Making money with a clear conscience

Yesterday I wrote about gaming the system with fake backlinks. There were at least two comments that seemed to express some confusion, so (against my better judgment) I will expand upon that today.

I suppose it's understandable that people are confused. There is tremendous amount of horribly bad advice to be found at HubPages and on the Internet in general.

Please note that when I say "at HubPages", I mean in forum posts and hubs, not in official documentation in the HubPages learning center. What HubPages itself has to say about these subjects is good advice, not bad.

Google is also a good place to get advice. At the end of this article I will include some links to what you should be reading, but before we get to that, I'd like to set a tone.

Honesty

It's a simple word, isn't it? I don't need to define it for you; any normal adult knows what is honest and what is not. We don't need to get into a long discussion of white lies and moral relativism here, do we?

We all lie at times. We lie to protect others, we lie to protect ourselves. I'm no different than anyone else in that regard. We all have lines we will not cross and places where our honesty can be sorely tested. This is not a place where I want to get into all of that, but I do want to explore one particular tug of war that occurs in this context. That's the conflict of honesty and money.

I don't want to get into moral extremes here. We can acknowledge that someone who steals bread to feed his starving family because he has no other choice can be forgiven.

The snapshot above is of my Google Adsense earnings over the past eight years. I put it there to ask a question.

Is that enough money that obtaining it would justify lying in your mind?

That's a simple enough question, isn't it? I didn't complicate it with mentioning a specific person you'd be lying to. I didn't say what you'd be lying about. I just want to know if you would lie to obtain $75,000.00.

I don't have any hesitation on that. My answer is a flat "no" and always will be.

For some people, the answer will be "Maybe". I don't think we'll get any flat "Yes" votes (I sure hope not), but let's explore some of the reasons that you might hedge your answer to that question.

Would you need to know what your chances of getting caught are?

Does it matter what the consequences are from getting caught? Some people wouldn't mind being embarrassed by getting caught in a lie; for others that might matter a lot.

Obviously the $75,000 had to come from somewhere. If you are lying to get it, plainly you are cheating someone else out of it.

That can get complicated, though. Let's say that there is an abandoned bank account that will be distributed to the general State funds if no one claims it, but with just a little forgery, you can get it. There is no legitimate owner, so it's very close to "stealing from nobody".

Or your lie might take that $75,000 from someone who has $75 billion. Does that change things for you?

But wait - there's more to that $75 billion case, isn't there?

Does it matter to you if the source of the $75,000 might be suspect itself? In other words, if the person or entity you are lying to obtained their money by dishonest means, does that affect your feelings?

Lying for Adsense

As I mentioned, the specific $75,000 in that photo came from Google Adsense. You'll have to take my word on this, but I obtained it without dishonesty. Specifically, I mean that I never created fake links intended to make Google think that my site had more value than another.

A false link is a lie. You can justify it in all the ways mentioned above, but it is a lie.

You may think that it's OK to lie to Google because they are an evil monster with billions of ill gotten dollars in their coffers. You may think that lies are justified because other people lie - obviously other people create false links every day.

You may think that you aren't taking anything that belongs to anyone else. Of course you are - if you gain SERP (Search Engine Results Position) by lying to Google and Bing, you are taking money from the person who held the top spot before you took it.

Did that person get there by lying? Does that change your feelings? Is it OK to push them out because they are frantically engaging in gray or black hat SEO themselves?

What if they are not? What if, for example, you are pushing one of my high ranking pages downward?

Does any of this bother you?

As I have had these discussions in the forums here and at other sites, I know that some people simply don't care about any of the moral issues. They simply refuse to see any of it as anything but a game.

Some will even blame Google, saying that it is their fault for putting value on backlinks. Others will simply admit that they will do what they have to do to make money and that they consider anyone who does not to be a fool.

I hope I have made it very clear how I feel about it. I feel that fake linking has polluted the Internet with junk and has stolen money out of my pocket. I don't like people who scam SERP.

Google has some very simple advice that I have always followed. You'll find it in the link below, and I have quoted them many times in many places.

(From Google's "Link Schemes" page)

The best way to get other sites to create relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet community. The more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it. Before making any single decision, you should ask yourself the question: Is this going to be beneficial for my page's visitors?

Pretty simple, isn't it? Will whatever you are about to do be beneficial to your visitors? Is your action intended to benefit them or is it intended to benefit you?

Answer that question honestly and you will always do the right thing.

Purity tests

If you'd like to explore the limits of your own honesty, "purity tests" are an interesting exercise. You can find them by Googling for that phrase, but here is someone who started collecting online purity tests a long time ago.