Thank you so much for posting this. I had an email from this group also, in fact I got it three times through three of my blogs, inviting me to participate and I was actually very close to shelling out $100 to buy space because I saw that other big blogs had taken up the offer. I thought it would be amazing to occupy a space next to slashdot and engadget!

Luckily I saw the post on boing boing which led me to your blog which made me look twice at what they were doing.

$100 might not sound like much for some but for me it is crucial as I’m a new blogger attempting to find readers.

Thanks

Ill agree with Jeremy and Andy though… tempest in a tea pot. Why don’t we track down the phishers instead. Now there’s a problem.

Yeah, that old quote sounds good on paper, but makes no practical sense unfortunately.

If somebody came and killed a family member, would you not be allowed to do anything about it if you had ever illegally downloaded an mp3?

Sorry for the metaphor, but for some reason I’m feeling very confrontational :)

I was only saying that it seemed like everybody jumped all over it just because there were banners displayed without the knowledge of the sites, which in and of itself isn’t that bad. However, like I said before, it was bad until they put a disclaimer saying which ones haven’t paid.

In all honesty, this seems to fall along the lines of link baiting to me. At least some major sites have turned it into a form of link bait by posting about the fiasco, thus driving a ton of traffic to the site like others have already said.

Ok, so to sum up my opionion. Putting the banners on the site alone with no disclaimer is slightly bad. putting the banners on the site with a disclaimer not bad at all. Telling people that those banners were paid for when they weren’t or that those sites approved of the ads is very bad AND illegal AND should have the law involved.

In all cases, regardless of the credibility of everyone involved, all have received a lot more exposure because of it.

This is what really bugs me. A handful of people can make what would be a ‘real world’ non-entity an online showcase. At least, in particular spheres of the blogo.

At one level they’re big deals, sure, but I’m off to find the spheres that shout and fuss about the issues that really matter to me. I am getting tired of reading about Mr A and Mr A jr and Mr A Wannabee, and a whole stack of Mr Zs, churning it all over.

Seriously, I am increasingly needing to find new neighbourhoods where people are looking at human issues. Given that I never know about this stuff until it ‘breaks’ on a big site, I doubt I’ll be missed.

All this energy debating a few crappy pixels could’ve been devoted to content about (shudder) politics, poverty, good news, cool gadgets, music, love…

Yeah well anyway…

What’s wrong with that? It’s a lie and it was a lie that had the sole purpose of getting people to give him money. That is not good business practice – that is not ethical – that should not be encouraged.

This type of action not only rips people off but it brings down the medium that many of us attempt to make a legitimate income from.

I don’t cry because someone makes money on the web – in fact the whole purpose of this site is to help people do it. I’m more than happy to highlight creative, ethical examples of people making money in ways that don’t involve ripping off others.

I’m stunned that people can’t see this for what it is.

Anyone’s link is publicly available and most people want to be linked. The majority of blogs base their existance on a scam called blogrolling — used mostly to try to increase pagerank. The entire blogosphere is built around what I would consider “scams.” Look at most advertising, what is the #1 rule for ads? Blend them. That’s not “scammish”?

I think this guy found a way to snag people into his program, and I think what he did is fine. I think those pixel sites are lame, but people do what they do. That’s freedom. If people wanted to know if the big names paid, they should have asked. Did he say they paid? No. Did his press releases lie? Not from what I can see.

The lawyer friends Mr. ProBlogger is talking about are part of the problem — rather than just ignoring this guy’s lame pixel site, he’s talking about bringing in the law! The last people we want in the Internet is the lawyers and the regulators, and by crying “poor me” all its doing is bringing more attention to the courts as well as more attention to the guy who is running the lame site.

Don’t cry just because someone else is trying to make money on the web — the majority of people trying something new always seem to be spit on by those who were there before them, maybe unwilling to share in the wealth.

As for it being better now? Complete and utter rubbish. He’s still trying to trade on the credibility of the sites he has listed. “pre-approval” is just crap. It’s a scam, plain and simple.

What is wrong with the site putting up a banner to sites that have not paid for them? Problogger posts MANY links ALL the time to sites that haven’t paid him, we ALL post links and sometimes even banners to places that haven’t paid us. Nobody ever questions that, actually, it would be quite laughable to criticize a site for deciding a link to another site before getting money for that link right? Well, why are we moaning about this pixel ad site doing it? Hmm..

Ok, I do agree it does have some problems with it, since it isn’t the actual putting up a banner to another site that is the problem, it’s more that it came off (at first) as though the ad system was so good that big name sites were using it, when in fact, they weren’t. Now, I doubt there is anything legally wrong with this, and now with there being a notice on the ones that haven’t paid, I personally see nothing morally wrong with it either.

It just seems like everybody jumped all over the pixel ad site VERY quickly when in my opinion, it wasn’t THAT bad and now that there are disclaimers on the non paid ones, it isn’t bad at all. I doubt you all think you need to have ALL your links and banners be paid ones on your site do you?