Do not buy gold guides!

Earlier this year a fellow blogger named Markco asked me to have a look at his WoW economics blog, and whether I would allow him to do a guest post on this blog. I had a look at his blog, which looked interesting enough, and allowed his guest post, which created a lot of traffic on his blog. Once he was well established and got lots of visitors, Markco transformed his blog: It was now not only offering WoW economics advice, but was also selling Markco's gold guide. Markco then repeatedly pestered me to promote his gold guide, promising I would make a lot of money. I refused. I do consider gold guides to be the very worst deal you can make on the internet, as you are basically paying for information which you can easily get for free at many places. Buying a gold guide is actually more stupid than buying gold. I am not promoting gold guides, and I considered Markco's bait-and-switch blog to be a clever, but shady and underhand way to quickly attract lots of visitors.

Now you would never again have heard of Markco on this blog, if it wasn't for Gevlon. Markco approached Gevlon with several shady offers designed to promote Markco's gold guide. And Gevlon, while probably not considered the most upstanding citizen of the MMO blogosphere, is intelligent enough to see through scams like that. Actually being anti-social makes scam detection easier, as they are based on social engineering, which is something which simply doesn't work on Gevlon. Gevlon posted his experience with Markco here, and called me as a witness, after Markco mentioned my refusal to cooperate in a mail to Gevlon. I am happy to comply. Selling gold guides is bad enough by itself, but using various underhand ways to promote them, and promising affiliates unrealistic sums they'll never receive is downright repugnant.

Do not buy gold guides! There are dozens of WoW economics blogs which are considerably more up to date, and give better information for free than you are likely to find in any gold guide you had to pay $20 for.