Dear Vint Falken, hereby you are invited to join “SLtoprantsites.com”…

LOL, really Vint, it isnt difficult to find a topic to agitate you, isnt it?

No, seriously, you are right, this is either just a traffic generator for the mentioned website, or a way to collect information and sell it to database owners.. (especially the visitor tracking script annoys me).
I hope I wont start receiving political propaganda because I read and enjoyed your LDD post.. :-{

btw: your suggestion “Ignore him/..” is OK, but on the other hand you mention the site name about 4 times in your post…
doubel agenda ??? * me grins in an evil way *

Well, after what you described I am sure I will not join.

Of course, this whould sound better if they had offered it, but if they do someday, I’ll decline :-).

I wouldn’t join anything like that. The part about identifying people who visit your website via “Visitor Tracker” creeps me out.

I was wondering when you were going to write about this! ;-)

I’m with Tobie - was wondering when you’d blog this, hehe. And good job doing so! (I had noticed you never participated anyway)

I finally signed up because I was curious as to how many page views I was getting, and this seemed like an easy way to keep track. However, when I went to the site, I couldn’t find me listed right away, so I kept refreshing different pages until I found my listing. Only, I wasn’t exactly sure how it was rating the sites, as for the bottom 15 or so blogs, each time I refreshed the page, my position/ranking would be different within 5 or so ranks each way.

Then the very next day, I received an email indicating that there was a new policy in rankings and you get higher rankings if people click the logo on your blog directing them back to their website (which I have been told, the #1 blog position is always the website owner’s (land baron) personal blog, anyway).

Anyway, the whole thing is pretty much a sham - as it doesn’t rank you on your Google rank, which it lists, and it doesn’t rank you on the number of page views your blog gets, etc. And the rankings supposedly start over each month now anyway, in order to allow everyone a chance to be number one.

In other words, a worthless site.

I got a spam message from this guy too, and reacted - put the code on the blog, but absolutely indeed the <a href=…> was removed from the code before putting it in.

Why decline a few referers ? :-) (and this appeared to be a very efficient way to stop his further spam to the blog) Try it out! I think at the very least it will be a very effective way to stop the spam.

If you would like to be very vendictive, you can apply the width=1 and height=1 to the resulting image, so there are not even visual cues :-)

…and about the privacy… It’s a little bit of an illusion. Thanks to google folks I really do not see the spam as a big problem… (although, indeed, big brother is watching you… but still - there are so many big brothers out there, that one more one less - does not change the size of the family that much :)

@Veronique:

I hope I wont start receiving political propaganda because I read and enjoyed your LDD post.. :-{

I never installed the tracking code or so, so you should be ’safe’. ;)

On the double agenda: I rather have them ending up here then on his sltopsites.com. ;)

@London Spengler:

Another reason to not join them: they did not invite London Spengler!

@Seraphine:

Indeed, creepy thought. Not that they have the date, but what they would do with it!

@Tobie and Wrath: If you were both waiting for me to blog about this, why didn’t you do so? If you’re curious about your visitor stats, install Google Analytics. It’s google. They are bound to have your data anyway. ;) But I agree on sltopsites.com being a worthless site. :p

@Dalien: Yeah well, I like Analytics, so in exchange for detailed, usable analytic figures of my site, I’m willing to give them my data.. As for this guy, I trust him even less then I trust Google. ;) As for the (non) benefits: the only way he gets traffic is the sites referring to his page, that traffic is devided between all the sites on his page minus the ads. So anyway, the total traffic the blogs are getting is less then the total traffic they are sending in.

Vint, I didn’t really care enough about it to write in my blog. My blog is almost all personal and roleplay entries. You do a great job of covering personal stuff as well as general SL interest, so I leave it to you ;-)

i had my doubts about this thing but i wasnt sure, so thank you for confirming it for me.

also i think you are right about him giving out our email adresses because after i joined it a few days later i started having spam in my inbox something i never had before.

Ok, I was never informed about winning a price with SLtopsites. Also, I was never informed winning the price actually. It was Bella who told me, and I contacted Richard Palace. He paid me 1000 L$ the day after, as mentioned in his email (which I never received from him, ;))
I don’t know why I was not informed, but the same text (email) Bella forwarded me was to be found on Richard’s blog.
And ofcourse I am interested more in comments than views on my blog, but first you need to have the views, to spread the word that you even have a blog, before you can have comments.
So for me it is just an ad for my blog.
Until now I have not been annoyed with more spam than usually.

Hi

I found this through Google Search.

First of all, I created the site not long ago. Probably less than a month. So, please give me sometime to adjust the script.

I have put in a lot of work hard to get Second Life Topsites up and running, appearing on Google Search, Yahoo Search.

I have 2 so called “visitor tracking script” installed. Statcounter and Google Analytics. I will keep Google Analytics and remove statcounter. Many sites have that installed. It’s used to analysis the website and how it can optimised. It’s not used to track visitors. For more information about Google Analytics, go to http://www.google.com/analytics/

I will get the privacy statement done and I can tell you i did not give or sell anyone the email.

If topsites doesn’t generate traffic, how is visitor going to visit your site through topsites? Nothing is free. Domain registration and hosting aren’t free. I have to find Sponsor to help pay the hosting.

I am sorry about the message that was send to you 3 times (as you said). I have stop sending through IM.

As for the winner, I send all the members the same email about the Jun Winner. Looker Lumet contact me and received L$1000 from me. so “did not notify the winner” is not true.

Looker Lumet,

I send out the email using the script email function. If your email is correct, you should received. I am not sure why you did not receive. Can you if your email is correct or it went into the junk folder?

Richard, I have checked my account on your site, my email address appears to be correct. I have also double checked my email account, no normal mails, no junk mails from Richard Palace.
And if I understood well, there are more people who did not receive that particular email. Are all these email addresses wrong? Did they all not check their junk mails? According to my knowledge, you are also informed when you received a junk mail, so you can always check if it is correct or not.

Looker Lumet, I am not sure why some people did not receive the email. I have to check the script. Anyway, I have a blog that is for Second Life Topsites at http://sltopsites.blogspot.com and is announced there as well. It keeps track of what I do on Second Life Topsites.

I have come out with the Second Life Topsites Privacy Policy at http://www.sltopsites.com/index.php?a=page&id=privacy .

I will post on the blog. Feedback and suggestion are welcome.

(Richard Palace’s two comments were stopped because everything with an URL in it gets in the moderation queue. Both are approved now.)

Vint Falken,

I am Richard Palace. Not Richard Palaca.

Thanks for the approval.

I am still learning. Give me some time to improve on the site.

…. and so, he received a lot of attention…

most of Vints readers, not an negligible amount I suppose, by now know the name of his site…

nice marketing move..

veronique kamiski,

I see this as a comment, feedback and suggest to improve and fine tune Second Life Topsites.

It’s seems that every step I move, there is a motive.

@Veronique, he got the attention anyway, posting useless comments on all the blog and sending in-world messages. Most people replying here at either already received such an ‘invitation’ or came across of it somewhere.

@Richard Palace:

On the disclaimer:

I don’t see how you use Google Analytics for SEO. It’s just a - good - traffic and site analytics tool. You can do SEO based on the information it gives you, but it doesn’t do ‘SEO’ for you.

Changing… blablabla… notify… prominent place on our site: let’s assume not everybody will continue checking your site, thus why not by e-mail AND in a prominent place on the site? In stead of ‘or’.

How do people who want their personal information removed / account terminated contact you?

What does the code you let them install on their sites do? (And how do you measure pageviews?)

On the ads:

1. You should have told the people from the start that you were going to place ads on the site. By subscribing to be listed they sort of ‘associate’ themselves with your site, so it would have been only decent to make that clear from the start.
2. Imho there are two types of ‘ad people’: those who have content and put some ads with it to pay for hosting expenses etc. and those who have ads and then need to think of some content to generate traffic to go with the ads. I place you in the second category of ‘ad people’.

I have no problem with you analysing data of people coming to your site. (*Hi* *I think I’m the one with the ‘zaventem’ IP* *waves*) I use Analytics too. I was just wondering about the data from the other sites you get. And - I asked this before - how do you measure ‘pageviews’?

If topsites doesn’t generate traffic, how is visitor going to visit your site through topsites? Nothing is free. Domain registration and hosting aren’t free. I have to find Sponsor to help pay the hosting.” Hosting + traffic for SLTopsites? Can’t be that expensive. You registered the domain with the idea to make money from it. So you knew from the start you were going to place ads, and should have at least mentioned that. I’m also 100% sure that you already knew you were going to change ranking by ‘page views’ to ‘incoming clicks’, as that’s how all these type of sites work.

Did not notify the winner is true, as he did not receive an e-mail. I suggest in the future you contact the winner yourself (in-world) just to be sure.

@Looker

What’s wrong with commenting on other blogs and being part of the community to get your blog known? A much more productive way imho.

The photoblog-community.com works with adsense and top lists too, but I don’t have the ‘awefully cheap’ feeling with that one. Maybe because it’s depending on votes and not on incoming clicks.

“I don’t see how you use Google Analytics for SEO. It’s just a - good - traffic and site analytics tool. You can do SEO based on the information it gives you, but it doesn’t do ‘SEO’ for you.”

When you change something to the website, you will see a differences in Google Analytics. Example are the meta tag, the SEO friendly links like .html instead of .php?xx=

“Changing… blablabla… notify… prominent place on our site: let’s assume not everybody will continue checking your site, thus why not by e-mail AND in a prominent place on the site? In stead of ‘or’.”

If i send out many email, people said i spam. If they never receive, people said i never send. Anyway, I blog about the developement of Second Life Topsites.

“I use Analytics too. I was just wondering about the data from the other sites you get. And - I asked this before - how do you measure ‘pageviews’”

The data shown to me is just unique view and total pageview which is under the site stat. There are no other data beside that.

FYI, Alexa also have your pageview data, reach data.

I have to find Sponsor to help pay the hosting.” Hosting + traffic for SLTopsites? Can’t be that expensive. You registered the domain with the idea to make money from it.

Registration is cheap, but Hosting can be expensive. I am on a dedicated server.

So you knew from the start you were going to place ads, and should have at least mentioned that.

Do I have to mention everything before I start anything?

Did not notify the winner is true, as he did not receive an e-mail. I suggest in the future you contact the winner yourself (in-world) just to be sure.

I did send out the same email to all the members using the site script email function. I have no idea why Looker Lumet never received it. You received it didn’t you?. Anyway, I mentioned it in my blog and SL forum. My wife informed him as well.

You will see so, but you can see that in your address bar too. Just say ‘Yes, Vint, Google ANALYTICS is an analytics tool.’ Which does not mean it can not help with SEO. :p

If you send out many mails about L$ prices that can be won, etc, yes, we say it’s spam. But if you send out a mail saying ‘hey, the site that you are listed on is going to start to run ads, if you do not want to be listed anymore you can unsubscribe ‘here”, I’m sure all would appreciate.

Thank you for clarifying on the data gathered from the sites. I know that Alexa has that. And even country locations, and such. Please, don’t threat Dolmere, me and the others as idiots. Btw. If you would not know: Alexa has only data about the behaviour of people that have the Alexa toolbar/plugin installed.

A dedicated server? I hope you didn’t got that especially for sltopsites.com?! I just assume you had that anyway for your other blog and businesses, so it should not even be an extra cost without registering the domain. As Dolmere said, take an example from planet.worldofsl.com.

Now, you do not have to mention everything before you start, but you shouldn’t ‘willingly ly’ either. You knew you were going to place ads, and you also knew more peole would sign up if you would not mention that.

And no, I did not receive the email either. Someone else told me.

… god, this guy is a pitbull… finally found a worthy opponent Vint? Cats (/Nekos) and Dogs…. lol

I didnt mean to say that you were (deliberately) involved Vint, just that he seems to use your blog for his advertising campaign..

@ Richard: waw, I did not know you were married to Bella. As she is the only one who did notify me. And that is how I found out about winning a price.
And as told before, there are others who did not receive the email. As Vint suggested: why not inform everyone inworld, at least the winner. So if Bella did not told me, I would never have known it.
@ Vint: as usual, you are completely right by saying that commenting on other blogs is way more effective, but sorry, I don’t have all day to run over all the blogs, and to comment them, I do have a job in RL which pays my bills. So if I stopped working in RL, I won’t be able to be in SL anymore, even not blog anymore.I can not go through hundreds of blogs, and then comment them too. I have to use other tools as SLtopsites, which is one of them, although I am getting more and more suspicious after reading his comments here. Please forgive me.:)
I have already deleted other ones on my blog for the same reason you mentioned, but honestly thought that SLtopsites was not one of them. Until now I still have a little faith.

@Veronique: Well, I hope that people reading this will some how realise Mr. Palace is definitely not the ‘nice guy’ he pretends to be. I ‘d be supprised if he does anything in SL that isn’t related to ‘gaining money and preferably as much as possible’.

@Looker: I don’t think Bella wants Richard. *grins* And same for all of us I think, without work no money and thus no food and no pc. :d And sorry, but ‘I HAVE TO’ use tools like SLtopsites, is just bullocks. Why do you HAVE TO, again?

[…] through the worldofsl.com blogroll this morning, I come across Vint Falkien’s post about this website called SLTopsites.com. For the unfamiliar it looks like an easy way to […]