So, who’s in the mood for a little controversy? I’m not particularly in the mood myself, but this will undoubtedly annoy some people as I am going after their hero - Chris Garrett. The co-author of the ProBlogger book has decided that his readers don’t matter, and he’d rather make some quick cash with his new all-out spam-a-lot programme. So let’s begin.
***This post contains incorrect information and some matters which were later resolved here***
Who Is Chris Garrett?
Well for the 3 or so people reading this who don’t know who Chris Garrett is, read on - everyone else can skip down to the next subheading. Chris Garrett was born on the 29th of July in 1974, and is currently a prolific blogger and internet marketing consultant. He’s had some great success creating and selling a number of websites, as well as developing some well known firefox plugins, and writing a couple of books on ASP.NET (which explains a lot right off the bat). More recently he has become even more well known for co-authoring ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income with fellow blogger Darren Rowse.
The Background Info
I’ve always been a follower of Chris’ writings on the web, and I’ve enjoyed his contributions into my feed reader each day as well as following his well written advice in the ProBlogger book itself, so I should stress that I by no means have some sort of underlying grudge or dislike towards him, I’m just telling it like it is.
One of Chris’ first successes (or so I understand) was a site called Performancing, aside from having a ridiculous name, the site is essentially a Chris Garrett version of Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger.net, except that Chris Charges cold hard cash if you want any help from him - whereas Darren rarely charges his users for anything.
Today, Chris remains the CEO of Performancing Ads - the segment of Performancing which deals solely with what I fondly refer to as ‘blog spam’. Publishers can sign up to this program to spam their own sites with other peoples products, and advertisers can sign up to have their products spammed across all the publishers’ various blogs. It’s like the circle of life, but spam.. so the circle of spam.
Performancing is a Banner Ad network, and not what I originally understood it to be.
The Story
Maybe I’m naiive, and maybe I simply never realised it before - but I subscribed to Chris Garrett’s blog because he offered great advice and an interesting insight into the internet marketing industry, and I’d never noticed a hint of him trying to promote other websites or products because he was being paid to do it.
That was until the 17th of November 2008, when he posted a blog titled, ‘Why Internet Marketing Is Like Driving Supercars‘.
Now, before I go on, let’s be clear on something: Internet Marketing is nothing like driving supercars. I know that, and Chris definitely knows that, so why would he title his latest post such an obscure article? Well, the answer becomes clear when you look at the content.
6th Gear Driving Experiences had invited a bunch of online geeks, Al Carlton, Dave Naylor, Kieron Donoghue, Patrick Altoft and me, for a day of thrashing supercars around a race circuit.
The first part is blatent link spam, and the second part (assortment of 4 links) just confirms that this is Chris using his own network to promote a client. All of the other people above have posted identical blogs about supercars, and used identical link text. Some of them also all have javascript tracking on the outbound links to 6th Gear, to track ‘campaign performance’ perhaps?
Now, it took me all of 3.5 seconds to see through this cheap content so I posted a comment on the article asking why he was doing it, saying that as a regular reader I didn’t appreciate this type of spam. Naturally my comment was deleted within a few hours, because a good way of handling your audience, is to ignore them.
The Conclusion
So, how is it that Chris can charge $600+ for his ‘Authority Blogger’ courses, when he can’t even get his own blog right? He’s telling people to create ‘pillar content’ or whatever the hell his latest catchphrase is, yet his blog posts consist of: Blogging is like driving a supercar because:
Power of the setup - Is your site, marketing campaign or content holding you back or providing the power and momentum you need?
What does that even mean? That’s the vaguest link I’ve ever seen drawn between a Lambourghini.. and a blog.
The Result
I unsubscribed from his feed. I’m sure he doesn’t care, he has 10,000 other subscribers to keep him going… but if he carries on like this then I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t last long either. For me, he dropped from respected authority figure, to spam artist in a number of hours.
**FOLLOW UP**
***This post contains incorrect information and some matters which were later resolved here***
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December 2nd, 2008 at 3:38pm
I admire the integrity you have for delivering real value to your clients (and like to think I am the same).
I am now a regular reader of your posts and look forward to more!
Sean Blanton, OpenMake Software
December 2nd, 2008 at 5:07pm
Just to get one thing straight - I organised the entire 6th Gear event myself through my company Branded3. Chris had nothing to do with it until 2 weeks before the event when I asked him to come along.
Not sure what your problem is with this? Why pick on Chris when it was me who organised it.
December 2nd, 2008 at 5:10pm
Performancing Ads is a *banner* network. It’s an advertising network like the google adsense you are using here, but for 125x pixel images
Nobody from that day out was paid to link, links are not for sale on chrisg.com
I hope these facts help.
December 2nd, 2008 at 5:25pm
@Patrick, you’re right I’m sure it’s a coincidence that 5 influential bloggers all blogged about the same experience using relevant anchor-text and referencing eachother as well as the specific products tested. My mistake?
@Chris, I realise that the ‘banner’ part of Performancing Ads is what it is, but I’ve read on a number of occasions that you take this further by publishing actual content across your own, and other blogs in your network… and this example seems to fully support that - or am I completely wrong?
If no one was paid then why the need for the rather carefully chosen anchor text mirrored across 5 blogs, and why delete both my comments rather than responding to them?
December 2nd, 2008 at 5:29pm
John it’s no coincidence - we all decided to blog about it and we were grateful to the guy so we wanted to link in a way that would give him a boost.
Why do you have a problem with Chris and not the other people who were there and me who organised it?
December 2nd, 2008 at 5:32pm
There is no content syndication, paid reviews or anything like that in Performancing Ads. Join. See for yourself. I would like to know where you believe you heard Performancing Ads is anything but a banner network.
December 2nd, 2008 at 5:58pm
You know what? I went to that same supercar day and it was actually pretty awesome. I was going to blog about it but didn’t because everyone else did - if I put up a post now am I in your bad-books too? People blog about free stuff and stuff they’ve bought all the time, it’s not spam, it’s an honest review of a service.
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:12pm
Neither of you answered my questions or addressed my points - I’m not going to bang my head against a wall here trying to justify myself because you’re trying to get out of something that potentially makes you look bad!
I knew what was coming with this post, hence the very first sentence.
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:24pm
I honestly have no idea what part of this could make me or Chris look bad. We went driving, liked it, and then blogged about it.
What is the problem?
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:37pm
We have made clear the facts and they are verifiable.
- There were no paid links.
- Performancing Ads wasn’t involved. At all. And Perfads does not sell paid reviews or syndicate content.
- Patrick and Branded3 organisd the day, not me.
I and the other bloggers were invited and enjoyed ourselves, and did what bloggers do, we wrote about it on our sites
What more can anyone say? If you want more answers tell us the points you feel are remaining to address.
December 3rd, 2008 at 9:48am
Chris, I’m tempted to post a follow-up blog on this, and I may well do in the future, but for now, know this:
I was beginning to feel bad, and thought that perhaps my blog post was unwarranted, so I just called 6th Gear, and the very friendly gentleman on the other end of the phone said, (and I quote)
“Yeah we just recently started working with a new PR Company who told us that we should get these guys to drive around our track for free and then they would all write blogs for us in order to improve our Google rankings, and it worked because the next day we shot up to number 1.”
Frankly Chris and Patrick, there are two issues here - one is that you’re spreading spam, and two is that you’re lying through your teeth about it! How dare you come on here proclaiming innocence with regards to what is CLEARLY link-spam, in full knowledge that it’s so so easy for anyone to find out!
Chris, I’ll admit that I was at fault thinking it was to do with Performancing - clearly it was just your side-business of getting free stuff in return for spam. (which I’m pretty sure, is buying links). And though you may not have organised it, you still happily participated it in it, so I don’t see you as less guilty than anyone else.
Patrick, you are clearly just a pathological liar - every comment left here has been false. You might also want to change your website descriptive text which is also untrue
“Here at Branded3 Search we love to get top rankings for our clients but we won’t take risks with their brands. Our optimisation strategies are natural and ethical meaning top rankings for the long term, not just until Google catches up with us.”
You are what I like to refer to as a “scumbag” (I’m unsure if you’re familiar with the term) I’ve blogged about them here, here, here, here, and possibly most importantly here
December 3rd, 2008 at 9:57am
John my first comment on this post said exactly what 6th gear told you - I organised the event via my company Branded3. How is that a lie?
I’m not hiding the fact that we arranged this.
What more can I say? We arranged an event with bloggers in the hope that they did what most bloggers do and that’s blog about the events they go to.
You calling me a liar is defamation so I suggest you either retract it or think before you write things in future.
December 3rd, 2008 at 10:18am
You didn’t blog about the event you went to! You went to the trouble of making the event happen for the sole purpose of building links. I don’t think Ryan Carson organises FOWD just so he can build links, so you can’t compare the two
You didn’t arrange this “in the hope that they did what most bloggers do and that’s blog about the events they go to.” - Yet another lie! You arranged for them to go for free so that they did blog about it, because it was a link building excersize, NOT just a fun day out which ‘per chance’ was blogged about.
I think you might need to look up the definition of defamtion before you go throwing that big word around. For it to be defamation, it has to be UNTRUE.
December 3rd, 2008 at 10:19am
John, Patrick invited us to an event that I enjoyed so I wrote about it. Just as I have written about other things that I think my readers would be interested in. Look at the comments on my post for confirmation.
No payment was made to the bloggers and there was no arrangement where I had to post but there was no doubt in my mind that I would post up mu pictures and tell people about the great thing we did because it was so cool, it’s just what bloggers do. We write about stuff.
If a PR company invites the press to a pop bands single and the newspapers write about it, is that spam? Are those journalists dirty spammers? Would you hate on them as you have here about me?
I am left wondering what your real problem is to take so much time, anger and venom out of something so trivial as a bunch of bloggers having a nice day on a race track and writing about it. There seems more to it.
Reading through the article again you have not corrected any of the accusations you made about me, just added another attack. This whole thing reflects more poorly on you than it does me.
I do notice you accuse me of deleting your comment. I delete hundreds of comments every day, some of which I never see because of akismet etc. If the tone was anything like what you wrote here I might have deleted it manually. I delete all the trash talk that people post in my comment area, as I am sure you do also.
The sad thing is you could have used my contact form and cleared this up in seconds. Suggests “getting answers” was not your motivation but that you were out to attack me for some reason that I can not fathom. Not sure what I could have possibly have done to offend you.
That’s my last comment on the subject as I have work to do and I think the real facts (ie. not your article) speak for themselves.
December 3rd, 2008 at 10:31am
Chris, the real facts (a direct quote from 6th Gear) say that you were paid to go driving and build links for this company, you were paid in the form of them paying for your £1k’s worth of driving for the day, and you did it all solely for the purpose of SEO.
My problem here, is what I stated originally in my article - I am not ok with you preaching about ethical internet marketing and writing ‘good content’, and then completely doing the opposite - taking paid links, and writing spam content.
If you hadn’t been to this event, would you ever have tried to draw a similarity between driving a supercar and blogging? I don’t think so, and that’s the real issue - you literally just crowbarred some content in, even though it was totally unrelated, and the points made were terrible.
If we’re still comparing this to the music industry I think they call that ’selling out’.
As for your journalist comparison, have you ever noticed that the artists who are on the back cover of the magazines always have great reviews? Again, they’re writing positive reviews because they’ve been paid to do it, and yes I do hate it!
To be honest Chris, I thought you were one of the ‘good guys’ I’m sad to see you making such poor excuses to justify what you’ve been doing.
As for it reflecting badly on me - unlike you, I’ll let my readers make up their own minds, I won’t remove or edit any of the content here.
December 3rd, 2008 at 10:51am
Hi John, I’m one of the guys who were invited to take part in the Supercar day and just wanted to clear up one thing:
“They also all have javascript tracking on the outbound links to 6th Gear, to track ‘campaign performance’ perhaps?”
Completely untrue. My link back to 6th Gear is just a plain old text link.
I can see you’re very angry about something although I have no idea what. I would suggest some light meditation, or beer, to cool your rage. Maybe we should ask you to the next press/bloggers event? Would that help you calm down?
December 3rd, 2008 at 11:08am
So obviously not just a coincidence.
December 3rd, 2008 at 11:20am
Keiron, perhaps its my writing style causing the confusion but I assure you that I’m perfectly calm! I passionately disagree with the whole thing, but I’m really not losing any sleep over it.
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:13pm
This post might have backfired as linkbait John, but the court case might raise your profile!
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:27pm
Hi all
Sounds like a storm in a teacup to me in all honesty. Does this sort of thing go on? Sure. Is there commercial motivation? Obviously. Is it the same as selling Viagra AdSense off the back of a scraper site? Not really - although I can see where there’s a continuum. If I squint a bit.
Taken one way, almost everything is “spam”. TV adverts… album write-ups… press junkets… sponsorship deals.. corporate blogs. I don’t get where the line is supposed to be, or why bloggers should be held to some kind of higher ethical standard than anyone else. It’s the wheels of commerce turning like they always have. 6th Gear have a product and getting some bloggers down there is as legitimate a tactic to generate interest as anything else.
Hell - if they rank #1 for ‘track day’ or whatever, maybe they even deserve it (I don’t know - I drive a Saxo). Google set the rules for how they judge these things, so I’d point a finger at them before I set up those taking advantage of an environment Google created.
Thought exercise: if they offered my cousin a free track day (him being a bit of a petrol head) and he told his 6 mates, or wrote something up for his college newspaper would that make him a ’scumbag’?
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:28pm
Daniel, if you think that this post a) backfired, b) was linkbait, or c) will go to court, then you really are a complete moron.
Carps, nothing against 6th gear, they’re doing a blinding job! As for the college newspaper article, if he wrote a column on flowers and was given a free trackday in exchange for a positive review in his flowers column, masqueraded as a legitimate post about how driving makes the flowers grow, then yes, he definitely would be a scumbag.
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:30pm
My reputation preceeds me. I *am* a moron!
Incidentally, did Allan Banks teach you to drive? If you didn’t some might say that leaving positive comments on his services on freeindex.co.uk would be unethical.
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:38pm
He did indeed, give him a call and ask him yourself - alternatively I’ll fax you my driving test paperwork, which states who my instructor was. Regardless, I don’t remember spamming an internet marketing advice blog with promotion for it.
Incidentally, this has nothing to do with anything - I’ve said already that I won’t delete people’s comments, but that does come with the condition that they are actually related to the article.
I must admit though, I am flattered that you girls are calling eachother to come help and getting your skirts in such a twist about it. Imagine if it wasn’t all true, you probably wouldn’t have even bothered to comment.
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:42pm
I must admit though, I am flattered that you girls are calling eachother to come help and getting your skirts in such a twist about it. Imagine if it wasn’t all true, you probably wouldn’t have even bothered to comment.
lol i found this because you linked to me ?
DaveN
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:48pm
Well I certainly didn’t link to your puppet Daniel, yet here he is! ‘lol’
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:49pm
well he is sat beside me, and you kept deleting my posts ???
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:51pm
btw just for full disclosure I have screen shots of the ones you deleted
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:57pm
***This post contains incorrect information and some matters which were later resolved here***