FreelanceWritingGigs.com NOT FreelanceWritingGig.com
November 15, 2008 by Deb
Filed under Writing Gigs
by Deb Ng
The other day I was watching a video post by Gary Vaynerchuk about how to gain advertisers for your blog. FWJ is starting to get more aggressive with ad sales and I’m interested to see how Gary Vee goes about it. His suggestion is one that’s obvious but never occurred to me. Do a search on the top keywords for this blog and see who is advertising on Google. Contact those advertisers directly to see if they’re interested. So I did a search on “freelance writing jobs”.
The first ad I came across was one for a place called freelancehomewriters.com. I didn’t see a number, but I did send them an email to see if they would be interested in advertising. Shame on me, I should have explored the site a little further.
Today, I received an email from John Hewitt of PoeWar. He wanted to let me know of a scam site advertising itself on Google and it’s url was freelancewritinggig.com. That’s right, just an “s” away from the #1 online freelance writing community. John even wrote a post about it, go ahead and read it, I’ll wait…
I won’t rehash John’s post, but you can see we’re dealing with less than savory types here. This is a place that tries to profit by making writers think they’re coming to one of our blogs, when of course they’re not. Oh and guess what came up when I checked out freelancewritinggig.com? You guessed it, the Freelancehomewriters.com site I contacted earlier about advertising. Um…I don’t think so.Google allows you to request certain ads don’t appear, and I’ll be updating my Adsense to remove any of the sites leading towards freelancehomewriters.com. I did it with Go Freelance too. We need to pay the bills but not at the expense of others.
Thanks for having our back John!
Support FWJ
Freelancehomewriters.com is a huge scam – read here:
http://www.accentuateservices.com/xmb/viewthread.php?tid=127
Thanks for the tip on being able to request that ads for certain sites don’t appear. I had seen it on Google Adsense, but hadn’t really taken it in or thought it would be much use, to be honest.
In light of what you’ve said, and John’s post, I’ll be requesting certain ads aren’t shown on my blog. I’d certainly put integrity and my readers’ best interests before any sort of income I might make from scammers advertising on my site.
Likewise done on my site with Google Adsense. Thanks Deb. Please post any of these scam sites that you find and I will delist them as well.
Deb,
Thanks for putting the best interest of the FWG community first instead of trying to make a quick buck. If everyone had this mentality, the Internet would be a much friendlier place, and we wouldn’t have to worry about the ugly side of affiliate marketing.
If anyone wants to gripe at the guy behind the FWG knockoff site, here’s his WHOIS info:
Administrative Contact:
Moore, David thisendupproductionsllc@gmail.com
7850 Shadow Creek Dr #231
Hamilton, Ohio 45011
United States
(513) 226-6448
Wow, that is horrible! I’ve stumbled this post, Deb, and I think I’ll go ahead and give it a Digg too to try to help get the word out. Geez, some people!
Deb,
I appreciate you making us aware of this. Thanks so much. I also enjoyed reading John’s post. More of us need to be aware of this problem.
It’s crazy, and a little sad, the lengths folks are going to in order to scam people… isn’t it?
I actually accidentally landed on the freelancewritinggig.com site the day that I twittered you about liking the new site design. Usually I read through my feed reader, but that day I typed it in on my iphone (and I’m clumsy).
I just thought I landed on the wrong site, and I backed out and tried again; I wasn’t aware that that site was a scam. Learn something new every day. 
Thanks for the info, Deb. I don’t use Google Adsense, but I will spread the word about this post.
Oh, I just brought the site up you mentioned and (oh my), this is a site that I was advertising and pushing! I am SO going to take this off of my sites now!
I’ve heard the scam cries about this one and made sure I didn’t have any ads up for them a little while back. But I think this was perhaps going a bit too far:
“This is a place that tries to profit by making writers think they’re coming to one of our blogs, when of course they’re not.”
FreelanceWritingGigs.com isn’t a “branded” type of domain name – it’s a generic phrase (which can be highly effective in choosing domain names). The fact that someone uses a similar domain name to take advantage of keywords people are searching for doesn’t mean they’re trying to trick people into thinking they’re coming to one of your blogs. What they’re doing is pretty common practice – you register keyword-rich domain names and either redirect them to your own separate site or they’re used by affiliates (and I know that site has an affiliate program) to again attract the targeted traffic based on keywords; not competing sites. I’m not defending the end site, and I’m not sure which case this is – just pointing out that you need to be careful about accusations that may not be true. Now, had they setup the site design to mimic yours, I would completely agree with what you said (and maybe that was the case before I looked at it – I don’t know).
OK. I stand corrected. I see that you mean they thought they were coming to one of your blogs because of the link on PoeWar – When I read this post, I took it to mean you thought folks would assume that just from them showing up in Google search / ad results. My mistake.
Yeah, that site has been spreading like a deadly disease lately. I’ve seen it everywhere. It’s not like the real deal, though!
It’s disgusting that some people try to make money this way.
Guess I better start paying attention to ads on my site. Wouldn’t want to give these people money.
We’ve received some e-mails her from people who have signed up for freelancewritinggig.com and thought it was us offering that service. I really hate to see anyone getting ripped off.
I don’t know if the look of the site has changed since your post was written but it’s very obvious to anyone who comes to this site that the other site is not yours. Also, I’m puzzled that someone like you – whom I would assume to be very net savvy – was unaware that this sort of thing went on; that’s one of the reasons people are encouraged to buy variants on their domain names.
Thanks for the link to John’s blog post. Man, that really bites! With the economy the way it is, it really sucks that a few idiots are ruining it for the good business owners. Thanks for looking out for us and keeping us informed, Deb! For newer bloggers like me, you provide a great example and keep me apprised of the pitfalls.
Hi Lindsey,
I have no intention of buying up all the FWJ like domains, I don’t think it’s necessary. I don’t mind other people having similar domains at all. I agree it’s obvious there are differences between the two blogs. I just wanted others to be aware and also to let them know ads for these sites, which rip off writers, will be removed from my Adsense account.
Rock on,
Deb
I will tell you that I could never miss your site and go to another because I type in Deb Ng in Google and it gives me your site every time.
Just a heads-up Deb. I can’t remember where now, but somewhere on the network you had Chitika ads, and this site’s showing up there, so you may want to update that as well. They’re like a friggin’ plague.