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I have a fear of saying anything about my site/ providing links to it on this forum: is this silly?

by Nate Cat
17 replies
Is there any reason why I should not mention my site on this forum?

I guess that at some point the site is going to become known if I start driving lots of traffic towards it. There is just some thing about a marketing forum that makes me feel unnerved. I am not sure if it is irrational.

I suppose what I am concerned with is the idea of scraping or people trying to directly copy what I have done before I have even got off the ground.

A side of me is saying that these thoughts are ludicrous because there are probably a million people doing exactly what I am doing right at this minute! I just maybe have not taken the time to find them.

(By the way, the reason I tend to do that is due to the intent of keeping the blinkers on and forgetting about competition and focusing on my own efforts to start with. When the time is right I can start paying more attention to the competition.)

Does anyone else have these kinds of feelings about saying too much about their site on here (or anywhere else for that matter)? If I seem a little silly then so be it - we all have oddities.
#fear #forum #links #providing #silly #site or
  • Profile picture of the author @tjr
    Protect yourself, protect your stuff. On a forum this size there are unfriendly faces willing to outright steal your crap or take it down just because. That is not an indictment on the user base as a whole. Just the reality of being in a place this size.
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    • Profile picture of the author Nate Cat
      Originally Posted by @tjr View Post

      Protect yourself, protect your stuff. On a forum this size there are unfriendly faces willing to outright steal your crap or take it down just because. That is not an indictment on the user base as a whole. Just the reality of being in a place this size.
      Thank you. You seem to have this same kind of feeling that I have. At the same time though I see masses of people posting their own websites either through signatures or their profile. They seem not to be bothered by this.

      My site should be pretty secure because it is an MVC 5 (ASP.NET) site and therefore they have lots of protection built in. It is unlikely to have too many vulnerabilities but... I suppose NOW actually may be the best time to see if there are vulnerabilities. I have disabled account registration for now because I do not wish to purchase an SSL cert without reason. I would allow user signups at some point though because it is vital for getting a community and getting return visits.
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      • Profile picture of the author @tjr
        Originally Posted by Nate Cat View Post

        Thank you. You seem to have this same kind of feeling that I have. At the same time though I see masses of people posting their own websites either through signatures or their profile. They seem not to be bothered by this.

        My site should be pretty secure because it is an MVC 5 (ASP.NET) site and therefore they have lots of protection built in. It is unlikely to have too many vulnerabilities but... I suppose NOW actually may be the best time to see if there are vulnerabilities. I have disabled account registration for now because I do not wish to purchase an SSL cert without reason. I would allow user signups at some point though because it is vital for getting a community and getting return visits.
        I'm looking more at the theft aspect of things, although security is something to look out for as well. The people who have sites in their signature, more often than not, have an IM specific product or service that they are trying to sell. They want you to see it.

        Now, those who operate in niches outside of IM/MMO who have posted here seem to have a horror story about all of their content stolen within a few days. At least from what I've seen. I'll admit that I haven't done the leg work on every case to see if it always happens.
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        • Profile picture of the author Nate Cat
          Originally Posted by @tjr View Post

          I'm looking more at the theft aspect of things, although security is something to look out for as well. The people who have sites in their signature, more often than not, have an IM specific product or service that they are trying to sell. They want you to see it.

          Now, those who operate in niches outside of IM/MMO who have posted here seem to have a horror story about all of their content stolen within a few days. At least from what I've seen. I'll admit that I haven't done the leg work on every case to see if it always happens.
          OK, I see - that is an issue as well. By theft I am presuming you mean simply copying all the sites content. I was worried about the fact that I have a lot of database stuff because it is comparisons. I am guessing it would not take much for someone to scrape all the stuff from the full page and put it into their own site. I may have to look into anti scraping at some time. It is either that or just make sure I am better than whoever is scraping my pages.

          The site has not been "launched" as such (as in actual traffic driven to it yet). It is live though. I guess if I was rich from the site and making money myself I would not care so much about some miscreants making a buck or 2 off my efforts. I could just go in with blinkers and not care.
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  • Profile picture of the author Freebiequeen1999
    I don't blame you.

    Unlike forums on other topics, there seems to be some (yes some) here who are desperate and would copy you or ruin it somehow. Also you might get a lot of spam and if you have comments open, eeek.
    I have seen the advice to "post on blogs and forums" . So yes you are smart to do this.
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    • Profile picture of the author Nate Cat
      Originally Posted by Freebiequeen1999 View Post

      I don't blame you.

      Unlike forums on other topics, there seems to be some (yes some) here who are desperate and would copy you or ruin it somehow. Also you might get a lot of spam and if you have comments open, eeek.
      I have seen the advice to "post on blogs and forums" . So yes you are smart to do this.
      It is an issue. I have had blogs in the past. I had done little in order to promote them but the spam was still awful.

      There is some captcha on the "contact us" page of my site but my customer feedback does not. I would rather sit there trashing piles of spam than just not get any feedback because of annoyance to customers. I may be forced to put captcha on it (not that captcha is spam proof! I have even had people work a way around that!).

      I had one php forum once that I had forgotten about for a year or so. I came back to it and it was literally full of links apparently leading to child porn sites (obviously I did not click them)!! I thought some kind of child porn ring had taken over the forum... I deleted the entire site. I was not using it anyway. It serves as an example of what can happen though.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mark Singletary
    I've personally been torn about this over the years. My thoughts, which are all over the place on this, follow.

    On the one hand - for those sharing advice (free or paid) - what credibility do you have if you are afraid to show your sites? Maybe you don't have any sites and you are just spouting empty theories? Maybe your sites are obvious failures and you'd be embarrassed for anyone to see them?

    On the other hand there are stories of someone stealing content and such. But there are thousands of weight loss sites on the Internet. Why would they choose specifically to steal your weight loss articles instead of the hundreds easily available at places like EzineArticles? Is it because you said you made $1000 in the last 30 days with your site so they copy things in the hope that the content is a winner?

    Then there is the situation where someone sells a ready to go site. They claim that the there is plenty of room for growth which is why they are selling the site as a product and that there is no problem with copy cats. Yet they themselves are unwilling to share their sites. Is this a lie? Is this hypocritical? Feels like it.

    Then there is the question of marketing/business ability. Gurus claim they are killing it in tiny niches, let's say, due to their marketing prowess yet they aren't marketing minded enough to ward off competition. That means they can't outmarket the competition which puts their whole guru status and claims in doubt. Successful companies run ads in newspapers and on TV and have banner ads on huge sites like CNN to get their message out there. They aren't afraid of someone stealing an article or whatever because they will just outdo and outmarket the thief. They are always trying to be a step ahead instead of resting and being happy with a "finished" product.

    Having said all that, I don't talk about my stuff here for the time being but that may soon change.

    Mark
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    • Profile picture of the author Zodiax
      Well, have you done research on other forums that are related to your niche?
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    • Profile picture of the author Lucian Lada
      Originally Posted by Mark Singletary View Post

      Then there is the question of marketing/business ability. Gurus claim they are killing it in tiny niches, let's say, due to their marketing prowess yet they aren't marketing minded enough to ward off competition. That means they can't outmarket the competition which puts their whole guru status and claims in doubt. Successful companies run ads in newspapers and on TV and have banner ads on huge sites like CNN to get their message out there. They aren't afraid of someone stealing an article or whatever because they will just outdo and outmarket the thief. They are always trying to be a step ahead instead of resting and being happy with a "finished" product.
      Maybe, or maybe they found a great obscure niche and don't want any competition. Why make your life harder? Sure, you could outmarket them, but that means wasting a lot of time and money just so you can show off your websites here. The tradeoffs are just not worth it, unless, perhaps, someone is selling coaching services or MMO ebooks.
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      • Profile picture of the author Nate Cat
        Originally Posted by Lucian Lada View Post

        Maybe, or maybe they found a great obscure niche and don't want any competition. Why make your life harder? Sure, you could outmarket them, but that means wasting a lot of time and money just so you can show off your websites here. The tradeoffs are just not worth it, unless, perhaps, someone is selling coaching services or MMO ebooks.
        I am taking it from what you are saying that you do not recommend posting links to one's site in this forum. I know for certain that there is a huge amount of competition within the industry I am promoting, however, I am not particularly happy with the sites that are at the top of Google. They would be a direct competitor to me. I believe I can do better. That is what I would work on.

        Getting to the top of Google is probably not exactly a sensible short term goal! I do, however, believe that even if one were to take a small cut of the industry in question it would make a person rich. If not then there are plenty of other fish to fry using the same type of approach.
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  • Profile picture of the author DubDubDubDot
    I don't think it's a huge problem much anymore. I'm not saying people aren't doing it, but they at least aren't showing up in the search engines like they used to.

    A good test is Pat Flynn's security guard website, which he claims makes something like $25,000 per year from AdSense (I don't believe it, but I guess that's a whole other discussion). One would think this is a prime candidate for ripping since he is claiming great success in front of a "make money online" audience desperate for cash. Yet putting text snippets from the blog into Google and Bing turns up pretty much nothing.
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  • Profile picture of the author funner
    what i want to give you a suggestion is not to provide some links on this site, because this site is just for learning something and for fun, if you are trying to offer ads from your site, maybe your accout will be banned. think twice befor you leap
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  • Profile picture of the author totalprocessing.net
    Put you plug for your site with a link in your signature. It is allowed. Asking for a review or help and posting a link is allowed too.

    P.S. let scrapers do their thing. Just make sure anything they scrape has a link to your site in it! Google is pretty smart and can identify scraped pages and give them lower priority in the results (most of the time). You can still get occasional clicks from scraped sites back to your site if the page they scraped from your site has a link to your site on it.

    How do I know this stuff? I did search engine results evaluations for Google for a period of time.. That's how.
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    • Profile picture of the author The Niche Man
      I don't think it's as big of a problem as most people suspect. I wouldn't give away any secret formulas if that's what you have. But in general people are so busy trying to find the easy, convenient and fast road to riches they don't have time to bother with anything that will take work, time or effort to get money out of.

      Simply showing your site won't trigger an avalanche of copy cats.
      But when you start making money hand over fist, you're on every major ad and marketing platform and being quoted and by top Guru's ..., then you may have a problem.

      Fact: Most people on this forum don't even follow proven success principles long enough to see them work. Even that takes strong convincing. Let alone follow a new, unproven method.
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      • Profile picture of the author Nate Cat
        Thank you very much for the responses guys. I have read all of them carefully because I am interested in what people say. Just a few points:

        Originally Posted by Zodiax View Post

        Well, have you done research on other forums that are related to your niche?
        I am not really sure what you mean, Zodiax. Did you mean asking around within the niche area what the likelihood is of people doing unpleasant stuff? I have not posted any links to my site within those sites either because most people in those forums would be a direct competitor. It may seem strange me saying that but I do not want people trying to trash talk my site in an attempt to discredit it. When I am more established I may be a bit more forthcoming.

        Originally Posted by funner View Post

        what i want to give you a suggestion is not to provide some links on this site, because this site is just for learning something and for fun, if you are trying to offer ads from your site, maybe your accout will be banned. think twice befor you leap
        The only reason I would want to post here is to see some feedback on the site itself and the layout. I am not interested in promoting IM. On the other hand I could possibly benefit from some form of promotion here. I would only do things within the rules of the forum either way anyway. I could put it in my signature or on my profile but that would be it.

        Originally Posted by totalprocessing.net View Post

        ...

        P.S. let scrapers do their thing. Just make sure anything they scrape has a link to your site in it! Google is pretty smart and can identify scraped pages and give them lower priority in the results (most of the time). You can still get occasional clicks from scraped sites back to your site if the page they scraped from your site has a link to your site on it.
        I doubt they would include the link in there because the whole point would be to place their own link on the comparisons instead of mine. Otherwise there would not be much point. I have gone to a lot of effort to make my admin section very easy to use so that I can put in a large amount of data. I have hundreds of entries already and I have only just started out really.

        Originally Posted by The Niche Man View Post

        I don't think it's as big of a problem as most people suspect. I wouldn't give away any secret formulas if that's what you have. But in general people are so busy trying to find the easy, convenient and fast road to riches they don't have time to bother with anything that will take work, time or effort to get money out of.

        Simply showing your site won't trigger an avalanche of copy cats.
        But when you start making money hand over fist, you're on every major ad and marketing platform and being quoted and by top Guru's ..., then you may have a problem.

        Fact: Most people on this forum don't even follow proven success principles long enough to see them work. Even that takes strong convincing. Let alone follow a new, unproven method.
        What I do may seem clever to non programmers but I would not suggest that I am a great programmer - just competent. I doubt that a serious programmer would consider me a genius but I have produced a working comparison site with a pretty large amount of hours put into it. All the same, my work is closed source and I have nothing to gain from making it open source. It is actually just standard programming using ASP.NET MVC.

        My feedback system is pretty nifty actually and I am quite please with that!

        My intention is simply to do it better than other people. At the same time I am not overly happy with people coasting off my efforts especially if they get in my way. Also people can use up my bandwidth if they are scraping and such like. I could be worried about nothing - maybe the site is not as good as I would like to think but I have put in a lot of effort and I am always improving the site day by day.

        Like I said, I have read all replies and they are much appreciated (even if I have not replied directly to some people!). I am still not really sure if I want to put a link to my site yet to see some feedback :S
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  • Profile picture of the author Lance K
    Forget the competition. Do you want your customers to see an indexed link to your site on Warrior Forum when they do a Google search for your name, site, business name etc.?

    Do you really want them reading that thread you commented in that talks about how to use lead magnets to build your email list...or the one about how to increase your lifetime customer value by a couple hundred dollars by offering new, premium products.

    Sure your intentions are good and you really do care about your customers and everything you put out is a genuinely good value. But who is to say they won't just see you as conversing with a group of marketers/business owners about how to pad your pockets.

    Unless you're in the internet marketing space and therefore have good reason to have links here on the forum, why even open that potential can of worms?
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    • Profile picture of the author Nate Cat
      Originally Posted by Lance K View Post

      Forget the competition. Do you want your customers to see an indexed link to your site on Warrior Forum when they do a Google search for your name, site, business name etc.?

      Do you really want them reading that thread you commented in that talks about how to use lead magnets to build your email list...or the one about how to increase your lifetime customer value by a couple hundred dollars by offering new, premium products.

      Sure your intentions are good and you really do care about your customers and everything you put out is a genuinely good value. But who is to say they won't just see you as conversing with a group of marketers/business owners about how to pad your pockets.

      Unless you're in the internet marketing space and therefore have good reason to have links here on the forum, why even open that potential can of worms?
      I guess this is a pretty strong reason for keeping a website link off here. To me it is obvious that the point of developing a website (especially a comparison website) is to make money. To many other people it would not be what they think... even if it is odd to think that people just put up a website because they just want to be lovely and nice.

      It is food for thought, Lance. I was expecting many people to say: "Just put a link to your site... it does not matter!" It seems I am not so silly to think the way I do.
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