Hey guys, curious about something. WHT removed my post saying I was mining their member base...Do you consider this mining the member base?

I've used this ad before I believe with no problems and I've used it here with no problems, so not sure why there is a problem. The link will take you to my ad here on HD.

Ad on HD


Is WHT right about the ad?

I don't think anything is wrong with your ad.

It will depend on the rules of their community I guess. When you're directly soliciting users from one forum to go to another I guess they consider it mining.

Rather than saying "come join the forum", maybe they only want you to state the facts of the community and let the user make their mind up?

I don't see anything wrong with it myself, but then I'm not the one enforcing rules

WHT is another entity with their own rules, its not up to us to make those decision. However, I know that WHT does not allow ads that require users to register to participate, or those that might get their member come over to new sites. They generally do not like competition, and I can understand them. Building a successful community takes years of dedicated effort, they wouldn't want to serve as a platform for members to openly invite others to their sites instead.

Having said that, I think its the phrasing that gets you in trouble. You are advertising your blog like it is a community-driven website. It is not, but even if you did run a forum, HostingDiscussion.com allows such advertisement, but limits it to one advertisement overall:

http://www.hostingdiscussion.com/pro...c-28-2007.html

I can see WHT's side of this. It's their forum so when in Rome (Romes) do as Caesar commands. LOL

You probably won't find a large forum that would allow you to post a thread regarding another user community, because they all see it as trying to steal their members.

It's one thing to advertise a service, and another to advertise a website. If you want to advertise a website within a community, there's always the hard way to do it: add quality posts that bare a signature. That way the forum gets activity and content, you stand a chance to get some visitors.

Rules like the one at WHT came about as website owners started to abuse their ability to advertise, basically resulting in them getting traffic to their sites and competing on a certain level with the forum, without giving anything in return.

I'm not gonna fight them on this, as WHT always wins...I just wanted to know if my ad is bad lol

Either way, I really hate WHT lol I gotta re word the ad now.

Any thoughts on phrases I should remove from my ad to make it more WHT friendly?

If you hate WHT why are you posting there?
It's statements like that, that in my opinion justifies WHT 100% in what they are doing.

I hate WHT because their users bash others, always getting spammed in my inbox, and their mods and admins are very rude! I only post there when there is an article that interests me, and to post my ad.

Also, no matter how much I hate WHT, I would never go against their rules or start trouble on the forum...

You need to spin this as offering a service of some kind. But really once the mods visit your link they will see it is a forum you are advertising, and you may still suffer.

Do you have a front end to the site? An article database perhaps? Can you somehow advertise that aspect of your site, and down play or ignore the forum and hope that people will stumble across it?

What you mean front end to the site? I could spin it as a news site? Basically what it is lol