These guidelines for ethical blogging that I'm about to share with you are based on one simple principle that I'm sure you're already familiar with. It's a well known principle that most of us use in everyday life.
“Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”
This is often referred to as The Golden Rule or the “ethic of reciprocity”.
First let's talk about why it's important to rely on ethics when it comes to blogging. At the risk of boring you with another cliche, here it comes:
“If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything!”
You might be stuck in a position where it's time to pay the rent and you are desperate enough to overlook these guidelines but what I see happening online today is that people are impatient and simply want to take shortcuts in order to make a quick buck. There's also a bunch of folks who are too lazy to put forth any real effort to educate themselves in their niche.
Since this is a blog post and not a white paper, I'm not going to explore all of the areas where bloggers are crossing the line but let's take a look at a few popular topics, shall we?
My Personal Pet Peeves When it Comes to Ethical Blogging
Pop-ups
I'm kicking off this discussion with pop-ups because I know that many of you reading this are using them to build your email list. I'll address more about the topic of emails list in my next point but let's start off with the tool most bloggers and webmasters use to get subscribers. Personally, I dislike pop-ups.
Wait – I'd better say this before you get the wrong idea.
I don't think that pop-ups are unethical – I just don't like them. I find them rude and annoying.
Whew! Got that out of the way, now let me make my point.
I decided a long time ago that I personally would not use pop-ups (remember how I started this post with “do unto others….”). I am standing my ground on this one. I don't care if some of the most well respected authorities on the internet use pop-ups, I'm not falling for it. There is one case in particular where I have lost all respect for a site that almost everyone else holds in high regard and that is the Forbes website.
That's right I said it, I don't visit the Forbes website and I don't care what kind of headline or breaking news story they have – I won't go there. If I click a link by accident that takes me to the site, I close it immediately. Of course they don't care about little old me, but my point here is this:
I care.
And you should care too. Stand for something or you will surely fall for anything. Maybe pop-ups don't bother you but I'm sure there is something else you see or hear online that turns you off. Do your own silent protest.
Click away.
Unsubscribe.
Do whatever it takes but by all means DON'T turn around and start using that same sneaky, annoying, obtuse tactic yourself just because all the “cool kids” are doing it.
Sidebar (an example of when it's OK to cheat):
As you may know I am a YouTuber. I urge people to subscribe to my YouTube channel. I send them to a link that looks like this:
http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=Msileanespeaks
If you are not already subscribed to my YouTube channel (what are you waiting for?) when you click that link you will see a pop-up like this:
Notice the difference?
It might be subtle to some but I think it's major. I'm not misleading you by saying – watch this video – I'm asking you to “subscribe to my YouTube Channel” and the popup just makes it easier for you to do so. Actually YouTube is responsible for this brilliant tactic but I wish I could take all the credit.
That brings me to the next pet peeve on my list.
List swaps and Solo Ads
What The efF! You mean that I trusted you with my email and the first thing you want to do is sell me off to the highest bidder. I signed up to get emails from YOU and now I'm getting messages from someone else because you allowed them to email solo ads to me. Are you kidding me?
IMHO it's tactics like solo ads and list swaps that give our niche a bad name. When I say “our” niche you might be thinking I'm not talking to you, but if you have a blog or an email list I most certainly am talking to you.
Do you value your subscribers or simply think of them as “a list”? No wonder personal development blogs are so popular. You are giving all your subscribers an insecurity complex.
Sidebar (an example of when it's OK to cheat):
Have you ever watched TV shows like Divorce Court or Judge Alex? These two shows have a commercial that plays urging people to follow these popular reality TV celebrities. During the call to action they also include the following statement:
You'll also receive some valuable offers.
For me that is the game-changer right there. This is where the person is completely above board and letting people know – you are going to receive offers!! That is what makes it OK to cheat. Don't mislead people. Be straight with them and let them know. I bet they get thousands of people signing up for those “valuable offers”.
Videos with no playback controls
Oh boy does this make my blood boil. Ok, I know it's not just me, so wherever you are right now, raise your hand if you love it when get to watch a video that you can't pause or stop when it's time to get up and go to the bathroom?
Hold it up high, so I can see you! Don't be shy.
I'm not surprised that no one has their hand raised, because if you ever sat through one of these videos you are probably too embarrassed to admit it right now anyway.
If there was such a thing as a “Court of Blogging” and I was a Judge, I would sentence everyone who makes these kinds of videos to be forced to sit in a room together and watch each other's videos play over and over again, until…
I can't even say it. The thought of it is way too cruel for me to imagine and no one deserves that type of punishment. I can't even make excuses for it. This is just WRONG.
Sidebar (I can't make this one OK but here's how to fight back)
Yes, that's what I use to record those non-stop videos while I'm at the grocery store or in other room watching TV. Then when I'm done I'm able to play back the video, watch the good part and delete the 15 minute sales pitch at the end.
Don't get me wrong, I didn't get Screencast-o-matic just for this purpose, I use it to record YouTube videos and podcasts. But it's really cool that I found an added benefit to using it.
Set Your Own Blogging “Standards”
I want you to leave this post with this thought in mind:
Set your own blogging standards. I mean after all, the true goal of this post is about helping you decide where to draw a line in the sand and it's about you making the commitment not to cross that line. These are (a few) of my personal pet peeves but they might not bother you one bit.
Make sure that you have your own set of standards that you won't compromise on and promise to uphold. I'd love to hear what they are. Please share them with us in the comments here and don't forget you can also comment in the Google+ section and be sure to @mention me so I don't miss it.
Btw – feel free to sign up for my mailing list and I promise that all the “valuable offers” will come directly from me!
[gp-comments]
Hi Ileane,
It’s a super awesome post and how nicely you’ve reflected all the annoyance of readers while visiting ‘popular blogs’.
I hate the popups while visiting blogs and hate it even more when it keeps displaying even after I already subscribe. I also don’t use the popups to force users.
I also agree with your views of lists too. True to heart.
Hi Suresh, you are certainly a blogger who follows ethical blogging guidelines. I’ve always known you to be fair and objective and I never saw a popup on your blog either 🙂
Thanks so much for stopping by Suresh. It means a lot.
Thank you Ileane.
I really liked the sharp image. Is this from iStock? We don’t need to offer credit to publish images once you pay for them?
Suresh, this is very ironic. Not too long after we had a conversation on your blog about guest authors uploading images, I landed a sponsorship for my podcast. DepositPhotos is now sponsoring the Ms. Ileane Speaks Podcast. The image came from there.
I made the announcement to my subscribers yesterday and I will announce it on the show very soon. Stay tuned!
That’s really great. The image quality immediately grabbed my attention and could not resist asking you.
I’m already your subscriber, but I’m afraid I missed that mail or if it is still in my reading queue. Will wait for your show !
I for one am definitely for solo ads and I do buy them because they bring fast targeted results.
Of course it goes without saying that I have to test to find those solo ads worth buying which are usually from the list owners who have a rapport with their list and do hold to ethical standards such as setting up the expectation to their subscribers of receiving valuable offers as you mentioned. This is usually done in the welcome email their subscribers first get, hence the phrase setting up the expectation.
And please understand that emails are not sold off. A solo ad is an endorsement of sorts that a list owners mail out to their subscribers containing a message and link to your free or paid offer depending on what that particular solo ad seller allows.
However, I will agree with you on videos with no playback control as that is just not helpful and very frustrating. And aside from the Screencast-o-matic tip you gave, there are also various browser plugins that allow for downloading videos you come on the web across which you can later watch and go to the parts you need.
Caleb, I agree with you on this. List owners don’t con the people in their list into buying anything. SoloAds are a valuable marketing tool, and of course worth-while lists are targeted and their owners do adhere to ethical standards.
As for the other things in this post, I agree! Popups are extremely annoying as well as those videos! It’s a disadvantage I’d say.
This is my first time on this website, and the content is wonderful! Thank you Ileane!
Hi Ileane, I think it’s ironic that we all have these ideas of what’s ethical and what’s not. I also think most of it’s based from our own experiences. If there’s something we don’t like or enjoy and others do it I think it’s questionable for that to be an ethical issue. If you personally don’t mind ads within the sidebars or pop ups than perhaps it’s not an ethical issues rather than a usability issues from the readers. I just went over and watched the video you did on Screencast-o-matic Pro, I’m seriously considering some video editing software for the near future!
Yes, I think it’s important for bloggers to develop their own set of guidelines based on personal experience and not employ every marketing tactic under the Sun just because they see someone else doing it.
People should stick to the same standards for ethical behavior that they use in their offline life. Don’t think that just because they’re on the internet they can throw all of their values out the window.
Thanks for stopping by Brian!
Ileane, I don’t know what is your problem with the solo ads and I won’t enter into details. But I want to point some mistakes…
1) “I signed up to get emails from YOU and now I’m getting messages from someone else.” – you’re making a confusion here. A solo ad is NOT a message from someone else.
2) “List swaps”… no such thing, it’s a misleading term. Actually it’s ad swaps. You publish an ad for someone else and that person publishes an ad for you. This is derived from the very ethical 😉 cross-promotional advertising that has a long offline history.
I don’t know why you say that solo ads give blogging a bad name. That’s funny… I sold solo ads in my ezines before blogging was some kind of fashion, before WordPress was founded… And finally, let me quote one of my online friends – j.l. scott:
“Let’s think about this logically. I subscribe to TIME MAGAZINE – and I pay for it. Yet, TIME makes their money mainly from advertising. They routinely send me extra mailings with special offers – in addition to the regular ads in each issue.”
I don’t know if you got the point of the paragraph above. If you didn’t, I can send you the link to the rest of the article. It’s about solo ads even if she doesn’t sell such ads 😉
Adrian
P.S. If some bloggers don’t know what they’re doing, it doesn’t mean that blogging is something unethical or something bad. If some email marketers send spam, it doesn’t mean that email marketing is unethical or something bad. The same is for solo ads 😉
Hi Adrian,
Thanks for the clarifications.
One thing I would like to point out – I wasn’t referring to bloggers getting a bad name I was referring to “Internet Marketers”. That is what I meant by if you have a blog or an email list. That would cover just about anyone who “markets” something online and I am well aware that this was being done way before blogs were conceived. It’s unfortunate that to this day, a lot of people are afraid to get online or sign up for Facebook or use their real picture in their profile because certain stigmas that are attached to the online world.
I’m also being very clear in this article well at least I thought I was clear, but maybe you missed it – that my point was not these are things that I won’t compromise on. Each and everyone who reads the article needs to find the line that THEY won’t cross. I’m not suggesting that my “pet peeves” should be adopted by everyone.
I don’t read Time magazine very often but I won’t mind going to the site as long as they don’t have pop-ups. Advertisements don’t bother me at all. I just don’t like the kind that stop you from reading the content that I came to the site to consume.
If you’re not SELLING your email list than good for you!
Hi Ileane, thank you for the reply 🙂
You misunderstood that Time Magazine paragraph but that’s not your fault (it’s just one para out of a whole article). It’s about the offline magazine. You can read the whole article here: http://www.soloadverts.com/solo-ads-publishing/exclusive-mailings/
It’s an interesting analogy addressed to everyone who is UNREASONABLE by complaining about solo ads. If you read the article I guess that you’ll understand why I said unreasonable.
I publish ezines since 2001… I don’t force anyone to subscribe to them. I never bribed anyone to subscribe to my ezines (get this free thing in exchange of bla bla). I also don’t take prisoners 😉 But…
If a subscriber likes my ezines (free content, not sales pitches), then she/he has to accept also the extra mailings (solo ads). She/he’s free to unsubscribe at any time, but not free to ask me to work for free just for the sake of their blue eyes. That’s unreasonable and that’s not how the real world (whether offline or online) is. Wanting my free content but complaining about the solo ads that make me money and allow me to deliver free that content … is really unreasonable.
Adrian
P.S. I don’t know what you understand by someone “selling the email list”. If you understand a person who gives subscribers’ names & email addresses to someone else in exchange of money… well … that has nothing to do with solo ads and it’s a very bad practice. The same like spam. There will always be bad guys in any field. But that doesn’t make the whole field (industry) something unethical or something bad 😉
P.P.S. I’m not looking for a backlink to that article. I didn’t comment on your blog post for the sake of getting backlinks. So… if your commenting policy doesn’t allow for such links, I’m sorry, please delete it. I don’t want to break your rules.
Adrian,
I love the way you stand up for what you believe in. You definitely have drawn a line in the sand and that is the whole point of the article. I hope others can learn a lot from your example and stop abusing the trust that people put in them.
Thanks!!
I think the whole make money online business model just seems easy, that is why people are impatient and lazy. Even the Gurus make it sound easy that makes newbies look for the easy way out.
I believe if you provide value and help solve people’s problems, you’ll have a successful blog or online business. If you have top quality content that people love, they will share it and follow or subscribe to get more from you. You wont need to spam or force anyone to join you. I totally agree with you Ms. Ileane, people need to keep this blogging business ethical and stop focusing on making a quick buck.
Great post sistah.
Hey Gugulethu! Thanks for the positive feedback.
This article seems good… Specially i am agreed with the points of Adrian Jock… he pointed out everything well… Thanks for such sharing.. 🙂
Hi Ileane,
This is amazing piece of content about the readers feeling while browsing through popular and some SEO proclaimed “big” websites. Over the years in this field, the only thing I hate on internet is “Pop-up”, even due to popup tricks, I start hating email lists capturing idea.
I just can’t tolerate that how someone can let the program disturb his/her readers for just the sake of email address. There are many ways to capture email addresses of readers, but why PopUp?
I really hated the idea of popup. However, I am agree with your views on lists swap, and solo ads.
Hi Hamza, The sad thing about pop-up plugins on WordPress blogs is that they are sold on the promise that people who subscribe to your blog won’t continue to see the pop-up.
That is the biggest lie ever told.
Every list I subscribe to continues to show me the popup when I visit the blog. Unfortunately these are some of my favorite blogs which is why I put up with it.
I agree with you Ileane. Even if using pop ups is found to moderately increase subscribers I’m unwilling to use them. I care about my readers and am unwilling to compromise my blog’s readability for them.
Good for you Cameron. Stick to your guns. That’s what I’m talkin’ bout!
Well, there are a lot of internet marketers, bloggers and experts who would do everything for the money promoting every possible products in every possible way. It makes me always laugh when I receive four or five emails in a row with “my friend xxx has just released his or her new product on yyy, go and buy it now that it has a 50 percent discount”. There are bloggers around who have a lot of friends.
Even better are those courses where they say you should join immediately otherwise you lose your chance and after a month they are still open. Or those who pose themselves as experts of something but when you go checking the numbers you see that in reality they have average results.
You can spot them pretty soon because every month or so they have a new tactic, a new service or a new product to sell. I just don’t know how they can be affiliate to so many things.
Another favorite are those who publish their earnings, self-stated, and then stop when they drop because they are not consistent. 90 percent of times after a year those blogs are more or less completely different always trying to reach the top but never getting there.
On one side though I understand them because thanks to Google is disturbing to be on the first page of results and then for no apparent reason to be pushed at the fourth or fifth so the fact that many would do everything for a subscription or a sale can be understood.
Ethic or not if you are not on Google you are not on the net which is why everyone, me too, uses G+ in the hope that it helps with SEO. It doesn’t from my experience.
It might be that the only way to be loved by Google is giving them money for an AdWord campaign and forget about SEO, content and all the rest.
Btw I hate popups too. 🙂
Wow Andrea, you certainly conjured up some awful memories that I must have erased from my memory banks.
I could have included all of these hear but it might actually provide the basis for another post about – How to see these scoundrels from a mile away!!
I thank you for the inspiration!
There is something else that you eluded to that I’d like to reiterate – there is nothing worse than someone bragging about how thorough their “program” or “membership site” is and they have absolutely no credentials to back up their claims. It’s like someone told them that they can make money from a membership site so they create one hoping that WE will join and provide all the valuable information. Most of the time these people don’t have a clue what they are talking about they just purchased a product they saw someone else promoting ….
I could talk about this all day. Wait here’s another one –
You know how many marketers these days tell you to sign up for their list and in the first email they send out they ask you to tell them what your challenges are.
Well earlier this month I signed up to a list where the person claimed to be an expert in Google Analytics. You might know that I’m pretty well versed in the topic myself, and even though I still have a lot for me to learn on the subject, I know more than the “average” blogger.
So I sent this “expert” and email and let them know that I was very familiar with the information they were providing in the emails they were sending and that my question was a little more on the “intermediate” level. They responded that they couldn’t answer my question via email but if I joined their PAID membership site I could ask the question there.
This told me two things
1. They didn’t know the answer
2. They were depending on one of their paying customers to provide it for me.
Ok, I think I have gone on long enough. 🙂
Thanks so much for your feedback Andrea!!
I agree with you that popups are annoying and I really don’t like them at. In fact, I hate it. Thanks for mentioning Screencast-o-matic .
Hi Shalu – you can try the free version of Screencast-o-matic but it comes with their watermark. But if you upgrade to the Pro version it only costs $15 and you get a ton of features that are well worth the investment.
I think it also comes in ethics that you make lofty claims to serve readers needs if they subscribe your channel or ebook through email listing but when a reader get your freebie it’s nothing but another rubbish in his hard drive; I think ethics in blogging means getting your readers into your customer without annoying them and without exaggerating about your freebies and premium products
Mi Muba,
You made me laugh when I read “another rubbish in his hard drive”.
If you notice I don’t offer a freebie bribe in order to get people to subscribe to my email list, but I do send a couple of useful PDF’s.
Great article Ileane. As you say if your content or your service is great then you won’t have to coerce people for their details, they’ll chase you for more.
“A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.” – Henry Ford
Hi Alex,
I don’t typically like “quotations” but the one from Henry Ford is pretty good.
Thanks for sharing.
Ethics can’t be defined in exact terms but I think if you are not annoying your readers at the cost of your small benefits that is really a ethical step and will eventually impress your readers; popups are really irritating but if we cast a look around many pro bloggers have never ever used popups to get more subscription and now they have thousands and thousands of daily subscribers
Yeah I hate pop ups too. Especially where the close button is the Submit Email button. And another thing I hate is if there’s too many ads, especially in article form which got delivered to my RSS reader!
Hey Louis, what tool are you using to read RSS feeds these days, now that Google reader is dying?
Hi Ileane, it’s the ol’ and classic Mozilla Thunderbird 🙂
This is a very interesting set of ethics. I wonder how many people agree or disagree with any of the statements you have made. I believe that everyone has their own code of ethics, some more conservative than others. In today’s society, a lot of people do not like to hear the opinions of others, but the same people can sit down to read a blog and write disrespectful things. If a person were to take a look at a lot of the articles that come out on yahoo.com, the comments would be full of vulgar statements.
Hi Illeane,
Set our blogging standard is highly important. It’s the last resort of our confidence to make us keep the blog alive
Very good points Ileane. I dislike popups and rarely tweet links from sites that have them. I don’t use them on my site and have no plans to do so.
Hi J0hn. Great to see you again!! Thanks for stopping by and for sharing the post.
Hi Ms IIeane,
Another wonderful piece you have written here! I’ve always had this bad feelings for pop ups. To say the least I never liked them, it doesn’t take me time to close down the tab once I sense this especially if it’s a blog where I have subscribed before.
I think is high time blogger started setting blogging standards, I took this step few months back and it’s paying me heavily…
Thanks for a wonderful write up!
Hi Ileane,
The point you mentioned of Popups which itself is annoying and the reader will run away even though if you are having interesting blog post and second thing is that I would like to say Donot and never focuss too much on the earning money at the initial stage than building up the list.
Regards
Siddhartha Sinha
I couldn’t agree with you more, especially the stuff about not being able to pause video content and pop windows. Two big bug bears of mine!!! Thanks and keep up the good work. Cheers, Jay
Hi Jay, thanks for the feedback.
Hey Ileane, I don’t mind the popups now and don’t mind the solo ads. But what I do mind is the videos with no playback controls. This really is a pet peeve and I see that I’m not the only one LOL.. I’m definitely going to check out Screencast-o-matic Pro because I do agree we should have some control over when to pause, stop and go back to the video. Thanks for sharing!
Hey Sherman,
Thanks for stopping by.
I hope to see you start making some videos after you get your hands on Screencast-o-matic. You’ll love it.
Great blog and all soooo true. All very annoying “tricks” You forgot to mention the videos that just start up when you get to a site. They scare the hell out of me because they are often really loud, and I didn’t press anything…ugh. Its all about deciding for me…but I am a big girl now, I can decide for myself!
Thank you for mentioning the auto play videos. I agree with all of the points in Illeane’s post but the auto play videos are at the top of my list of annoying things.
I’m with you Ileane on the pop ups. As a marketer, I blast right through them and if I subscribe to a person’s list, I don’t think I’ve ever done it through one of them, but instead, I just go to the subscribe box on their site.
But my tainted opinion doesn’t keep me using it. I know I’m not my customer and in this instance, I get daily proof of this because people opt in via the pop up opt in box on my site.
And when I finally stop being lazy, I want to test what Conversion XL is doing on their site with having the pop up only come up from the bottom right side of the screen, in the white space alongside the content. It’s unique in that it only pops up when you’ve scrolled about a 1/4 of the way down a post. It’s very noticeable, but far from annoying in that you can keep doing what you’re doing without even clicking it away. What’s even cooler is that these are guys I trust know what they’re doing and I think they even have a post on their site highlighting the results they’ve gotten from using this tactic.
Now as for things I draw my line in the sand about, the first one that comes to my mind is that of not writing incomplete posts but rather making sure that I’ve always got an explanation of Why someone should care about the topic I’m going to be talking about, What I’m going to be talking about laid out with concepts and definitions, How to recipes/steps for accomplishing the outcome I’m speaking to, And What To Do NOW to start getting results.
This is a complete communication that appeals to all four of the learning styles and my goal is to stream line this process and make it as tight and as potent as could be.
And I’m doing this contrary to what is popular. What is popular isn’t useful most of the time because it involves short 400-500 word posts of people giving theory or opinion, but no template for what to do, why to do it, or how to do it.
Writing complete communications isn’t easy and it isn’t welcomed by the person who gets a sense of achievement just from reading ; not from doing something to actually move forward. I’m probably hurting my readership and shares by discouraging people who are only pretending that they want to improve their business so they’re turned off by content that encourages them to go take a specific action, but that’s my line in the sand as of now that I proudly don’t cross at this moment.
Thank you Ileane for introducing me to Screencast-o-matic. I didn’t know about it until today. I think one of my primary uses for it will be dissecting winning webinar pitches – reverse engineering what a marketer did that caused a herd of people to take them up on their offer. I think the other good use to it will be recording FAIL videos of people busting themselves up on trampolines or doing idiotic things in, and around pools. Hahaha
Lewis I can see that you have a lot to say on this topic. I don’t normally approve long comments like this from someone I don’t know but I’ll let this one go.
To be honest (just keeping it real) I have a hard time reading all of this.
I look forward to hearing more from you and hopefully next time you will be brief. 🙂
A great post! You make some interesting points on pop ups, especially with the Golden Rule. I use it because it works, but I am not a huge fan of them (on other sites). Excellent point about Forbes.
Have you been to their mobile site? No thank you!
I love screencast-o-matic!
Adam, it amazes me that “Forbes” continues to hold the same reputation that had back in the days of print publishing. IMO, their web presence today, falls really short.
Like I said, I know they don’t care about me, but I still gotta take a stand and draw my line in the sand. 🙂
I too agree on some points and strongly feel that there should not be unwanted pop-up ads, which annoys user, thanks for sharing such a informative post.
I personally dislike pop-ups as well and I agree with the golden rule of “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you,” that is why I don’t place any in my articles. But like many other things in life, we don’t have the same beliefs that is why I respect those who do place pop ups and just ignore!
Hi Ileane,
Certainly you have come with some interesting facts!!
I hate Popup ads… They are so much irritating… 🙁
Those are some interesting points you made my number on turn of is pop ups hate em :/ another blogger should stop is sell off their email list because its really annoying to bet getting emails from sites you’ve never visited or subscribed to anyhow lovely post and keep them coming :).
Hi Ileane. As usual quite interesting post it is. Google Spam Filer head Matt Cutts has already announced that sites those have popup ads will be considered as spammy websites and penalized by Penguin Algo update. I never recommend anyone those who make a disaster by giving such ads in their own website. It not only create a bad effect for their website but also no users will come to spend their valuable time in such a stupid site. Keep sharing updates like this. Thanks 🙂
Hi Kristinakathy, thanks so much for adding your feedback. Cheers.
I was recently using facebook lightbox popup on my blog (it has good amount of traffic). Though the facebook likes were increasing drastically, I found that the bounce rate and overall experience of the users was dying. Since then, I have removed it and my blog is again on a high with visitors spending more time on it. This article really gives some good tips.
Stephen, oh wow I am so happy to hear you say that you removed that Facebook lightbox popup. By far that is the worst and most annoying thing ever when it comes to popups. If you have a blog you want to get people OFF of Facebook and over to your blog but certainly not the other way around. Asking people to like your Facebook page without letting them see your content first is one of the most backwards strategies bloggers can take on.
Good for you!!
Ethical tips to be a cheater! But I have learnt a lot. Ileane you are genious
Hi Clair, you really know how to make me feel special 🙂
Thanks dear.
Thanks for reading the post ahsan!
Hi there Ileane,
It’s SO GREAT to see your approach to this topic. I think many people mistakenly believe that the minute they go online the etiquette rules of the offline world stop existing. Hence the reason why there are so many rude commenters, bloggers, link builders, spammers (i.e.: trolls) who make the net a worse place than it deserves to be. It’s people like YOU who fight back and, as you say, who have standards that repair the damage. So thanks again for this post, I totally agree with everything you say.
Good luck in the future,
Steve
Hi Steven,
Wow, I like you already. lol
Thanks for stopping by and making my day. Hope to see you here again soon.
Hi Ileane,
There’s one site I used to visit frequently because they always have the latest news on my favorite sport. Each time I click a link and see the page open, I’m greeted with a grey shading blanking out the story! The shading prevents me from reading anything until I complete the two question survey. After a few visits, I realized that the survey is the entrance fee to read the content. I avoid their links when I see them now.
It all boils down to respect. As you said, treat others the way you like to be treated. It’s so funny to read people’s comments about pop-ups. Bloggers are using them. They must be effective in some way. Something has to make it worth losing some loyal readers alone the way.