Am I Famous Now…

Since some days I am pretty pissed. I admire the tact of certain people. What did happen?

I wrote some days ago a blogathon post and also pimped that post in their forums. All I actually wanted to do was helping people who might not have thought of those options. I know I would do anyything for the charity I have chosen which is also my employer. I participate to the Blogathon in my freetime. Of course I told them I am participating and we will internally even send out an email and forward it to every community and volunteer group world wide. My purpose is not that much to collect money, but more to spread the idea of the organization and make it more popular. Especially in the US.

I predict Emmaus hard times in the next years with the growing popularity of Freecycle. Of course I totally support the idea of Freecycle but at the same time it will make life for charities as the one I work and blog for harder.

Anyway, back to the topic. I think during events like the Blogathon all the tricks are allowed. And I have no problem with certain suspicions like mentionned in the comments of that post. But what does bother me is why can’t people just send an email, PM or whatever? Especially since there is a clear difference in tone between reactions from one person in the comments and in the forums.

The Blogathon is a trust-based system, which is why we only allow donations to be made directly to the charity. Individual fundraising efforts like yours, while admirable, are far too difficult to track, and the event would be inundated with scammers quickly.

(blog comments)

Uh….you may not use the Blogathon to make money for yourself. That is very much against the spirit of the event. …
Could you please remove or clarify your post? Thanks.

(public forums)

Twice the same person. Now I am a pretty open/public person. You ask me publicly and I’ll answer you publicly. Of course it was no surprize to me when EVERYONE at work confronted me yesterday and today with the comment and the fact that the ads are still up.

So :
No I won’t fucking remove the ads, unless pro ad $100 are sponsored. My boss knows about the ads and the ads are all registered in the name of Emmaus. Actually I will still integrate more ads, as can be read in the post.

I will remove the ads, if the Blogathon organization becomes that professional, to start get in touch with organizations like Google, Microsoft and/or Text-Links-Ads today, to make sure that next year’s event covers those options. Let me think :
- Surf frame with ads. Easy to check how many times a site has been visited (stats/referrer/other tricks) so no rocket science hard to calculate who gets how much.
- Possibility to run your own ads (outside of the surf frame), under the name of Blogathon (read the money goes to Blogathon and they pay it to the charity after the event). I am sure sites like TLA, Blogads and Adbrite would certainly promote an event like this and (help) find advertizers even tho the event only takes 24 hours.

Oh btw an auction platform would be nice too. Or again I’ll have to be borderliner and run my own one.

That has kept me busy pretty much the last 3 days. An email, a PM and certainly a consequent line in the comments/reactions would have made me feel better, less offended. Yes I do consider the question valid and answered them politely (but I still would prefer to delete the comments). I even said I would provide all info about my boss, charity so they could verify this, but still I am annoyed. No, I don’t like being suspicionned implicitely.

Sidenote. I can tell you 70 pull-ups/day are just too much, especially if you’re not used to do pull-ups
Back to 2 designs, 3 new blogs in the start blocks and erm… oh well just being busy as usual now. Btw I think I need to start ranting again here. But the upcoming design will be more rant optimized ;)