The horns they blowin’ that sound
(or where I muse on how you can get your foot in the door with one of the better bloggers out there)
You get a shiver in the dark
Well, it is winter isn’t it? And it does get dark at something like 4pm these days. Sucks for a kid who grew up in the southern hemisphere like I did. So anyway, you browse on over to Upstart Blogger to warm the cockels of your shiney 24inch wide-screen monitor’s heart. What? You don’t have a 24inch monitor? Oh. Sorry……..you browse on over to Upstart Blogger to warm the cockles of your 800×600 monitor’s heart.
South of the river, you stop and you hold everything
Yep, you just read his invitation to the inner circle. The idea is, you pay your money, you get a link at the bottom of his blog (and everyone else’s who joins up). It’s a blog ring. But one that has some serious weight behind it, because Upstart Blogger is currently PR7 with growing traffic. Some of you are pissed, some of you are laughing, some of you are thinking “good for you man – go for it!” (I’m in the last camp myself).
A band is blowing dixie double four time
I can only imagine the speed with which the hate mail came into Upstart Blogger’s email box. Double four time? ptha….I bet it was more like slaughter of rapid-fire quintuplets (probably in the Locrian mode*)! The blogging world is funny isn’t it. Actually the world is funny. People don’t seem to mind throwing their money at stupid faceless corporations, buying up all sorts of crap like celebrity gossip mags or designer clothes or overpriced luke warm milky coffee from Starbucks, but if you are simply a guy trying to run a blog and make ends meet, you catch all nine levels of hell from every infernal-asshat who thinks the world owes them a living.
And now you step inside
Anyway after announcing the inner circle idea, Ashley must have taken some flack from people who obviously think it is his duty to help them…..bollocks I say. It isn’t his duty, it is his choice. And kind of him to do so if he does. So, a new post on Upstart Blogger announces that he is inviting some noob bloggers into the league with the big boys. Or at least into the league with people prepared to invest. I’m not sure if he knew he was going to get the backlash he obviously did, maybe he had a contingency planned – wouldn’t surprise me – the guy is pretty astute.
But you don’t see too many faces
Coming in out of the rain to hear the jazz go down
Well, you will see 2 lucky faces at any rate. Chosen by Ashley, based on a sample post that they write.
You feel alright when you hear that music ring
Don’t worry though, I’m not entering. I don’t really want to write a blog about pop music culture (’cause I rarely hear any pop music that catches my interest) or film and television reviews……I watch maybe every third episode of heros and the occasional film on TV…….I’m not a big watcher 
And a crowd of young boys they’re fooling around in the corner
Drunk and dressed in he best brown baggies and their platform soles
They don’t give a damn about any trumpet playing band
This leads me to a small matter of manners. I figure, whether you agree or disagree with the way someone is blogging, there is never really a need to get nasty with them right off the bat. I don’t see the point of randomly insulting someone. I figure you can call crap if someone behaves badly towards you, but mostly, I think if you approach someone with some civility, you will get treated the same way. At least that should be your default behaviour.
I’ve had occasion to email Ashley before and I’ve emailed him more recently about one of his other blog posts. You know what? I’ve always found him to be a nice guy. In fact, he has gone out of his way to help me. Of course, I haven’t tried emailing him with a subject line of “Hey Ashley – you’re a w*nker”. If I did though, I would personally expect my email to get dumped into the spam box where it belongs. He obviously treats his blog seriously (and as a business), but he has always been courteous to me, and always replied to my emails, even though I’m pretty sure he gets a dump load of mail.
Good night now its time to go home
You have an opportunity to get into blogging in a big way. If nothing else, you risk getting a domain and the kind of link love that a lot of us underdogbloggers scuttle around for. Stop complaining, stop thinking you are owed something. Here is an opportunity. Don’t waste it!
*The locrian mode, for those of you who did not study your music theory properly, is often thought of as being the most unstable and unworkable mode in classical music theory. However, it offers a good diminished tonic chord which creates dissonance and finds favour in, among other forms of music, some Jazz. If you know anything about Upstart Blogger, I guess that makes sense to you. If you don’t well, then you aren’t in on my rather brilliant homage here.
I must admit, if he fills up the 30 spaces then congrats to him – thats $30 grand he will have made over the course of the year.
I’m not a follower of upstart blogger, haven’t really read any of the posts, or seen him commenting on any of the blogs I visit, therefore I forget about him.
Oh, and by linking back to the post you have entered to get one of the links
hehe
You know, I had to read this a couple of times because, initially, I thought you were talking about yourself. LOL It’s an interesting concept, one I’m not going to take advantage of, but I think you make a very good point about not having to go into an encounter initially gunning for bear. I’m going to look at that site a bit more, just to see what some of the gripes were.
Dude – you’re an amazing writer and should get a link immediately. Even though I haven’t been frequenting Ashley’s blog over the last month or so, I am a previous avid reader to say the least – I love his writing and any one who’s been to my blog or seen my videos knows that I’m obsessed with jazz music.
mmmm… Bill Evans… arrrrghghghh…
As Ashley usually speaks his mind openly, he does tend to get blasted – which I think is awesome, and encourage all bloggers to do. BE naked, BE yourself.. and you will have a successful blog.
Thanks. Both for the great, and revealingly intelligent, writing and your kind words. I especially like the way only those people who know about Upstart Blogger and my background will truly get what you mean.
Dan – The idea is that the 30 spots get allocated before the start of the new year so that the network can roll out with as much traffic as possible. And at the moment it’s on course to do just that.
Mitch – Some of the responses I got were just as you describe, gunning for bear. These were, however, mostly via email and very aggressive. As UDB correctly says, they went straight in the bin.
Elijah and UDB – I’ve got something on the drawing board that jazz heads like you, and I hope all music fans, will be interested in. I’ll announce it on Upstart Blogger to give it a kick start, hopefully as soon as next week.
@Dan – lol yeah entered, but not at the same time….wooooo spooky.
@Mitch – damn – sorry for the confusion…..stuff makes perfect sense in my mind but you know when you put it out there for other people….fwoooooosh
@Elijah – thanks man!
@Ashley – Thanks for dropping by, and your kind word back….can’t wait for the jazz to go down.
I’m sorry I have to post this here, but I see no other way.
I had posted my concerns about the inner circle on his announcement blog post, but none of my comments since that time have been accepted.
They were all valid comments, polite and on subject. I raise a few issues with the inner circle concept that I would have liked to see answered, and I think anyone who is interested in joining should be able to read those concerns before making his or her decision on this matter.
However, like I said, none of my comments have been accepted. I sent a few emails to Ashley, again without any response what so ever.
I always loved commenting on his blog, but this behavior is so childish.. I cannot but wonder why. Is having a different opinion on a subject grounds to banning you from commenting? Boy, what boring discussions that would make.
I also asked him to simply tell me, by email, to stop commenting if he wanted me to, and I would immediately do so. I just want a reason for this behavior, that’s all.
I didn’t want to come posting here, I sought to handle this privately, but since Ashley is completely ignoring me, I see no other way but to take this public.
Anyway, here are a few of the comments that were not approved:
On “If you are serious about making money online this may be of interest to you”:
“I thought this was a great idea, until I read that it won’t be free and comes at a substantial cost..
This is essentially charging for being on someone’s blog roll.. Or charging for pagerank (you state this as a benefit in your post) which could get you banned from google.
Furthermore, will the links be at the bottom of the site? How many clicks can one expect from your blog? (Plus, footer links may be devalued by search engines (patents))
How will we know what the site is about if all that you see is a little icon?
And if those blogs aren’t related to tech, why would I ever want to visit them again?
Ofcourse the other sites will generate traffic too, but those will almost all be small sites with little traffic. Is there a money back guarantee if this thing just doesn’t work out? I mean, your blog isn’t that big if you look at the grand scheme of things..”
– In hindsight, this sounds a little challenging, but not alot. Pretty valid questions to ask. The kicker is indeed that you can get banned from google for buying paid links, and Ashley makes no mention of it. I don’t know if he even knows this, that’s why I made the comment in the first place.
On “Golden opportunity for rookie bloggers”:
“Just to clarify to those that want to participate in this, could you tell what happens to the domain name, etc, after the first year and they don’t want to pay for the next? Do you transfer the domain name, files, etc over to them? This is not explained very well.”
– Since he’s buying the domains, he owns them. And he hosts the sites. I just wanted to know what would happen after the year was up.
On “Upstart Blogger income statement for November 2008″:
“Hmm, that’s only 2.5 pageviews per unique user. That doesn’t sound like alot to me (given also that you have an RSS feed with only excerpts). What’s the standard for blogs? And the question I always ask, but never receive an answer to: “Is this only from AN Hosting?”
However, I must say, given this amount of traffic you really monetized it well. Don’t think you can improve your earnings per visitor much more. $0.087 per unique visitor.”
– I meant the pageviews was low, not the uniques, maybe I should have put that in there?.. And yes, I do always ask what the different methods of monetizations are that he uses, but I have never received an answer to that.
On “Watch me build a new blog live and make $1,000 in under 30 days”:
“That’s pretty bold for a new blog that is not about blogging, etc.. This means that promotiong AN Hosting on that site will likely not work. You will need other means of monetizing the traffic.”
– Well, nothing wrong with this. Ashleymorgan.com is a personal/music blog, so a hosting offer should theoretically not go well with that kind of traffic.
Let me know what you think about this issue. I’d like to see this resolved. Hopefully, upstartblogger.com can become better because of this. It is often times when we are called out on something that we tend to do something about it, hopefully improve.
Discussion is something that should be encouraged, not moderated away.
Feel better now Wesley? I’m going to respond to you, but it is getting rather long so I’ll put up a blog post. I mean content is good for my site innit?
Hey, yes I do
I just wanted to get this off my chest.
When you don’t have a blog yourself to state an issue, in this day and age it’s like you don’t have a voice. So thank you for adding the comment
Anyway, I also know that Ashley, as the blog owner ofcourse has the right to disregard any comments he wants to, there is no right to free speech. But when I then read the title and first line of the “Raw and uncensored” post at ashleymorgan.com , I just wanted to reply.
I had no expectations when I posted the comment here, just that I knew someone else would at least read it. Had you not approved the comment, I would not have bothered pursuing this any further. So thank you, I look forward to reading the post, whichever side you may choose. (If there are even “sides”).
oh well. I was going to put up a post about it Wesley, but I’m too lazy to edit it so I’ll just throw in some comments.
Man – get yourself a blog – they are free! Mine is, just sign up to wordpress or blogger. At the very least get a wordpress login so that once one of your comments have been approved, you skip through the first “spam hurdle”.
I had similar thoughts about the blogs getting G-slapped, but it is all hearsay on my behalf. Only time will tell if it brings people traffic or not, and only time will tell if they can leverage that traffic into money.
Thing is, without a blog of your own, and experience yourself, all the theory in the world means shit.
As to the inner circle being paid for…..well some things aren’t free, nor are they obliged to be offered for free.
The slightly snide comment about the amount of money Ashley makes per visitor – I don’t know dude, start a blog, convert better than he does, then talk, otherwise it all sounds like a bit of a moan really. Bottom line is, he has enough visitors to pull in 7k a month, we don’t.
wrt the blogs that Ashley wants to give out to 2 rookies, what difference does it make if you get to keep them at the end of the year – use them to launch a bunch of other initiatives. Weave the links into your posts intelligently and you get some good backlinks pretty swiftly to new blogs that you can write (and own). At the end of the year, even if he takes the blog away from you, you’ve got backlinks for africa and a bunch of other viable blogs of your own.
Hey, I’m working on starting that blog right now
But I won’t be discussing this issue there, I will just let it rest/keep it here in these comments 
You say it is hearsay about being banned for paid links? Here’s from the horses’ mouth: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/
Ashley is doing something pretty risky here in my opinion, as his own blog could also be banned if someone reports him. (Know though that I will not report him). One way he could avert this is if he made the blog ring via a javascript, that way no PR is passed and google wouldn’t have any grounds to ban anyone.
My comment about how much he makes was not meant to be snide, I don’t know why you think that. Often people express how much they earn per visitor. It is a very valuable statistic to have. My only thought there was, for a blog, he has low pageviews.
About the 2 newbies, the difference it makes is this: If the rookie makes a brilliantly successful blog, earns 5K per month with it at the end of the year, there’s no guarantee that Ashley will let that person have the domain. And a couple of links to your other blogs won’t help since those can be stripped off instantly
Ofcourse, I do not think Ashley would do that.. but one must always be careful in these things, same when you start a business with a friend, never start anything without a contract, etc..
The point of posting this here was really not to talk about my comments, but the fact that Ashley chose to hide my comments from the public eye, why exactly? To get more people to sign up? Am I really a troll? Is that how you would describe me? No? I’m passionate about things and defend my opinion, which I would expect of everyone.
Also, the fact that I have commented alot without being moderated before these specific comments were deleted, makes this all the worse. You’d think that you have some sort of relationship with the blog owner.
Actually, I may be a bit wrong about google banning you for this. They would at least disqualify those “paid” links. So what that would mean is that the pagerank benefit from this blog ring would be nullified. Still something to consider before you join this.
Hey Wesley. Sorry – I misinterpreted your remarks about his money making….my bad.
We could argue back and forth over the other points about PR and such, but I think we’ve both had our say……I don’t know why your comments were not approved dude, other than to say, it is Ashley’s blog and he does what he feels best for his online ventures. c’est la vie.
Good luck with the blog, let me know when it is done so I can pop over and take a gander.
Thanks mate, I’ll be sure to let you know