Wordpress.com killed all my blogs...

[NicheExposed]

Hi everyone.

Well I decided to try my hand at affiliate marketing. So I went to clickbank and found about 3 - 4 good products that I wanted to try to sell. I created the hoplinks and went to bit.ly and created my shortened links.

Then went to wordpress and found 130 good names that would rank high in the search engines and was going to create some review blogs for the products I planned to promote.

Well spent all day sunday creating these blog accounts and did 1 review post of about 450 words. Giving good detail on the product and my true expsriences with the product. I then took the last few days off to deal with stuff at my "REAL JOB" and went back this morning to see if I had any clickbank sales or any clicks on the links. Saw that I had 10 clicks this week which I thought was pretty cool. I then went to check the blog to see if any comments were made and found "Blot shut down for terms of service"

"WTF"

I went into my wordpress account and saw all my blogs GONE!!

What happened? Once you log into wordpress.com it says on the screen "CREATE AS MANY BOGS AS YOU WANT CREATE AWAY"

Well I did. I just haven't gotten around to creating all the content for all 130 blogs.

Has anyone else had this issue? It really put a bad taste in my mouth for wordpress...

[R Hagel]

This isn't surprising -- when you signed up with WP, you agreed to their terms of service, which you can find here:

Terms of Service — WordPress.com


And here's one of those terms:

the Content is not spam, is not machine- or randomly-generated, and does not contain unethical or unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost the search engine rankings of third party sites, or to further unlawful acts (such as phishing) or mislead recipients as to the source of the material (such as spoofing);

That particular term is highlighted in a yellow box, so it's hard to miss.

Best bet is to get your own domain and install WP via wordpress.org (or cpanel, if your host has it). Then no one can take down your content (unless you're doing something against your host's TOS).

Cheers,
Becky

[thunderbird]

If you want to put up affiliate links on a free blogging system, use blogger.com which allows it.

[cellcom]

Never ever build a business on a free site! Repeat - never ever build a business on a free site.

You can use them to generate traffic to your main site, but other than that you are setting yourself up for failure and running the risk of being out of business in 1 instant.

You can buy a domain for less than $10 for goodness sake!

[JRoon]

Buy a domain, and use coupons to lessen the cost.

[NicheExposed]

I have over 50 domains that I sell my products on but was trying an experiment with wordpress.com. Guess it failed. Oh well I use blogger and other sites. No big deal just glad it happened before I posted 130 articles and such.

[mmurtha]

There is a rule of thumb when using wordpress blogs. Never ever host the blog with them (free hosting) if you are running affiliate products. It is not worth getting them deleted as you just found out.

Go get a domain, and put the WP blog on your own domain. Then you can do as you please.

[VegasGreg]

I often wonder that if some people would spend as much time reading the rules as they do posting their complaints about the rules, how much better things would be.

We all know (or should know) that Wordpress.com (not the .org self hosted version) does NOT allow marketing sites. It has been talked about over and over.

[yourreviewer]

It is not advisable to run your business on free services. Recently Google pretty much wiped out a number of music blogs. So even if you are using Blogger, they can take it down any time.

[NancyHill]

What a pain! Sorry to hear that you lost your work and whatever income you were building.

Setting up a self-hosted wordpress blog is very easy and would be a much more stable platform than any of the free sites. An unlimited hosting account for about $10 is a very cheap investment, and then you can have all your blogs in one place and in one format so you're not having to navigate new software all the time.

[RobinSkeen]

Don't go sour on Wordpress itself. It's a very good system and highly customizable. As others have said, best to get your own domain. That way, you're the boss.

[Emily Meeks]

That really sucks that happened, but to be brutally honest with you, putting up 130 blogs with nothing but review posts probably didn't look terribly FTC-compliant, either.

Even if you weren't "flogging" (fake blogging), someone on the outside might not see it that way.

In future, not only should you invest in your hosting/domain, but your blogs should be more fleshed out. One review post with a mental note to do more won't cut it. It's better to have 10 "up and running" blogs than 130 "under construction" blogs. Not to mention, attempting to keep up with that many blogs in the very beginning will wear your energies thin, as you will be constantly stuck in a "developing" state.

Take the experience as a learning one, so you know what NOT to do in future. Good luck.

[DogScout]

Buy one unlimited hosting account
buy as many domains as you want at a different place and point them to the hosting account.
make a folder and install each blog in it. There are 12 different ways to have the domain resolve to that folder, from Htaccess to forwarding it from where you bought the domain from to using c panel.
Do it again, but this time no one will be deleting your efforts.

school of hard knocks

welcome to IM.

[innocent07]

Originally Posted by R Hagel

This isn't surprising -- when you signed up with WP, you agreed to their terms of service, which you can find here:

Terms of Service — WordPress.com


And here's one of those terms:



That particular term is highlighted in a yellow box, so it's hard to miss.

Best bet is to get your own domain and install WP via wordpress.org (or cpanel, if your host has it). Then no one can take down your content (unless you're doing something against your host's TOS).

Cheers,
Becky

Would this have happened on your own domained hosted blog? (if the did the same content stuff)

[R Hagel]

Originally Posted by innocent07

Would this have happened on your own domained hosted blog? (if the did the same content stuff)

If you downloaded the WP script from wordpress.org and hosted it on your own domain, then WordPress has no control over what you post. So you can create a blog full of nothing but commercial links if that tickles your fancy -- WP can't take it down.

HOWEVER...

When you host content on your own domain, then you need to follow the terms of service of:

1. Your web host.
2. Any affiliate programs which you're promoting.
3. Any payment processors you might be using.
4. Any other third-party programs.
5. Your domain registrar


You also need to follow any applicable laws (such as the FTC regulations for those selling in the U.S.).


So as an example...

If you create a fake blog (flog), the FTC might come knocking.

If you infringe on someone else's intellectual property or post hate content, your web host might take your site down.

If you're selling a "how to hack websites" book, then your payment processor, host and others might show up at your virtual door.

And so on.


Cheers,
Becky

[NicheExposed]

I was basically doing an experiment with some software that I purchased and some how to information I came across on building links. My main issue was that I was surprised to see all the blogs gone. I had only made a single post on one blog and was going to check it out when I discovered all gone.

I am not sour on wordpress just wordpress.org. I won't be using their site anymore to host my blogs. Yes this was a learning experience and was looking to do something a little different. Just seems what I was going to do wasn't going to work and got slapped.

No big deal.

I have been on the Internet for over 10 years now and have been making money and some good money doing it but got out of it for awhile and decided to go back in since I really like creating things. I guess I just go back to what I was doing originally and take it to the bank.

Thanks for all the comments.

[thunderbird]

Originally Posted by yourreviewer

It is not advisable to run your business on free services. Recently Google pretty much wiped out a number of music blogs. So even if you are using Blogger, they can take it down any time.

That's interesting. Why would have Google done this? There is usually a fairly apparent reason for it, but I know sometimes the reasons are mysterious, and Google will typically not respond to questions on any given case.

[Pat Jackson]

Originally Posted by NicheExposed

I have over 50 domains that I sell my products on but was trying an experiment with wordpress.com. Guess it failed. Oh well I use blogger and other sites. No big deal just glad it happened before I posted 130 articles and such.

Well, it's good that you have your own domains so you're not building your business on something you don't own.

You can still use Wordpress.com, but don't sell anything directly on it. You use it to funnel traffic back to your money sites.

[CryoCrispy]

Originally Posted by thunderbird

That's interesting. Why would have Google done this?

Because they can?! =) Google has done several things in the past which sent shockwaves each time, you can complain all you want but if you're not paying for services to be rendered you don't really have a case.

It's just another lesson to learn, don't put all your eggs in one basket and diversify.

Most companies have their terms of service written to allow them to do anything they want for no reason at any time, simply because they own it.

Good luck with your testing, if you're still going to pursue it.

[NicheExposed]

Originally Posted by Pat Jackson

You can still use Wordpress.com, but don't sell anything directly on it. You use it to funnel traffic back to your money sites.

That is what I was trying to do. Guess I just did it wrong. Oh well... Live and learn.

[ramone_johnny]

Originally Posted by mmurtha

Go get a domain, and put the WP blog on your own domain. Then you can do as you please.

+ 1

If you're going to do it - do it right!

[Rob Maggs]

The same happened to me with Blogspot...My Bogs weren't spammy or anything but they all got taken down and they were making me over $200 a week. Such is life

Gonna stick with paid hosting from now on

[ivana]

Originally Posted by cellcom

Never ever build a business on a free site! Repeat - never ever build a business on a free site.

You can use them to generate traffic to your main site, but other than that you are setting yourself up for failure and running the risk of being out of business in 1 instant.

You can buy a domain for less than $10 for goodness sake!

Not only do they have control of your business, BUT you are going to spend days building the site and in the end they have an asset and you are left with nothing!

[IMKing]

Instead of keeping all at one place we can have many free blog providers, they can also rank well, we need to take care of all these things and also max.3 links should be advisable in the article..

[sbucciarel]

There's another post here today ... Blogger killed all my blogs!
Now this ... Wordpress killed all my blogs!

They aren't your blogs. They belong to Blogger and Wordpress and that becomes all too apparent when they delete them.

Get a host, get a domain, build your business on something solid rather than on free blogging platforms.