesses who want to advertise on porn sitesâ€, the point I was trying to make is that I’m not going to stand in moral judgement over site owners, in the way that Google or PPP do, saying no porn sites. Got a porn site you want to sell advertising on? Why should I be worrying about what others do? I will be obvious from the description in the directory that it’s a porn site, if that offends you, simply don’t click the link. Concerning your point about the email address p*mp@blogwh*re.net, as I say below, p*imp is a common term for someone who facilitates a business transaction between two other people. The term “p*mp” must also be looked at in the context of the name of my “main” blog – pimpmypagerank.com
Secondly, in relation to the name. As Teli says, the term “wh*re”, and “p*mp” are common replacements for descriptions of selling or advertising a service, such as “I’m whoring my new ppc engine around the blogosphere at the moment”. I’m sorry if the term offends you.
Thirdly, in relation to the signup process, and asking for a short post, this is actually a quite common requrement of free services to bloggers. I’ve actually included a small button people can put in their sidebar, I guess I need to make it clearer that this is an option, and can be done instead of the blog post. My bad.
You’re right in regard to bizarre traffic – you don’t even want to see my spam karma logs!
On to your final question, as to whether blogwh*re was intended to be a legitimate service, or was I trying to implement a link-baiting technique. This question needs to be broken down into a couple of points, so here we go:
Firstly, the linkbait question – I’m not sure how you came to this conclusion. If I was using linkbait to drive traffic to another site or blog where I was trying to sell something, this would be a fair comment, but I’m not, so I’m not sure what you mean by this.
Secondly, was it intended to be a legitimate service? Yes, very much so. Companies like Google, Yahoo, and text link ads will take approximately 50% of your revenue for running ads through their systems, payperpost seems to be a little better in this regard, as my understanding is that their take is somewhere closer to 20%, but remember, these are mostly automated systems. Once the system is in place, they make good money from doing not a whole lot of work. I was interested to see if this model could work using a sort of “open source” system, where the blogger got better value because they got every cent that the advertiser paid, and the advertiser got better value because every cent of his advertising budget went on actually buying ads, rather than commissions.
Lastly, as to whether I’m trying to play off on a controversial topic, yes and no. I’ve been a firm advocate of my right to use payperpost on my blogs, to my detriment, as I’ve been stupid and pig-headed enough to actually let it cost me readers. I implore you to read the post in the link in the second paragraph of this comment. The whole payperpost controversy absolutely fascinates me, but it became obvious that if I kept writing about it in my main blog, my haemmoraging of readers would continue, so I took it to another blog.
In closing, if your mugging of me was intended to be payback for my post about your post, I’m sorry I upset you, I’m trying to provide a blog where all sides of the ppp debate are given equal airing. No-one wants to read fluffy, pro-ppp blogs, as they don’t address the real issues and discussion taking place in the blogosphere.
Cheers
Stu
Hey Stu!
No, no, no – this post wasnt meant as a dig at you personally AT ALL
In fact, I’m quite enjoying our discussion on your blog.
I was sincerely curious if blogwh*ore.net was a legitimate service or more of a joke or dig – and assumed if it was a ‘funny’ that it was in reference to something specific. That’s the purpose behind my post in a nutshell. And I apologize for giving you the wrong impression.
My question as to whether it may just be Link Bait was in noticing your Amazon & PayPal affiliate links… and thinking it wasnt a bad idea for getting a buzz going (negative or not) to drive traffic to the site… generating interest in those offers. If that was the intention.
If you go back and read my post again, imagine my tone with more of a “scratching my head” slant than a “this guy is weird!” slant
facetious = “not to be taken seriously”. I honestly wasnt sure… And I wanted to get my readers’ take on the site/service as well.
I’m off to check out the link you mentioned. And thank you for taking the time to address my questions!
Lynn Terry
Follow me @lynnterry on Twitter.
Cheers Lynn!
Once you’ve read the above thread, you might understand my defenciveness on the whole issue. I’ve been mugged a little more than I can take, both on my own blog, and on one other relatively high ranking blog in particular over the last couple of weeks because of my stance on ppp. Since that above-mentioned post and the ensuing arguments, my once reasonably popular blog has become a commenters wasteland. I’ve got a lot of work to do to try to rebuilt the friendly environment I once had.
As far as the amazon and paypal links goes, apart from the fact that they have generated not one sale, a couple of points need addressing. Firstly, the paypal link is there more as a service. A lot of bloggers wouldn’t have a paypal account, therefore the ability of advertisers to pay them would be diminished. Secondly, the advertising is there in pretty much the same way it is in all of my blogs – take advantage of it if you want to, ignore it if that suits you. In all honesty, the directory doesn’t get enough traffic to make any form of advertising worthwhile, anyway.
As far as you scratching your head whilst thinking about me, my wife would say she spends plenty of time doing the exact same thing!
Whilst we’re on the subject of advertising on blogs. I’m a little confused at your use of ppp on this blog. With an alexa ranking of somewhere in the vicinity of 30,000 and a PR of five, do you think you’d be better off signing individual advertisers? (Those are numbers I can only dream of!
)
Love your blog by the way – added to feeds page!
It would probably take entirely too much reading to catch up on my whole stance with PayPerPost (and why I am using them to earn money), so I’ll summarize it for you here real quick…
For the past decade, I have been self-employed and working online. What I am known best for is helping other “self starters” find ways to “make money online”. I explore the options, publish case studies, send out how-to tips, and even answer questions personally on my discussion forum. This blog is simply an extention of all of that – ie My Internet Marketing Journal.
PayPerPost is an opportunity for tons of people who wouldnt otherwise have a “make money” option with their blog – at least at this point. Here’s an excerpt from a recent tip I sent out that shares my take on that:
“Making decent money with Affiliate Programs requires good
copy for presell, and of course targeted traffic. Making
much at all with Google Adsense requires quite a bit of
targeted traff’ic, which takes some time to build. And you
cant even get the attention of Paid Sponsors or sell any
Text Links until you have consistent traffic and decent
PageRank.
Frustrating, right?
If you’re blog has been online for at least 90 days, and
you have posted to your blog in the last 7 days, then you
qualify for a really cool way to make some easy money…
It’s called PayPerPost and it’s a cool little service that
hooks advertisers up with bloggers.”
For a 3-month old blog, it’s one of the few opps available at the moment. And my target market is the “self-starters” – who likely have newer blogs and are struggling to monetize them like the ‘big boys’ claim they can.
For that reason I am exploring it fully myself, taking the opp seriously for one full month, so that I can report results and details… good and/or bad.
I hope that clears up your confusion about my participation with PPP. Yes I am pocketing a little cash ($120 in the first 5 days + other revenue generated as a direct result) in the process – but this blog is not my primary money-maker (no intention of it)… not by a long shot.
Follow me @lynnterry on Twitter.
No problem with that!
As I said, I’m an advocate personally.
If you’ve made $120 in five days, you’re doing extremely well!
I wasn’t suggesting you don’t use ppp here, or that it’s a bad idea overall, I just thought that with this blog in particular, and the pretty impressive numbers, I’d be looking at personally flogging advertising here.
I’m sure I’ll consider it as some point… but at the moment I love having full editorial control
Instead of selling ad space, I can put up an ad as an affiliate. If my blog is truly a good place to advertise – I’ll earn more going that route. If its not, it wouldnt be worth the price of the ad to the advertiser.
Follow me @lynnterry on Twitter.