I know we had a debate recently about BST and changing shit around in there, but what about the promotional threads in T&C?
http://www.wickedfire.com/traffic-content/163023-free-rank-tracker-sgw-folks.html
http://www.wickedfire.com/traffic-content/163086-looking-private-us-proxies-heres-coupon-code.html
http://www.wickedfire.com/traffic-content/162206-beta-link-building-service.html
As some random recent examples.
It seems a bit unfair to me that people can do things which are blatantly promotional in T&C, due to the way they structure it (i.e. give something away free rather than charging, whether it's a trial, coupon, software membership, etc). It allows people to create threads containing their brand which can easily be bumped up to the top of the forum at any time, generate ongoing awareness and also build email lists to promote their paid products too. Effectively it's free promotion which is infinitely more effective than posting in BST, and the only requirement seems to be that you give at least several users something free, and don't try directly try the hard sell in the thread itself.
Now clearly some are more "obvious" than others (i.e. a discount coupon for a service you offer is arguably worse that telling people about a free product you've put together) but in the end it's all marketing, and the thread starter stands to profit, so shouldn't they be going in with the rest of the promotional threads? It's not like $36 is a ton of cash.
Also no disrespect to anyone in particular [if I was selling SEO products I'd be using the shit out of this free targeted marketing], I went a bit hard on the xrumer dude earlier, which was a bit of perhaps unfair selectionism. (Primarily because I see enough xrumer shit being spammed around BST here and on various other forums - and didn't feel that a beta for an xrumer service was something even vaguely worthy of having any sort of promotion in what is meant to be a discussion forum - at least a completely free, effective rank tracker is innovative and something people don't currently have that could save them money, for ex).
Oh and in before all the "who gives a fuck?" posts.
http://www.wickedfire.com/traffic-content/163023-free-rank-tracker-sgw-folks.html
http://www.wickedfire.com/traffic-content/163086-looking-private-us-proxies-heres-coupon-code.html
http://www.wickedfire.com/traffic-content/162206-beta-link-building-service.html
As some random recent examples.
It seems a bit unfair to me that people can do things which are blatantly promotional in T&C, due to the way they structure it (i.e. give something away free rather than charging, whether it's a trial, coupon, software membership, etc). It allows people to create threads containing their brand which can easily be bumped up to the top of the forum at any time, generate ongoing awareness and also build email lists to promote their paid products too. Effectively it's free promotion which is infinitely more effective than posting in BST, and the only requirement seems to be that you give at least several users something free, and don't try directly try the hard sell in the thread itself.
Now clearly some are more "obvious" than others (i.e. a discount coupon for a service you offer is arguably worse that telling people about a free product you've put together) but in the end it's all marketing, and the thread starter stands to profit, so shouldn't they be going in with the rest of the promotional threads? It's not like $36 is a ton of cash.
Also no disrespect to anyone in particular [if I was selling SEO products I'd be using the shit out of this free targeted marketing], I went a bit hard on the xrumer dude earlier, which was a bit of perhaps unfair selectionism. (Primarily because I see enough xrumer shit being spammed around BST here and on various other forums - and didn't feel that a beta for an xrumer service was something even vaguely worthy of having any sort of promotion in what is meant to be a discussion forum - at least a completely free, effective rank tracker is innovative and something people don't currently have that could save them money, for ex).
Oh and in before all the "who gives a fuck?" posts.
