Alex Sloman of Linkfire Inc. ripped off my Mothers Day Flowers site
On March 16th I created a post about my experience of promoting Mothers Day Flowers online. The site I designed and built is www.mothersday-flowers.org.uk.
Now the post was meant to inspire people and show what can be done and that there is money to be made in sector. Yes I completely expected people to get in on this market, especially as Mothers Day in the USA occurs later than it does in the UK. I even displayed the URL of my site so people could learn from what I did, after all I get really sick of affiliates being very vague about their success. There are loads of so called “gurus” around who talk the talk but never actually tell you how to be successful with real life examples. So anyway, yes I expected people to jump onto this bandwagon as it were and therefore I was prepared for some competition.
What I didn’t expect however was the likes of this rip-off site that has taken my design and just blatantly ripped it off. They even went so far as to copy my terms and conditions. A whois of the domain shows it was registered on 17th April (after my original post) and is owned by Linkfire Inc with Alex Sloman as the admin contact and domain owner.
Well Alex, what a leech you are. Didn’t you know that you need some originality to succeed in this business? Its people like you who give Affiliate Marketing a bad name. I’ve emailed Azoogle Ads pointing them to this blog post and highlighted the fact that you are in breech of my copyright. Lets hope they kick you off their network.
Nearly forgot, www.flowersformommy.org, I’m watching you too.
UPDATE: The first site I mentioned in this post has now been taken down. The second site I mentioned has also removed all of my graphics.
What I’m listening to right now: Allure - “Head Over Heals”
Friday, April 27th, 2007 at 9:42 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I run UK Offer Media Ltd. I thought it would be fun to post a daily (well hopefully daily) blog, writing about my experiences in Internet Marketing and more specifically Affiliate Marketing. I'll include some personal stuff too, probably about my other passions, music and cars. Please feel free to post your comments and thoughts too.
April 28th, 2007 at 12:08 am
You should copyright one of your landing pages before posting it, and then just sue everyone who copies it. Seriously.
April 28th, 2007 at 11:09 am
Seems like the offending site has been removed. Power to the people!
April 28th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Mate, it’s a landing page with 6 links in it!!! Hardly revolutionary…
April 28th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
Anonymous - where did I say it was revolutionary?? Most of my landing pages are very very basic, why? Because they work.
What annoys me though is this muppet ripped it off completely. Designs, code, text, everything. Thats just not on, revolutionary or not.
April 28th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
I wouldn’t post any of my pages, I’m not sure why you do, unless it’s for seo purposes?
You’re sticking your neck out too far. Unless you are posting fakes and leaving your “real” landing pages anonymous? (I’ll go put my tin foil hat on…)
LOL
April 28th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Agreed Kieron. Completely ripping a site is not on, using a site for inspiration - ok in my books. Look at sites like Amazon - their layout is constanly copied as it’s a site that works.
Anyway, just wondering why you’ve passed on your link juice to these sites in a post full of keywords about mothers day flowers.
The guy behind flowersformummy will surely benefit from this???
April 28th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
The page has been nuked, the power of blogging.
April 28th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Well Kieron, you need to understand its the internet you tell anyone i make £xxxss with this site someone is going to copy you and do the same, yes i know its sad but thats life and that is why 99% of superaffiliates keep there business to themself its just not worth the time emailing hosting companies and affiliate networks complaining about leechs when you could be spending your time builting more sites making more money for YOURSELF, at the end of the day as long as YOU know you making money who cares what everyone elses thinks.
April 28th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
Bob, I post *some* of my sites because I believe it helps other people to get involved in this business. There are too many affiliate blogs out there that are just too vague and don’t give out any advice that is actually helpful.
April 28th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
anonymous, one link from my blog really won’t make that much difference in the grand scheme of things.
April 28th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
anonymous - I have been in this game long anough and had enough of my sites and ideas ripped of that I’m not surprised it happens.
But for everyone who rips me off there are more people who don’t and are appreciative for my help and advice. Thats what matters to me.
April 28th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
See thats what i dont understand you say “help and advice” how is posting your niche site and how much you make helping anyone its more like “SHOWING OFF” then helping because at the end of the day anyone who can spend £100k a month on ppc can copy your “help and advice” and do the same then you just going to start complaining again “WHY ME”.
April 28th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
OK then anonymous, if you think you can spend £100k a month on ppc and make money, then give it a go if you think its that easy. Do remember to get back to me and let me know how you got on.
My original post about my mothers day flowers site was more about missed opportunity for seasonal events. My point was to inspire people to make the most of these events and I posted some facts and figures to back up my experiences. I posted my URL and some general tips so people can see a real life example and learn from it. Not so they could just blatantly rip off my code. As I mentioned before there are loads of affiliate blogs out there that don’t use real life examples and just talk in generalisms. I want my blog to be a bit different.
Of course I’m never going to publish all of my sites/campaigns but I will some.
April 28th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
RE:
anonymous, one link from my blog really won’t make that much difference in the grand scheme of things.
In that case Kieron, you won’t mind linking to a couple of my sites then? He He.
April 29th, 2007 at 9:25 am
Thank you very much Kieron …. , your are making the difference ,
April 29th, 2007 at 9:25 am
My biggest roadblock right now is not having enough credit to go huge…
I would love to spend £100k + per month, but my credit only allows about £15k at the moment. (It’s very frustrating too…)
Whenever someone asks for an example site, I just tell them to type the main keyword into google or yahoo or msn and have a look at all those example sites in the sponsored search results.
April 30th, 2007 at 11:09 am
I’d like to thank you Kieron for great work you’re doing here. I’m reading your blog for some time now. Don’t let people (who actually copy your whole site) spoil good feeling from well done work here.
Andrew
April 30th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Yeah, cheers for doing what you do Kieron. The original mothers day post was great and and very inspiring. Sometimes the net can feel a little claustrophobic but it’s nice to be reminded that even great opportunities like that can be missed by the majority of affiliates.
Posting your site adds a lot weight to your words too. I agree that a lot of super affiliate blogs can seem very thin when they (understandably) guard the details of their campaigns so closely.
As ever though, some idiot has to come along and spoil the party, and, as mentioned above, the funny thing is that your landing page was so simple. It would take no time to build an original take on it from scratch, and content-wise it follows the standard landing page format.
So, all in all, this really is the peak of laziness.
May 1st, 2007 at 12:58 am
Keiron’s blog is one of the most useful blogs in affiliate marketing and it is true that you do back up what you say which adds weight to your comments.
I don’t agree with people ripping off sites but to stop posting about projects and suggestions doesn’t help anyone.
It’s a great affiliate blog and I hope it continues and new affiliate’s find it.
May 1st, 2007 at 12:58 am
I have been reading this Blog as well as posts over on A4U by Kieron for months now and it does help loads. Now i would never copy his sites as i would hope no one would copy mine ever (and they have done in the past)what Kieron has done for me is help with ideas as were to place links and how to build the landing pages oh yer and how to dream about a nice big car.
May 2nd, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Nice one Kieron - these people should take inspiration from this blog… not the whole design and code, glad they got caught out.
Love this blog btw.
May 3rd, 2007 at 10:05 pm
I can’t see what are you complaing about. Is this a way to promote your linksite? Best of luck anyway.
May 3rd, 2007 at 10:06 pm
anonymous - did you not see my update? You know the bit where I said “update” in bold at the end of the blog post?
May 3rd, 2007 at 11:25 pm
http://therefore.ca/site.html - You would think if this guy is the owner of Therefore Interactive - which bills itself as a web design/content management/emarketing company - he could come up with his own designs
May 3rd, 2007 at 11:25 pm
Stuff like this never stops annoying me. It seems that many people have their own definition of “Copyright” that suits their own uses. I wish people would understand the reason for the “copy _right_”. Since whatever was written (or typed) by the author is their own property, why shouldn’t they have the “right” to say who can use it and how? Just because it’s on paper (or in data format) doesn’t mean that it isn’t theirs. I had a JPG of a photo I had taken for a site hijacked by another webmaster. I contacted him and notified him that the image was copyrighted and even gave him the option to continue using it if he simply put a credit with a link to my site. His response was that he always lets other people use the images he makes and that I had too much time on my hands. Contacting his hosting provider and notifying them of his copyright infringement seems to have worked.
Nice site Kieron. Keep up the good work.
-M
May 4th, 2007 at 8:17 am
Hey dude. Just curious. Are you actually making any money from the affiliate links?
May 4th, 2007 at 8:18 am
Mayur - not sure what you mean? I make my living from affiliate marketing so yes I make money from affiliate links.
May 5th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
FYI: As of today, May 5, the Alex site is back online.
May 5th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
Thanks anonymous, its been online for a couple of days. However he is now using an original design and not mine, so all is well.
May 8th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
Just wanted to say thanks for the advice and openness you’ve given to date. It annoys me that people take such a liberty. For god’s sake you even told us about Sitepoint where you can get the things built.
Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but some people take it too far! Loving the ‘what I’m listening to’ recommendations too.
May 10th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
Kieron, I agree with the others who ahve said that giving real examples is useful. I too enjoyed the Mothers Day Flowers post, and feel it provided inspiration where some other blogs don’t.