BlogCatalog accepted 21st Century Affiliate Marketing »

Why did BlogCatalog decline my blog?

August 1, 2008 by John Dilbeck
Filed under: Blog Directories, Blogging, Customer Service, Musings

Yesterday morning, I spent some time sprucing up this blog and added it to my blogs on BlogCatalog.

While there, I joined SezWho, added BlogCatalog widgets and links, and – as far as I can see – did everything required to be accepted into their catalog.

I wonder why they declined to add 21st Century Affiliate Marketing to their blog directory.

I received the following email:

Dear John Dilbeck,

Thank you for submitting your blog 21st Century Affiliate Marketing
(http://21stCenturyAffiliateMarketing.com)
to BlogCatalog.

Unfortunately upon reviewing your blog we are unable to grant it access to the directory.

The most common reasons for not getting into Blog Catalog are:

We could not verify ownership of your blog.

A link back, widget or meta-tag is required to verify site ownership. visit:
http://www.blogcatalog.com/buttons.php

for more information.

The URL you submitted is not a blog.

The URL you submitted is solely for commercial purposes, or is suspected to be spam.

Your blog is brand new and/or doesn’t have enough content to make it truly valuable.

If this is the case, please resubmit after you have made more postings.

Your blog contains pornographic material.

At the time of review your blog was unavailable or there was a typo in your submission URL.

Please make sure the URL submitted is correct and accessible

If you believe this to be a mistake, you can login to Blog Catalog and change anything which may have caused it to get declined. After updating your blog, it will be put back into the submission queue.

If you have any
questions/comments/suggestions/ideas
please feel free to contact us.

Thanks,
BlogCatalog

I’m sure they could verify ownership of the blog. My name and photos are all over it.

I have links and widgets installed that link to BlogCatalog.

The URL I submitted is definitely a blog.

The URL I submitted is used for commercial purposes, but not solely. It definitely is not spam.

The blog is relatively new, but I think it already has content to make it valuable.

I’m pretty sure that it doesn’t contain pornographic material. I may not be able to define pornography, but I can recognize it when I see it.

Perhaps the blog was unavailable. I don’t know. It’s available now.

The submission URL is correct. I’ve tested it.

So, I have no idea why BlogCatalog declined to add 21st Century Affiliate Marketing to its directory.

Maybe someone will take a moment and explain the decision.

This brings up a wider consideration, and that’s poor customer service.

I would think that a specific reason easily could be given for declining a blog submission. That way, we wouldn’t be left guessing and wasting time addressing something that could have been specifically addressed.

I had no problem getting it accepted into BlogCatalog’s competitors’ directories, including MyBlogLog.com.

Now, it’s not going to distress me if they don’t accept this blog in their directory. I still like BlogCatalog and I’ll continue using some of their widgets on my site – although I may drop the one that shows a big fat zero ranking in the bottom left corner of every page.

I’m going to resubmit the blog to BlogCatalog this morning and then I’ll move on, whether it is accepted or not.

I’m really disappointed in how they handled this and the lack of any specificity in their reply to my submission. I know they could have done better. I think this reflects poorly on them, but I’m just one blogger out of many thousands of members of their service.

Perhaps I just don’t deserve better treatment?

Act on your dream!

Tags: blog, BlogCatalog, Customer Service, directory