IN THE BIZ

I regularly speak at newbie-targeted seminars at the Internext and Cybernet Expo conventions. Among other things, I always tell the new webmasters in attendance that they need to be wary of whom they do business with in our industry.IN THE BIZ

I regularly speak at newbie-targeted seminars at the Internext and Cybernet Expo conventions. Among other things, I always tell the new webmasters in attendance that they need to be wary of whom they do business with in our industry. There are plenty of unethical and unscrupulous webmasters out there who will rip them off at the drop of a hat. Our industry is a bit schizophrenic – while new webmasters will find a plethora of experienced webmasters who will bend over backwards to give them advice and guidance, for free, there are also a significant number of webmasters and companies that provide services or products to webmasters that are preying on the naïveté and inexperience of the gullible webmaster.

As I always tell the webmasters attending these seminars, however, things are getting better all the time. There is a lot less fraud and other improper activity being committed now in our industry against webmasters and surfers alike than there was three years ago when I got into this business.

In my opinion, each and every one of us has an ethical obligation to do what we can to expose fraudulent and illegal activity being committed in our industry and to do what we can to eradicate it. While there are bad apples in each and every industry, without exception, such as lawyers, doctors, car salesmen, and priests, there are an inordinate number of shysters and criminals remaining in our industry. These people contribute to the overall bad reputation our industry labors under. While there will ALWAYS be a stigma attached to the adult Internet, doing what we can immediately to clean up our industry will give our opponents less ammunition to attack us with. And, in my opinion, improving the public image of our industry is not a gargantuan task. If each and every one of us stopped turning a blind eye to improper/illegal conduct and did something about it, we will all experience increased pride in what we do and who we are as a whole – and we’ll all make more money to boot.

This purging process is rather simple. There is already a vehicle in place at YNOTMasters.com. For years, YNOT has entertained and investigated complaints of improper conduct brought by webmasters against other webmasters or entities that provide products or services to webmasters (see http://www.ynotmasters.com/listings/report.html). YNOT acts as a mediator, investigating the complaint and trying to reach an amicable resolution between the parties. If the party accused of wrongdoing, however, fails to respond to the complaint against it, or is found to have in fact engaged in improper conduct and has not remedied the situation, then the accused party loses its listing in YNOT’s Service Directory, the biggest resources listing of its kind on the Internet.

As far as I know, YNOTMasters is the only webmaster resource site that screens all companies seeking to get listed in the site’s resources section – and we receive on average over 70 new applications to be listed in our Service Directory every week. If upon review YNOT deems that a company seeking a listing engages in improper or illegal conduct, YNOT rejects the application to get listed. Further, as far as I know, YNOT is the only webmaster resource site that has a complaint process, allowing webmasters to bring to the entire community’s attention a webmaster or company that is not above board.

The Service Directory on YNOTMasters.com currently has listed approximately 2,500 companies providing services and products to webmasters. And we only list those companies who have passed our screening process and who do not lose their listing because of complaints filed against those companies. Accordingly, a wise webmaster will NOT do business with any company that is not listed in YNOT’s Service Directory. If a company is not listed, there is a strong likelihood that the company is not one that webmasters should be doing business with.

I encourage all webmasters to utilize YNOT’s complaint process each and every time any webmaster runs across a company that is not acting properly. For example, are you aware of any web hosts that advertise one cost for hosting services, but charge another? Are you aware of any hosting companies that promise unlimited bandwidth, but then charge for bandwidth if a certain threshold is exceeded without telling you that in advance? Do you know of any affiliate programs that advertise that they will pay you a certain amount per sign-up, but then pay something less, based upon a rule that they failed to tell you about? Do you know of any affiliate programs that terminate affiliate webmasters without notice, and continue to receive traffic from the terminated webmasters without paying for the traffic? Do you know of any pay sites that promote specific content in their tours, but contain no such content in their members’ areas?

Each of these examples illustrates misleading, fraudulent conduct which our industry would be better off without, and which I combine under the heading “false advertising”. If you come across any such conduct, or other conduct that is improper, please report it to YNOT at the link noted above immediately. You can also write articles about illicit conduct or scams you have been a victim of or have knowledge of, and we’ll print the articles here in YNOTNews for the benefit of the entire community. As many in our industry have been stating for years, isn’t it better that we try to clean up our industry ourselves, rather than relying upon some outside entity to step in and try to do it for us, and do a poor job in the process, making business a lot more difficult for all of us?

That said, however, please allow me to provide an example of how NOT to attempt to try to clean up our industry through writing an article. Last Thursday, Jayson John of PornoVice.com published an article entitled, “The Resource Racket”, apparently in an attempt to point out improper and misleading conduct (or as I like to put it, “false advertising”) that is being committed by various webmaster resource sites. I applaud Mr. John for his attempt to open up webmaster eyes to alleged illicit conduct being perpetrated within our community, which is exactly what I am trying to encourage with this article. However, in attempting to point out misleading statements and misconduct among several webmaster resource sites, Mr. John laces his article with false statements and misleading information. I deem this endeavor so irresponsible on Mr. John’s part that the article is, in my opinion, not worth the virtual paper that it is written on. While defrauding webmasters and/or surfers is an evil we need to eradicate, trying to increase webmaster awareness of such harmful conduct by making inaccurate statements and providing misleading information is, in my view, just as harmful as outright wrongful conduct.

I will explain why some of Mr. John’s statements regarding alleged misconduct being committed by various webmaster resource sites are inaccurate and misleading. I can only speak on behalf of YNOTMasters.com, however, as I am unaware of the inner workings and practices of other webmaster resource sites.

Mr. John makes his thoughts abundantly clear in his opening paragraph: “One thing that all major adult webmaster resources have in common is that they all fail to retain advertisers. One might think the majority of the advertisers went out of business, when in fact the resources failed to deliver on their promises.” He also noted, “I did monitor the adult webmaster resources for 2 years following [his pulling of his own advertising from one of the sites] and noticed that not one was able to retain long-term advertisers like television, radio, and magazines do.”

Mr. John did not speak to YNOT before making these statements about lack of advertiser retention and failure to deliver on promises, and it is doubtful that he spoke to any other webmaster resource sites either. If he had spoken to YNOT, he would have learned that there are 79 different companies that have advertised on YNOTMasters.com thus far in 2002 that also advertised with us in 2001. Further, 48 companies have advertised on YNOTMasters.com in EACH of the years 2000, 2001 and thus far in 2002. Quite contrary to Mr. John’s unsupported allegation, YNOT is clearly able to retain advertisers. In fact, YNOT has more retained advertisers that have advertised with us in each of the last three years alone than most webmaster resources sites have in total paying advertisers (retained AND non-retained) in an entire year!

Furthermore, the number of YNOT’s retained advertisers would be greater if YNOT was unscrupulous and agreed to let anyone advertise. Some companies advertised with YNOT at one time but no longer do because there were webmaster complaints against those advertisers, and we pulled both their advertising and their listings in our Service Directory. Further, other companies have sought to advertise with YNOT, but we turned them down and never let them advertise because our screening review indicated that they engaged in conduct that was detrimental to webmasters and/or surfers. How many other webmaster resource sites regularly turn down paying advertisers?

Mr. John continues, “…adult webmaster resources are the second highest in numbers next to adult paysites…” Hmmmm. Apparently Mr. John is unaware that there are tens of thousands of adult free sites, while there are a few dozen pure adult webmaster resource sites at most. Furthermore, there are many more sites of hosting companies as well as content companies, affiliate programs, AVS programs, and Eprocessor companies than there are webmaster resource sites.

In regard to YNOTMasters.com, Mr. John states, “Another resource claims to be ethical and the longest running. However, it has changed owners three times since 2000.” Mr. John infers that since YNOT changed ownership three times in the past two years, YNOT’s claim to be ethical and the longest running adult webmaster resource is misleading and/or inaccurate. His conclusion is illogical. YNOT has remained ethical since its inception in 1996, regardless of who was the owner at any given time. And YNOT remains the longest running adult webmaster resource site, despite the changes in ownership. Are the Cincinnati Reds not the oldest professional baseball club because it has changed ownership numerous times since its inception in the 19th Century?

“Each of the above [webmaster resource sites, including YNOTMasters.com] has gone to great efforts to present themselves as a knowledge [sic] network of information. As time goes on, the articles become smaller and less frequent. Most of them post notices looking for articles.” This is another inaccurate statement. When YNOTNews first started over two years ago, only three or four articles were published each week. Since then, and especially in the last year, the number of articles published each week has only grown, and we have a waiting list of articles to be published. Further, YNOTNews is published each and every Thursday like clockwork, usually 50 weeks a year.

Mr. John states, “…school has taught me that advertising is about numbers. For example, this is why advertising companies have the pre-press packages with user/reader demographics, distribution charts, and circulations. It is unlikely that you will find this level of service from any of the major resources.” Apparently Mr. John failed to do his research before slinging this mud, such as reviewing the Advertising Info page at YNOTMasters.com which contains such information (http://www.ynotmasters.com/advertising.html). Furthermore, twice during each advertising campaign, YNOT sends to each advertiser a report indicating how many impressions, and more importantly, how many click-throughs, each of the advertiser’s ads has received since the ad campaign started. The statistics are not compiled by YNOT but by third-party ad serving software – Real Media’s Open Ad Stream. Plus, the reports YNOT provides to the advertisers compare each advertiser’s ad performance to the return other advertisers are receiving in the same advertising space, so that the advertiser may judge how effective his ad campaign is while the campaign is still running. This allows advertisers the opportunity to switch out poorly-performing ads while the campaign is still live so that they can maximize their advertising return. We are not aware of any other webmaster resource site that provides its advertisers with such timely and valuable information.

“The biggest of the resources claim they will receive 4-6 thousand unique visitors per day. However, there are no public statistics to show advertisers the demographics of their traffic as one could easily gain various forms of garbage traffic to increase numbers.” This statement is faulty on several fronts. Foremost, as explained in the immediately-preceding paragraph, YNOT does provide public statistics for its advertisers, as well as private reports to each advertiser. As to the “garbage traffic” statement, YNOT mails out its Newsletter promoting each new issue of YNOTNews to over 7,600 DOUBLE-OPT-IN webmasters. As you know, YNOTMasters and YNOTNews are targeted toward adult Internet webmasters. Why would anyone who isn’t a webmaster or a webmaster-in-training opt into our mailing list? Why would any webmaster double-opt-in more than once? Even if 10% of our over 7,600 double-opt-in email addresses were not webmaster addresses, YNOT would still have an audience of well over 6,000 individual webmasters.

Furthermore, as we have indicated in the past, anyone who questions YNOT’s claims as to how many “Online Users” YNOTMasters receives on any given day is free to come to our office at any time and look at our statistics. We use the Urchin stats package to compile these statistics (as such, they are compiled by a third party, not us), and we confirm those statistics against our own server logs. Many other companies in our industry use the Urchin stats package to track traffic as well.

Mr. John goes on to state that most ads on webmaster resource sites provide only 40-60 click-throughs a day. He states, “Honestly, how can anyone convert with less than 100 visitors per day?” Well, Mr. John, we’re talking webmaster traffic here, not surfer traffic. A webmaster client is much more valuable than a surfer client. A professional, organized company providing webmasters a useful and reasonably-priced service or product that is in demand can make a lot of money off of 40-60 webmaster click-throughs a day, even if only a small percentage of those visitors convert. That’s why YNOT has dozens of advertisers each and every month, who spend thousands of dollars each and every month on advertising. They provide valuable products and services to webmasters, and make money off of their YNOT advertising. I venture to guess that they succeed where you failed.

This, my friends, is an excellent example of what I am trying to get across here in this article. There are many, many webmasters and companies out there that are either lying to, misleading, or stealing from other webmasters or from surfers. Stop turning a blind eye when you notice this conduct. Challenge statements that sound fishy. Report inappropriate behavior through YNOT’s complaint process. You will be glad you did, and the rest of the webmaster community will be grateful you did as well. HOWEVER, do your homework and make sure your accusations are accurate before you make any public statements!

Gregory Geelan, J.D., is President and CEO of YNOT Network, LP, and has been practicing law for ten years. He can be reached at greg@ynotmasters.com.