I knew it would only be a matter of time until this blogger did something stupid. He’s a World of Warcraft player that has a gold selling guide. He has a “How to make gold” in World of Warcraft site. He’s been pushing his guide ridiculously. He tried adding ads to his site, to his forums, he has an affiliate program for his gold guide and he recently accepted money for a sponsored ad (which his audience loudly complained about). He has ads in his RSS feed as well. Readers complained about being solicited about the gold guide (they didn’t want to resort to not visiting the site) but Markco didn’t listen because his latest stunt is almost unbelievable. He was soliciting WoW bloggers to recommend his gold guide to his readers:

Here’s how you could sell the guide and not put up a single ad: Create a post about gold guides and how you hate them. Give examples of guides and then at the very end start talking about my gold guide and use my blog as credibility for the guide. Perhaps you can mention that this guide is the only one you will even consider tolerating. Leave a link to the 20kleveling.com site with your clickbank hoplink encrypted inside of it. I can guarantee that if you did this you would make $500-$1000 the first day it was posted. You’d maintain your ‘street credibility’ and at the same time make some great money. What’s more that post will continue making you money for as long as it exists because it will always have traffic hitting it and users clicking on the link. Just think about it, if you need help setting up the clickbank id and the link let me know.Markco’s email to Gevlon from Greedy Goblin

That’s the words of someone desperate to make money. Marcko claims he makes good money but his actions (and persistence of shoving his gold guide down people’s throats even when they say they are not interested) does not match his words. You can read some of his responses in the comments here (ironically it is the one year anniversary of his blog).

Because he approached the wrong person…a person who, if one took two seconds to think about it, would obviously say no. Gevlon.

Gevlon, the Greedy Goblin

Gevlon has a gold making blog as well. He posts all of his tips for free (disclaimer: he hasn’t been posting any recently but there is a wealth of information there on how to make gold). He has a unique personality and some strong opinions. He also regularly calls out morons on his blog (his word, not mine). Every Friday, he highlights people making unwise hustling type decisions. So you can see, it was really stupid (for lack of another word) for Markco to approach Gevlon. The risk was way too high that Gevlon would publish his email just like he does everyone else, ruining Markco’s credibility (which implies strong motives on why Markco would do this *cough – needs money* to take a stupid risk of approaching Gevlon twice). Why would Markco be an exception to being a “moron” if he was acting just like everyone else? Gevlon is taking some heat from some about posting Markco’s emails. Funny how two-faced people are. It was fine for Gevlon to post “moron” emails from in the game but let Gevlon post a real-life example and it is called a “bitch move”. That’s bullshit.

And then there were none…

You notice that there is always one that will spoil it for the bunch? An example, addon developers were able to make some money until someone decided to get greedy and push the envelope, causing Blizzard to take action. This is the exact same scenario. While addon developers were restricted from making an income, gold selling guide makers were doing okay.

Until now…maybe.

The problem is that Markco used shady tactics to sell his guide, which happens to be about playing World of Warcraft. Again, this proves an act of desperation because Blizzard has proved, many times, they will protect their IP. When bloggers are harassed about linking to a guide, Blizzard will step in a make a standard. All because someone got greedy.

And since a couple people told me they were so turned off by Markco’s actions they reported it to Blizzard, wouldn’t be surprised if all gold guides had to be free. If you read the highlighted lines in the image above, you’ll notice Blizzard makes their intent very clear: the game is to be used for non-commercial purposes. Do sites make money from WoW content? Sure they do, but that right can be taken away at any time in a two-fold way: a cease/desist and a more long-term solution by making gold easy to come by rendering gold guides obsolete.

Of course, it doesn’t end there…

For fun, I decided to ask Sassafrass, someone who reviewed the gold guide, how he got the guide:

Sassafrass has approved comments but has not answered my question. If you read the comments (and this is happening where people notice a review/ad for the gold guide), people are disgusted the blogger has the review or ad on the site. The trust is broken for many people and the only way to win it back is for Markco to permanently chill out of marketing the guide. If it sells it sells, if it doesn’t it doesn’t. The need to push it this much implies it is not selling well. Accept it and move on.

Update: It was Sassafrass not Triv that had not responded but there is a response now:

thanks for some support. the comments on the review are getting out of hand. I refuse to partake in any more drama. I conclude most wow players live in a One Tree Hill Ville. Geez.

No response to my question. Gold guide ad still up. Busted…IMO.

Update 2: There is an update below. Also, I received a couple of emails that they reported this issue to Google as well. As we all know, Google has a very clear policy about paid links within content…they don’t stand for it.

My point….

When people do things for the money, eventually their true intentions will show. In this case, one could argue Markco made the site to draw traffic so he could sell the guide. Let’s see if Markco learns his lesson and chills out (permanently) with pushing his guide. If he doesn’t, his actions will speak loud and clear.

Don’t be stupid.

Update 3: I seem to have attracted a troll. Luckily for me (which I kind of had to prove with my last edit), the person impersonated his/herself as someone else. My readers, being very smart people, know what that means .

As far as comments being closed – I easily receive between 200-500 comments on my entries, which makes it very hard to follow (for readers).

Written by: Tyme White | Follow Tyme on Twitter | Be Friends on Facebook