Confused By The Stompernet SMARTS Launch?
Join the club.
It’s for sale? The price is going up? It’s not for sale? Scribd stopped allowing outbound links because of the volume of Internet marketers flooding their system? SMARTS was to blame for that flood? Now SMARTS is for sale again, but only for 24 hours? And they’re rolling back the price to the initial launch price, so you “save 600 bucks”?
OK, you got me. I’m confused.
BTW, I’m not posting an affiliate link because I haven’t reviewed the product. I hardly ever promote something “blind”. The few times I did, I got burned. So “never promoting blind” is a new rule of mine. 
BTW, what happened with Scribd is a great example of why building your business using only other web properties is not a great idea. They can pull the rug from under you whenever they feel like it. For example, see the Google Slap when the Adwords program stopped sending traffic to people’s landing pages. Boom. There goes your business.
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Okay Neil,
You wrote, “BTW, I’m not posting an affiliate link because I haven’t reviewed the product…”
So when are you going to review the product? I mean do you have any intention to review it and let us know your opinions?
Expecting your reply
January 23rd, 2008 at 11:25 am
I don’t see how I can review a “coaching program”. Even if I had a place on the program, I couldn’t offer a full review until the end.
I’ll leave this to others to promote.
February 3rd, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Hi:
On the advice of a PR person whose newsletter I’ve subscribed to for many years, I watched the Stompernet SMARTS teaser “video” (not really a video, but a PP presentation, but with what sounded like some very good thoughts about how to utilize social marketing sites to build SEO) and subscribed to their “free report.”
In four days, I had seven emails from these people. Yuck. When I attempted to communicate with them about my irritation over this, I discovered that they are impermeable. They have no easy mechanism to reach a live person, and so far, my comment to their blog critiquing their tactics has not made it past their moderators.
Okay, fine, so they’re just another bunch of hype merchants. The ‘net is filled with ‘em, who use 4 billion word long sales letters and too much email and automated “ticket” systems limit customer communication with a small staff as they attempt to move lots and lots of product explaining how you, too, can get rich (some with great content, most with crap) and accordingly make them money. It’s the 21st century snake oil world — patent medicines may be mostly a thing of the past, but patent get-rich-quick schemes are thriving.
However, my outrage about this particular version is over the top because they’re professing to have the inside scoop on social marketing/web 2.0 organic SEO. The WHOLE point of social marketing and web 2.0 is to build relationships between people. It’s such a powerful model and has such a glowing sense of possibility — the internet serving as a genuine tool to build relationships and voices for people around the world. There is room for sustainable commerce in this model, that exists and flourishes on its merits and the responses/respect that people honestly share with one another.
As far as I can see, Stompernet is a cynical attempt to manipulate that. And no surprise that Scribd (or other platforms) might want to protect themselves from upsurges in use based on their suggestions.
I’m trying to use the internet to build a business and make some money, like most people here. But I just can’t believe that the answer is to hijack people’s efforts to build a true lateral communication system. In my mind, their greed damages all of us.
February 3rd, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Interesting thoughts, Leigh. Thanks for sharing them.
Neil.
February 26th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
I to like I`m sure many others have seen these new tactics to boost your website. Never joined, never will. This to me is why something good like social networking seemed a good idea at the time but that corner of the internet that saw an opportunity to fleece it has once again spoilt it for every body else. So those who were being ethical in their approach are feeling the downside of over play dirty tactics introduced by this “knowledgable” (ha) group. Google and many of the other top search engines have a FAQ section to help build your sites reputation. One that stands out is perhaps this kind of linking. after all backlinks are good search engine fodder, aren`t they. The best way around this is to stick with the basics, submit your links to directories of note (PR value) and article submission sites, again the top few. Don`t submit the same article too many times though as you may fall foul of duplicate content. thats why most don`t do it though, it does take a while to build this up. hence the sharks lurk around every corner. Take Care.
February 27th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
It’s obvious that even the stomper people know this tactic doesn’t work… their promotion was an email campaign not social marketing… the claim to having 8 pages on Google is for a term they made up and gets no traffic…
The results of flooding social bookmarking, and video upload sites with a promotional product are short lived.
Nancy Andrews calls this the “Warhol Effect”
Google recognizes fresh content because of keyword stuffing, and ranks it high initially, but in days (unless it is soooo longtail no one cares) the listing disappears.
and as Dan Theis wrote “must we piss in every public fountain”
Google will soon see the abuses that SMARTS is propagating, and find a way to shut it down… probably with a lot of collateral damage
April 4th, 2008 at 12:21 am
look forward to a review, if someone wants to do one ! if i get round to it i’ve bookmarked this page to report back