After writing the article on Why Automatic Follower Services for Twitter are Crap, it seems that I struck a nerve with a few people and I’ve received some pretty interesting emails from people who think that John Chow’s service, TwitterFollower.com is a great tool.
I’ve received several pieces of email from people saying that John Chow was one of the best bloggers in the world and that I had no right criticizing the free tool that he willingly gave to the rest of the Twitter community. It was made clear to me that I was a “nobody” blogger and a John Chow wannabe with very little to offer the blogging community.
Okay, let’s get this straight people. John Chow didn’t give us Twitter Follower out of the goodness of his heart. John Chow gave us Twitter Follower so he could up his social influence via his email marketing strategy that he uses. It’s that simple.
It’s a marketing tactic that John Chow uses to get leads which he uses to drive traffic to his affiliate links and MAKE MONEY! It’s a system that works for him and many bloggers. I recognize this fact and I’ve gotten over the fact he does this. All the more power to him.
However, what really pisses me off is something that I’m seeing now happen throughout the blogging community – especially with some of the high profile bloggers.
Let me shed some light on what I’m referring to. The account that I used to sign-up for Twitter Follower started getting his offers of “great” products that were obviously affiliate sites and for every one of these “great” products, John Chow was getting a portion of the sale. Not only was John Chow promoting his sites, he started telling me about his “good friends” and was promoting other high profile bloggers systems – namely Jeremy Schoemaker and Darren Rowse.
It’s an obvious gimic that these bloggers are using to pass around subscribers, promote one another and their “make money systems” but who’s making the money? It’s definitely not the novice blogger that is trying to scratch a living, build a reputation and get a following. The only ones benefiting from this tactic are those involved in it.
Personally, I’ve gotten little help from any of the things that I’ve read on these sites and the fact that these individuals continually have to tell me how they made their fortunes using their “techniques” is wearing a little thin. Sure, they provide loads of information to the blogging community and some of the tools and products they are promoting do have merit. I would much rather they openly engage me, add value to the relationship and build a level of trust with me before trying to sell me something or pass me off to some other site where they try to sell me something.
While I’m only a single reader, I’m going to boycott John Chow, Jeremy Schoemaker and Darren Rowse. I can find other bloggers that offer much more in-depth information and who value me as a reader much more than these “high profile” bloggers.
If you know of some great insightful and up-and-coming bloggers that I should read, drop me a note! I would love to find some refreshing information for a change rather than being passed around from blogger to blogger like a cheap hooker on a Saturday night.
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Kudos for the chutzpah / forthright approach in reference to these superstar bloggers.
I must say that I regularly read (and value, and enjoy) the content of Shoe & Copyblogger (Darren) but I recently dropped J. Chow from my FB list and rarely visit his site nor follow it via RSS. Simply too much crap vs content; enough with the self-gratifying posts about the (now defunct and barely credible) .com lifestyle he peddles to many.
Shoe & Darren do have interesting content IMHO.