Forum Equalizer - it's devil's work
You might have heard about the new "next big thing" to hit the IM market - it's a piece of software called `Forum Equalizer`. It's designed to spam forums, in order to "automatically" create backlinks to a given site.
Now, I do not have a problem with Black Hat procedures and tools - I've used enough of them to know that they are not for me. But all the tools I did (and do) use, I tried to bring value to myself, to the website readers and not devalue any other website…
This new piece of software is designed to spam 2100+ forums - most of which are mom and pop type forums. Heck, one of the forums on the list has a grand total of 44 members who have made 18 posts in 10 topics! Imagine if a thousand users posted one message each to that board - where's the vaue to the Blog Owner?!?
I made a comment in one of the private forums that I am a member of;
I don't care to destroy (or help to destroy) someones business and hard work in the hope that I might get a bit more traffic.
In my opinion, if a website owner cannot get traffic by legitimate means, then perhaps owning a network of (adsense) sites is not their forte.
So, watch out for this crappy product - it's the 2nd worst product I've had the misfortune to stumble across, the worst being that pile of doo-dooh that is Reverse Polarity. Avoid Forum Equalizer at all costs.
So what could an entrepreneur do about this?
How about someone buy the product. Note which boards it spams. Spend some time creating graphical captcha plugins for said forums. Now use the tool to send a broadcast comment along the lines of;
This post was made with a new Spamming Tool called Forum Equalizer. If you want to stop getting these comments visit forumequalizerbuster.com - you'll find a *free* download pack which will take 5 minutes to install on your forum.
So, then write up instructions for each type of board & package it for downloading, but do this in one of two ways;
- Make it a paid for download.
- Make it a free download (list building exercise).
It seems to me that marketers will promote any old crap if it pays well enough. I have personally been told "your product is great, but you do not charge enough, so I won't promote it" a couple of times, once by a very well known marketer.
The moral of the Story;
Make a crap product, promote it as the "next big thing", charge a high amount and watch JV partners promote the heck out of it.
And that, my friends, is the secret to success. And it sucks, eh?
Comment by Chris H — November 28, 2006 @ 3:03 pm
2100+ forums - are they all one board type? If so it would be fantastic to let the board developers know and give this product the shortest life possible.
Comment by IMF-Will — November 28, 2006 @ 11:04 pm
The suggestion about forumequalizerbuster.com smells like the Windows Remote Procedure Call vulnerability that was exploited by people selling the solution to the problem of people exploiting the Windows Remote Procedure Call vulnerability…
Comment by Dave — November 28, 2006 @ 11:06 pm
Hell - that's grim. Kinda hope they get ddos'd into oblivion.
Just about the lowest of the low that one. I spend more and more time each week deleting crap (and users) out of one of our forums and its a right pita.
Hopefully its doomed to failure….
Comment by Carine — November 28, 2006 @ 11:11 pm
Wow, am I glad I disabled the forum option in our accounting package LOL
Comment by Oli — November 29, 2006 @ 12:34 am
Out of interest, do you guys really see this as that much worse than blog spamming, social bookmark spamming, or other black hat link building methods?
Comment by Chris H — November 29, 2006 @ 8:23 am
No different Oli. Blog spammers make my blood boil. Anything that tries to use what I have built/created and in so doing reduces the effect of my work deserves everything they get.
Comment by burt — November 29, 2006 @ 9:28 am
It's on the same level as Blog Spamming. Blogs and Forums are usually owned by one person who have to spend tie deleting out crap posts/comments…
Other link building methods are not so bad, as these are not destructive to "one persons" business…
Comment by burt — December 1, 2006 @ 9:33 am
And so it starts, I found this on a forum;
Comment by Chris H — December 2, 2006 @ 2:44 pm
Some are contacting the software creators and asking to be removed from the list of forums.
Comment by A very unsatisfied customer — December 5, 2006 @ 12:45 pm
This product sucks!
First, it ONLY submit your link to forums that hosted at forumer.com and hyperboards.com. They used subdomain for different forums. E.g. abc.forumer.com, 123.hyperboards.com, xyz.hyperboards.com. So, in other words, your link are actually displayed at these parent domains: forumer.com & hyperboards.com. Don't be fooled by the sales letter that they claims this program can submit your link to 2000+ forums.
Second, the program won't tell you the information of the forums that you are going to submit your links. The forums might be the link farm forums. Can you imagine what are the risks if you just simply submit links.
Third, now search engine are getting smarter and smarter, such as google and it will eventually hurt your search engine ranking.
The most frustrated part is: I made refund request and you know what, the product owner hold my refund and "forced" me to give them the reasons so that they can make improvement. Well, I do understand that feedback is very important for self improvement. But they can't hold my refund and only release it after I told them the reason. WTF!!
I would suggest you to save the money and buy a good SEO software to promote your website.
Comment by IMF-Will — December 5, 2006 @ 8:13 pm
If that were true then it would be possible to harm other peoples websites by submitting them.
Comment by Peter — December 25, 2006 @ 8:04 am
I'm a forum owner and I really feel the pain from this stupid software. Not do I get the same stupid posts over and over again. It doesn't seem to bother them to spam my forum time after time.
I have a hard time to keep my ban control up to date. First I ban the username and then I ban the ip address. Not only am I annoyed by this, my legit forum members are starting to complain about the garbage posted.
There must be a way to block this.