My Tumblr Blog got Shut Down

[mopek1]

I had tons of followers after a few years building it and there were no ads or affiliate links whatsoever. Just pics that linked to content on my site (where they could see the rest of the picture series) which had ads at the bottom of the pages but no pop ups or anything intrusive or blatant - just more content.

I can conclude that even though you are adding value to their social media network, if you have a 'chance' of making any money off of it they will ban you. Same with Reddit.

I knew enough not to put all my eggs in one basket and only put forth 15% of my efforts there. I did get some traffic but it still feels like such a waste.

Oh well, on to building on my own domains from now on.

[mopek1]

Oh yeah, they gave me the same cut and paste reply they give everyone.

"We've terminated your Tumblr account at blog.tumblr.com for spam or affiliate marketing. Per the policies you agreed to when creating your account, Tumblr prohibits such activity.

Don't put deceptive links or dubious code in your posts. That includes using Javascript to inject unwanted ads in blogs, or embedding links to interstitial or pop-up ad services. Don't use deceptive means to generate revenue or traffic, or create blogs with the primary purpose of affiliate marketing."

[rogueteens]

Oh yeah, they gave me the same cut and paste reply they give everyone.

"We've terminated your Tumblr account at blog.tumblr.com for spam or affiliate marketing. Per the policies you agreed to when creating your account, Tumblr prohibits such activity.

Don't put deceptive links or dubious code in your posts. That includes using Javascript to inject unwanted ads in blogs, or embedding links to interstitial or pop-up ad services. Don't use deceptive means to generate revenue or traffic, or create blogs with the primary purpose of affiliate marketing."

was that second paragraph part of the email they sent you? I've never got that bit before from them.

[Tom_PM]

SO.. only provide content to us and don't make use of it yourself.

[mopek1]

was that second paragraph part of the email they sent you? I've never got that bit before from them.

Yeah it was from them. I've seen other GFY members post it.

[mopek1]

SO.. only provide content to us and don't make use of it yourself.

Exactly. Many of the social media sites want to make us out to be these EVIL spammers who are trying to make a profit (even though many of us provide value) ...

But really they allow all their users to scrape and steal content from other websites and use it for their own benefit and that is somehow okay?????

....

[dehash]

Just forget about them and keep moving.

[Google Expert]

linking the pics back to your money site = affiliate marketing

[mopek1]

linking the pics back to your money site = affiliate marketing

I know.

This is why we all build tumblr blogs though. AFF Marketing.

I would have thought though that if I am adding value and not being so "in-your-face" with the ads like I mentioned above that the social media network would be happy to have the contribution. Instead they prefer it if their users steal content.

[itx]

With all this shit happening is better not build on Tumblr.

[Fat Panda]

to hand build tumblr porn blogs is moronic...they ALL get shut down eventually.

the only way to make money is to buy 1000s of proxies and automate it.

[jimmycastor]

how many followers on your closed tumblr ??

[Marquis85]

damn that sucks. I've been checking mine daily since these threads popped up. How popular was your blog and how many followers?

[mopek1]

I had around 1000 followers and many liked and reblogged the posts.

[Tofu]

Have you all seen the advertising they are injecting into your timelines, now?



.

[PornDiscounts-V]

Getting followers is a lot easier than I had thought it was going to be.

[mopek1]

Have you all seen the advertising they are injecting into your timelines, now?



.

What do you mean?

[Fat Panda]

Getting followers is a lot easier than I had thought it was going to be.

correct because 90% of them are marketers just like you

[Captain Kawaii]

Have you all seen the advertising they are injecting into your timelines, now?



.

yeah. Well, hello, Yahoo.

[RubyGoodnight]

I had one canned today as well. Thankfully it was only up less than a month and I hadn't really spent much time on it. Oh well....onto the next one.

[deltav]

correct because 90% of them are marketers just like you

I dunno, I've got 1200 after a few months of 2-3x/week posting and the vast majority of them are real users with no marketing angle. I've noticed one or two that seem to be slinging their product but they're a very small minority.

Far as the "spam" angle, it is kinda infuriating from our perspective - working hard to create our content, then presenting it *for free* in one of these social networks, get an overwhelmingly positive response from users yet the company itself flags it as spam. On my Tumblr I do a link back to my site with each post (no affiliate code, just the domain) and not a single person has complained and they'll in fact repost with the source - it's as though they actually understand about giving credit where credit's due, which is what this is essentially all about. I've gotten more than one message from people to the effect of "this is my favorite tumblr, thanks" so I'll be pretty pissed if they shut it down. We'll see...

That being said, I think it's in part from the earlier days of adult marketing when you had thousands of noobs wanting to break into the biz & get rich, they did indeed flood the web with terrible useless overt spam and people are still a bit cagey as a result. Yet another way in which our Wild West era still comes back to bite us in the ass.

[Tofu]

What do you mean?

I was just diggin through the app, so I could use a screenshot to illustrate, but interestingly enough, they seem to have stopped (for the moment).

However, it is happening and the tumblr bloggers have voiced their opinions, here:
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/sponsor...language=ru_RU


Thoughts?

[Tofu]

Example, right here.

[mikesinner]

Better to have 10 blogs on something like pornblogspace than 1 on tumblr.

[Fat Panda]

Better to have 10 blogs on something like pornblogspace than 1 on tumblr.

no its better to have 10 of YOUR OWN BLOGS

(IE that means you OWN domain names and purchase hosting).

[signupdamnit]

I'm thinking you might be okay if you don't link every post to your site. Mix it up and throw in some youtube links and other sites too. Ideally you don't want them to be able to tell you are a marketer.

[signupdamnit]

no its better to have 10 of YOUR OWN BLOGS

(IE that means you OWN domain names and purchase hosting).

Yep. In this business climate I would be highly skeptical of any free hosted services no matter what the owners tell you. And Tumblr blogs ought to be for gaining traffic and maybe monetizing (if you go automated). They should not be your main sites or presence.

[oppoten]

They're totally going about it the wrong way. They should simply charge marketers a monthly subscription to use the service.

correct because 90% of them are marketers just like you

That's not true, most of my followers are surfers.

[deltav]

Yep. In this business climate I would be highly skeptical of any free hosted services no matter what the owners tell you. And Tumblr blogs ought to be for gaining traffic and maybe monetizing (if you go automated). They should not be your main sites or presence.

I don't think anyone is advocating going all-in on Tumblr. However, by nature it's a great branding tool - i.e. accumulate followers by choice who then can easily share your content with their friends and them with their friends & so on - and I've found from a monetizing perspective the traffic is extremely productive, albeit on a small scale.

Another thing to keep in mind is Google is swinging heavily towards so-called "authority" sites for their results, and this includes photosharing networks like Tumblr & Pinterest. I've noticed a huge increase in those for many of my keywords. If they continue this trend it's a good idea to at least have a presence on many of these services.

[mopek1]

I was just diggin through the app, so I could use a screenshot to illustrate, but interestingly enough, they seem to have stopped (for the moment).

However, it is happening and the tumblr bloggers have voiced their opinions, here:
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/sponsor...language=ru_RU


Thoughts?

I see. Yeah I've seen that. Their users seem to be pissed off about their own ads but they were never with mine since again, I had ads only at the bottom of my content pages.

Go figure.

[signupdamnit]

I don't think anyone is advocating going all-in on Tumblr. However, by nature it's a great branding tool - i.e. accumulate followers by choice who then can easily share your content with their friends and them with their friends & so on - and I've found from a monetizing perspective the traffic is extremely productive, albeit on a small scale.

Another thing to keep in mind is Google is swinging heavily towards so-called "authority" sites for their results, and this includes photosharing networks like Tumblr & Pinterest. I've noticed a huge increase in those for many of my keywords. If they continue this trend it's a good idea to at least have a presence on many of these services.

Just keep in mind any blog tagged "adult" will be invisible to Google due to robots.txt. So if your strategy is to build adult blogs on Tumblr for the long term for Google it is a losing one.

http://www.tumblr.com/docs/en/nsfw

I believe eventually existing adult tumblr blogs which have already been tagged adult will fade out of Google in the next few months. I could be wrong but I would expect that as well as most to be nuked from Tumblr itself if they have any marketing on Tumblr or even if they primarily link to obvious external marketing. Already the description is something like "This description could not be updated due to the sites robots.txt".

[mopek1]

Far as the "spam" angle, it is kinda infuriating from our perspective - working hard to create our content, then presenting it *for free* in one of these social networks, get an overwhelmingly positive response from users ....... I've gotten more than one message from people to the effect of "this is my favorite tumblr, thanks" so I'll be pretty pissed if they shut it down.

Yet another way in which our Wild West era still comes back to bite us in the ass.

True and true.

[signupdamnit]

That's not true, most of my followers are surfers.

When you first start post-Yahoo most followers will be other marketers. I think they made some changes to how new blogs show up. Existing blogs already have their place established.

[deltav]

Just keep in mind any blog tagged "adult" will be invisible to Google due to robots.txt. So if your strategy is to build adult blogs on Tumblr for the long term for Google it is a losing one.

It should be noted that Tumblr has two tiers though: "NSFW" and "Adult". NSFW blogs are currently indexed by Google per Tumblr's TOS (though I haven't independently verified this), in my experience one can *at the moment* publish a NSFW-flagged blog with mostly softcore stuff interspersed with other material. A steady stream of XXX will probably get the "Adult" tag & be hidden from Google. For my vintage Tumblr I also try to give the occasional historical or educational context with the intent of hewing to that NSFW line.

Of course, as you say it's well within Tumblr's rights to change their policies on a whim. And sure, they may phase out all adult stuff or commercially oriented blogs in the near future, the Yahoo purchase was a game changer for sure. But to ignore social networking or other so-called 'authority sites' because you don't have full control of the TOS is to leave a lot of branding opportunities on the table. It's just one facet of modern marketing. The good news is, most of these are free to set up and can be maintained with about 10 minutes/week, so the ROI usually works out favorably.

[oppoten]

When you first start post-Yahoo most followers will be other marketers. I think they made some changes to how new blogs show up. Existing blogs already have their place established.

Ah that makes sense. I've started a new one and I'd noticed it was a bit sluggish compared with previous ones.

Fuck it, if they can mine then I don't think I'll bother with it anymore.

[rogueteens]

Better to have 10 blogs on something like pornblogspace than 1 on tumblr.

you are missing the point, tumblr has its own massive internal search engine, other tumblrs will repost your work which can build and build if reposted again and again AND Google loves tumblr tight now.

[helterskelter808]

Another fucking dipshit who thinks the world owes him a living. It's real simple, buddy, if you don't like what Tumblr does with its own service, don't use it.

But that's right, you're a talentless broke clown who expects other sites to eat the bill hosting your shit at no cost to you while also providing you free traffic that you can lure to your own sites, hoping to make a buck.

Why not set up a Tumblr-like service yourself and allow anyone to host shit, with the sole intention of trying to exploit your traffic for their own benefit, all on your dime? You can call it "adding value".

Oh, doesn't sound quite so reasonable any more does it...

[deltav]

Another fucking dipshit who thinks the world owes him a living. It's real simple, buddy, if you don't like what Tumblr does with its own service, don't use it.

But that's right, you're a talentless broke clown who expects other sites to eat the bill hosting your shit at no cost to you while also providing you free traffic that you can lure to your own sites, hoping to make a buck.

Dude, chill with the righteous indignation! The OP didn't even really complain about it much, and it's useful to hear about for the rest of us who have Tumblr blogs.

Far as marketing goes, it's just not as simple as you make it out to be anymore. These services are "free" yes, but also a substantial portion of the content shared on them is copyrighted material posted by users without the original owners' permission. Call it piracy if you want (tho that's becoming an outdated term in the current environment). If users just posted "officially released" content many of these services would probably not exist. So in many cases these services are indirectly profiting illicitly off our material in a way to begin with.

Also, you can market your product and still provide "added value". Again, my vintage blog often links back to my main site, but I've gotten nothing but extremely positive feedback from other users & followers, people will go out of their way to comment how much they enjoy the posts. Also as stated repeatedly, Google has started given services like these massive priority over privately owned domains & blogs.

If there was an option to register as a "content producer" for a reasonable monthly fee on Tumblr and be able to post without worrying about getting canned, I'd consider it as probably would others. As it stands, the current new ad system they have is definitely unwelcome by users and *not* considered to be "adding value" by the majority.

[rogueteens]

Another fucking dipshit who thinks the world owes him a living. It's real simple, buddy, if you don't like what Tumblr does with its own service, don't use it.

But that's right, you're a talentless broke clown who expects other sites to eat the bill hosting your shit at no cost to you while also providing you free traffic that you can lure to your own sites, hoping to make a buck.

Why not set up a Tumblr-like service yourself and allow anyone to host shit, with the sole intention of trying to exploit your traffic for their own benefit, all on your dime? You can call it "adding value".

Oh, doesn't sound quite so reasonable any more does it...

and you can build your empire on images stolen from elsewhere, just like tumblr

[helterskelter808]

Dude, chill with the righteous indignation! The OP didn't even really complain about it much, and it's useful to hear about for the rest of us who have Tumblr blogs.

It's spammers who are unbelievable self-righteous. "I deliberately violated the terms and conditions I agreed to and that I knew all about when I signed up and they TOS'd me. Instead of accepting that I finally got caught, I'll whine about how they suck and how I was just trying to help them and how many problems they caused."

And if Tumblr didn't do this what do you think would happen? Of course it would be spammed to oblivion and there'd be no more users to exploit. Porn has been shitting in everyone else's back yard since the days of Usenet.

Far as marketing goes, it's just not as simple as you make it out to be anymore. These services are "free" yes, but also a substantial portion of the content shared on them is copyrighted material posted by users without the original owners' permission. Call it piracy if you want (tho that's becoming an outdated term in the current environment). If users just posted "officially released" content many of these services would probably not exist. So in many cases these services are indirectly profiting illicitly off our material in a way to begin with.

Maybe they are, in which case the copyright holders should have their shit removed; it's a different and non-relevant issue. Nobody here is spamming Tumblr in order to stick it to them for pirated material; they're doing it to make a quick buck. Hell, I bet most of the blogs people here are spamming to Tumblr are wall-to-wall infringing material.

Also, you can market your product and still provide "added value". Again, my vintage blog often links back to my main site, but I've gotten nothing but extremely positive feedback from other users & followers, people will go out of their way to comment how much they enjoy the posts. Also as stated repeatedly, Google has started given services like these massive priority over privately owned domains & blogs.

It's up to Tumblr to decide what adds value to their service; and maybe they'd consider yours okay, who knows. But just ask yourself this: would you have a Tumblr blog if you weren't trying to make a buck from it? If the answer is no, then your interest in adding value to Tumblr is zero.

If there was an option to register as a "content producer" for a reasonable monthly fee on Tumblr and be able to post without worrying about getting canned, I'd consider it as probably would others. As it stands, the current new ad system they have is definitely unwelcome by users and *not* considered to be "adding value" by the majority.

Again, that's a decision for Tumblr. Instead of being grateful they don't rule out adult material completely, like many services do, you complain that they don't cater more fully to porn sites. Unreal.

It ain't a porn site.

and you can build your empire on images stolen from elsewhere, just like tumblr

[deltav]

We probably agree on more of this than you think, but you seem more interested in skewing the context & meaning of what I'm saying just slightly enough to argue it & be "right". And I don't have the time for that, no way I'm convincing you otherwise anyhow. So nice job, you win, pat yourself on the back.

[helterskelter808]

^ Oh, so when you challenge what I say, that's totally fine and reasonable, but when I have the audacity to respond, rather than simply accepting every word you say, that's not fine. Got it.

You're in for a rude awakening if you're at this stage of your life and don't realize not everyone in the world is going to magically agree with what you say, just because you say it.

[DWB]

They're totally going about it the wrong way. They should simply charge marketers a monthly subscription to use the service.

If you link out to other shit, you pay to upgrade. Problem solved.

[georgeyw]

was that second paragraph part of the email they sent you? I've never got that bit before from them.

I have received that just recently...

[deltav]

You're in for a rude awakening if you're at this stage of your life and don't realize not everyone in the world is going to magically agree with what you say, just because you say it.

Likewise if you've reached this stage and not realized that being totally condescending & hostile - "another fucking dipshit" "talentless broke clown" etc - is going to make people want to have a discussion with you. Obviously you're working out issues not related to the topic at hand.

[helterskelter808]

^ Obviously you don't even know where you are.

[_Richard_]

^ Oh, so when you challenge what I say, that's totally fine and reasonable, but when I have the audacity to respond, rather than simply accepting every word you say, that's not fine. Got it.

You're in for a rude awakening if you're at this stage of your life and don't realize not everyone in the world is going to magically agree with what you say, just because you say it.

[DWB]

^ Obviously you don't even know where you are.

[MainstreamGuy]

Nothing new, dude... We have been saying this for a long time.

I had mine closed over 1 year ago. Even long before Yahoo purchase.

Right now, I can only use tumblr for my link building campaigns in SeNuke, to my Money Site. I treat tumblr as a Social Bookmark site in SeNuke. Don't expect to put a tumblr full of affiliate codes like refer-ccbill, have 1000 followers, and try to last long. That is not going to work.

[mopek1]

Another fucking dipshit who thinks the world owes him a living.

I'm the OP .... how do you figure that?