Advertising For Success: SPLOG Network Uncovered

Last month, I wrote a blog post on my Texas RV Travel blog about the new Airstream and Ford Concept Car. Airstream is an RV manufacturer and I thought the vehicle might be of interest to my readers.

A few days later, I received an invitation by email to join ford-bloggers.com. Wary of being tangled up in another flog episode, I sent a reply by email requesting more information. Specifically, I wanted to know who was the sponsor of this Ford-blogger.com site and if there was corporate involvement. I was never contacted again.

Now I was curious! I wanted to know if this Ford-blogger.com was a public relations or advertising agency FLOG or a content-rich niche SPLOG? What can I say? I love puzzles.

First, I went to Who-is to look up the owner of the domain. Of course, it was registered at Go Daddy, so there was no information except the site was registered last year for one year.
Next, I searched for Craig Cantin, the name used on the email invitation. I found a Craig Cantin of green-bloggers.com, but no more information.
Third, I searched for a text string used in the invitation: "and make a positive contribution to the Internet community. Would you be interested in joining"
So far, I have discovered apple-computer-bloggers, christian-bloggers, american-idol-bloggers, green-bloggers, honda-bloggers, and ferrari-bloggers.

It is a SPLOG network!! These websites are article farms, supported by Google Adsense. This is in violation of Google TOS, but their robot has not exposed this extensive SPLOG network. I grew weary of the deception, so I stopped.

Below is the email invitation I received. I put ______ (fill-in-the-blank) where the name of the blog changes. If you receive an email like the one below, it is a scam. Do not fall for it and link your blog to any of these splogs.

Dear blog author:

We recently came across your site, _______ while searching for bloggers who blog about _______ issues.

A small group of us have started a new site called _______ Bloggers . Our intent is to bring _______ bloggers closer together, and make a positive contribution to the Internet community.

Would you be interested in joining _______ Bloggers ? Please take a few minutes to have a look at what we are trying to do, and if you are interested, there is a sign up page to get the ball rolling. We would greatly appreciate your support in this endeavour.

If you do not feel that your blog would be a good fit for _______ Bloggers , but enjoy this subject area, come visit us and one of our member bloggers. You can also check our FAQ Section to learn more about _______ Bloggers .

We look forward to hearing from you and seeing you on _______ Bloggers .

Craig Cantin

_______ Bloggers

info@_______-bloggers.com