And might I add Dean: you should be very careful what you say from a legal sense. Even with my Year 12 law class education (I failed that course ;-) you are defaming Darren by calling him a “spam blogger”.

I’m not here to stick up for Darren, but I don’t think you really understand blog spam or stealing conent . Blog spam/stealing is when you take content made by others and make people believe it’s your own without due recognition of the original author.

It’s like me taking some of Darren’s posts and posting them on my own blog without any mention that they’re his and taking full credit for them.

Now if Darren was doing that, wouldn’t you think it would have caught up with him by now?

Everyone knows about gadget-type blogs. They’re packed with third-party reviews, lots of images, affiliate links and the occasional personal post. They are highly niche and that’s what those visiting those sites want.

The whole beauty of blogging is the linking involved. It’s a win-win situation for all if everyone gets their due recognition.

Just take a look at what Darren is doing with his 31 Days series. Everyone wins: Darren gets the accoldaes of bringing this all together and making his site more well-known as a source of blogging information and little-known bloggers get a little of the spotlight to shine.

I’m not sure the people I link to would agree with you – in fact I’ve just talked to a couple of them on IM and they know where my traffic comes from (it’s on public record). They actually don’t mind because I not only send them traffic but give them search engine page rank.

It’s a bit of a pointless debate to have here actually because you’re making assumptions about how they feel.

I stand by my approach – I don’t do anything dishonest. I never claim anyone elses content as my own – I personally find content and don’t use any automated services to post to my blogs – I always acknowledge sources and link to the sites I talk about. I keep my own comments down because I want my readers to see the information they’ve come for and none of my own ramblings.

I have done my own reviews from time to time – however this is not easy as most of the digital camera manufacturers here in Australia are reluctant to send cameras out. The only manufacturer to do so so far is Canon who I’m hoping to review more cameras of. This is slowly changing as my site gains reputation.

What satisfies me is that readers find the information that they want to help them make their decisions and that the sites writing reviews get traffic. The emails I get from readers and other sites makes me think I’m achieving both goals.

Anyway – it’s 2am here and after a couple of hours of adding new content to my blogs (non review ones – but ones about new cameras) I’m heading to bed.

Who cares about the email, lets talk write here

They like your traffic because they don’t relize, that you are getting it from google and taking the google traffic that they would get first hand from google, not second hand from you. you get a chance to profit from their reviews because you get the google traffic first.

I like everything about all your sites expect the way you represnt reviews on you site, none of the words you write are you own expect “TrustedReviews.com reviews the blahblah and they say -”

It would be alright if you did this occassionally but you do it non stop just to keep getting a position in google all the time, so you keep on getting the google traffic for that review.

I really think this is spam, and I’m sure you know to that is on the borderline to.

Anyway everything else is good expect the reviews all the time, if you did one review like that a day it would be alright but you do heaps like that everyday and steal away all the google traffic from thoughs sites that do the thoughs reviews all the time.

I’m not not being mean at all this is my point of view, I congradulations on your success you deserve it, but I just hate the way you represent reviews on you electronic sites, it is wrong, write you own reviews, wouldn’t that be more satisfying.

In fact other sites email me every day to let me know of the reviews that they do because they want me to link to them. I send considerable traffic to other sites and in the process serve my readers by following hundreds of sites and collating the information that I find so that they don’t have to spend hours each day searching the web.

In 2.5 years of doing this I’ve had only two complaints from the sites I link to. One was a misunderstanding which we resolved very quickly (they now email me to let me know of their reviews) – the other one was a small site that asked me to remove a post I did on one of their reviews – I complied within minutes of getting the request.

Happy to answer more questions if you have them. I’ve nothing to hide.

Mark – thanks – yep am a minister (although it’s not a ‘job’ any more – just a hobby/passion/love – not sure what the word is any more).

Duncan – it’s winter mate – rain rain rain makes the grass grow grow grow (it needs a cut now) and maybe a little bit of photoshopping was involved.

Congratulations! Didn’t know you’re a minister – too cool. I wonder if your readers and The Age’s readers know that not only folks from Australia come to ProBlogger but folks from all over the globe read you – for ex. I’m in Savannah, GA., USA.

And I’m learning a LOT from this guy – Darren Rowse. He’s a gift!

Thanks Darren,

Mark

You should get a few Aussie bloggers together and we (see how I effortlessly put myself in there ;-) can pitch a story to them (goes just as well for BRW, DSB, MyBusines etc) … sorry, for non-Aussie readers these are our main smal business magazines.

PS- Those iBooks must have really bright screens eh?

Martin – don’t know anyone there. This one actually was a referral from Henry Copeland who was approached by the author of the article. I agree about the Herald Sun – have tried to get their attention actually – maybe I need to come up with a more Herald Sun type angle….hmmm….the mind boggles.

Comic Strip Blogger – it’s actually a Powerbook. I had an ibook a few years back but I ran it into the ground. I’m about to upgrade again to a Power Mac. I’d buy a tablet though if Apple put one out. The camera on the ground is one of my old ones – just a Canon A70 (my first digital camera). The camera in my hand is a Canon video camera.