How To Make Money | The Definitive Don’ts

Slashing Your Competitor’s Tires

There’s always that person. You know who I’m talking about. The one that’s always before you on the SERP pages and banking more revenue then you could ever dream of. The one you’re basically envious of. While there’s nothing wrong with a little competition, you should keep yourself from going overboard in your competitive efforts.

Oops! I Accidentally Clicked Your Ad, Again!

How do you get someone’s attention? By playing with their finances. Unfortunately, this is quite easy to do in an online environment. Let’s say that you know your competitor has Adsense ads on his/her site. What would keep you from going over there and click bombing the site? Hopefully your honest character, but otherwise nothing. The people over at Google would notice your competitor’s site receiving a large number of clicks from the same IP, and would most likely ban the publisher.

This is the part where you think you’ve won: you haven’t. All you’ve done is show yourself what a cheater you are. But don’t worry, you might be next.

What’s One More Backlink?

Some people clickbomb their competitors to no avail and thus move on to other sabotaging activities. These activities might consist of linking their competitor’s sites to so-called “bad neighborhoods.” Some “bad neighborhoods” include link farms, spam sites, etc. etc. This type of sabotage can work when done properly but is again of utmost dishonesty.

The Game Won’t Go On For Long

The truth of the matter is that you won’t be able to shove all your competitors aside for long. Search engines are becoming smarter to the point where they can tell whether someone is attempting to jeopardize a site’s ranking. Further, site owners are becoming smarter about preventing clickbombing. Many of the sites that earn a substantial amount of revenue from PPC ads now monitor where their clicks are coming from. Some sites even block you from clicking an ad multiple times.

The bottom-line is that if you want to make money online, you need play fair. Trying to put your competitors out of business is stupid and counterproductive. Invest your time and efforts into your sites, and competition will be the last thing you have to worry about.

Image: Berberich

competition traffic sabotage dishonesty clickbombing