Don't listen to them!

I was perusing reviews of web hosts today trying to find a possible future home for Nidgin Idberry. Two of the first names I stumbled across, in addition to my old 1&1, were FastCow and JustHost (and I'm not linking either because they suck). I searched around for some reviews of them, and came across this website: www.hostingsthatsuck.com

HostingsThatSuck had a review of FatCow that said "Hold up. We researched this, and there are more positive reviews than negative. We recommend them!" Okay, cool.

Then I was checking out other hosts on the same website and I came to a startling realization.

The text was identical.

Compare:

You have seen the number analysis above. Numbers don’t lie. You should look no further. EasyASPHosting comes with 30-day money back guarantee so there is little risk to you to try host your blog, build company website or sell your products with them. Follow the EasyASPHosting discount link below and get their special limited time 15% discount via the coupon code (the coupon code may have expired so hurry).

You have seen the number analysis above. Numbers don’t lie. You should look no further. HostExpress comes with 30-day money back guarantee so there is little risk to you to try host your blog, build company website or sell your products with them. Follow the HostExpress discount link below and get their special limited time 15% discount via the coupon code (the coupon code may have expired so hurry).

You have seen the numbers. You should look no further. Follow the Dot5 discount link below and get Unlimited Everything (diskspace, bandwidth, email accounts) at only $4.95 $3.95 per month. Hesitate no more. They come with 30-day money back guarantee so you have no risk to try them. Dot5 Hosting can get you started today.

I found the Dot5 review, by the way, by researching the worst internet companies out there and plugging them in to HostingThatSucks to see if they got a good review. They did. There are a couple of variations, depending on whether the host is big enough to have negative experiences floating around on the easy-to-find portions of the net. So it's either "You've heard this bad stuff, but here's OUR verdict" or "we couldn't find any bad stuff about them, so here's OUR verdict."

Why?

Many bloggers make money by writing paid reviews on their blogs. Some seed them in, nonsensically, as nonsequiters to their normal writings. Some slip them in between legitimate reviews. And some blogs (okay, many blogs), like HostingThatSucks, set up an entire fraudulent website devoting to writing rave reviews for terrible services, making their bucks at the expense of those poor suckers who are trying to research products.

Oh, that site I linked to there? Paid Opportunities. It's a blog about making money online, much like one I tried to start and abandoned within a week. The irony is Paid Opportunties is basically devoted to taking money from companies to sell you on using their services to make money online. So it's half sincere, since the author is making money on it, but there is no reasonable expectation that you will too. It's essentially a pyramid scheme.

In the quest to make money online--or just to make money--we are finding that it is not the decentralized responsibility and groupthink of the corporation that is responsible for unethical practices in the market. It is the simple fact that greed--individual greed of individual people--trumps integrity.

nickkauffman.blogspot.com does NOT recommend HostingThatSucks OR Paid Opportunities.

Nico