Email for Epic Traffic Systems dropped into my spam folder yesterday with a winning sales title so I decided to have a look. I clicked over and watched the marketing video. Your typical high def sales pitch for a new over-priced system/product that promises you traffic and riches. Groovy. You should have a look too because, this and the dozens of programs like them are why you will find failure in this business. It’s why competition will consume you.
I have no beef with ETS. The video for ETS is actually what you should be doing to create micro niche sites. There is no mystery or secret there. But the implementation of systems like ETS is just adding huge amounts of competition to the web sewers. Yes, I know there are millions of niches and there is enough for everyone to compete and blah, blah, blah. And normally if it was just dudes creating a reasonable amount of websites and getting normal amounts of backlinks it wouldn’t really be a big deal. But does anyone remember how hard it was back in ’03-’04 to get in front of directory generated spam sites? They were one reason guberus started preaching about niches. You couldn’t compete with the onslaught of big crap so you had to go for the little crap. Well there are tools that are making it potentially difficult to compete for little crap now.
ETS creates blog networks apparently. I only know what I watched in the organic traffic video. They discussed a way to set up what they called “micro site networks” manually with WordPress-Mu. The following is a screen cap of one of the slides presented:
Sure, this is no secret. This is how folks create massive amounts of blogs quickly. But apparently they will be automating this process. 30,000 remote blogs created. 30,000. You think running around collecting comment backlinks, bookmark links and writing an article for Ezine Articles will mean anything to an onslaught like this? There are probably dozens of programs like this to do the same thing. I dunno.
So how are you going to compete? Still think building a well-written fancy pants blog is going to matter? Maybe it will. Systems like this will certainly make your work a lot harder. Do I have a problem with using ETS? I don’t. But I lament that competing on the web has come to this mass generation of spam niche domination.
A lot of folks are going to use this system. Couple of thousand maybe? A hundred or so will probably actually do anything with it and few dozen are going to pound the hell out of the web sewers. I personally have no interest in spending a couple of hundred dollars a month not to mention the cost for domains (which they omitted in the video) for dedicated hosting and building tens of thousands of blogs.
There is no doubt you can make money with this system. You can simply brute force your way to top Google rankings using backlinks from properties you control. It looks expensive. The hosting is not cheap and I don’t know how you square all the domains you have to buy. But this is what is required to keep up.
I guess I am naive enough to think that building a good site that people actually want to naturally link to will matter in the end. Systems like this come and go. They are great for a quick blast of cash. Will this last? I dunno. Do I care? Not really. I am simply going to plod along building a site here and there on things that I care about. Folks using systems like ETS can potentially rape the web sewers for eyeballs and clicks and make a boatload of fat stacks with anxiety built web properties all the while looking over their shoulder to see if Daddy G is watching the proceedings. I’m kind of done with that nonsense. These guberus are going to have to get rich off someone else’s monthly dime.
It makes my head hurt to think about using and maintaining a system like this. I don’t know if I’ll make another dime slinging content into the web sewers. But I simply refuse to use systems like this to further the depths. Not that I care about the quality of the web, I’m just sick of this kind of crap.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
I stopped a few minutes into the video when I started falling asleep to the ponderous low voiceover. Your review tells me all I need to know. No need to revisit it. Thanks!
This is actually really scary and pisses me off. I have the mentality like yours: build a quality site and build it naturally but apparently I’m just going to get stomped for caring about the web and its users.
However, one thing I keep in mind is how much of the web I use is now through social media and digging through insightful comments on blogs I subscribe to.
If you ever have the chance, read Islands on the Net – old cyberpunk – really shows how the web is going to now.
The 30k blogs he is talking about are built on the WordPress MU platform. No need for a domain as far as I know. All you will need a domain for is the one money blog that you are linking to from all the MU blogs.
This is nothing new. This type of automation is out there. But you are right in that putting it all together in a $2K (assuming so) package will bring in the quick buck clod hoppers who will be flinging shit right and left. They will get tired of the actually work involved and be looking for the next shiny object within 2 weeks.
Rest assured Google will eat these morons for breakfast, they don’t know what they are doing.
Well, actually they do know what they are doing. They are selling some shit they don’t understand to people who understand it even less than they do.
Mark my words, these networks will crash and burn.
Yea, I’ve built an MU “network” with a single domain and hung a bunch of subs off of it. It didn’t do so good. RSS2Blog and crap. He’s still talking about creating 60 separate domains and hanging 500 more blogs off each. That’s a lot of blogs. $500-600 worth of domains. Somehow I seriously doubt they will all be worthwhile. Whatever. I just don’t care for this activity anymore.
This video was so full of crap, my compute literally would not play beyond the first minute of this video.
So over this unoriginal piece of junk.
And it’s right in time for Google’s major Mayday toilet cleaning….Hooray!
I was thinking the same thing as Jez. It won’t last. Chances are there will be a footprint that google will find and make it go away. They are using a plug-in for wordpress to autogenerate content.
And frankly, I am not worried at all. If they enter my main money markets, I will report them to Google. Chances are good though, that I would have to stand in line. Webmasters who rank for competitive terms are very stingy with their rankings.
So, they can auto-generate all they want. Let them swim with the big boys and it will be very likely they will get bit and all that money they spent on a “system” will just fade into the wind.
I think MU will probably stomp them long before Google does. Didn’t MU just go through an elimination round a while back where guys like this lost a large part of their “networks”? I am thinking so.
Its cuckoo… they do not have enough domains or IP’s to support that number of sites safely.
G go in hard when they see clouds of spam erupting from a single domain (sub domained), its an old trick, the response is usually the scorched treatment.
Its a crazy bonkers scammy delight.
Yea, I’m not so much worried as I simply don’t care. It certainly seems like a lot potential competition but in thinking about it I doubt it will matter much. You all are right. Most likely this thing will meet its demise.
“If you ever have the chance, read Islands on the Net – old cyberpunk – really shows how the web is going to now.”
I haven’t read that book but read the synopsis and yeah computer algo’s have already allowed it to happen on the stock market. The ability of computers to make 1,000 trades in less than a second are already going on and they have been doing it for years.
stock volumes are ficticious
http://www.youtube.com/user/ford7777777#p/u/72/V4cRYI2x60Q
Goldman trading code can manipulate the market
http://www.youtube.com/user/ford7777777#p/u/66/O4aBf41buNw
I agree with Jez and Leo. The “epic” douchebags are just out for a blast of quick cash; it’s their latest shit-spraying product, nothing more. Google will sandbox, penalize, or somehow expurgate those millions of worthless blogs.