I don’t often retract posts I’ve done but after struggling with this I am going to. I was so excited to join a network I thought I would actually have a part in. business2blogger sounded like a wonderful idea and on their website it seems as if bloggers helped run the show.
They ask you (the blogger) to refer your contacts but what happens if you actually do? Well you get an email at some point during the week. The email is well written and laid out well but then you see an opportunity that you’d like to sign up for. You start thinking great, this must be like Mom Central, I’ll just go in and submit my links and info. They’ll totally let all of us been seen.
That’s not correct!
You go to sign up for a campaign and you are brought to this pretty little green blank screen that tells you all spots have been filled. Wonderful! So I thought I’ll just be on top of it next time and sign up early. Well not so much…
What must bloggers do to actually get into a business2blogger campaign?
- Refer all your wonderful contacts and be okay knowing you will never actually get to work with them through Business2Blogger.
- You MUST not read anything and hurry to sign up for any campaign with openings.
- You must move to the east coast because clearly all emails are sent according to their time.
- Don’t actually have any expectations of working with Business2Blogger unless you are a race horse, or some distorted cheetah with wings.
- And don’t ever try to give them constructive criticism.. you may get the inevitable:
If the service is not for you, please unsubscribe! We certainly don't want to frustrate anyone.
It leaves me feeling like I’m the one who put myself on the line. I, the blogger you want to refer my contacts to to you! What Business2Blogger’s argument is they want to be fair. I totally get that, I’m all about helping those who never get reviews. The ones who would like to get into reviews but can’t or don’t know how. But even Business2Blogger has requirements. Are they checking them? Do they check out the blogs who do somehow magically sign up?
I guess it’s true. Anyone without any experience online can create a blog and/or website and offer services. I guess I should start asking for all your contacts and then offer you nothing in return.
The truth is forget the posts I’ve done
- I’ve never once gotten any exposure.
- I’ve never once gotten an opportunity.
- I’m not allowed to offer suggestions.
- Business2Blogger isn’t worth your time or mine.
About Kristin
I signed up for it, thinking it would be like Mom Central as well, only to be highly disappointed, like you. I am not a race horse, haha, but it seems you have to be to get an opportunity with them.
agreed!
i was excited, as well, but it really has turned into a flop
Wow, thank you for this! I had seen their buttons and banners EVERYWHERE and was tempted to sign up. But I am so busy I kept putting it off. Good thing I did too. Doesn’t sound like it is worth my time. It will be interesting to see if they respond to this blog post
I am on it and I love it!
I have found them to be a great addition to my other groups that I’ve joined.
Now, I am very particular about what I want, and yes, it is a fast paced system that I have on my BlackBerry of time warnings , so I can be sitting at my computer with Google Docs up so I can put in my request as quickly as possible.
But I’ve found some great companies that I work with and the people are tons of fun.
Sorry you haven’t found them to be a strong addition to help with your blogging.
~hugs~
The thing is, I am particular about what I want as well. I don’t sign up for just anything. After I did my first post I had 15 bloggers sign up who I know. I feel a little like I was wrong, and it was then my reputation that was put out there.
After reading your now retracted post, I investigated further and joined myself. Having missed the first few e-mails, I wanted to make sure today I was on the ball. I am on the east coast. We recieved the e-mail at 10 am, and I read through and clicked on one at 10:07, only to have it full. For S&G I clicked through on all the links, only to find every single one, full… this is quite frustrating, and I thought it was just me!
I thought that B2B was going to be a wonderful way to dip my feet in the world of review blogging. But I find that isn’t the case. I was actually considering unsubscribing.
I appreciate you writing this, its nice to know that its not just me.
Amen, Sister!
Their system does not work well the way it is currently set up.
I am in my email almost all the time – I have clicked to sign up literally 30 seconds after I received the email only to find it “full”.
There is no time to read the opp to see if it fits and even without reading, there’s no time. Think it’s safe for businesses to assume that anyone who has successfully submitted a form didn’t have time to read the opp.
I did “get” one, but it wasn’t a fit for me. The information in the opp was not complete enough about what was required so I ended up turning it down after I got detailed post requirement info including the ridiculous “compensation” that was really just a “discount coupon” for me to spend additional money at the sponsor’s site AFTER they were satisfied with a completed post. Ummm…NO.
Am finding it MUCH less frustrating to find review sources on my own.
Can any of you see how its unfair to those who have lives to attend to. Not everyone can sit around their electronic devices all day. We know what can happen in situations like that.
Business2Blogger is only a middle company. I have a feeling on 3rd party middle companies. http://www.delthedad.com/2010/03/02/do-i-think-those-big-brands-exploit-the-mommy-bloggers/
“They ask you (the blogger) to refer your contacts but what happens if you actually do? Well you get an email at some point during the week.” I remember when I heard how they worked, I was kind of skeptical. Serious with all the deceit people create out there, it seems people will say and do what they can to make something of themselves. I am not saying this is true of everyone, but you cannot put it past everyone.
What a way to start. Send me your contacts and let me have little to do. Then when you say anything, I may get offended and tell you to go away. Will you get your contacts or anything to shared? NO.
I looked at a couple of their pitches and they did not look too lucrative. So Kristin point IMO, is you cant do everything and even if you want to do one thing, you cant. You can get $10-$20 opps from reliable pay-per-post companies. And you can sign up with many others for free stuff. To others, sign up and try them out. If it works out than great, you will have less people to climb over to get opps. Otherwise you may realize that it is basically what Kristin found it to be.
Kristin never tries to put anyone/company down. She did not do that here, she was just trying to make a point. And the way Business2Blogger approaches her is to tell her to unsubscribe.
Too bad Kristin did not know how they operate before she convinced others to sign up.
Business2Blogger should have not made the choice to perturb Kristin and try to push her around since she stated her opinion on their service. Its was nothing personal.
I am on East Coast time and never get in and I have clicked in minutes aster one email came in and everything was full. I agree with what youwrote. Not worth my time.
I haven’t heard of them before today, but I think I will pass on joining. Thank you for alerting others to this so they can get details before signing up…
Thank you! I’m glad someone finally said it. I’m removing their button today after yet another frustrating email. One more I got the email right as I was reading my inbox, actually made it to the google doc form, filled it out, and hit submit … POOF… campaign was full. All of this in under 30 seconds. They’re idea of connections is such a crock.
Hi Kristen-
Sorry to hear you haven’t liked our free service. Holly, Shauna and I are Bloggers, just like you, simply trying to make something that can benefit Bloggers and Mommy Businesses as a whole. We’ve only had the doors open for a few short weeks, but in that time have managed to bring over 900 offers to our Bloggers. Sorry you haven’t managed to land one… you’re right, it has been ultra competitive! Good thing it’s free, huh?
One quick point of clarification: we do NOT require Bloggers to refer their Business contacts. We tell them how they can if they WANT to, but it is NOT required to join, or receive the offers.
Our little venture is in its infancy…it’s only 4 weeks old. We change it every day based on the constructive, positive comments and ideas of our users. We’ll change it tomorrow, and the day after, until it works for the most people. We already changed the email schedule to a random basis so that, for example, Eastern Time zone doesn’t always have the advantage of getting theirs at 8am while Pacific Bloggers have to get up at 5am. This suggestion was made by Bloggers, and we adopted it.
One of the things we will be working to do is to give people more clarity in what to expect when they sign up. We don’t charge anything for the service, and to be a Preferred member the only thing we require is the placement of a button on their blog, but otherwise we have no Blogger requirements to “compete” for these offers. That being said, until we find a way to make the program work even better we want people to be realistic in their expectations. We will be working to make sure that people know how competitive it currently is, while we also work to improve the service for everyone.
As I was the one who “wrote” the site, I know that my style of writing is often misinterpreted or misunderstood. Just ask my wife.
That may also be leading to confusion about correct details of the program, and we will be working on clarifying the process for everyone. Until then, we hope that people will understand that Holly, Shauna and I are human (sort of) as well as Bloggers, and we didnt open the doors to Business2Blogger believing it was “perfect” in design. Our 4 week old baby has a lot of growing to do! But ultimately, we hope to keep it a place for Bloggers and Businesses to have opportunities they simply didn’t have before, and keep it FREE!
Sorry you didn’t care for what we are trying to do, but no hard feelings here!
Health, Happiness and Prayers to you,
Jay
Business2Blogger
Hey Kristen,
Jay got around to commenting before I did — See, we race for things too!
I want to reiterate that we are just normal people trying to do something cool. We hope it’s not a failure, being that we are just in our baby phase here. We completely understand your concerns and hope we are able to fix these problems in the very near future!
Hope to see you back one day when we are better at what we are trying so hard to do!
Shauna
Your only problem which could be easily fixed is to open up registrations for campaigns. Also I don’t think Kristin meant that you are required to add contacts it’s just the fact that if you were to.
As a blogger I appreciate both Jay and Shauna’s response.
I’m sorry it sucks when you’re used and don’t even get pimped in the process.
oh my gosh I have been wanting to write this! I actually was going to write something today too. I am so sick of how they run this and it’s not right at all!
What a bum deal! Hopefully something changes with their system soon.
OK, so maybe your header isn’t different…lol. Any-who. I just signed up (or tried to) for the first time this morning (and I joined just after they began) …and found it full. I do live on the east coast…but hadn’t thought too much about it until now. It’s definitely something to think about…thanks Kristin.
It would be nice if they limited the number of sign ups per blogger. On another site today someone stated she got in on three of the offers posted today. I am not sure how she did it, but it would be desirable if they would spread the wealth! That being said, I have been able to sign up once (must have been pure luck) and the experience was positive. They are a new company and they have some room for growth but I also feel everyone’s frustration!
Hi Kristin,
I didn’t know how to respond to this so I decided to wait a day…after a good cry.
I started B2B because I was getting irrelevant offers to blog about stuff and thought other bloggers might be getting those too. I figured that what didn’t interest me might be a passion of another blogger. We have NEVER required you to turn ANY business contacts over to us. THAT WOULD SUCK. Our plan is to do a large button in our sidebar for the blogger (and feature in at least one of our email) that referred the most businesses to us that month. We would be posting our first one on Monday since we have been in business now just a month. If you have other ideas on how we could highlight those amazing people who are helping us, please let me know. I am all about good online karma.
I re-did our blogger information page yesterday after reading your post because we were obviously being unintentionally mis-leading. The new page is here: http://business2blogger.com/bloggers/what-to-expect/ – I would really appreciate any feedback you have. I want to make sure we are reflecting the actual experience.
Two other bloggers and I (Jay and Shauna who have commented above) started and run this thing. I thought it would be fun and would spend a few hours a week promoting it…ha. So much has changed in the last month. We are re-designing, re-working, improving and changing on a daily basis because we are in uncharted territory and this has become a full time labor of love. We started with no money and have made no money. We really, really love suggestions on how we can improve. We are MAKING THIS UP AS WE GO.
I want to apologize for the unsubscribe comment. In context, what I meant was that this free service may not be a good fit for every blogger out there. Bloggers like yourself have a huge following and sphere of influence and are receiving opportunities daily because of the amazing blog you have built. You have probably turned down several of the offers that we are published in our emails.
I am so so sorry. I wish I could take you to coffee and discuss this…
Holly
holly@business2blogger.com – if anyone wants to email me directly with suggestions (I am reading all the ones above!)
.
I signed up for B2B after you posted about it, and I live on the east coast so i did see and was able to sign up for a few pitches…(pre format change) though until a few days ago I hadn’t been accepted into any. Not overly thrilled yet, but we’ll see how it goes. Great post Kristin, looks like you said hat a lot of people were thinking
The sad part is this is not done with. Jay from B2B sent out a new email talking about mobs and how they are forcing him to make changes. Maybe he should just say “Sorry, thanks for the feedback; we are going to implement some changes.” Instead ‘Jay’ says “go away,” and then tells Kristin what times she had accessed their “system” saying that it was her fault for not getting any opps. All Kristin tried to tell them was, if they want to gain more bloggers, open your opps to more people. She helped you all out when you came online….
Instead they took her feedback, said the mob forced them to make changes, and their great solution to fix all this is to make some changes to their system. Better yet, tell Kristin “sorry,” and show some respect. Be a man and stop beating around the bush blaming ‘mobs’ for your problems with your “system.” I am upset with Jay of B2B, because he has other bloggers starting another ‘dislike’ wagon on this ‘mob.’ To me this mob could seem like Kristin who posted about B2B with 20 comments. And that is what I am going to think until someone says otherwise.
I have said my part on here and over here: http://aimeebartis.blogspot.com/2010/03/biz2bloggers-greatness.html
Hopefully someone at B2B gets this and puts an end to all the negativity surrounding B2B and anyone who wants to give honest feedback. That is the reason Kristin mentioned FAIL. And to top it all off Kristin did what she could she B2B came about to help promote and spread the word. This is the kind of respect a lot of people how around the net, why?
it was just good fortune that i even heard of business2blogger. and, it was a twitter search that lead me here. i have to say that i find it curious that the author of this blog has not responded to the comments from the folks from business2blogger. i think that they are making a genuine offer to help, to take suggestions, etc. i have no idea whether i will sign up for the service. i probably will, just because version 1.0 of anything has problems. my larger concern is whether you always have to write a positive review. that seems dishonest. that’s what concerns me most. thanks for the post – it is always difficult to admit when you have made a mistake, even if you’ve been bamboozled.
Holly, I will reach out to by email, I’m sorry I haven’t had the chance to respond. I also go to school full time. I emailed Jay from the day I first joined and said I’d love to work with you guys. In many ways we could benefit from one another.
My feedback: My only feedback is to open registration. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again. I really like the idea behind B2B thus the reason I was so excited about it to begin with. This post was ONLY about registration and I feel B2B has and is going to make changes.
Am I now the MOB because I wrote a post about the registration process? I’m not a completely serious kind of person so maybe it was taken out of context by some of the readers.
But calling me a MOB…
Seems unfair and quite immature for a business to go along with such things. FREE or not!
Dear Kristin,
I am a little unclear what the MOB reference is about. If it is in reference to the last email which referenced Mob Rule and how we will be changing things based on majority rule through a series of surveys. It was very tongue-in-cheek. We, like you are not completely serious and trying to make a situation light.
We will be sending out surveys next week to all our members to give us input as to where they want to see us go from here. We are in a position now that our next step of growth will need major financial investment to build something that will work and we want to create something that people WANT! So, please send suggestions.
I agree with the open registration. Our last and next campaign will have open registration. We are looking for creative and effective ways to narrow down the field – any suggestions? We are seeking enlightenment in this area – ha!
Thanks!
Holly
junecleaver@tx.rr.com
I am back.
I have just read Del’s comment and I really really want to apologize for whatever we have done to make him mad.
The MOB comment which I gather WAS taken from the last email based on what he said was IN NO WAY AN ATTACK ON ANYONE LET ALONE THIS BLOG.
We are completely looking at each and every process that we currently do. We are bloggers with families and trying to fit all this together without neglecting our families. We SHOULD DO MORE. We WILL DO MORE.
I am so so sorry.
Holly
No worries I’ll shoot you an email this weekend I believe it wasn’t your intention to hurt me. It felt a little unfair yes thanks for the continued dialogue Holly