What Was He Thinking?
Sometimes I wonder what goes through the mind of a blogger when he orders a ReviewMe review from John Chow dot Com. Take for example the case of AndrewTalk. This is a blog about online business. It is presumably own by someone name Andrew. AndrewTalk is a good example on how not to do a blog. After reading this, you’ll understand why and you’ll also wonder what Andrew was thinking by order this review.
Who Is AndrewTalk?
Who is AndrewTalk? Your guess is as good as mine. The blog has no about page and the posts have no author links. The only message Andrew left me in the review request was:
This is a brand new blog about internet business. Encourage your visitors to keep visiting my blog because they will get good posts every day.
I had to do a WhoIs to find out that the owner’s name was Andrei Raileanu and had to go all the way back to the blog’s first post to find any information about him and even then it didn’t offer much except to say Andrew is a 21 year old from Eastern-Europe and the owner of Dev3, a web design and programming company.
If you are going to create a “make money online” blog, branding is everything. What makes you an authority on the subject? You can’t create a brand when readers don’t even know your full name.
Using Stolen Content Is Not The Way To Build a Blog
It took me a few minutes to figure out why all the posts on AndrewTalk had no author links. As far as I can tell, nearly all the posts were stolen from other blogs, including mine! On August 10th, AndewTalk posted Check out 5 Requirements For Investing In A New Business. It’s a copy and paste of My Five Requirements For Investing In A New Business. Then there is this post which is a copy and paste of Make $100 With A Citibank Saving Account
Andrew puts the disclaimer “This post was inspired from JhonChow.com.” on the two posts he took from my blog. Not only did Andrew misspelled my name but the correct disclaimer should be, “This post was stolen from JohnChow.com.” Andrew didn’t put any disclaimer on the other posts he stole. I recommend you check his blog to see if he ripped any posts from you. From doing a Google quote search, I can see that Andrew ripped a bunch of the posts from Search Engine Optimization Journal. Other posts looks to be taken from free article services but the resource box was removed.
The only original posts on AndrewTalk is his first post and the post asking readers to suggest a topic for him to write about. I suggest, “How to make yourself look like a fool by paying $400 for a review from a blog that you stole content from.”
This Is Not 1999
If Andrew really owns a web design and programming company then surely he must have an understanding of copyright laws. Furthermore, you would think he would also know that white text on a black background went out of style in 1999. The blog violates every design rules you can think of. Where is the home page link?
I really don’t know what Andrew was thinking when he ordered this review, but since he did, I recommend he remove all stolen articles from his blog or the $400 he paid for this review will seem like peanuts once the owners of those websites he stole content from gets done with him.
Guy creates a blog with stolen content and then orders a review from a blog that he stole content from. Try and figure that one out.
Did you enjoy this post? Get John Chow Dot Com updates via email...
Stay up to date with all of John Chow’s tips for making money online and blog posts by subscribing via email. Your email will be kept private and never shared with anyone.













One of the most common complaint (or excuse) I hear from potential new bloggers is they don’t know how to install WordPress. Terms like FTP and CPanel are like a foreign language and setting up a database might as well be setting up the space shuttle for a launch. Because of the technology barrier, many would-be bloggers never start their blogs...
{ 218 comments }
PWND!!
LOL! This is funnier than when what’s-his-name ordered a review and got torn a new one.
You’re referring to Michael Nivola LOL
hey. you still remember him ?
It appears AndrewTalk is back up and running.
I just searched Michael Nivola in John chow’s search box and found his ReviewMe post. Also hilarious.hahaha. Much more hilarious was he commented on John’s post while sourgraping.hahahaha
This is just sad… some people really don’t get it. Like at all…
It is not about to get something or not…it is just about USING your brain. I mean, you know you don’t have a quality blog, you know you have stolen content from JohnChow.com why in the earth you to spend $400 blog review on the site of which you stole content from, it is more than certain that the review will be negative. And a negative review you could of get by just writing an anonymous e-mail to John and tickling him about the guy that has stole his content and things like that, that way most probably John would take some time to write about that, mention his blog…and he would still save the damn $400 bucks and invest them elsewhere…
My next question is, were the $400 legit with which John got paid?
What a slamming! I think I might contact him and offer him a review on cashquests.com! He’s obviously got too much money to throw around!
no. he’s doing a great job actually. it’s so clever. what do you think? creating a dummy blog, then order a reviewme to jc.com then don’t pay it. then redirect all the traffic to the new other dummy blog.
The only problem with that plan is all ReviewMe reviews are prepaid with no refunds.
Unless it was paid for by stolen credit card.
what a strange twist of events. and a waste of money..
Hahaha… clever thinking.
This guy has obviously got a lot of traffic quickly, regardless of why people are going there.
He needs to get rid of the under construction sign and spend all night making some quality, original, posts.
If you can find a contact on his blog then your a more observant person than I.
My thoughts exactly!
Wow. I’d like to see the response by “Andrew” to this review. Very funny.
HAHA indeed
Hehe, it’s great that Review Me doesn’t require positive reviews.
If you told me it was a joke I will trust you but it is a true story that so pathetic.
gotcha!
I must say that this is the best reviewme i have seen
that had to be the funniest ReviewMe i’ve read yet!
most definately without a doubt. i was ROFLMAO
When are people going to learn that you don’t order a review just because you are hoping to generate traffic, you order one for that reason plus a critique of your blog and areas of improvements. At least thats what I see it as when I do reviews. If you have something to hide, don’t order a reviewMe…especially from the Root of all Evil!
Exactly if you want just traffic you order it per head from Google.
Wow… just wow. Best Reviewme review ever. I love the “inspired from” part. Its one thing to be inspired by another post, its totally something else to totally rip it off. Its either “Inspired By” or “Ripped From”… not “Inspired From”.
John, you are SO evil!!
Sounds like a nobody about to become a somebody though.
I’m looking forward to AndrewTalk’s response, once he recovers.
I have to agree
Have I missed this one yet? Just woke up
It means Andrew has a good manner. He gives your money back to you after stealing your content. Andrew, you are good boy, son…. LOL
Never saw it that way, very true but unlikely
Nice way of taking it.
So true, Andrew your a good man
Haha, there you go! Andrew is paying you a ‘licensing fee’ for the content with the review me
Yup $400 for Licensing Fee
That is hilarious!!!
Not only is this guy a thief but he is an unbelievably stupid one!!!
The irony here is – although this is probably one of the worst reviews John has ever done it is guaranteed to drive a whopping amount of traffic to AndrewTalk because people want to check out just how daft this bloke is.
What’s that thing about no such thing as bad publicity?? It may be true.
true, but the links are nofollowed so he won’t get any SEO benefit. Surely will get some traffic though.
I was going to ask if the links were a nofollow or not for this… wouldn’t want to pass an ounce of PR to his rip off site.
Oh well, after reading the review i am not sure i wanna follow the link and find out what else is on that blog…
It’s because he’s from Eastern Europe. They don’t have many property rights like they do in North America.
Easy $400. =)
His webdesign company is Dev3.ro, so I’d say that eastern european country is Romania (which is quite third world).
Romania isn’t that third world, and they do have some good designers
Since January this year, Romania has been a member of the Eurpoean Union, so its copyright laws, etc, will be pretty much the same as in the UK/France/etc.
Wow, we’re both named Bryce and we’re both in Australia. What city are you in?
Sorry Bruce, I don`t know you, you don`t know me.
But saying Romania is third world shows me what kinda geography and history you know .. Not to mention other sciences, like cybernetics (invented by romanians) – mean that things which give you now the chance to speak here …
Lemme tell you a secret everybody know, except you : dot ro domain is available to be bought as well as dot us. I can only hope you`ll understand what I want to say …
The facts are simple : The guy, romanian, american or whatever he is (as citizen), MUST PAY for his mistake(s). That is simple, clear and undeniable.
Romania is third world , Nicolae Ceauşescu , revolution of 1989 , not a member of the OECD ( Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ) , etc …
Romanian did not invent cybernetics , but that’s not to say they where not big participant in it either.
Romania :
Globalization Index 2005, ranked 35 out of 62 countries.
Bertelsmann Transformation Index 2006, ranked 19th out of 119 countries.
World Competitiveness Yearbook 2006, ranked 57 out of 61 economies.
Annual worldwide press freedom index (2006), ranked 58 out of 168 countries.
Index of Economic Freedom, ranked 67 out of 157 countries.
Etc …
Third world is not bad , considering your history , it means your not fourth world or a developing country.
For a somebody not having the balls to print who you are, you prove to be very brave.
Romanian did not invent cybernetics , but that’s not to say they where not big participant in it either.
Ştefan Odobleja (1902 – 1978) was a Romanian scientist, one of the precursors of cybernetics. His major work, Psychologie consonantiste, first published in 1938 and 1939, in Paris, had established many of the major themes of cybernetics regarding cybernetics and systems thinking ten years before the work of Norbert Wiener was published (1948).
I think you should reconsider everythink you think you know. You`ll be surprised that 99% of what you think now is actually wrong, bad, mistaken.
Ive been around the world twice and have done much of eastern Europe. Anything ex-russian is freaking scary.
Even a place like Germany which I would call first world has its ex-russian East Berlin. The difference between the americanized west Berlin and russian east Berlin is a big one. Even today with the wall down if you walk from one to the other, you know you’ve crossed where the wall was. It suddenly gets really scary.
“For a somebody not having the balls to print who you are, you prove to be very brave.”
My name and my e-mail are written in the required field , John as decided to not show them , for some reason. No need to be brave to disagree with someone like you , by that I mean someone insecure , nothing more , who is wrong.
“Ştefan Odobleja … was published (1948).”
Like I said , Romania and Ştefan Odobleja did not invent cybernetics , because I knew what your false information and false reference was.
The Roots of Cybernetic theory
The word cybernetics (‘cybernétique’) was first used in the context of “the study of self-governance” by Plato in The Laws to signify the governance of people. The words govern and governor are related to the same Greek root through the Latin cognates gubernare and gubernator. It was also used in 1834 by the physicist André-Marie Ampère (1775–1836) to denote the sciences of government in his classification system of human knowledge.
The first artificial automatic regulatory system, a water clock, was invented by the mechanician Ktesibios. In his water clocks, water flowed from a source such as a holding tank in to a reservoir, then from the reservoir to the mechanisms of the clock. Ktesibios’s device used a cone shaped float to monitor the level of the water in it’s reservoir and adjust the rate of flow of the water accordingly to maintain a constant level of water in the reservoir, so that it neither overflowed nor was allowed to run dry. This is the first artificial truely automatic self-regulatory device that required no outside intervention between the feedback and the controls of the mechanism. Although they did not refer to this concept by the name of Cybernetics (they considered it a field of engineering) Ktesibios and others such as Heron and Su Song are considered to be some of the first to study cybernetic principles.
The study of teleological mechanisms (from the Greek τέλος or telos for end, goal, or purpose) in machines with corrective feedback dates from as far back as the late 1700s when James Watt’s steam engine was equipped with a governor, a centripetal feedback valve for controlling the speed of the engine. In 1868 James Clerk Maxwell published a theoretical article on governors, one of the first to discuss and refine the principals of self-regulating devices.
I don’t need to reconsider anything at all , you offered no new information , you where lied to , by your own government and teachers , you consider your education to be exact , when the proof is in the details you where unaware of even existed.
Since I was educated properly and I consider my word here , I wont suggest that you reconsider everything you know , just that you know that your education
and teaching in this mater are incorrect , the worldwide recognized answers is more complete ,you are incorrect by major omissions and by propaganda and political lies.
The mater is completely close for me , I said what I had to say , if you can get the worldwide recognized cybernetics body to agree with you , then I will agree with you , but they won’t , so I don’t.
Out of curiousity, Valentin and the Anonymous guy. Where are you guys from? Im assuming one of you is from east europe because its getting pretty emotionally involved.
I am not a Romanian, but have lot of Romanian Colleagues ( i work in a “western” European country). Its a pity that for Americans, anything non-american or non-british is third world. Yes Romania is not so well-off, but that doesn’t make it third world. Looking at the way the dollar is sliding down, America might soon lose its ground!
“Its a pity that for Americans”
Third world , and world fragmentation /was an European creation. The term was coined in 1952 by French demographer Alfred Sauvy to refer to what are now called developing countries. The definition as changed this days to include fourth world and fifth world and developing countries. It’s as much an economical qualification then a economy and commerce and currency exchange qualification this days
“Yes Romania is not so well-off, but that doesn’t make it third world.”
not so well-off = third world.
- First world are G8 country.
- Second world are well off but not as rich or as influencing of other’s.
- Third world are not so poor , but on the brink of it , there not as technologically advanced as other’s and are not as competitive as other’s.
Note : Romania is on it’s way to be second world , but there not really there yet.
- Fourth world are poor country , where the status of living is still good.
- Fifth world are country where war and commerce is interrupted continuously , but they don’t need monetary external contribution.
Devloping country are country where the most basic need are not met.
Currency is not the determining factor.
What ground would America be loosing ? I suspect your also talking about the US only. The lowering currency only affect people who rely only on the US currency. The big US conglomerate and big corporation deal in many currency and are unnafected by it.
“Lemme tell you a secret everybody know, except you : dot ro domain is available to be bought as well as dot us. I can only hope you`ll understand what I want to say”
I am well aware that anyone can get a .ro domain just like a .us. However, who the hell would want a .RO domain name? Unless of course, you are a business operating in Romania.
.Com.Au domain names are much more expensive here in Australia, I could go for a .com but I want people to know my business is Australian. Chances are this guy wants the same for his business in Romania.
I just cant think of any reason why a non Romainian would want a .ro domain name. Unless of course it makes up part of a word (like del.icio.us), but his business name doesnt.
“I can only hope you`ll understand what I want to say” was pointed to the fact JC was diplomat and didn`t mention any country name.
I want, on purpose, to belive he choosed that way as to not be as “well informed” as the guy without name, which guy is more whorst than I could think at first sight. Why ? Beause, in his high level knowledges, he seems to forget the basics : HE`S STYLE DISCRIMINATE !
I`m a flamer. A real flamer, not what suckers writted is supposed to be one (on wikipedia). There for I flamed the guy with the Odobleja thing and didn`t ask him who is first world, who is second and what OBJECTIVE criterias he support for that categorization. Well, be sure he have no idea, he is just a copy/paste for others opinions.
Really sorry for using you to put the ball up for anotherone.
The anonymus one, if he think he should not be hidden, he can find ways to be out of shadow … yet a friend of mine made a bet with me while he sustain that anonymus one`s name (one of his names) start with letter “c”. I say “o” as first letter of one of his names. The bet is a box of beer.
And that`s gonna be all, I think I`m very close or maybe allready passed the spam limits, there for I`ll cease commenting on here.
I can’t believe this has turned into a sledging match around whether or not Romania is a third world country and who invented cybernetics!
All because someone ripped off John Chow’s blog content and then decided to ask him to review it!
How things snowball!
@ Valentin :
“yet a friend of mine made a bet with me while he sustain that anonymus one`s name (one of his names) start with letter “c”. I say “o” as first letter of one of his names. The bet is a box of beer.”
You both loose , so I expect you will be both paying John 24 beer each , thats , 58 beer. Because a Canadian box of beer is 24 beer.
1.00 CAD = 2.25737 RON
1.00 CAD = 22,572.06 ROL
1 Beer = 3$ CAD = 6.78 RON or 62.71 ROL per beer.
163 RON or 1506 ROL Per case of Beer
@ Geedos :
No sledging match about Romania or question about who invented cybernetics. I used the internationnal answers used by CANADA.
So, he can afford a $400 review, but not his own content???
He could buy almost 2 full months of 1,000 words per day from some of the content sites for the same price he paid for this review.
Unbelievable!
Very true and its strange that he doesnt write his own stuff. A clear example of people thinking that john chow will make them rich
This is really hilarious! hahaha. I can’t believe andrew wasted his $400 for this review.
Maybe want to get some traffic
Wow, this must be extremely embarassing for the guy. I wonder what was going through his mind when he wanted a review from someone he blatantly plagiarised? I think he took the phrase, “Imitation is the highest form of flattery”, too literally. It’s funny he’ll be getting a lot of publicity but not the publicity he’d like..
All publicity is good publicity.
Unless it gets you sued.
Yes…but that’s usually in reference to free publicity, not publicity you have to pay for. Sure his website probably got an influx of traffic from this review, but he’s not likely to get any long term readers out of his $400.
btw, he’s got an old school counter at the bottom left corner. The text was hurting my eyes. This is hilarious.
I cant believe he scraped your blog and then paid to be reviewed here!
I wonder if he’ll scrape this post too
I’m afraid to post a comment or he might rip off all our sites!
omg LOL.
LOL!
Thats it John, I’m Defiantly NOT ordering a review from you when my new project is ready!! J/Ks
Great review, a wonderful idea to go ahead with it instead of declining, I love it!
When I first started reading and I realized he ordered the review, I couldn’t imagine why someone would pay 400 dollars and think someone wouldn’t realize his content was stolen. You shed light on yourself and all you bring is bad attention. Your post was on point about everything, and it’s awful to use other peoples content, especially individuals who usually write from the heart and actually have “The Knowledge”. Great Post.
Thanks John, I was contemplating ordering a review from you but I didn’t want to just yet because I wasn’t sure if you would do a positive or negative one, but its great to get an idea of what you look for in blogs, maybe you could write a detailed post about that in the future.
I think I’ll wait a bit longer.
Simon
This is crazy. I’d like to know where he came up with the $400 to even get the review! He’ll probably issue a chargeback against ReviewMe. Now, John, isn’t it great when you can make $200 for doing a review like this?
Not a particularly bright guy, this Andrew.
I wonder…how old is he?
Simon, you’ve got a nice blog. No Need to worry about a Neg review
Thanks Colin, I appreciate that.
Simon
J.D – It states in the post above, he is 21 (according to his first post)
This post is hilarious. He paid you $400, basically alerting you to the fact that he steals content from you.
Comedy gold.
Ha ha! That’s gotta be a first – somebody paying someone else to incriminate themselves!
Glorious!
That’s mental
Or it could be some genius scheme,No hes mental.
That is the most hilarious and infuriating thing I’ve seen!
At least you got $400 while you busted him… that’s more than he’ll ever make with his blog… EVER. I wonder if you would have ever noticed his blog stole your content if he hadn’t paid you to find it?
Damn thiefs.
Funny indeed…. some people don’t think!
lol good stuff
John, does the Review Me rules allow you to point to the Google cache of his site instead of the actual site, so people can check out his ignorance without actually giving him clicks?
You have to link to their site. I don’t really mind doing that. All he has on there is a Google ad so it won’t make him any money, unless someone clicks on it.
John, does ReviewMe not have a policy about nofollowing links in the review? Don’t get me wrong, this guy deserved what he got and should never be linked to from any site ever without the nofollow tage, I was just curious for any negative reviews I might do in the future.
ReviewMe has no rules on how you link to the advertiser.
Very nice! I wish I had thought to ask that question sooner as I probably would have accepted a couple more reviews. Oh well, live and learn.
I’m reading some cool stuff from his blog, surely because its not actually his.
Simon
Chances are he stole the money to pay for the review
Yeah, I tend to think that the money he paid with is as stolen as his content…time will tell…
this is absolutely crazy john. i am amazed at how people can be these days..
great post as usual.
I can’t believe someone would spend the money on something so stupid.
Yeah, just about every form of advertising I can imagine that you could buy with $400 would probably be more effective then this review.
If he doesn’t even want to pay people to write him content then surely he didn’t intend to pay you in the first place. Maybe this was a ploy by Andrew to get you to write a post about him (good or bad) using a fake reviewme account or credit account unless you confirmed you were paid already since I don’t know how reviewme works. I hope justice is served for this Andrew.
All ReviewMe reviews are prepaid.
BUUUUUUUUURN
Hence Andrei got owned.
Funniest post ever! I don’t think I’ll order a reviewme any time soon, not that I steal content, it’s all my own but if it would ever stand up to John’s standards I don’t know?
By the way he can still order a charge back and will get it if he paid by credit card, a major problem with electronically delivered products.
He would need to prove he didn’t get the product or the product was defective. All ReviewMe has to do is show this URL to the CC company and his claims would be dismissed.
That’s not actually correct John. I’m an online merchant provider, and the online merchant selling an intangible product has 0 protection. All the card holder has to do is call up his credit card company and say, “I didn’t order this service”. The only “proof” the credit card company will accept is a signature. Showing them your review will not stop a chargeback unfortunately.
I agree, my experience with CC companies is that they have no understanding of so called e-products. The proof has to be physical, which in an online world like we operate in just isn’t there.
I wouldn’t mind reviewing a blog for $400 regardless of their content.
Damm !!! How you feel when you review a blog with your own content , when that blog’s most popular posts are the popular posts written by you on your blog.
Plagiarism is spreading the blogging world like anything..I think you should prepare to file a DMCA notice to that guy .
wooo he has some bad days ahead facing many bloggers
jhon, being yourself a blogger who publicly shares your income monthly, please check out this reports & stats, based on yours and thirty others blogger’s data, on monthly earnings
Well-well ..
Somebody paid you 400 $ for a review.
Sure is your right, then, to make the review.
disclaimer : I have no competition on being the biggest worldwide anti-thief/scam/copyright-violation/whatever guy ever born and stil alive.
:-P:-) ) Chow, you are also anti-*. But not on my level. See below why.
So, I`m NOT protecting this guy or others doing similar stuff.
Also, I am NOT surprised you, Jhon(
End of disclaimer.
So, while you received the review request, you HAD THRE OPTIONS :
1- do exactly what you done – take the money and, naturaly, obviously, corectly, f*** the bastard;
2- take a short pre-view, see the sh** there, refuse the review request and eventually announce it the copyrights broke to who ever may be intersted, using other tools than this blog;
3- leave the review in pending, make the article as above published on a not-public page, then give the link to the guy, or contact the guy and explain him why he MUST come first on line (not online, on the line), then, after, make a such a payment for a such a purpose. In case of a no response (or slang response), publish the article for free.
I consider 1 as highly imoral, 2 as moral and 3 as best morality, acording to morality standards, without involving religions, countries`s laws or whatever else you`ll want. Simply MORALITY. That think which will stop somebody to take the candy from a kid, if you know what I mean …
Presumption of unguilty :
Prove you have NOT take the money but yet write this article, and I`ll worship you. (I doubt you can, while you have also indirectly admited above, in comments, you have take the review charge ..)
Again, revealing a copyright broke/scam/stole is ok. Is a need. I agree and I support that.
Again, I do not challenge nor questioning your value as marketer and businessman.
ps : Long time since you haven`t face a devil`s advocate here, isn`t it ?
Isn`t boring to see only “yes, good job, JC, keep it on” comments ?
ps2 : White writings on black bg may be outfashioned for you. If you haven`t hear it yet, short skirt was outfashined once, then come back, again out, again back .. NOTHING more wrong than to say something is forever outfashioned.
While #1 maybe highly immoral to you, it’s highly evil to me.
And yet again an evil way how to make money online..isn’t that what John is doing?
, people have to learn that if you are dumb you will lose money and the smart (or evil) one will earn those money.
Just hope you won’t get in trouble with chargebacks and stuff, a service is a service and a product is product… we are not speaking about product sale here…but a service.
JC won`t have trouble with charge-back. He provided backlinks, he done the review – which apparently was not requested to be positive-negative-however. That proves again how stupid is that Andrei.
What I don`t understand is why one would wanna pay to be reviewed by JC.
What I`ll never never never understand is why thiefs stil belive they can live with stolen things, while was proved so clear durring the history that they`ll be in spot light sooner or later ..
“evil” you say ? lol
Real evil would be to pay to yourself 400$ for a negative review of your own (this) site.
mwuahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Providing the review isn’t a proof of purchase. From the credit card companies perspective they will say, “well someone else could have ordered the review for him.”
Unfortunately, the only proof of purchase they accept is a signature….does review me require buyers to fax in a signature for high priced reviews?
I think this is Andrew here…..look at the way he spelled John as Jhon! Is that you Andrew, talking?
You have a lot of broken links on your site … And no, i`m not Andrew. Thanks God (if any outthere) I never meet him and never do, hopefully.
You’ve single-handedly stripped morality of its meaning. Congratulations.
This is hilarious. John this is one of those times when I think you’ve shown a lot of character. Good stuff.
I haven’t checked the code but it could be a fairly ingenious way to get infected machines for a bot army or to hack into peoples machines. A little piece of java and then get 100′s of visitors from a popular blog and bang you could have access to some of the most popular blogs on the net along with google adsense accounts and other accounts.
this one is hilarious .where are u Andrew?
Hi chow, fancy ur blog a lot. and now i ve just set up my blog, if u wanna meet with pretty girl friends, come and have a look, http://www.sodoii.com , dont tell ur wife ya, good luck!
This review will go down in the history of blogging as a classic.
John,
You’ve just send thousands of free traffic to his website! After stealing other people content still can get free high volume traffic. Not bad huh!?
Bob
It wasn’t exactly free… the guy paid $400 for it.
Yeah, this post will probably bring over 90% of all visitors that blog will get, ever.
Anyways, nicely written, that review.
Supposedly Napoleon (but some claim other sources) said: “Never ascribe to Malice what is adequately explained by Ignorance” Amen
Ok, those posts were removed. The disclaimer was down there so I tought that it will not be a problem.
I will take the review as it is and now I am starting to re-build the blog without the mistakes written by you.
Well, at least it seems Andrew has learned his lesson.
You seem to have shut him down at least!
LOL! Absolutely hysterical! What was this guy thinking? It reminds me of one of the guys who scraped my site. Once I tracked him down I found that he had proudly posted on one of his blogs that his intent was to build an empire by scraping sites. Somehow, he didn’t get the idea that walking into someone’s house and swiping their stuff was not ok. As dumb as that was, Andrew certainly takes the cake. This guy will be talked about for years…
Bummer – he already pulled his site down so now we can’t view it for ourselves!
Poor guy, he took down the whole thing and is redoing it. As bad as his mistake was, I feel a little sorry for him now. Anyway, lets see what happens.
Simon
How can you feel sorry for this guy??!? He’s arguably the most blatant content copier this blog has ever been exposed to!
Are you sure he took it down or did the site just fold under the weight of the increased traffic levels?
nah he took it down, if you check the link it says that he’s redoing the whole thing. Anyway, he is an idiot, but some people are real sincere idiots.
Simon
He commented on here apologizing and said he was going to take down the stolen content.
Does anyone remember the last time John gave a stellar review where he absolutely loved the website?
Seems like it has been a very long time since.
I wonder how he will improve his blog.
Wow I can’t believe the sheer stupidity of the guy – great review.
And the Darwin Award in the category “my genes should not be transmitted” goes to… Andrew!
I’ve noticed even my blog folks are scraping from it, even after only being live for a couple of months. It’s sad how people think they can make easy money. I don’t think they understand how much time and effort it takes to get anything going in the blogosphere. All they can see is “if it has X person’s name on it, I’m sure to make 12k a month!” Rather pathetic if you ask me. There isn’t much you can do besides contact the hosting company I assume.
People scrape my blog from time to time as well, there’s not much you can do about it. At least they usually only scrape part of an article and link back for the full thing.
This whole deal is just classic!
Nice work John.
His site was already taken down before I got to see it
Shoot. I missed it. Did anyone get a copy of the site?
The best ReviewMe that I have ever read. Its hilarious. John, you have torn him apart. I think he is doing a good job of keeping a copy of the internet.
Probably the funniest review I’ve ever read about site.
Well so much for the site it’s down now, with a message about reconstruction.
Yeah, just don’t use this as an example to other potential advertisers
the site now shows:
Under Complete Re-Construction!
I will prove the world that this is not a junk blog. I will re-make all the posts and all de the designing.
After this I will ask the world what they think about AndrewTalk.
Best regards,
Andrew
I think that is the funniest part. He just paid $400 for people to land on an Under Construction page. I can’t wait until he gets to ask the whole world what we think after he re-makes and “des” all the designing.
I believe you should let your site stay up, take the heat, learn from it, work in parralel and redesign the site, how long could this possible take you?
And for the stolen content give full accreditation that the posts on the blog for the timebeing are from your your favorite blogs with full credits t the source while enjoying the traffic flow from this blog and other blogs that tol thier readers about it.
You paid $400.00 ow enjoy the buzz you created without knowing that you did. You ain’t the first nor the only one here that might have gone about business the way you did.
Best thing I’ve seen since…hmmmmmm – no, it is the funniest thing I have seen today!
Please come and order a review from me…go on…please…
At first I thought this was some sort of joke, but I quickly realised it wasn’t. What a spoon…
Who would pay $400 for a review, which he must of known would be negative (considering he stole the content from you) to top to increase the readers of his blog?
Strange…
At least we know that you’re reviews are honest
That is the post of the week, if not the month!
Absolutely awesome!
Can’t stop laughing at that fool…
What an idiot!
I don’t even see that his blog is online anymore. Doesn’t deserve to be, I guess.
Hey guys, Andrew just called me up from Hospital. He was torn apart right in the middle and would be commenting here his thoughts once he recovers.
Take care of yourself Andrew – get well soon!
Well the fact that he took it down to “reconstruct” it is almost admirable (almost I said) given that his $400 is now wasted because he doesn’t even have his site up to benefit from all the traffic he is getting.
This really just proves the point that even bad publicity can be good. Heck, imagine if the guy got sued by JC and others, just think how much traffic he would have coming to his site then.
The site is “Under Complete Re-Construction!” LOL, poor guy.
Yeah “complete”.. but I think Andrew taken it to heart and would be coming back soon with some better “stolen” content.
I will take all the insults. But I will be back. I promise
LOL !, hillarious.
Just my EVIL thinking.
Is this John Chow’s other website he was talking about the other day. Start with no one and make the blog hit. ?????
I can’t really imagine if there are fools like ANDREW, but might be a well thought out plan to make visitors come back and check how he is doing with his new blog.
BINGO! I’ve been scrolling through all the other comments to see if anyone else was thinking the same thing!!!
Steal your own content, buy a review, stir up controversy… Now, on top of that, the blog is being redone, removing the stolen content… 133 comments as I write this, who knows how many visitors to the blog…
Does a bad review create more visitors than a good one? How many people slow down to watch a guy change a woman’s tire vs. the number of people that slow down to look at a car wreck?
This could be Evil 101.
I was beginning to think I was the only one that thought this…evil 101 indeed. If John isn’t “Andrew” maybe he should have been…
The nobody blog has a marketing budget of $86.10, not $400.
The startup budget was $86.10 (after the domain name registration and hosting fees), but how do we know you haven’t already made $400 off the blog and have $486.10 to spend now?
You don’t.
Haha he has now shut down the page, what a complete moron!
It’s like stealing a car and then try to sell it back to the owner what the hell was that crazy ruski thinking about?
He’s not getting a click of traffic from me. Andrew, FYI, I’ll mock you for half price. And less people will see it. Double Win!
This is the funniest sponsored review of the year
at least he got a free review
What an idiot!
I’m glad that you caught him. I just confronted someone for pasting my content on their website (they have their own domain). They have it monetized with Yahoo’s Publishing Network. Check this out. Everytime I write a post, this person has some type of feed that automatically posts my content on their site. It gets better. I have a problem with Technorati not updating my posts immediately. Every time I post, I have to ping with the suffix index.html. Meanwhile, my post appears on their site instantly. So guess what happens? It looks like I’m posting duplicate content! I went as far as offering to blog for them for pay, if they were too lazy to post themsleves. Never got a reply. Hhmm, it’s just easier to copy and paste. By the way, you guys might want to check the site. It has lots of content from many different authors. I refuse to give them free advertising. So if you want to see if they have your content, contact me on my blog.
Geez, I blog to support myself and my 7 kids. You would think they would have some consideration. I’m tired of lazy people scamming those of us that work!
I’m glad that you got him and his $400.00. Think of it this way, you got $200.00 for the content he stole!
Hey guys, just wanted to apologize to everyone and encourage you all to check out the improvements I’ve made to my NEW blog.
I think you will see that I’m NOT just some scam artist. I’ve got great articles and advice.
I just want to apologize to JohnChow.com and encourage everyone to check out my NEW blog (now live!) with articles and content I can be proud of.
Nice use of tinyurl there, buddy. Like, why do you even bother?
LOL hahhahhahhaha, $400 well spent.
I seriously wonder what type of review he thought he might get with all his stolen content
. I am glad that regardless of the money he paid you provided honest information about the site. That must have been a bit frustrating to find your own work compy and pasted.
Cheers!
First of all, excuse my english (I´m Portuguese)
Recently I´ve launch the site AdMiNTEC.net (a place for people to discover and share content about “Making Money Online”).
This site links to many of the top blogs about it, like jonhchow.com and problogger.net, and many more… All sources are identified and in the footer of all pages I put this disclaimer:
AdMiNTEC.net is neither affiliated with the authors of this stories nor responsible for its content. AdMiNTEC.net does not claim ownership rights to the stories, which are instead held by the sites to which this Service links. All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. AdMiNTEC.net is a place for people to discover and share content about “Making Money Online”.
Is my site violating any copyright rights? What do you think about it?
Thank´s for your help.
Linking to the original post is not a copyright violation. You can even use a quote or two from the article to help explain things to your readers. However, posting the entire article without permission is a copyright violation. You look to be OK.
A typical good format when linking to other content is:
John Chow recently wrote:
“AndrewTalk is a good example on how not to do a blog. After reading this, you’ll understand why and you’ll also wonder what Andrew was thinking by order this review.”
Check it out over at:
http://www.johnchow.com/andrewtalk-how-not-to-do-a-blog/
why not title this website andrewstolencontent.com huh? As a matter of fact is this blogging is acting as a rferral point for other blog content then maybe using th trackback permalink witha brief intro to the post wouldn’t be so bad huh.
I can’t believe this guy is so stupid. I just checked his website and he setup a poll where he asks if he still has a chance to recover.
I don’t know if this guy is really stupid or naive.
I voted no..
People keep getting dumb err… smarter each day
This guy is screwed.
Damn, this is really funny.
C’mon John, own up. This is really your nobody blog and you’re using John Chow dot Com for some free publicity.
now that’s beyond evil
that’s exactly what I think too
I dont think no one would just waste $400 for no reason. It’s a lot of money. I think this was a well thought out plan from Andrew’s part and if that’s the case then I must say that he is a VERY smart person.
Wow: Andrew finally got wind you were so ticked and stopped by to comment. Hilarious!
Anyway, thanks for the backlink, John! By the way, admiring your ebook was part of the reason I finally put out my own.
Mine, however, is a memoir. Lots of strange and funny stories from my youth (e.g., ghost sightings, elementary school cross-dressers)…
Regards,
Viqi French
http://squidoo.com/daddysgonnabuy
Btw, his domain are very easy to remember imo
Maybe he was trying to linkbait… will be awesome cause I’m sure others are blogging about this as we speak.
I guess I stand alone. Stolen content or not, I think it was classless to accept the review fee and trash the guy.
You could have accomplished the same thing without taking his money.
You are not the only one.
I also said is highly imoral, yet JC bother to answer :
is not imoral, is … evil ..
LOL.
Pathetic excuse to grab 400$ coming from a guy pretending to have ~15,000$ a month online income ..
Everyone knows that reviews do not have to be positive. Advertisers take that risk. Guy orders a review, guy got a review. What is classless or immoral about it?
IMO, there’s nothing immoral about giving an accurate review of a site. They paid for a review–that’s what they got. I think it’s WAY more immoral to give a positive review of a site or product that sucks just to collect a fee…which seems to be standard operating procedure for the vast majority of bloggers out there that do pay per post type programs. Not to mention the fact that Andrew (assuming John /= “Andrew”) may have gotten exactly what he was looking for out of this.
Funniest thing i’ve read so far today! God bless the internet!
Interesting, we have a similar issue going on. But they didn’t pay us $400 to find it:(
That’s Hilarious. Maybe paying for a review was his way of paying you back for all the money he made off your content. I wonder if he is paying back everyone in this manner
Very interesting. I would love to hear of the outcome after everyone finds out he has stolen their material….
Best of luck to you with that one.
kcdc627
I’ve set up a website to expose this plagiarism artist. Check it out
Nice way to point out a youtube very old video ..
Added: November 27, 2006
From: TheFishman75
Information
Rick Astley’s debut single…
You should do a little checking on his whois information. Check the guy’s address in the whois…, it will take you to some interesting information… I already emailed John with the stuff…
I don’t see any good coming from this.
“No such thing as bad press” maybe? But still… hmm.
this guy will certainly feel the john chow effect lol
I tried to goto his blog and found this:
“I will prove the world that this is not a junk blog. I will re-make all the posts and all de the designing.
After this I will ask the world what they think about AndrewTalk.”
… heh.
i always support chow, welcome to http://www.sodoii.com if you are looking for girl friends.
too bad he’ll still get the john chow effect. Well, not from me, I’m not gonna give andrew talk any of my my traffic.
I just went back and read the post on Michael Nivola. That was almost as good as this one.
Ouch 400 dollars down the drain, but I guess this is good for john’s rep as it proves he doesnt push crappy sites just cause they pay him.
400 dollars down the drain my a$$. Look how much traffic he’s gotten, and the comments keep coming. 422 people have voted on his poll. Who knows how many people have visited…. Maybe he’s a complete doofus, but I doubt it. It was probably planned out to go exactly like it has.
Note to self…come up with a blog that will absolutely get horrible review, pay for a review by a top blog, then move to stage 2 of the plan.
All of you here actually fell inside of a buzz marketing trap although it seems this was done by default by the owner of the blog in question.
John Chow dot Com is an influential authority in its own right so doing an interview especially a not so positive one will definitely send hundreds of visitors to the blog anyway and this is eveident by the nearly two hundred responses to the post John made, how gullible we all can be at times.
My question is to John and I would wish he replies directly to this question:
Did you perform a due diligence check on the review applicant before accepting to write the review?
It’s obvious that you’re pissing rocks over the ripped off content ina number of the posts made on this blog but the blog has already achieved its aim from you exposure your ranting has given to the andrewtalk blog.
But then again there are so mny free to publish content available online today I’m surprised that word for word articles are being used to populate the average don’t have the time to write it myself blogger out there.
Oh God, the first thing I did after read this review was change my Wordpress theme (it was white text over black background)
John, let me tell you, your blog and knowledge has been the pilar of the mine (that begin this month), and just yesterday found the Misty theme, almost by accident.
I am amazed the amount of traffic Andrew has received as a result of this post.
Seriously there is no such thing as bad PR. He should place some ads on those pages and moentize the traffic a bit. Also leave a RSS feed and email alert for visitors to be notified in the future.
So the lesson is that if you write a horrible blog, you can get huge amount of traffic
Abhishek
This all goes beyond Johns blog now too. Look at all the pingbacks.
It’s been suggested already, but what if AndrewTalk had this planned all along? I don’t believe Andrew to be that stupid, so it seems the most likely idea to me. What if he deliberately made his site look bad, stolen a bunch of articles, in order to be bashed in his JohnChow review?
I mean I’m talking from my own experience here, but the fact the review was so negative is the only reason that *I* visited the guy’s site. I’m sure that of all the people that visited, some will be checking his webpage a few more times in the upcoming week, just to see if his “new content” is actually worth it. Most of them won’t, but some of them will. So this guy basically got a sh**load of new readers overnight. Talk about instant fame.
The question is: if this theory is true, was $400 worth it?
Hi John,
I complete agree with you. There is blog called
http://www.plannerlife.info.
This guy is copying entire stuff from my blog.
http://analogstuff.blogspot.com
I dont know how to avoid that. Do u have any suggestions.
Regards,
analogstuff
Well, AndrewTalk is back. Here is the official apology: http://andrewtalk.com/2007/08/17/the-big-comeback-after-the-slap-from-john-chow/