When it comes to SEO, there is a dark side to Wikipedia. Many of the supposed "do-good" editors on wiki sites are removing your links not because they honestly care if you're a reliable source or not, but because they are employed by SEO companies who are trying to protect their link juice (this is also why you may have trouble removing links from a wikia which obviously are spam. Some of the admins are the spammers!). They also do things like "wiki jacking" which ultimately benefit them while crushing competitors.
You might think it's despicable, but here's the thing: because this stuff goes on it becomes necessary for you to also engage in it. It's hard to compete with these sites who are receiving so much authority from wikis if you're not also being viewed as an authority site by wikis (so if you're gonna blame someone, blame the search engine companies for giving so much authority ranking to wikis, who are way too easy to manipulate).
The key to beating the rival editors;
wiki history pages!
It's pointless to engage in edit wars with them, because they control these websites and even if you manage to convince one person to not delete your link there will be others who will. So trying to protect your links on wiki sites is a gigantic waste of time.
Method #1 Link to older page versions
However, I have figured out a way to beat these guys. You see, Wiki sites allow anyone to view the prior versions of these pages and then directly link to them. All you need to do is go to the history page for that article and then find one of the edits before your site was removed from the page. Next socially bookmark that version of the page and even embed the link it into your articles and blog comments!
The even cooler thing about this technique is that your deleted link is now at the very top of the page in the part that shows what content was changed. This works well with services like Stumbleupon or Reddit, especially if there was any controversial statements made by the editors. Edit wars can spark the interest of Stumbleupon users, which can convince people to copy and paste your link into their browser just to see what the fuss was all about.
Unfortunately the older versions don't have quite as much authority as the normal pages do, but the domain names still carry a great deal of authority weight to them. As long as you help search engines find the pages by submitting the link all over, you can get authority ranking back to your site from these older page versions.
Lastly you can always add a bunch of links to your content on your profile page, and then submit that profile page all over the internet. And every time you post a signature on Wikipedia's talk pages, you'll be internally linking back to your profile page, too!
Haters gonna hate, but they can't stop this!
Method #2 Make a community blog post
The most latest Wikia version software allows any registered user to make a community blog. Moderators and rival SEO competitors pay very little attention to these blogs because they are so focused on controlling the articles. This means you can post your links on your blogs with a much lowered chance of having the links deleted.
Community blogs are a boon for back-links!
You may not be able to win the edit battles to ensure your links remain on the most recent version of heavily trafficked articles (which the majority of users will see), but you can win the war to get authority ranking going back to your website from wiki domains related to your keywords!
Don't let rival editors stop you, just outsmart them!
As Youtube gets bigger, Google has been working out deals with major companies to make more money. Some of these deals involve how Google interprets "Fair Use" on Youtube.
The most important thing people need to understand about Youtube is that it is a privately held corporation and they are free to decide what content they will and won't monetize!
By contrast, "fair use" is a legal doctrine intended as a defense against a lawsuit. If no one is suing you, "fair use" is simply not applicable!
And despite what you may have heard, inserting something like, "This video is a review and is protected by the fair-use policy and was made for educational purposes" provides you absolutely zero protection from your video being disabled!
The reason is thus: because it is not cost effective to sue millions of people who upload copyrighted material, major corporations are working out agreements with Youtube to ensure they don't have to file lawsuits to have copyright infringement removed from Youtube. This means it becomes very important to comply with Youtube's policies concerning the use of material you don't own in your videos, which is described at http://www.youtube.com/t/copyright_permissions
If you are interested in making a cover song or song parody it would behoove you to obtain a license for the song to show Youtube when a Content ID claim is undoubtedly placed on your video, or your monetization request is declined by a member of Youtube's copyright team.
Obtaining a license is not always as expensive as you may think, because the entertainment industry is very complex. Although one corporation may own the rights to a song, many companies have licensing agreements to large libraries of songs and they are able to sell "sub-licenses" to others.
This company tends to charge $15 to issue a license for making a cover song (which includes parody). You will also need to pay royalties of your song earnings, but this is better than the $0 you would be making without a license.
This is why I hate the internet and social media sites like reddit, n4g and Wikipedia. They are such a pain in the ass to submit to, even when you're following the guidelines. And it has nothing to do with whether the site is user friendly or not; it's because these companies give way too much power to a select few users called moderators.
Because the event is anime related (it took place at an anime convention and more than a few of the people in the video are dressed in cosplay) and was Legend of Zelda themed, I submitted it to Animeshinbun rather than n4g (which is owned by the same company as AnimeShinBun.com, HavaMEDIA), because, in my experience, n4g's crowd tends to be extremely anti-anime and even more anti-cosplay.
My belief is the article would do better on Anime Shin Bun than n4g, and anyone who knows anything about these websites would agree with that assessment.
However, as sometimes occurs with these sites, some mod named lavalamp 1138 flagged it for "not being anime related" and told me to go post it on n4g.
I protested the flagging and so did several other users using the "Disagree" option, but lavalamp1138 manually set the submission to "Fail" when it looked like his report was going to be automatically over-ruled by all the Disagreements against his report by the user base.
Not one to give up easily, I decided to resubmit the submission but lavalamp1138 instantly appeared to reject the submission again.
Because I am so freakin tired of this crap constantly occurring, I decided to fight back.
I messaged lavalamp1138 with a declaration that I was reporting him, as well as PMing every other mod I could find on the site about what he did. Then I sent a ticket in the admins of the website as well.
My brief conversation with mod lavalamp1138
I would show you a screenshot of the original submission and report filed by lavalamp1138 but in response to my threat, he used his mod powers to transform my failed submission back into Pending status in order to delete his original action against the submission (turning it to Pending deleted his original report and that he manually made it Failed), after I told him flat out I was filing reports against him.
The altered post. Notice his report has been deleted, but the last change before was Failed. Rather than let the community decide, he manually blocked the submission until I raised hell.
I view this change of status to my article as only as an attempt to hide the evidence of what he was doing and most likely has been doing to many other user submissions. My belief is that he would manually set an article to Failed that belongs on the site so that his own submissions have less competition from high quality articles like mine which could be very popular with the users.
And that is why I've made this article; if he is doing it to others, it needs to be brought to light so his mod powers are revoked. Who knows how many other people he has been screwing over? Hell, who knows how many other mods are doing the same thing he is doing?
It would NOT be the first time volunteer mods at social book mark sites have abused their positions to get better exposure for their own promoted work. Such has been reported on by other news sources, and here are a few examples,
Realize I don't have any proof that Lavalamp1138 is a marketer, but it's the only answer that makes any degree of sense to me. His actions are completely out of character for what a mod at Anime Shin Bun should be doing with his powers if his goals are in line with those of the site he works for.
But it shouldn't even matter because the article I submitted took place at an anime convention and Anime Shin Bun is for anything about Japanese anime AND videogames. And Zelda is one of the most well known Japanese videogame franchises, right up there with Mario and Sonic.
Final Fantasy is so anime, right??
And for the record, I did try submitting the article to n4g, where it received no votes and one troll comment,
10 degree rating on n4g. As expected, n4g's crowd hated it cause it was cosplay.
By contrast, in the same amount of time the story has a 90 degree rating on Anime Shin Bun,
Now you might think this is nothing to get worked up over, but you'd be wrong. For an upstart website like Weekly Texas Jump which has no money for advertising, social bookmarking sites like Anime Shin Bun are vital for news to reach their intended audiences. Within a few hours of something hitting the front page of Anime Shin Bun, it can receive thousands of views.
And it's not like I submitted a beta key giveaway or something; this is a quality article and video which can demonstrate why Weekly Texas Jump is a good source of information related to anime and anime conventions in the Texas area.
"Submitting your stories to a newsboiler site can be a great way to promote your site and to gain new readers."
I'm really quite fed up with the lack-luster attitude many social bookmarking sites have when it comes to how much authority they give a select number of users who are chosen not for real-life credentials but because they are active on the website.
It's basically like saying, "Hey you there Mr. Marketer. Would you like to be able to block other people's submissions from our website so you can get to the top easier?"
The people who submit the most content to social book-marketing sites are marketers. Don't think it's not true, because it is. Every action anyone takes has a motive and the simplest motive for submitting hundreds of entries to a site like Anime Shin Bun is because you're trying to market something for someone.
And I believe too many of these social bookmarking websites allow people to become mods because they prefer volunteers to do most of the community management tasks (so they don't have to pay them salaries) without ever questioning why a regular user would want to become a mod.
For many mods, their "volunteering" allows them the opportunity to deny others the ability to promote on a website while ensuring they and their company are able to. This abuse of their positions has been reported on by many other websites.
So here is what I propose. If you've stumbled upon this article because you've also had trouble with moderators on sites owned by HavaMEDIA, here's the contact form on their website. Send some complaints about their moderators, along with a link to this article.
Maybe if enough people complain they will make some changes to get rid of the volunteer mods and hire real employees who've had background checks and can ensure they won't use their mod tools to block rival news companies from posting to the service.
UPDATE: As of September 1st, 2012 the article is now public, but not before it entered Failed status one more time. Because the article ended up at the very bottom of the Pending feed nobody saw it. Fortunately one of the mods manually approved it, archaic, who is apparently the site community manager.
And also the admin for Bulbapedia....
Though it finally went live, it is rather absurd it took over a week for this submission to to go live, all because of what lavalamp did. The silliness of the situation was even commented on by another user,
I'm not privy to what occurred between the mods but I hope lavalamp1138 was told to never do something like this again. But that's probably too hopeful.
Today I'm sharing with you an infographic that has been floating around the web, created by http://www.comescaricaremusicadayoutube.it. It uses data from the Youtube Creator Handbook which Google released several months ago and is supposed to summarize the necessary steps to become a successful Youtube Partner.
Personally speaking, I take issue with some of the facts in that book (for example, joining a network will boost your subscriber count by 90%? Not necessarily. Many networks just scheme to monetize as many channels as they possibly can and do absolutely no promotion for the overwhelming majority of channels they take in) but I thought the infographic at least summarizes the basic idea of what you're supposed to do with a Youtube channel. So I'm embedding it here for your viewing pleasure.
Before you read on I want to say the most important thing to understand is none of this stuff is special.
These are the basic things everyone should be doing, and because everyone is doing them they aren't necessarily going to bring you a ton of traffic. But they are required in order to for everything else you do to make any difference.
Nobody can find your videos if they don't have key-word rich titles, descriptions and tags; Youtube is a social network so communicating with your subscribers is vital; making videos that provide value to people's lives, rather than re-uploading someone else's music video, etc etc
Personally speaking, I have a channel I created to upload public domain videos called the Classic Movies Network. I've uploaded videos with expired copyrights or those commissioned by the federal government (videos that exist in the public domain and who no one can claim copyright ownership of) and received copyright strikes from companies who have claimed ownership of these videos using Content ID. I end up keeping the videos private while I appeal the decisions, which can take weeks or a full month.
To date I have always been able to appeal the decision and get the strikes overturned (they would need to file a lawsuit over it which they know they cannot win) , but Youtube then prevents me from monetizing the videos unless I show proof of copyright ownership. This is terribly unfair because no one can provide proof of ownership for these videos, yet they allow companies to claim them using Content ID.
Worst of all, Content ID is not given freely to all Partners; only a select few companies are allowed to have it. I have been rejected many times even though I have millions of views to my videos and several Partner channels. So Content ID is basically monopolized by the few who have it, and they use it to claim content they do not exclusively own in order to run ads on public domain videos that other users have uploaded.
I'll admit, the strategy is smart from a business point of view. They probably make hundreds of thousands of dollars a month by using Content ID like this. However it is not morally correct and Google should do something about it rather than waive their hands in the air as they collect ad revenue.
The funny thing is that the only way he knows it is my content is because my username on reddit is 'therpgfanatic'. I could call myself anything else and we wouldn't be having an issue, but because I chose to be honest about who I am on reditt I am being punished.
Or what about all those ad agencies who constantly plug content on reddit and have their employees post back and forth positive things about the link?
This kind of nonsense is one of the biggest reasons why I designed my video game community website as a place where users are rewarded for posting content rather than punished. Nobody will ever get this kind of message from me for doing my site a favor by posting high-quality content for our users to enjoy.
The solution to this problem is pretty simple; I'm going to make a new reddit account that doesn't make it so obvious who I am. Additionally I will show these PMs I've received to my friends who post on reddit and use it to encourage them to post content on my behalf.
Youtube's Cosmic Panda update made major changes to the way Youtube Search ranked the search results.
One of these changes seems to be to favor videos from mega Partner networks like VEVO.
I first noticed it when I was looking for "WoW" videos to see the most popular ones (searching by "view counts"), and saw tons of music videos that had nothing to do with World of Warcraft.
This implies that Google is manipulating the front page results for specific keywords to favor certain Partners like VEVO. That really is the only explanation for what is happening, because you shouldn't obtain dramatically different results for "kitten" compared to "kittens".
And this is yet another reason why many Youtube Partners have lost massive amounts of traffic they used to have.
This also isn't a brand new thing. I pointed this out to Youtube Partner Support months ago when I first noticed it. They haven't fixed it, which means to me this is intentional.
I've personally had a really crappy time of things, too. By looking at my Analytics data, I can see about 100-200 of my 1,826 subscribers to The RPG Fanatic Show are actually seeing my most recent videos in their feeds, and I've had subscribers tell me they didn't realize I had any new videos.
I'm sure specific Partners are being benefited by this, but it's not equal. The majority of us are losing our business and the fault belongs to Google for implementing algorithms that were not ready to go live, and now refusing to roll back the changes until the bugs are worked out.
Youtube Partner Support has the worst customer service of any business I've ever encountered.
I distinctly recall when Sesame Street and fred both had their accounts hacked, their videos deleted and porn uploaded to their accounts. You don't have to take my word for it, ABC actually reported on it when it occurred.
And I also remember that Youtube repaired their accounts in a few hours. So that leads people to believe Youtube cares about quickly responding to these issues, right?
Wrong.
That same kind of quick service isn't done for smaller Partners, who Youtube Partner Support have always treated like unwanted baggage even though we make up the majority of Youtube Partner channels and collectively earn Youtube millions of dollars.
In the thread she talks about how she has lost a massive amount of subscribers since the hacking. This kind of thing is destroying a brand she has been working hard to build up. But the Youtube Partner Support Team is doing nothing about it.
Her Partnership has obviously been revoked as well.
It is clear that Youtube Support Team can respond to issues like this quickly, because they have done so for large Partners like Sesame Street. Instead they do not lift a finger to help her and reply to her with form letters telling her that her community strikes were valid. For two weeks she is unable to login to her account to even try to repair the damage, due to how the strike system works on Youtube.
And again, it's not like anyone hasn't read her emails. She has been receiving form letters telling her that her strikes wont be removed.
But I'll bet fred and Sesame Street had their strikes removed for the porn the hackers uploaded to their channels.
It's quite shameful how little Youtube cares for small business. The only time they give us quick service is if we're going to purchase AdWords ads. Youtube Partner Support has no phone service, and honestly no email service either because nearly every email we send is replied to with a generic form letter.
I wish ABC would report on how they ignore the emails of small businesses and don't spend 5 minutes to restore our channels when things like this occur. Maybe then Google would be embarrassed enough to make the Youtube Partner Support Team do their jobs correctly.
And while they're at it, maybe restore Partnerships to those who lost them due to click bombings they weren't even aware of.
It still surprises me that many Partners are unaware of this but there are several ways to "cheat" at Youtube. This is because Youtube's algorithms are very easy to manipulate. All one really need do is obtain some software to make a bunch of proxies and then setup bots to constantly watch videos and reload them.
Don't believe me? Okay, I suppose the burden falls on me to prove this subculture exists.
However bear in mind that I do not advocate the use of these methods at all. It is easy to see that Youtube obviously doesn't catch all instances where people use these tricks but there is still a high chance you may have your Partnership revoked for using these services. This is because they violate the Youtube terms of service agreement, which Google takes very seriously because they wish to protect advertisers.
I am only talking about these methods because I want to drill it into people's heads that Youtube is a game and it is possible to win, even cheat at it. This is important for people to accept so they can truly understand how Youtube works.
Exhibit A: Viewtube Train
This website allows people to earn "points" by watching other user's submitted videos, and these points can be spent to get other people to watch your own videos. It's a simple concept. Fortunately the site seems to have a small population and at best, the "top" videos can only manage to acquire about 20k views. However, that can be enough to get a video into the "trending" feeds where it may truly go viral.
Now here is another thing to consider: this site requires you to install a Firefox toolbar. That sounds like a really bad idea. There is no real reason why they need to have you install a toolbar of any sort to do a site like this. I would be very cautious of that toolbar having a keylogger. There is a lot of hackings going around on Youtube and it wouldn't surprise me that websites like this are involved.
Exhibit B: Blackhat World forums
There is no shortage of public forums primarily populated by script kiddies who promise all kinds of services, including the sale of large quantities of Youtube views. And they can easily deliver because it's not terribly hard; all one need do is understand how to make proxies and have a bot that watches videos in multiple browsers.
Of course these methods can be detected if performed in a haphazard manner, which is why it is a terrible idea to buy views. Do you really want to entrust the fate of your AdSense account to some random person who feels no qualms ripping off Google and its advertisers?
Exhibit C: Viewet
Viewet is a tad more sophisticated of a website than other places. The site also specializes in more than just Youtube views; you can also buy Facebook Fan Page likes and Twitter followers.
The problem with these services is that they merely create the illusion of success; you will get exactly what you pay for. If you buy 1,000 Facebook likes, that is what you get and not a single more.
However..... once you have obtained enough "social proof" (the number of comments, 'likes' and views) this social proof can be used to trick real people into believing that you are someone they should pay attention to. For example, my ex girlfriend would look at the comments of a video before she actually watched the video and she did this to figure out if the video was worth watching; she relied on random strangers to tell her what to think about a video.
This is the deception of the internet; many people have a tendency to assume that every 'like' and comment is from a real person and not some bot created to encourage real people to believe the image the marketer is trying to present.
Exhibit D: Tube Automater
Tube Automater is $30 software that does the whole proxie and multiple browser thing mentioned earlier. A lot of people seem to use this software as part of a marketing scam involving referral offers, where they are simply trying to lure people to click on the referral link.
The software is fairly sophisticated in that it also adds lots of comments to the video from an army of sock puppet accounts. I'm sure this has been successful at deceiving many viewers into believing a video is truly popular.
Keep in mind, if these reviews are to be believed, the use of this software has led to several individuals being banned from Youtube. The product does have some positive reviews BUT it is certainly possible that if someone can make a bot to post comments on Youtube videos, then they are fully capable of making a bot to post phony user reviews claiming the software works.
Don't automatically assume everything you read on a review site is the truth. If it sounds too good to be true then it probably isn't true.
Conclusion:
There are more sites out there which provide these services, but there is no real point in discussing them. If you turn to any of these methods you are risking having your AdSense terminated. AdSense is required to be a Youtube Partner and if you lose your AdSense you cannot make another account without using someone else's SSN.
It is a very poor idea to turn to these methods but I wanted to shine a spotlight on their existence so that Partners better understand that Youtube success is more complicated than simply choosing the right keywords and releasing videos on a consistent schedule; much of your success on Youtube depends upon getting lots of views from the charts, and there are people who are dominating spots on the charts by using these services.
It is very difficult to legitimately compete with the botters, and you are never going to do so by simply posting content onto Youtube and doing absolutely no other marketing of your work. It takes longer and more effort than creating artificial traffic with bots, but the long term benefits of networking with other Partners is a much better choice; and better yet it won't get you banned from AdSense.
That's about 118,000 views to all my videos on the channel.
This is how much I've got the past month on that gaming channel,
That's about 34,000 views.
So when I tell you that this is not good enough, I mean it because I'm living it. I'm not saying it to be mean or cruel or elitist. I'm saying it because it is 100% true.
I'm not allowed to say how much I am making but I can say this: I can't buy a brand new Playstation 3 with the amount I make every month, let alone enough to make this a full time job.
I need to say this because there are some Partners who believe seeing thousands and thousands of views means they are doing well. I hate to burst your bubble, but you are not.
You need to make millions of views every month in order to be successful at Youtube.
Every video on your channel should have, at the bare minimum, 100k views. And even that is scrapping at the bottom of the barrel instead of reaching for the stars, because millions and millions of views per month is not only possible but required in order to be able to do Youtube as a full time job or even build a company where you employ other people.
Now what I do believe is this: with the amount of traffic I am receiving I should be able to build upon this and turn it into millions of views. I just don't understand how to do that yet, because I suck at marketing.
But I do not believe for a second that I am successful at Youtube. I'm not. I will not be successful until I am getting millions of views per month, and I will not be "satisfied" until I have billions. This is because my goal is to build a company, not to sit around and play videogames all day.
PS: You might think my subscriber counts are good, since I gained 532 in the past few months. It's not. If I was doing well I would be receiving hundreds of subscribers every day.
I have said before that AdWords is terrible for Youtube Partners unless they have a big pile of money to blow. I could write a lengthy and detailed post about why, but I'm pretty sure the only thing you need to see is the following screenshot:
"21% effective", my ass. Try 0% effective since that is how many clicks I received; zero.
I received no clicks at all. How the hell can this campaign be interpreted as ANYTHING but completely and utterly INEFFECTIVE?!
But don't just take my word for it. Unlike practically every other Google product, AdWords actually has a customer service number so you can call and talk to a live person about how to use the service. If you tell them you don't have a lot of money to spend they will try to encourage you to spend hundreds of dollars a day at the bare minimum, because you need millions of impressions using AdWords to get any clicks and the competition is now so fierce that you may need to pay a whole dollar (or more) for just one impression.
By encouraging us to pay for clicks from AdWords campaigns you aren't helping us, "Play Big" anymore than iUniverse, PublishAmerica and Author House help people publish and sell their books.
Google, whatever happened to, "Don't Be Evil" ?
I supposed if I had a couple thousand dollars I could experiment with different keywords and bid amounts -- but I don't have the money to play a keyword fishing game on AdWords, casting my ad into different sections of the internet until something bites.
Don't get me wrong, Google has made a lot of products that are extremely useful to me and everyone else reading this blog. After all, they do run Youtube, AdSense, Analytics, Google Sites and Blogger; all of which are important products relative to what we do here.
The problem I have is that when Google advertises AdWords as a good way for Youtube Partners to market videos, they are being dishonest. AdWords is not a valid solution, and the constant advertising of AdWords to Youtube Partners (with Creator blog posts, and even popups on our Youtube account pages) comes across like a car salesman trying to convince a single mom that a brand new Mercedes-Benze is the best vehicle for her to haul her kids to school in. In both situations there are significantly cheaper solutions that provide better results.
The point of this post is to warn Partners who don't have a lot of money to stay the hell away from AdWords, because it will do nothing but waste your money.
The unfortunate drawback of being a Youtube Partner is that you inherit all of the risks that a conventional television celebrity would inherit without any of the financial advantages those celebrities have.
What "risk" am I talking about?
The chance that you might gain the attention of crazy people whose lives have so little meaning they need to obsess over trivial nonsense, to the point they wholeheartedly believe elaborate fantasies they have invented about themselves and decided to involve you in; otherwise known as 'stalkers'.
I was once click bombed and had my reputation digitally assassinated by a group of stalkers. This was a very traumatic experience for me because they were trying to not just drag my name through the mud but also take away my business' ability to earn revenue on Youtube.
Here is a video I created while I was going through the experience,
I'm telling you this upfront so you know two things; firstly, that I was click bombed and managed to keep my Adsense, and secondly that I understand every emotional thing someone who is being click bombed is going through.
This guide should help you retain your AdSense if you are being click bombed and if you haven't yet, it can still help you by explaining what click bombing is, why people do it and how you can detect it before it is too late.
Understanding the Motivations of Click-Bombers
There are some uneducated folks who will insist Youtube Partners who get click-bombed have done something to "deserve" the harassment. These arguments are incredibly misinformed about the psychology of the mentally unbalanced.
I mean, can you tell me what Jodie Foster did to convince John Hinckley, Jr to shoot President Reagan?
I'll tell you what she did; ABSOLUTELY <CENSORED> NOTHING!
However if you ask John Hinckley, Jr what she did he will weave you a fantastical tale of romance, adventure, and all kinds of other nonsense - all of which only ever existed inside his imagination!
Stalkers are a problem for everyone, but your probability of getting a stalker dramatically increases as awareness of 'you' increases. This is why celebrities get lots of stalkers, and Youtube Partners are no exception. If other people value what you say and you build a following -- even a modest one -- you can be certain that someone is going to demand your full attention simply because they believe if someone like you gives them attention they must be pretty important. Basically they want to leech off your popularity to make themselves feel special.
If you really get to the heart of it, stalkers are not at all interested in what the person they are stalking is doing. It is quite irrelevant to them. The stalker is focused entirely on themselves and what they can get out of the stalking, and that my friends is attention; and the worst is that the attention doesn't necessarily need to come from you.
The attention can come from other people, like angry members of your fanbase, law enforcement officials or even other stalkers with a like-mind.
I should stress the latter, because it is very relevant to what we will talk about here. Before everyone became super connected through the internet, stalkers were isolated from other stalkers. They were loners and the kinds of crazy stupid things they could do were fairly limited.
However, now because of places like Youtube, Facebook, Skype and 4chan, they can form tight-knit stalker communities without needing to leave their bedrooms. They form strong friendships with other stalkers and assist one another in their stalking activities, sharing information and tactics to obtain attention.
This is a significant problem and it's not being well addressed by places like Youtube and Facebook because there is so little information about these subcultures and how they function, even though the truth is they function much like any other kind of internet subculture; only instead of sharing images of funny cats they share people's home addresses and software for clickbombing Youtube Partners.
Harassing you simply becomes an activity shared by the group, fed by the elaborate fantasies they invent about what you have done to deserve their wrath in order to justify their actions. This new breed of internet troll does not necessarily harass people to gain attention from the target, but rather to be praised by the group for how much of a good troll they are.
Of course, feeding the trolls by giving them the attention they crave makes things worse.
So I know about this stuff because I was stalked last year. I had information about myself and my family posted all over the net, including phone numbers. Dozens of videos and blog articles from anonymous trolls were made accusing me of everything from being a child molester to a dishonorably discharged soldier, and none of it was true. They dislike bombed my videos and internet movie database listings. And it required a strong effort to get Youtube and other services they used to remove this material; even to this day some of it still exists.
You might think that when third parties come across their videos, forum posts and comments on my videos, it will be obvious the stalkers are trolling.... but that isn't always the case. Sometimes the trolling appears to be something else entirely and successfully deceives people. Rumors tend to be perpetrated by people who seek to obtain a measure of admiration from the person or group they are leaking information to., and some of these folk are not against fabricating information. Several individuals came out of the woodwork claiming to have some special insight or relationship with me in order to gain praise from the group for having shared the "information"; some of this shared "information" was a mixture of true information (stuff you could find in Google searches) and lies.
For example, my Youtube page listed my location as San Antonio, TX and I had mentioned in videos that I was a disabled Veteran. An individual suddenly appeared who made a series of videos claiming that he knew me from my active duty days and he met me when I was stationed at Fort Sam Houston, which is located in San Antonio, TX.
The truth is that I have never in my entire life been inside Fort Sam Houston; I had only recently moved to San Antonio, TX. Everything this individual said about me was a complete lie, based on what little information he had gathered about me from my Youtube page. But it was enough to convince several people in the stalker community that what he said was true, and they spread his lies in their own videos and blog posts about me. And he gained a lot of praise from his fellow stalkers for his actions.
I spent months trying to do damage control and ensure I also posted wherever they were spreading lies, explaining the truth so that others who stumble across the posts in Google search results for my name don't get the wrong idea. However, it was like chopping heads off a hydra; responding to one forum post simply resulted in several more popping up and soon there was a feeding frenzy as several troll communities banded together to milk whatever attention they might get out of cyber stalking me. Pretty much every blog I own was attacked, including my Facebook fan page which forced me to disable any of my fans from posting to it for a week.
I knew that giving them attention would not make things better, but I felt I had no other choices. Unlike some who are stalked I did not have a large fanbase to drown out the lies. If someone posts an insult on a Madonna video you will find at least a few dozen die-hard Madonna fans quickly respond to defend Madonna and legions more will click the 'Dislike' and 'Spam' buttons on the comment to make it hidden. This is not the case for someone like me who has a very small fanbase for my show.
However, the harassment only quieted down once two things occurred,
1) I started ignoring the trolls completely. I also disabled ratings on my videos so they could no longer dislike bomb them, and made posting comments to my videos and blogs approval only. This deprived them of ways to get attention from others by harassing me, since nobody could see their harassment.
Depriving them of ways to spam my videos infuriated them initially, but they eventually got bored and stopped trying to spam my videos.
2) Their group imploded on itself. This shouldn't surprise anyone; there is no honor among thieves and the same goes for the mentally disturbed psychopaths who get their kicks by harassing people on the internet. Eventually they started turning on one another, using the secrets everyone shared about themselves to harass the weaker members of their group who were now a much easier target than I was.
(If you are wondering why I know so much about this, it is because I was sent a Skype chat log from the stalker group which detailed the whole shebang from their point of view. Like any good soldier, I studied it. After all, if you want to defeat your enemy you must first understand your enemy).
My assessment of the situation is that the stalkers turned to click bombing as a final resort in order to demonstrate to the target and each another that they have power and influence. The click bombings occurred after their months of 'Report this video' flag-bombing and Google forum posts did not result in the loss of my Partner account, and I began completing ignoring them. So they turned to click bombing to "teach me a lesson" and the lesson I was supposed to learn is that they have power over me.
I imagine this is the same motivation for all click bombers; to demonstrate they have power and are important.
When their actions failed to revoke my Partnership they became frustrated at each other and the group fell apart on its own due to the internal conflicts.
My primary occupational specialty in the United States Army was 11B; that's Infantry. I can tell you that the absolute worst situation you could ever find yourself in as foot soldier is one where you cannot go on the offensive and all you can do is hold a position, defending yourself against wave upon wave of attack.
This is because the enemy has all of the advantages; they can attack you whenever they want and from whatever direction they want. They can bolster their forces with reserves, whereas your forces are surrounded. And because you are trying to hold a position the only resources you have are those with you in the position, whereas the enemy can keep supplying their forces with more and more resources.
And this is true in many other things, including publishing content on the internet.
The unfortunate thing about click-bombings is that you cannot "attack" the click bombers, and you cannot "recruit" anyone to help you defend against the click-bombings. You also have very limited means to defend yourself due to lack of information on what they are doing, such as what videos they are targeting. This is because AdSense doesn't tell you what videos earned what clicks, and Analytics is very slow to update this information.
Step 1) Monitor Your AdSense Like a Hawk
All you can do is defend against their attacks and hold your position, but unlike real-life you cannot hear a gunshot or explosion to alert you to the attack happening. Click-bombings are silent attacks and there is only ONE place you can even see that they are taking place.
Your AdSense account.
I will repeat this for emphasis: The ONLY place you can see that a clickbombing is happening is from your AdSense.
Youtube Analytics WILL NOT tell you it is taking place. This is because Analytics does not update in real time and often has a delay of 2-4 days before it has actually made anything resembling a realistic earning statement, let alone an accurate view count. AdSense, on the other hand, is updated in real time.
By the time Analytics finally updates your account may already be shut down.
Everyone who uses AdSense should religiously monitor their AdSense account; and I am not exaggerating this.. You must catch it happening within the first few hours or your AdSense might be shut down by Google's automatic algorithms for detecting invalid click activity.
I check my Adsense several times a day as a force of habit whenever I check my email.
If you are a Partner through another network (like Machinima for example) there is no way for you to know if you are being click bombed and hopefully someone at that service will be looking out for this stuff.
For everyone else who has their own AdSense connected to their Youtube account, this is what a clickbombing in progress looks like when it first begins,
This is a screenshot I took of the first clickbombing attack that happened to me. I caught it within 2 hours of the attack's start (I know this because I had checked my AdSense an earlier, and then on a whim checked it again before going to bed. Plus the screenshot clearly says I last logged in two hours prior). I snapped this screenshot as soon as I recognized what it was.
For those unfamiliar with AdSense I will explain what you are seeing in the photo, and I have circled the only important information to us concerning click bombings (my earnings and other personal information has also been deleted as displaying that would violate the AdSense terms of service agreement).
'Hosted AdSense for Content' is the label AdSense uses for Youtube earnings. I don't know why they don't make it more obvious, but that is what it is.
'Page views' is the number of times an ad was displayed on your Youtube videos.
'Clicks' is the number of times someone clicked on an ad.
'Page CTR' is the click through ratio of your videos. Generally speaking you should never see a Page CTR that is higher than 15%. Anything more than that is incredibly suspicious because the overwhelming majority of people DO NOT click on ads. Whenever you see large numbers of clicks on ads, you are most likely being click bombed (This is something even advertisers should be aware of, so they can realize when they are being ripped off by ad display networks).
You will notice in the above screenshot my Page CTR was about 37%. So you might think to yourself, "Oh, your Page CTR was not that high. It's just 37%. You were just over-reacting."
This is the screenshot I took when I refreshed the page,
The Page CTR is now 68.78%. Still think I was over-reacting? I hope not.
(I actually have the entire Skype log of the group who was doing this click bombing to my channel. It was sent to me a few months later when the group fell apart due to internal drama between the members, and basically they all started turning on one another. The log detailed about six months of harassment and included the organizing and execution of the click bombing attacks, and the dates of the log matched the activity in my records.)
Anyway AdSense eventually started trying to fix the damage, and dropped the earnings. I can't show you how much it was but at certain points it was saying I had earned over a thousand dollars. Had I been paid those earnings the advertisers would have been very upset because they had been ripped off, and that is ultimately what the click bombers do; they try to make it look like the Youtube Partner is having their ads click bombed.
Why would a stalker want to do this? It's because Google assumes the only people who might be benefited from click bombings are the owner of the channel, so they have an algorithm that will disable your AdSense if it detects a large amount of click activity. The account remains disabled until a live person at Google investigates it. The problem is it can take weeks, even months, for anyone to ever respond to you.
Meanwhile you will lose your Youtube Partnership because in order for an account to retain 'Partner' status it MUST be associated with an AdSense account. Even worse, some Partners who have had their Adsense disabled have attempted to make a new AdSense account and connect their account to it, but Google has a policy that says an individual may only have one AdSense account and making additional accounts will result in the termination of all accounts, so eventually those Adsense accounts get detected and closed. Eventually the Youtube Partnership is lost.
Essentially, click bombers use Google's own policies against Youtube Partners they wish to harass by tricking the algorithms into shutting the account down.
This must be done from the AdSense account that is affected. Include as much information as possible. Feel free to even file several dozen emails, to make sure someone sees it!
Additionally, I submitted an email to Youtube Partner support which included screenshots of the invalid click activity and the following message,
"To whom it may concern,
I am being click bombed, as these
screenshots demonstrate. Picture 7 shows that I have attempted to
disable ads on my videos yet ads are still showing and the click bombing
is continuing. I own the Youtube Partner channels jfreedan,
TheRPGFanatic and NinjaGKaiser. As the clicks are independent of views, I
don't know what channel is being attacked.
I hope you will not disable my Partner accounts, as I have done
everything I possibly can do to prevent this aside from deleting my
channels.
Carey Martell
ManagingMember, Martell Brothers Studios, LLC"
I received the following reply,
"Thank you for emailing YouTube Partner Support.
You can find an answer to your question at the following Partner Support
resources.
- Find educational materials and chances to connect with the creator
community at the YouTube Creator Hub: http://www.youtube.com/creators/
- Interact with and get answers to your questions from other Partners and
YouTube experts at the YouTube Partner Forum: http://goo.gl/oeT6
- Search for step-by-step guidance and platform/feature information in the
YouTube Partner Help Center: http://goo.gl/EW893
- Stay up-to-date with known site issues at the YouTube Known Issues Page:http://goo.gl/MRSJ
You can also sign up for our product and program-related email
communications from within your YouTube account by following these
instructions: http://goo.gl/GvTRr.
Thanks,
The YouTube Partner Support Team
This is obviously a worthless form letter that provided me with no useful information, but that is beside the point.
The important thing is that someone at Youtube Partner Support might have forwarded my email to someone else who handles invalid click activity at AdSense.
Even if that didn't happen, I now have a record that I promptly and correctly reported the invalid click activity was occurring to several parties at Google
This is important because if I did have my Partnership shut down I would be able to use this email in efforts to convince someone at Google that I was responsible in monitoring my AdSense click activity and should have it restored. This is a big deal because I have no record of my invalid click activity submissions, because Google does not send you a copy of the report you submit nor any email indication that they received it.
It is not enough to simply do one or two things when defending against something like this. You must use all possible resources at your disposal and take action to help yourself in the worst case scenario, which is having your Partnership revoked.
By emailing Partner Support ahead of time, you make it easier for the decision to be appealed and your Partnership re-instated should that occur.
Step 3) Disable ALL Ads on EVERY Video!
Having said all of this, you need to physically disable ads on every video you have put up. This is because the option to disable ads on all videos on your account does absolutely nothing.
I don't care what the text says. It is broken. It does NOT stop displaying ads on your videos. Ads continue to be displayed and they keep clicking away. After toggling ads off using that box, I waited for TWO HOURS for the ads to stop being displayed and ads CONTINUED until I literally went into each and every video and disabled the ads manually.
You must go into EVERY video you have monetized and uncheck ALL the boxes for ads. If you are like me and have hundreds of videos on all your accounts, this can take over an hour to do and is incredibly tedious.
But it is the ONLY way to make the clickbombings STOP.
Do this to ALL videos you have!
I did not want to shut off my ads. I actually waited several days for AdSense or Youtube Partner support to respond, and in the meantime I left ads on my videos and kept submitting invalid click reports. I never heard anything back from AdSense about this matter. The click-bombings only stopped when I shut off my ads, because the trolls got bored or thought they had won.
I then left ads off my accounts for two weeks to ensure I got off the radar of the stalkers, so they could feel like they "won" and find something else to do.
Unfortunately this means the only way to protect yourself is to lose money. That sucks.
I wish I had better advice to give you, but Youtube has been very unhelpful in assisting Partners with this problem. Sure, my account wasn't disabled but had they communicated with me and re-assured me my account would not be disabled, I would have been a lot less stressful for that entire period of time. I also got little to no assistance from other Partners, as they had no experience with the matter or wanted to chime in about how it must be my fault and I deserve it.
Nobody who is click bombed "deserves it". Click-bombing is a malicious scam that is easily performed by anyone. All it requires is any software designed to enhance your mouse so you spam several clicks with just one mouse click, and use software that makes it appear that you have multiple IP addresses. It requires no actual technical skills to perform.
Someone who has never used a computer could be taught to do it in five minutes, it is that easy.
I could post the method here but I do not want to assist anyone who is seeking to do it. But it is a childishly easy thing to perform and Google should be embarrassed that their ad display network is vulnerable to it and that their own policies designed to protect advertising clients are actually hurting the people who make Youtube profitable -- the Partners.
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