Ashwin Kanna sucks and why

You know what they say, if it sounds like it’s too good to be true, then it probably is…?

ContestBlogger alerted me recently to this “full of crap contest” scam. I love the title of this post, “I told you so Ashwin Kanna is full of crap”:

The reason this makes me so angry is because of the way he did it: by hosting a total sham blog contest and promising bloggers that he would give one lucky winner $2,500 if they would link to his pukebag blog.

Well, check out what happened over at Ashwin Kanna’s blog. No, I am not linking to this fool. Please type in the URL yourself if you wish to see what kind of disgrace he has pulled on the unsuspecting internet public.

Some of the blogosphere were sucked in by this nonsense. Thankfully, I was not part of the bloggers that gave this guy a link back. His blog has literally jumped in popularity from no-nothing status to up in the top 10k.

Evil, you say? Yes, it sure is. It’s also wrong.

He awarded a winner alright. Some blog called bloggerslogger that is hosted on wordpress.com. This “lucky” blogger only had one post as of the drawing date of the contest. Suspicious indeed.

If you’ve done a review of Ashwin’s blog, then I’d urge you now to delete the post that links to his site. He doesn’t deserve your linklove or your loyalty. And they say that there’s no such thing as bad publicity? If you don’t want to delete your link, please feel free to update the anchor text to “crappy blog” or something similar.

To say that someone needs to review a lesson in blogging ethics should go without saying.

Here’s what another blogger has to say about the contest sham:

AshwinKhanna.com is a disgrace to the hustle. Please remove all links to his site if you have any in your blogroll or posts, and spread the news so he cannot start another one.

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19 Comments so far

  1. Chee Kui on August 23rd, 2007

    So he won his own contest? Hmm.. something really interesting.

  2. Melissa R. Garrett on August 23rd, 2007

    Okay, I have to admit I got sucked in. I think I was more curious than anything and was wondering how (and why??) anyone would just give away $2500. But I deleted that link a LONG time ago. Sneaky, indeed.

  3. […] Roberta Ferguson: Ashwin Khanna sucks and why […]

  4. cooliojones on August 23rd, 2007

    I hope this will serve as a lesson to anyone who tries to defraud their readers: we will unite and stop you!

  5. […] I’m not going to link to him but you can read more about the situation at Contest Blogger, Roberta Ferguson, and Michael Kwan. Just goes to show you… if it sounds to good to be true, it probably […]

  6. J.T Dabbagian on August 23rd, 2007

    Don’t forget to report that sorry-ass wordpress.com blog to WP. I’m sure they’d love to know what happened with Ashwin, not to mention that HP article is plagiarized from the NY Times!

  7. cooliojones on August 23rd, 2007

    Whoa JT! That’s some good info! I never even realized that, oh yeah, he might have woven a web he can’t get out of!

  8. […] Ashwin Kanna Sucks and Here’s Why - robertaferguson.com […]

  9. Malin on August 23rd, 2007

    Geez, what a jerk!

  10. Blogging Tips on August 24th, 2007

    what really bothers me is that he basically cheated to his technorati score, which many of us worked hard for ours

  11. MB Web Design on August 24th, 2007

    I was kicking myself for not getting round to it, and now I’m glad I didn’t!

  12. Carl Coddington on August 25th, 2007

    I’m wondering if these articles are giving him more popularity. I had never heard of him before this week. Now I am curious to know who he is.

  13. vargas on August 25th, 2007

    He actually got away with it? Huh.

  14. Roberta on August 25th, 2007

    Carl, that’s the main reason I didn’t link to him. He’s gaining popularity like that. He doesn’t deserve the link love or the traffic. He really took the trust of the blogosphere and messed it up. He’ll need a lot of luck to recover from that. Especially with such a tight knit group of people.

  15. Rose on August 26th, 2007

    Well this is just all wrong. Thank you for the heads up.

  16. Christina on August 26th, 2007

    how could he have got away with that? Sounds fishy to me.

  17. blog-nog on August 27th, 2007

    The most unfortunate thing is that all these “complaint” blogs are just giving him more exposure and more “name-recognition” for the Google bots to move him up the search list on Google. He is very clever indeed - this scam continues to reap it’s rewards for him. Who says crime doesn’t pay ?? I suggest you all remove these blogs and any reference to his name - notify technorati, WP and Google they will completely wipe him off the face of the earth- that’s it that’s all. Do not reprint his name.

  18. ONwebCHECK on August 31st, 2007

    jup, blog-nog is abolutly right!

  19. […] Roberta Ferguson - Ashwin Khanna Sucks And Why […]

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