PLEASE DON'T LINK TO TOTALLY MONEY OR USE THEIR BADGE | Bloggers Lair | Yakezie Forums

I don't know any of the answers to those questions, but I can tell you that Miss Moneypenniless participates here in the Blogger's Lair and is one of the new owners of the Totally Money Blog Carnival.  I met her here and her and the other owner made an offer a few weeks later.  I thought that this new list was created to compete with Wisebread's, which doesn't update as often as people like, but that is just my guess based on how it was announced here a couple of weeks ago.

I must not have been paying attention since I didn't know they were asking us to post a badge…I don't "badge up" for hardly any groups – Yakezie and J Money's group is about it…

I answered in the other thread, but I'll put this here, too. I have the same concerns and a few others.

 

I have misgivings about this too.

I worry about this diluting our brand by including anyone who says they're Yakezie with no differentiation between member and challenger, whether they're following the rules of Yakezie or not. It has the potential to include ad/corporate blogs with the Yakezie name, which are becoming a problem in the forum. This is being run by a challenger who may not understand the background of these issues or how to spot the kind of blog the group doesn't want to be associated with.

The challenger list is just too fluid to use for a tool like this and call it Yakezie. Even the "official challenger list" that I created is constantly in update as challengers appear and disappear. I've repeatedly edited to remove ad blogs/commercial blogs from the challenger list. Is someone going to go through each blog routinely and make sure they're meeting Yakezie standards, participating, displaying the badge (unlikely as this site doesn't display it!), and aren't a cleverly disguised ad? So far it hasn't happened.

I also find the site it's housed on to be the type of site I would decline for an ad link because it is selling loans, front and center on its homepage. Many of us do not want to be connected to payday loan sites and I do not want my information to be associated with a site running this type of business. I definitely don't want to be giving free links to a loan site!

I know Sam is working on some huge backend things here, and I don't want an outside group stepping on toes and taking on something that should stay in network. This is not a tool that should be run by someone who hasn't met the challenge yet, simply because they don't know the other side of the discussion happening in the member area about what constitutes a legitimate challenger, concerns with corporate blogs, and the backend projects in progress. 

It especially shouldn't be run by an advertising company, completely blurring the corporate line!

MyJourneytoMillions said:

But you don't find it at all shady that her main page is a hardcore bankrate like page?  How many people rocked out those stupid top 50 blog badges from that random college company? 

 

I'm putting my hand in the air for that college badge.  I was so naive!  That's why I waited on this one to see how it turned out.  If I want to know how I rank compared to Yakezie, I can just look on our member page.

Well, I never posted the badge (and would never do so anyway). So collectively are we removing our information from their site? I think we could hurt their feelings…they've been extremely responsive and nice. Perhaps someone should send them an email to explain everyone's hesitations about brand dilution (which I completely am behind) and to thank them for their efforts in programming it? I know Sam has spoken with the woman through email before, but I guess i don't want to hurt their feelings.

Uh-oh….am I being too nice?

I didn't know about the badge and I probably won't put it up.

I like the official Yakezie list too, it's my go to list.

I wrote a comment here but did my math wrong (embarassing!) when I hit submit so it didn't show up.  Here's what I wrote in the other thread which is pretty much what my lost comment said…

MJTM is right.  We should stick with the official Yakezie ranking
system.  I'm not a member yet so I'm not on the official list yet but I
plan to keep working hard so I can get there.  The more I've thought
about this the more I don't like what Totally Money is doing.  If I'd
known about the badge thing earlier I don't think I would have signed
up.  I'm going to request to be removed.  The official list on Yakezie
is where the focus should stay. 

Hello,

This is Henry
and I work with Harriet, she is away this week and asked me to check if anyone
had any questions about the list. What a week for here to go on holiday. I have
just written a bit about us on this thread http://yakezie.com/forums/blog…..rs/page-4/,
I see that there a few more questions that I can help with here.

My reply on that thread answers a few questions, so I might
reuse some of it.

You don’t have to add a badge to your website at any stage. We would love it if
you did and it would really help get the word out about our table. When you add
a site to our list you get a link from our site to yours and hopefully in the future
it will be a useful source of traffic.

We are a business that makes money in a similar way to bankrate, but our plan
for Totallymoney/blogs is not really for that and is quite separate from that.
We hope to build a large PF community in the UK as there really isn’t a UK
version of Wisebread or any other large Pf blogs and we would like to start
one.

As explained in the other thread we wanted to build a better list then the
wisebread one, preferably a list that would be useful for you. What I really
like about this community is how active you are at helping people out and we
thought we could help out as well (maybe not the best of ideas)

This thread here will answer a few more of your questions and I will try to
keep on top of them.

We don’t ask anything from you and you don’t
have to add a badge. Adding your site just gets you a link from the table to
your site. We could use your help to improve the list.

Thanks

Henry 

I am cool with people making their own decisions, but when they go for a cheap link back it really gets me annoyed.  Scroll the yakezie forum clock back like a year ago and the big SEO trick was to come up with lists and tell new bloggers that they made it and should put up a widget to brag…the widget was nothing but a text link back to their site.

I warned bloggers back then, and I received the same "what's the harm?"

All I am saying is that if a site wants to rank you they don't need a thing from you, literally nothing.

We even have (had) a member that came up with the first ranking system and a way to brag…once they realized that no one was bragging he stopped participating (CCC anyone?)

The Single Saver said:

Why is this becoming such a big blow up?  If you don't want to be ranked in Harriet's system then don't register and don't display a badge.  It isn't as if anyone is being forced to join.  To actually request in big bold letters that everyone not partake in a Yakezie Challenger's site seems a little bully-ish to me. As a challenger who has taken part in blog swaps, etc., it seems like Harriet deserves a little more kindness and respect. 

 

I am not singling out any one blogger here – this is just a general observation – but in the last month or two I have seen several "subtle" negative comments made by a few members about "yakezie challengers."  As a fellow challenger, it hasn't given me a warm fuzzy feeling.  As a whole, the group here has been wonderful and supportive so I have ignored those feelings for the most part.  But, it concerns me that as the group grows it could get too much of a snooty vibe.  I think everyone needs to remember that they were once a Challenger, themselves.  Remember the days when you were super-enthusiastic about growing your sites and blogging empires?  Sure, some Challengers overstep at times, but isn't it usually just a case of innocence and excitement taking over?  The thing that attracted me to Yakezie was the "selfishly helping others" mentality… not the "members only" mentality. 

 

 

 

The site as a whole is misleading.  A URL was given to http:\\url\BLOG but the root of the URL looks like a business site that most challengers or members would not link to unless given incentive to do so.

This has nothing to do w/ members only – it has to do w/ quality control and having challengers and members alike being blogs, not corporate sites that have figured out they should add a blog to gain access to blogging networks.

I did sign up w/o thinking much about it.  Jacob has brought forth some valid points that a request to link back to a site is not necessary.  That if Totally Money wanted to include Yakezie members and challengers to a list they could have done so w/o registration.