Jonathan Burdon

I have written a pretty in-depth review of Jonathan Burdon and AlreadyHosting.com concerning their affiliate fraud campaigns here. I even discovered that Jonathan Burdon is directly using cookie stuffing to obtain fraudulent affiliate commissions.  You can watch a short video demonstrating the cookie stuffing for MDDHosting, BlueHost, HostMonster, and WebHostingPad in this video.  If you’re not very familiar with how affiliate systems work, the basic premise is that sites will use outbound links to the provider that place a cookie on the user’s computer to identify the referral so that the affiliate can be paid.

In an article about Jonathan Burdon [which is likely written by Jonathan] it is claimed that “There is one *unnamed* company on the web that refuses to pay Jonathan for his contract so they have launched a smear campaign against him, please ignore their comments,” and the article goes on to say “If users will take a few moments to visit Jonathan’s sites they will soon realize that his site is a great resource and that the individuals writing the slanderous posts about him are simply incorrect.” Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/branding-articles/jonathan-burdon-webmaster-2848333.html

It seems that Jonathan Burdon believes that I’m personally launching a smear campaign about him and goes so far as to claim my posts are slanderous.  What I find particularly interesting, is that I have only posted verifiable, factual information and even the email communications with Jonathan Burdon.  I’ve not posted or said anything that wasn’t simply true and verifiable.  To be entirely honest, I don’t care about Jonathan Burdon or his reputation but only that he doesn’t continue committing affiliate fraud and, as such, stealing money from other hosting providers.  I publicly challenge Jonathan Burdon to disprove any of the information I’ve posted about him or AlreadyHosting.com.

I’ll be straight and to the point as to why Jonathan Burdon (AlreadyHosting.com) has not been paid for their affiliate commissions – they’ve committed affiliate fraud and, as such, we terminated them as an affiliate.  In performing cookie stuffing, not only has Jonathan’s site immediately taken credit for everybody who visited his page whether the page was helpful or not in the provider obtaining said new customer but it has done so under the false pretenses of being a “Review” of which the page was most certainly not.  Any provider that relies upon word of mouth and quality reviews to obtain customers will have a large portion of their customers who simply search Google for reviews of their company.  As soon as one of our potential customers clicks on the AlreadyHosting.com link to read the review of MDDHosting they will already be giving AlreadyHosting.com credit for the purchase even if the visitor was only on the page for a tenth of a second and didn’t find any useful information.

Jonathan Burdon has submitted a DMCA Takedown Notice to us and our data center to have his email conversation removed from public view under the false pretense of his emails being “original works” that he claims are protected by U.S. Copyright Laws.  While I do very much appreciate Copyright laws and their protection of intellectual property; I do believe publishing of Jonathan Burdon’s emails qualify under “fair use” and, as such, as soon as the DMCA Takedown period has passed (10 to 14 days) said emails will be published here once again along with some more emails not yet published.

It is my own personal opinion that the only one being damaging to Jonathan Burdon’s reputation is Jonathan Burdon.

Here are some more sources of interesting information:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=963915

http://www.scottswezey.com/blog/2010/jonathan-burdon-wants-to-sue-you-if-you-link-to-someone-that-doesnt-like-him/

Update – 07/24/2010

Upon further research it does appear that Mr. Burdon is indeed correct about emails and copyright and as such the emails that were previously posted and removed due to his DMCA notification will not be reposted.

The individual signed up using a first name and last initial only, their mailing address was a mail forwarding address, and many other red flags were sent up when this individual attempted to order services.

Here is a complete view of the email conversation with all personally identifying information redacted and by all means read it over and let me know what you think in the comments.

This individual came to us from WebHostingTalk.com so I’m curious how they are going to portray this email conversation.  I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what they have to say.

Anybody with enough experience in the industry knows that most “web hosting review” and “top 10 web hosts” type of sites are simply affiliate link farms where the goal is to pull in as many visitors to click on their affiliate links as possible.  Someone experienced in the industry who has “been there, done that” will often see through this and knows to conduct their own research and won’t fall for these tricks but someone new to the industry and turning to Google for advice won’t.  While there isn’t anything inherently wrong with that, what bothers me is when the site makes commission in a misleading way.  Some sites actually do write up a decent review of the provider and provide links to sign up which is entirely understandable but some are not so honest and straightforward in their dealings.

One such site that is operating in a misleading way is “AlreadyHosting.com” which is operated by Jonathan Burdon of Murray, Kentucky.  While going over our affiliate sales I noticed that one particular affiliate had an extraordinarily high conversion rate and to be honest I wanted to know what they were doing to achieve a conversion rate of 9%.

Their site “reviews” as of this writing 111 companies which is not a lot when you look at the hosting industry itself as having thousands of individual providers.  When you look at any one of their providers that they review you may be surprised at the utter lack of any content or reviews (I certainly was).  I have pictured the page that I found was sending the affiliate referrals to us and commented directly in the image as to how their methods are misleading. Not only does every host that they “review” offer links to “Promo pricing” and “Coupon Codes & Promotional Links”, but every one of these links goes directly to the provider dropping the affiliate code without giving any promotional codes or pricing.

I contacted Jonathan (read entire conversation here) and explained to him that we felt that he was misleading his visitors by offering links to coupon codes and promotional pricing when those links actually just dropped them on the affiliate URL where no such information can be found.  We let him know that we were doing so pro-actively and that while we could have let him continue sending us visitors and simply refused to pay him any money at a later date but that we simply were not that type of company.

AlreadyHosting.com uses it’s SERP power to be seen for “[Hosting Company Name] Review” which means that the customer isn’t simply browsing for a list of providers but is looking for specific information on a provider that they are already considering.  At the time of this writing I did a Google search for “GreenGeeks Review” and in 9th place is “GreenGeeks Review & Coupon Codes | AlreadyHosting.com”.  Upon visiting this URL you will see that there is no review but there are links promising promotional pricing and coupon codes which anybody that is already considering that provider is going to click on.  As soon as the visitor clicks on the link they are taken to the provider’s site and should that visitor continue researching the company before buying – AlreadyHosting will obtain commission on the sale due to the visitor having been interested in coupon codes and promotional pricing.

In my conversation with Jonathan I explained to him that we were more than happy to keep him on board with us as an affiliate as long as he was willing to modify the page to actually link to the content it claims to link to (i.e. promotional information or coupon codes) or to simply not claim to link to such content if it isn’t doing so and rather than editing the review page to modify or remove the misleading hyperlinks Jonathan decided to respond with a threat:

If you do not reconsider we will keep your
review active and will tell our readers how you treat affiliates and will
directly recommend that they sign up for another company. I will also
invest a lot in SEO for that page to ensure that it ranks high for all of
your keywords.

Upon visiting the “MDDHosting Review” on AlreadyHosting.com after this email exchange I found that he has updated the page with an “Important Note” stating that we had discontinued his affiliate account with us, which we have.  I have no particular problem with this but what I do find interesting is the site claims to be a site containing the “BEST WEB HOSTING REVIEWS” which would lead the average hosting consumer to believe that they either have tried and reviewed the services they “review” directly or they have input from third parties who have done so and as such list them based upon their quality of service and support which is obviously not the case.  Should any of these “best web hosting providers” find that AlreadyHosting.com is misleading their potential customers and committing affiliate fraud by using misleading hyperlinks AlreadyHosting.com may end up having to place this notice on more pages than just ours.

At the end of the day I don’t suggest trusting any of the “Web Hosting Review” or “Top 10 Web Hosts”  sort of sites as they are all affiliate driven and a vast majority of them are simply misleading.  If you do happen across a site offering coupon codes or promotional codes and it turns out there are none to be had make sure to clear your cookies so that you don’t pay these crooks for misleading you.  I highly suggest a resource that is not affiliate driven for researching hosting providers such as the WebHostingTalk.com Forums.

Feel free to read about Mr. Burdon and AlreadyHosting.com’s less than ethical strategies to obtain affiliate commissions:

• http://www.mikedvb.com/2010/03/21/beware-of-web-hosting-review-and-top-10-web-hosts-sites/
• http://www.mikedvb.com/2010/07/19/jonathan-burdon-apparently-posting-facts-is-a-smear-campaign/

The most important quality required in a person starting their own web hosting provider is resourcefulness – when you are new to hosting there are certainly going to be roadblocks that you come across and questions that you do not know the answers to.  Being resourceful means that even if you don’t know the answer immediately you know where to look to find the answer.  The vast majority of support issues that clients raise could be answered simply by visiting Google.com and typing in the question or a description of the issue.  Unless you are an expert on everything (keep dreaming) then you either need to be resourceful or you will very quickly find yourself being asked questions you cannot answer which leads to very unhappy customers and bad reviews.

The second most important quality required is good business sense – such as knowing that offering unlimited master reseller accounts for $7/month is not going to lead to anything but a quick rise and and even quicker fall. It is very important that any entrepreneur sits down and writes up a solid business plan setting both short-term and long-term goals as well as planning out how the business is going to achieve these goals.  While it is possible to start a business and be successful without a business plan it is highly unlikely and I would say personally that it is the exception to the rule.  Without a business plan not only is it impossible to know if you are getting where you need to be but it is impossible to determine what changes should be made to help meet any goals that you may have in mind.  You need to be able to make the big decisions without having to go to your friends, family, or others in the hosting industry to ask them what they suggest.

The third most important quality is a basic understanding of marketing. Many new hosting providers try to compete on price with the major players in the industry which is another issue that anybody with solid business sense is going to know from the start is simply not going to work 99% of the time.  Larger providers are able to offer more features and resources at lower prices simply due to their ability to obtain hardware, software licenses, and other necessary tools at much lower prices by dealing in bulk.  As a small provider you will not have the ability to get such good deals on your resources and as such attempting to compete on price with the larger providers in most cases will lead quickly to the demise of your company.  Understanding the basics of marketing will help you not only get your company’s name out there but will also help to convert potential customers that do make it to your web site.

I will post more on Starting and Running a Web Hosting Business within the next few days so be sure to check back for Part Two!

I was doing the math on the licensing structure (we’ll go with the 1-CPU Enterprise license as this example).

I will start by saying that I realize it is in LiteSpeed Technologies’ best interests for you to lease your license from them as this gives them the most profit/income etc… where as an Owned license is generally seen as a larger up-front investment to reduce long-term costs.

I am also aware that I am comparing monthly lease to a yearly ownership as I am wanting to compare the extremes (smallest up-front investment vs the largest).

Owned licenses are an investment into LiteSpeed Web Server/Technologies and I always look at investments based upon how well they will return and how long until they return. A 39 month wait until the investment begins to return is a tad too long in my opinion and as you read on you will see the details of my analysis of their licensing program.

The primary problem that I see is that the Owned licensing doesn’t really reduce long-term costs fast enough – the argument could be seen either way that either the leasing prices need increased (sorry, have to share both view points) or that the owned licensing needs to be reduced either the initial purchase or the support renewal costs.

The price of a 1-CPU Enterprise Leased license is $32/month or $384 paid monthly for a year.

The price of a 1-CPU Enterprise Owned license is $41.58/month or $499 paid yearly.

At these prices you could have a Leased license for 15.6 Months for the price of an Owned license for one year – which makes sense if you think about it.  At the end of the first year if you want to continue support and upgrades for your owned license you then have to pay $99 for a support renewal.  You do not have to pay any such renewal fee for Leased license.

The price of a 1-CPU Enterprise Owned license for two years is $598 which would get you 18.69 months of Leased licensing – so after you have your owned license for over 18 and a half months you’ve broken even on your investment of an owned license.  While a year and a half is not a tremendous amount of time – it is asking for a huge investment of your money up front.  To make the Owned license an option you have to be willing to invest over a year and a half into LiteSpeed before you even break even.

After 18.69 months of being on an Owned license and having paid the $99 support fee after a year you will be at approximately $8.25/month for each owned license which isn’t terribly bad (a savings over leased of $23.75/month), but keep in mind it took over a year and a half to get to this point which leads me to my next concern.

The next major concern in my eyes with the current structure is that for the Owned license to “pay for itself” (to return on my original investment) which is one of the primary reasons I look at owned licenses over leased – it will take an additional  21 months for a total of 39 months before going Owned has “paid for itself” and returns on your initial owned licensing investment will be realized if you don’t include the support Renewals. The first and second renewal for a total addition of $198 because by this point you’re already at 39 months before going Owned has paid for itself.

Is it really intentional on the part of LiteSpeedTech to make an Owned license holder have to wait 39 months before they can start to see a return on their investment of going Owned?

What are your thoughts? Post comments!

The issue is that the Michael Jackson funeral is the largest web event in history. This is causing sluggish response times everywhere.

David E
SoftLayer CSA

We have had several clients submit tickets saying things such as “My site is loading slowly or not at all” and in my testing I have found that it is difficult to make connections across the country depending on what backbone your internet service provider is using.  It seems that Level3 and RoadRunner are having some trouble with the amount of traffic being transferred across their backbones where as I am seeing beautiful performance out of the Comcast backbone myself.

Upon asking for further detail from our datacenter, SoftLayer, this is what the representative had to say:

We are getting reports of sluggish response from all locations. There is no point of origin. It is internet wide.

If you are browsing the internet right now and everything is running smoothly then you can consider yourself lucky.  If you do run your own web site and you are having trouble connecting to it or you are receiving reports from your clients that your site is down there isn’t much you can do but tell them that the internet is extraordinarily congested due to the Michael Jackson funeral today and that we will all just have to wait this out.

There is also a thread that has been started by a user having issues with the internet over at the good old WebHostingTalk.com discussing that they are having issues connecting to WebHostingTalk.com where as other users are reporting no issues at all.  There is no definite way to tell if you will or will not have problems and you may have problems visiting one site while not having problems connecting to another.

Are you having trouble connecting to your own site or a site that you frequent?  Post a comment and let us know!

A great example as to when business social networking helps is when an exploit is discovered and affects one company. Information about the exploit can spread across the social network and cause other providers to proactively protect themselves from the issue.  If you want a specific example of an issue you can Google for “HyperVM fsckVPS” and I am sure you will turn up loads of good results about the issue.

If you really want to run a successful business – talk to people who are already in the industry and listen closely to what they have to say.  Do your best to make business related social networking ties with other individuals and businesses in your industry as you may not need them now but I am sure at some point in time you will.

I look at running a business almost like putting together a puzzle: without all of the pieces you can’t complete the puzzle.  I myself operate a very successful web hosting firm and I have found that my firm’s competition often copy what we do in an attempt to become as successful as us however they are only obtaining a few pieces of the puzzle in the process.  It is tremendously saddening that there are companies and entrepreneurs out there that will look outward for ways to be successful rather than looking inward at their business model to evolve it into what it has the potential to be.

When it comes to being successful in business it has very little to do with what other businesses are doing and very much to do with what you and your business are not doing.