Webhostingstuff.com, not every host that was a top host survives.

Webhostingstuff.com has been the focal point of this blog at several points in the last few years. They claimed to be a place for fair and honest hosting reviews. However Webhostingstuff.com has been a shinnying example of everything that is wrong with the hosting review industry. But I have reached the point that I feel like I am beating a dead horse, if not a dying horse. Unless somehow webhostingstuff.com manages to reinvent itself in a way that revives it this is the last post to pick apart their methods.
So far the only change webhostingstuff.com has been capable of is remaking the so called top 25 list into something that is cumbersome. It no longer starts on the main page of webhostingstuff.com.  You have to actually look for it among a list of items for “best hosts”.  Than you only get to see 5 of the some 23 – 29 Best Hosts. Anyone wanting to see the next 5 Best Hosts would have to scroll down past “Show me more Hot Deals …” link.  Where there were 10 hosts to past.  To find “Next  >>>”, and without clicking next I would have no way of knowing that that is how I get more “Best Hosting”.  Which is why since April 2010 my posts on webhostingstuff.com have been far less.  Anyone past the firth position was not going to get their money worth.
On top of that, right now I cannot access their site.  Because one too many inquires triggers an IP block. Never mind that real people in need of hosting may be researching multiple hosting companies to find the right one.
Then there was the original fair and honest ranking webhostingstuff.com page had this:
To build a fair and honest ranking system, ranking is always performed automatically by the system – free of human interference.
Not far into the whole spill about honesty, they lay down the justification for the advertising they offer. Advertising that I have yet to see.
Human editors are also needed to maintain the high level of integrity of our trusted reviews. Webmasters and system administrators are needed for the smooth running of this large site.

No surprise but that wording is no longer there.

I was going to do several posts on hosts that closed up shop or switched gears. But that seemed long, tedious, and boring (remember I have ADD). But I am going to boil it down into one post. After which my next post is going to deal with what a lot of people have been asking me since my mindshark.ca posts, and that is how to find a seo expert. So one post that focuses on the closures (or switch from hosting to something else).

Why hosting-reviews-exposed.com became a blog and focused on webhostingstuff.com

The very issue that started this site to have a blog was a host called hostdawgs.com. Another host that had watched my video decided to track one month of top 25 hosts that appeared on webhostingstuff.com (it was either 2008 or 2009), a few months after they posted their finding hostdawgs.com a host that appeared on that so called top 25 list at webhostingstuff.com was out of business.  Clearly there were some obvious kinks in webhostingstuff.com’s armor.

Into my second month blogging I found i7net.net on webhostingstuff.com

What could be worse than a host that went out of business mere months after appearing on webhostingstuff.com’s top 25?
How about a host that was not online at any point when I found it on the top 25 list (from June – November 2010) of when I was doing reviews. Between the 21 – 25 positions.  Never mind the worst part was webhostingstuff.com clearly indicated they had 72.62% uptime, and had stopped tracking uptime in July 2009. Which means it had been offline longer than a year.
I emailed Michael Low of webhostingstuff.com in June 2010 about what I had found. It took him until December 2010 to do something. Which was to remove i7net from webhostingstuff.com’s data base.
I7net.net became the keystone in my argument against webhostingstuff.com.  Which can be found at:

The other “top” webhostingstuff.com hosts that went offline or are out of the hosting business:

Since my 10looniehost.ca post  about them forgetting to renew their domain (who last I checked was still a best host) I figured I would look and see who else on webhostignstuff.com’s top 25 list was offline.

These were hosts I found between May 2010 – April 2011. I did not track any that entered into the top deals or best host lists.  Because out of 64 hosts, I found a lot of flaws. Some of which I am amazed they are still online

Firedragonhosting.com – Former Webhostingstuff.com top host – Status *Unknown*

When I first reviewed this host (May 2010), it appeared that it was some messed up Godaddy.com Wild West reseller. By which I mean it appeared the owner of the site was purchasing what people ordered through his reseller account.  If you know as much as I do about Wild West Domains, its illogical. With Wild West Domains your job is to maintain the main site, while working on means to bring in traffic. I know a lot of people that are pretty good with their program. But this guy seems to have a separate order form, where after you order he goes to the reseller and orders what you ordered.  Plus on top of that he is going to have to offer support for a reseller account that is supposed to do the support for you.
He also charged $49.95 to set up WordPress and $9.95 a month for what is essentially a free very easy to set up program.

I know that the domains are under a reseller account because the register shows me Wild West Domains, which is a godaddy.com reseller program.  On top of that most of the domains in this sites reviews were under the name of the owner. Plus hosting was on Godaddy.com’s servers.
Keep in mind I think it is a very bad idea to keep your domain with your hosting company.  However what is worse is letting a hosting provider register a domain for you, and keep it under their name. Webhostingstuff.com was supposed to have a policy of not allowing Wild West Resellers from registering as a host in their system.  Webhostingstuff.com placed it in the top 25, it was number 23 when I reviewed it.

When you goto fire dragonhosting.com there is no product page. It appears to be a login page. I see the ability to order, but I get this message when I click on the order link:
Filling out the order form does not guarantee you hosting on my servers
So they might as well be closed.

Topgreenhost.com – Former Webhostingstuff.com top host – Status *Closed*

There is not much to add here, other than I have control over topgreenhost.com, and if you type that domain in you will see my first post on this former webhostingstuff.com top host.

Yaspe.net – Former Webhostingstuff.com top host – Status *Unknown*

October 2010 was when I first found Yaspe.net on webhostingstuff.com’s so called top host list. At the time they claimed to have 20,000 customers. The problem with that was their Alexa score did not validate that.  Yaspe.net was at 1,812,782 with Alexa in October 2010, and as of today it is at 12,348,306. Keep in mind low numbers are good with Alexa and high numbers are bad.  The traffic stats did not back up a claim of 20,000 clients.  At 12,348,306 they may have one visitor a day.

So far yaspe.net devolved into what I can only assume is a web design contact form.  The banner on the bottom goes to securedservers.com, which Alexa says country with the top traffic is China (42,600).  They offer a $75 per sign up or 10% monthly reoccurring payment.
I think it is safe to assume yaspe.net is out of the hosting business.

Aquariusstorage.com – Former Webhostingstuff.com top host – Status *acquired*

“As of June 2012, all Aquarius Storage operations are now officially part of DJAB Hosting.”
This host was recently acquired by djabhosting.com. Which does not offer unlimited hosting, so I have to wonder how the unlimited customers transferred over. At best from what http://web.archive.org tells me, they came online December 2008.

Webhostingstuff.com, where awards are bought

To me one of the prerequisites to being a top host is the ability to stand the test of time.  In some cases hosts have not even had to be online to be a best host at webhostingstuff.com (10looniehost.ca and i7net.net), others did not even have to be online a month (Hostinglocker.com).  I have hosts like KVChosting.com that tell me that they are paying for advertising.  Advertising is really hard to find on Webhostingstuff.com. But it is really easy to find hosts that did not earn the right to be called a best host or top deal on webhostingstuff.com. Hosts that have no reviews, little to show for experience. Webhostingstuff.com is too lazy to even fabricate a fake review for the new comers or slow to take off hosts.
Can Webhostingstuff.com evolve? I don’t think webhostingstuff.com can, and if they do it will not be anything in the realm of ethics.

SEO Experts – Top 10 Tips on how to tell if they know what they are doing

SEO experts seem to be a dime a dozen these days.  But not everyone claiming to be a SEO experts knows what they are doing. I think the best standard is that they have to know more than I do.  I am by no stretch of the imagination an SEO Expert (I am a self-proclaimed SEO noob). Everything I know about SEO is reflected on this site. Not to mention I have literally been poked with a stick to know what I know (I would have preferred to play video games).

So before I go into a whole spill about not being an SEO expert and having ADD, and that I find SEO boring; I know enough to spot a crappy SEO Expert.

The reason for this post was because of so called SEO Experts Mindshark.ca.  In July 2010 prior to them starting up they decided to harvest my email from this site for the purposes of spamming. One of their first spammings was about my competitors having an edge.  Granted if someone else came along and actually did what I do better than me, I would happily stand a side. But it does not appear anyone wants to write reviews about hosting review sites.  Because these so called SEO Experts decided to claim I opted in I decided to complain to Netfirms and wrote two posts, one of which was to prove they were not the SEO Experts that they claimed to be.
I re-reviewed them last month. Which triggered a furry of emails asking me who to go with. While I know some really good people in the business, you may not want to pay what they ask for (probable because no one returned my email after mentioning they were not cheap). I can tell you how I spotted the problems with Mindshark.ca; those details can help in making an informed decision when shopping for a SEO Expert.

Top Ten Tips for seeing if your SEO Expert is Valid

1. Alexa.com tells you how well SEO Experts rank

If you read enough of this blog there is no surprise that Alexa is at the top of the list. Out of any SEO detail I find Alexa.com interesting. Which maybe has to do with the fact that Alexa.com belongs to Amazon.com, or maybe it has to do with history graphs. Yes, amazingly historical graph charts can keep my attention.  If any SEO Expert tries to tell you that Alexa.com is not a valid measure of a site’s traffic, promptly mark their emails as spam.
I have used Alexa in many cases to prove that hosts may have just started or to show how popular they may be. It can work just as well for looking at SEO Experts and their sites. In fact Alexa.com can tell you a lot about rather if someone is actually a SEO expert. They should be able to do for themselves what they claim they will do for you.
In case you don’t understand how Alexa works, low numbers good, high numbers bad. For more details see: http://www.alexa.com/help/traffic-learn-more
Examples of some sites I visit:
Facebook.com – 1
Google.com – 2
Yahoo.com – 4
Twitter.com – 8
Amazon.com – 10
Netflix.com – 96
Hostgator.com – 240
Tigerdirect.com – 1,497
Penny-arcade.com – 5,223
Centralops.net – 18,996
Romanticallyapocalyptic.com – 74,178

After 21 days how did hosting-reviews-exposed.com do compared to so called SEO Experts Mindshark.ca?

Hosting-reviews-exposed.com – 125,586 formally 129,240, a loss of 3,654. Nice but I am sure other people could do better.
Alexa.com says this about Hosting-review-exposed.com.
There are 125,585 sites with a better three-month global Alexa traffic rank than Hosting-reviews-exposed.com. 
Mindshark.ca – 768,973 formally 637,187, a gain of 131,786. In terms of being SEO Experts this is really bad.  That number should be going down.
Another warning sign is when you see this “Historical data not available for sites ranked > ~ 100,00”, if you see that with any so called SEO Expert run, don’t walk. For some reason Alexa.com is showing historical data for Hosting-reviews-exposed.com I can only assume because their system predicts this site will go below 100,000.
However Alexa.com is not fool proof, there are ways so called SEO Experts can fool the system. I suggest avoiding any service that artificially enhances your Alexa score as this can have a negative effect on your site later on.

There are places you can go online to pay to ping a site to fake traffic numbers, most can get you below 100,000 on Alexa.com. However that does not guarantee there are no tell-tale signs. Clearly that is the case with this site that rigs Alexa scores.

Another thing to look for is what countries that are highest in traffic.  For example, so called SEO experts Mindshark.ca claims “Home to the latest and greatest Internet Marketing Strategies in North America,”

No Surprise but Mindshark.ca, self-proclaimed SEO Experts are not even big in their own country Canada.

Which if there is any place you want to have traffic in, it would be your own country. Especially when their propaganda lists Toronto, London, and Sydney along with New York and Delhi.
Another tell-tale sign is if the extreme ups and downs in traffic history.

The above chart is from one of those Alexa score boosting companies, clearly their attempts to manipulate the system have back fired. I think at worst the highest a SEO Expert’s site should be is at 100,000 or lower.

2. Centralops.net and Archive.net – When a SEO Expert’s history matters

So you get claims that someone has been using an SEO expert for years, maybe even a decade or more. Perhaps this SEO expert uses their BBB record as proof that they were around that long. Problem is the BBB does not verify when a company got into business.
Domains whois information on the other hand is next to impossible to fake.

However creation dates don’t tell the whole story. Maybe like me they had the domain for years before using, or they purchased it as a “aged domain”. Which is why I recommend looking at archive.net (thewaybackmachine).  This site will tell you what a site looked like from creation to today. Few changes indicated little was done with the site. A domain providers  start up page for years at a time indicated they were not active. One site that is a perfect example is Zyma.com it was formally a construction site out of Spain, and late 2010 they became a British hosting company.

3. What the Better Business Bureau can tell you about SEO Experts

I know I just told you not to trust the start date.  Anyone that knows me might think it a bit odd that I would use the BBB as a reference. But there is a valid reason.  One thing to note is it took years before mindshark.ca was actually registered with the BBB, and they contacted me not long after we launched. Perhaps it is not the case for everyone.

But that is not what I think should be focused on. The real issue I have with this SEO Expert’s BBB record they claim they have 200 plus resellers, 300 plus SEO firms that outsource to them, and 4,000 plus clients.

This strikes me as odd:

Why might I find a record that has zero complaints odd? Because it is too good to be true. There is always going to be a customer that cannot be pleased, especially when you offer “Affordable SEO services”, i.e. cheap. Not to mention no company is perfect.  Never mind this SEO expert claims to be in business since 2006, the last three years have zero complaints.
No one can please every customer they have, even if they cherry pick who is going to be a customer.

4. SEO Experts with Google Page Rank less than 5 need not apply.

I recommend using this site to see what your SEO experts page rank is.
http://www.prchecker.info/
From what I am told a page rank of 5 is the lowest you want to go with someone that claims to be a SEO expert.
As for what Google Page rank is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank

5. Search Engine results, what Yahoo.com, Bing.com, and Google tells you about SEO Experts.

At worst any self-proclaimed SEO expert should have the main page populated keeping off any negative feedback about their company for any search for just their name.
Example what searching for “mindshark.ca” shows on Bing.com, Yahoo.com, and Google.com: To date I have at least two posts on the first page of their search engine results.

6. How social are SEO Experts – Social Media Facebook / Twitter

About 4 years ago I learned a trick for getting Twitter followers. That is to follow someone who follows whoever follows them. There is software that can do this for you. It is super easy to spot.  Example someone has 17,000 followers, and they are following 17,000 people.  For my twitter account for this site @hostingscams, I have 1,700 followers, yet I follow about 20 people.  I don’t follow everyone that follows me simply because there is no way I could keep track of every tweet. Plus not every twitter account is following me for the sheer sake of seeing who I am doing a blog post on.  I get at least 3 – 8 a day that stop following me after 24 hours.

Clearly Mindshark.ca is using this method.
Twitter followers can also be purchased. You might want to check the followers to see how many people they actually follow.

Facebook is a harder thing to figure out. I know that likes can also be purchased.

My own page has 675 followers at this time. While appreciate the likes I tend to doubt my Facebook pages represents normal active websites and their social media. But there are some clear details I see when looking at the visitors for self-proclaimed SEO Experts Mindshark.ca.

What I see as problematic is the age bracket 18 -24 year olds. The other problem is the rate of visitors is rare. So rare that the best week was 1 visitor.  Even with 675 likes I appear to have more engagement with the people that liked my site, despite my lack of daily activity.

7. How did you find this SEO expert, or did they find you?

One of the things I have noticed with Mindshark.ca is that they literally phished for details. They got my email by going to my contact form, replying to them justified adding me to their mailing list. Never mind their initial mail out did not have my name. Others had their email and phone numbers harvested through sites that were meant to connect with professionals. They meant to connect with other people that would provide them work, not the other way around.
First Contact from a SEO Expert firm should not start off with a one size fits all mail out. I can understand a firm contacting a website, and providing details one what they see with their site, and what potential the site has with hard numbers.
Did the SEO Expert contact you?  Did they have permission to put you on their mailing list? If they put you on their mailing list avoid them.  Never do business with anyone that spams you.
I wish I could tell you how to find a SEO expert but the best I can do is tell you to try forums and advertising.  The people I deal with generally word of mouth from designers like myself.

8. SEO Experts Testimonials

One thing that stuck out to me with mindshark.ca was the testimonials. A site claiming to offer SEO services should have websites in their testimonials.  There were none.
Should a site(s) appear in the testimonials points 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 should be used to see how well they performed.

9. SEO Experts awards

If there is anything to be learned from the hosting review industry, its awards are not always earned.  They are often bought.
Look for:

• Awards that are vague on details.
• Awards that look like they were written by the SEO experts.
• Awards site that has a link for advertise with us, when there is no visible advertising on the site.
• Awards sites that have no visible source of income.
• SEO Experts Awards that do not link directly back to the independent “unaffiliated” party
• Awards that are more so an affiliation than an award (example they use a merchant so that merchant gives them a page to promote from).
• Things that are listed as awards that let anyone put their site up.
• They received an award from a site that has a top 10 list of SEO Experts, and the one you are looking at has an affiliate program.
• Award sites with the same whois and/or network details as the SEO Expert
• Award sites that fail at points 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6.

While I am no expert on SEO Expert awards, I can only assume that what was very visible in the Hosting Review industry would apply very well to the SEO Review industry.

10. The SEO Expert warns you about other SEO experts, sends you testiomonials and awards. Yet the SEO Expert fails to send you ideas.

One thing I noticed from the emails I got that Mindshark.ca was sending out was warning about:
“These signs have been compiled after close examination of the common features of many Unethical and Inexperienced SEO firms which exist.”
Clearly what this is for is to keep you from looking at other SEO Experts; it is designed to cause doubt. The awards and testimonials I have already covered how to look at. But clearly they are being sent to impress.
What you should be getting from any SEO expert is a plan of action. If you are in a field that is competitive they should be able to tell you what your competitors strong points and weak points are.

Finding SEO experts is no easy task

Things to remember:

• There is no such thing as a quick fix
• Its not a one time deal
• What worked 10 years ago, 5 years ago, or 1 year ago may no longer work today.
• They should have targets like traffic, keywords, and demographics.

When it comes to any service be they SEO Experts or whatever else, buyer beware.

Mindshark.ca – Seo Marketing Experts or Spammers? Part 1

Apr 01

Mindshark.ca seems to think this is a business.  Keep in mind it took more then 3 years for this site to make enough money to cover its own monthly bill.  So far my experience has been the people either come here to look for a host or to complain about a host.   The most bizzare request is from hosts that don’t use fake reviews,  is to get me to do a review on them.  You would think the last person they would ask to write something would not be me – the guy that has bad things to say about the very hosts that he uses.  But in the end the people that are looking for a host are dissapointed because I don’t recommend any one, and the people that come here to complain are not inclined to buy.

So why the rage with Mindshark.ca?

Back when I first started I had asked a friend to set me up a contact form, I am not known for my non-graphic web skills which are still lacking, requiring me to pay for professionals.  Keep in mind I have stated this site makes enough to pay for its hosting, but its not paying for experts I bring in to assist me.  Anyway getting back to that contact form.   It was set up to send to a gmail account, one in which only my YouTube account was sending mail to.  So after adding the contact form there is only one way to get my gmail account, and that is use by the contact form.  Mindshark.ca used a third party “over seas” to phish/harvest my email.  After a contact with me they added me to their mailing list.  Once again I did not opt-in or authorize use of this email address for their marketing / spam purposes.   This week I got tired of them sending email to the gmail account I use exclusively for hosting-reviews-exposed.com.  Here is the comment I got when I gave them 24 hours to remove my email or suffer a review and complaint to netfirms (funny didn’t I just do a post about them last month http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/endurance-international-group/netfirms-com.html).  Here is the response I got this response from Zamir of Mindshark.ca:
“You are off the list. Cheers
FYI you did opt in on August 9th   thx
———————————————-
Zamir Javer
Mindshark Marketing
1.877.MSHARK  1 xtn 730
www.mindshark.ca“
My response:
“Bullshit, I have the emails to prove that your full of it.  I will be filing a complaint with netfirms and my own review of your site.”
Yes thats right, I used profanity.  I did not opt in, I did not authorize them to use my email to spam or market to.  Frankly I was a little tame in my response.  But I am not about to be treated like I “forgot” that I signed up for their spam.
I get the following response from Zamir of mindshark.ca,
What emails….please send so we can review.
My response:
“You can review them with everyone else on my blog.  Your company contacted me by my forum when I responded to someone in your company you added my email without my permission to your mailing list.  Hence you are spamming.   Benjamin of hosting-reviews-exposed.com”
Zamir of Mindshark.ca response:
“I have reviewed your site.  You are an extortionist company like ripoffreport etc.
We are an internet marketing firm.   We have not done anything wrong.  If you have further questions please direct them to me and I would be happy to respond and address any concerns.”
Yes I am a terrible person, I told him I would do a review and report him to his upstream provider if they did not remove my email from their mailing a list.  A email that I did not authorize / opt in for them to spam me.  But why did they bring up ripoffreport?

Its a bit dificult to read, but it appears that this person also had their email harvest and on top of that their cell phone number.
Ripoffreport.com may very well be extorting, after all they do offer a paid service to deal with a complaint.  I on the other hand only offer a chance to plead your case on my blog, I offer no service to clean up a complaint.  But I guess on the surface because I placed a few ads in hopes of re-cooping my costs, it appears I am in the business of extortion.
So my response:
“Zamir,
Your a bit full of yourself, but I have to wonder what ripoffreport has on your company.   Thanks for the material.  Your company did harvest my email through my contact page.   Your an idiot and so is David Abramovici  (the dumbass that thought it would be a good idea to add my email to your list) to think I had my sights on your company as your not a host or a hosting review site.  But I really passionately hate spam, and you have the nerve to say I opted into your list.  You can call me an extortionist because you glanced at my site, but the  truth is you have no idea who I am.
By the way netfirms is moving to the U.S.
Regards,
Benjamin”
Here is where Zamir of mindshark.ca admits it without knowing it that they are spamming:
“Yes I know netfirms is moving.  Lol I have no clue what this conversation is about any longer.
Anyways….we do use a lead generation company from overseas.
IT seems maybe they are the ones that did something on your site,  If you can forward whatever info they sent we can review to try and forward it and put a stop to this.
We hate spam with a passion as well and do not engage in any of it.
thx”

I have my reason for mentioning netfirms, which some time I might explain to him.  But here is the point where Mindshark.ca admits they are not the marketing experts that they claim to be because they used a “a lead generation company from overseas“.  Translation they did not gather the emails themselves, nor did they make sure they were opt-in.  Their is no integrity to the list, and so far their seems like two complaints that prove this.
Just to be clear if you purchase a list from a third party to gather your contacts, that does not free you from spam complaints.  If anything its more daming.
My response:
“Zamir,
Now your telling me that your not even sure if people have been opted in because you used a third party.  When I owned hosting companies I did not accept that as an excuse.  For that matter if they could not prove their system was double  opt-in after a spam complaint their account was shut down.  Seriously if I were you I would get rid of your existing mailing list and start from scratch.  After all you sent your mailouts to me when I did not request or opt-in to your service.  Nor would I have reason to do so, if I needed marking assistance, which is not something I need for this site I would contact my previous business partners.
I am not going to send you the emails that were sent to me, you can find it when it hits my blog along with these wonderful emails you keep sending me, sorry but I don’t take kindly to being called an extorsionist.  After all the only thing I asked for was to be removed from your list.
As for what netfirms moving has to do with this conversation…….
Regards,
Benjamin”
Zamir of mindshark.ca tries to deflect the facts:
“Thanks for your email.  Again as I stated earlier.  We get hit with spam ourselves and we do not engage in any spam ourselves.   If there is any email or information you feel is spam related we would be happy to review it.  You are in our system as an optin from a third party lead source.
I understand you business relies on this type of thing to keep you busy with posts etc.  However I am extending our offer to assist you in whatever you are looking for.  If your intention is to keep responding with vulgarities please refrain.
However if you do have any requests for information or would like us to review any matter we are more than happy to help“.
I would like to think that my last response to mindshark.ca covers that:
“Zamir,
If this was a business it would have failed miserably, its taken 3 years to finale start paying for its own hosting.  A post on your site would go against the grain of what my site is about.  But you do not realize that a post about your site has nothing to do with webhosting.  Though I guess I can work on the angle of how netfirms will deal with you once I send my complaint.  But the truth is, my feed back on hosts that use fake review sites discourages people from buying, a wonderful business model when you want people to buy.   Coming up with assumptions that I do what I do just for money is at best a poor defense for your spamming me.
Your receiving spam, has nothing to do with the fact that you spammed me. I am doing a post because you have indeed spammed me, I did not -REPEAT- I did not authorize or opted into mail outs under this email address.   Therefore any mail out sent to me from you is SPAM.  Use of a  third party does not liberate you from any spam complaints, as clearly the netfirms terms of service indicates.
As for vulgarities, there were none in my last response.  Should you not have stated that when I called you an idiot, or when I said what you were saying was bullshit, or that David Abramovici is a dumbass.  The world can see exactly how many vulgarities I have used which has been very restrained.
Looking forward to another email where you defend the use of mail outs to people that did not opt in to your list, because you used a third party “over seas” to collect peoples emails.  While telling me that I am being vulgar and extorting you.  By the way if I was extorting you I would had asked for alot more then removing me from your list.  Your claim that I opted in has been rejected.  Further more the use of a third party to get emails has proven that your mailing list is tainted with other people that did not opt in.
You can of coarse continue to lay the blame on me by stating

1. I opted in.  (which you have already shed doubt on this claim of yours).
2. I am an extortionist (for which the only thing I asked for was to be removed from your list).
3. I am doing a article for my business.(despite it being totally off topic for my site).
4. Complain about my limited vulgarities. (which honestly who would not be vulgar with a spammer).

And you can suffer more complaints then just mine, as I will be providing an outlet for other people that experienced the same thing as me.  Not to mention information how to register their complaints.
Or you can start your list from scratch and make sure you double opt in your contacts.
Regards,
Benjamin”
Because I typed this from  my phone I over repeated some details, but I think it serves the purpose of getting my point across.  Anyway I did not hear from Zamir of Mindshark.ca again.

Do you have a spam complaint against Mindshark.ca?

First off I enter the domain mindshark.ca into http://centralops.net/co/DomainDossier.aspx
To find out where mindshark.ca is hosting in most cases the network whois will tell you where to send abuse complaints.

The whois tells me that they are with netfirms, it also tells me they are just a little over a year old I will have fun with this on another post where I will discuss mindsharks.ca’s seo skills.  But another thing is mindshark.ca appears to have recently moved to netfirms.com.

So if mindshark.ca harvested / phished for  your email like they did mine, I suggest sending the mailout they sent you to abuse@netfirms.com.
Your also more then welcome to place your own complaints in the comments area of this post.

Two more posts on mindshark.ca are in the works to show the email,  I am currently waiting on netfirms and I am hoping to get a contact from a spam expert before I do the second post on mindshark.

Another post in preparation of Hostgator.com’s Black Friday Special

Hostgator.com Black Friday Spam
Hostgator.com has found it’s black Friday special on my blog for the third year now.
As I get back into the swing of things after the end of a rather intense work load, I find reason to write and that is the spam that comes from Hostgator.com affiliates.
Just in case this time someone at Hostgator.com reads my blog, just to be clear I am not blaming you for spam. However if you don’t address it, with more than a unofficial looking short email while still collecting new customers from this form of very annoying affiliates you might as well do the spamming.
Instead of pointing out who has spammed me this time I am going to instead put together recommendations. But first let’s look at the promotional email that hostgator.com put out last year:
“Be ready to see a huge amount of activity and unbelievable sales numbers that will only come around once a year!
Here’s what we want you to do:
Post about the promotion on your blog
Post on Twitter and Facebook
Post about it on forums (follow all forum rules and don’t spam)
Tell your E-mail lists (Again, no Spam!)
Refer friends and family
Push all of your hosting related traffic to HostGator and EARN BIG!
Tell everyone you know!”
From there I am going to formulate what should have been done.

1. An official Hostgator.com looking email.Seriously the last one I saw asides for being lite on content and poorly formatted was weak. Especially when the prior emailed encouraged use of forums, Twitter, Facebook,  email lists, friends, and family.
2. Tell your affiliates their consequences and what defines spam. Let us put two and two together, you refer someone and they only pay a penny for service, and you get the full $50 – $125 refer fee.  In short it looks like Hostgator.com how to spam, without actually defining what spam is. From the traditional perspective spam is an email only thing. But the truth of the matter is spam has come to envelope any form on undesired communication via the Internet.  From what looks like people trying to say how grand and wonderful my site is, while trying to get site with a url to something about Viagra in very long link. To the people sending me messages via chat to sign up with some date service or some other crap.
3. Remind them of your Affiliate Agreement.
4. If you are going to advise them to use of forums, Twitter, Facebook,  email lists, friends, and family. Advise them on a proper protocol as opposed to annoying people.

Hopefully this time around I am busy with online stores and their Black Friday deals as opposed to going to through my in box, YouTube channels, forums, blogs, and whatever else.

IXwebhosting.com wants a blog post to be happy, apparently 1 was not enough

Really?

Aug 21

 

 

 

IXwebhosting.com was far from my thoughts (ok I mentioned IXwebhosting.com in my last post), as I already have 20 posts literally waiting for me to finish on my desk top.  Not to mention this is an election year and I am hurting for free time, and I am not hurting for work.  But I got this email (and others that provide me with new post ideas) just a few hours ago from Stepan who wrote me from an email address from ecommerce.com.

Email from ecommerce.com on behalf of IXwebhosting.com

Hello,
I’m currently Affiliate Manager at IX WebHosting and noticed you don’t have our review on your website! This is really sad, and I would love you to add us to your website.
You can check all our current Shared Hosting plans from the next page:
https://www.IXwebhosting.com/
hosting-plans
You can even try them out for Free (7 days free trial)!
Please notice that we offer also industry leading VPS and Cloud
hosting.
What I want to offer you is not only to advertise us on your website (place review), but also get money out of it! As I said, I’m affiliate manager @IX and I would like to invite you to our Affiliate Program. You can get up to $300 per signup! I know this may sound like a lottery, but… This is the way our affiliates are earning up to $10K on a regular basis. As I see from your website – you may be one of those successful ones. You can check our Affiliate Program from the next link:
https://www.IXwebhosting.com/
affiliate-program
Feel free to contact me in case you have any questions or interested
in future beneficial cooperation.
Thanks,
Stepan

So IXwebhosting.com does not understand what this site is about?

Personally I would think that most hosts would be happy not to be featured on this site, except of course amazon.com (and I don’t mean the hosting side). As no host has got a glowing endorsement from me. I am not about to endorse any company that offers unlimited resources like IXwebhosting.com.
Stepan had no problem finding the contact form for my site,  where I make it clear I will post emails in interest of full disclosure. Yet I am not sure Stepan understood the nature of this site.  IXwebhosting.com is not on the main page for this site but I did do a post on IXwebhosting.com in July 2011. Part of my interest in them is like many hosts that appear on this site, is IXwebhosting.com  and other large commission sites are often found on so called top 10 sites.
After all IXwebhosting.com appears on hosting-review.com’s top 10.



My other interest in IXwebhosting.com is the founder was also part of a company called featuredprice.com.
http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/hosting-reviews/IXwebhosting-com.html
In short the point of my post was I thought there was something common between all of the sites that did reviews for IXwebhosting.com. Which there was and that was they were all done in the same city, and all were filmed by the same crew. Remarkable Lisa Grice of IXwebhosting.com contacted me the next day after I did my review.
“I’m the Customer Service Director for IX Web Hosting (yup, in Columbus, OH). I am commenting here because while your post is factual – I’m confused at how we’re ‘busted’”
Despite my critic testimonial page has not much since I last reviewed. The page does not disclose the back story behind what I found.

IX Web Hosting is trusted by over 500,000 websites and their owners all over the world.
Not being the best person at marketing I think I could do a better job of disclosing the scenario by adding just this sentence. ”Here is what the people of Columbus Ohio think about us.”

So who is still with IXwebhosting.com since I looked at the videos back in 2011?

houndsinthekitchen.com – Left at least March 2012
kellsband.com – Still there
digitaldynamicdesigns.com – Still there
yunbootcamps.com – Still there
1canalgirl.com – Still there
djscolumbus.com - Still there
ryanomics.com – Still there
fox-counseling.com Left around April 2012
kellisautosales.com – Still there and still at risk at having their domain taken away because of crap info entered in the whois,
All things considered IXwebhosting.com kept a fair amount of the sites that did reviews.
Lisa stop responding when I asked why IXwebhosting.com had not joined the many hosts such as Hostgator.com and Endurance International Group hosts in asking their affiliates to follow FTC guidelines. I had two IXwebhosting.com customers who left comments on my blog who looked like they could have used some assistance as well from IXwebhosting.com. One of those customers who seemed in need of industry leading vps service.

The IXwebhosting.com question part of the blog

1. Was this site targeted by IXwebhosting.com because it used the terms hosting + reviews?
I have had a lot of hosts ask me to do a review, most failed to see that “exposed” part in my domain hosting-reviews-“exposed”.com. What most don’t realized is that this site was created because a review site (webhostingstuff.com) choose to unfairly delete my companies positive feedback. This event made it a core mission of this site to expose the real relationship between hosting review sites and hosting companies.
2. Why is there no FTC compliance in the IXwebhosting.com affiliate agreement?
Many of the big names(hostgator.com, fatcow, webhostingpad.com,……..) in U.S. hosting have required their affiliates to follow FTC compliance guidelines in regards to sites that make a commission based of a review or perception of a review. So why has IXwebhosting.com left that out of their agreement? Below is a copy of IXwebhosting.com’s affiliate agreement.



3. Has hostingsthatsuck.com been contacted  by IXwebhosting.com as well?
I just ask because there are a few hosts that have contacted this so called review site around the same time they ask me for a review. As far as I can tell they have not done a review on IXwebhosting.com. They use this whole so called “*host name* sucks” to get people to sign up, and I was wondering if I will be writing a third post to explain how hostingsthatsuck.com is wrong.  One host in particular started up last year, and hostingsthatsuck.com failed to mention this was a new company. But they made it sound like a good company because there was no negative feedback in search engines (look up zyma.com on this site).  I know a lot of hosts don’t like their methodology. Would “IXwebhosting.com Sucks? Is this Hosting any Good?” sound like a good solution for selling services for IXwebhosting.com?
4. I would love to hear the back story of why alreadyhost.com removed their endorsement of IXwebhosting.com. Why did they lose/quit their affiliate account with IXwebhosting.com?
http://www.alreadyhosting.com/blog/tag/IXwebhosting-poor-service/
Unlike most review sites alreadyhosting.com barely tries when it comes to writing a review about a host. The review they have up on IXwebhosting.com is weak at best and I am supposed to take his word like every site (which has an affiliate program with a nice payout) that I was supposed to choose IXwebhosting.com or other site.  I have seen content spinners put more effort into promoting a post.  But I was in contact with one host that removed their affiliate program due to cookie stuffing.
http://www.alreadyhosting.com/blog/2010/07/mddhosting-com-review-removed/
http://www.mikedvb.com/?s=alreadyhosting.com
So it really is not hard to imagine that IXwebhosting.com removed alreadyhosting.com’s affiliate program for the same/similar reasons and alreadyhosting.com is just covering up.

I don’t have a problem with IXwebhosting.com finding new affiliates

My concern is who IXwebhosting.com might be targeting, its one thing to ask internet related sites to do a review on IXwebhosting.com or place ads. Its another to ask sites that are into reviews for pure profit like hosting-review.com, alreadyhosting.com, webhostingstuff.com, hostaz.com, hostingsthatsuck.com, and a list that is way too long. All of these sites want their viewers to think they are independent sources to trust when someone is looking for their hosting needs.  Sites that want their viewers to pick hosts like ixwebhostin.com to get up to $300 commissions / $10k on a regular basis.

 IXwebhosting.com seems to appear on a lot of so called review sites.