Now, Morrus over on ENWorld says you don't have to pay to make the list, and in his case, he might be right - but I've had confirmation from others that paying is what got them on the list. ENworld may have made the list legitimately but much (most? all?) of that list is paid for.
Alright, email sent. I'll share the answers I get.
edit: lets see the Alexa rankings of some of these top sites.
at #45
at #50
at #60
at #62
at #63
#64
Now, here's an unlisted number that hasn't paid:
I'm not saying every site on the list has paid, but this fairly random sampling shows some obvious ones that did.
I know that TheRPGSite did not pay for it, and appearing on it was a surprise.
ReplyDeleteI added the Alexa rankings of some of these "Top 100 RPG Blogs" and it is obvious that there is something screwy with the list. Now, it may be that the top 10 or 15 are legit - but if you take out Reddits and Youtube channels, your list of 75 shrinks to 66.
DeleteNow I'm wondering if they "seeded" the list with a few legit sites to make it look kosher, then got money to add the rest of them "Look, for just $300 a year your site can be listed along with RPGsite and Enworld"!
ReplyDeleteto be fair, its 3 bucks a month - 36 bucks a year
Deletebut if 75 out of 100 pay 3 bucks a month = 225 a month - thats a lot of cash with pages upon pages of lists.
And thus have you sussed out their business model. :-)
DeleteThese sorts of scams have been floating around since the earliest days of the Internet. In the pre-Google days, they might even have been somewhat useful, since it was hard to find sites devoted to things you were interested in, back in the days when Yahoo was manually curated.
Makes a lot of sense.
DeleteNone of the RPG site owners I know personally paid to be in that list. Myself (UK Role Players, number 26) included.
ReplyDeleteMy blog (dieheart.net) appears on it but I haven't paid. It was a surprise when the feedspot owner contacted me.
ReplyDeleteWe got that email over at Gnome Stew, and pretty much just ignored it. We've been getting "listed" on blogs and top video game sites forever. Feedspot is a pretty big name, but it seemed just like another one of those scams where they list you wanting to get support and traffic back to their list.
ReplyDeleteI got a response to my email (I posted about it earlier this morning)
Deletebasically, its a mixed list - some "organic", some paid to be listed.
organic is great. a paid list that is noted as such? fine
a hybrid list that doesn't indicate that much of the list is essentially paid advertising? that's dishonest.
I got this email too. I am on the list and have not paid anything.
ReplyDelete