A couple days ago John Chow and I endorsed ZK to win the Invesp internet marketer of 2009.
ZK was crushing everyone in the contest…
But evidently Invesp wanted someone else to win and removed most of his votes.
If you can’t trust these guys to run a legit contest can you really trust them to run your PPC campaigns or optimize your conversions?
Seems like a shady organization.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
More about Jeremy at http://www.shoemoney.com!
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December 8, 2009 at 11:34 pm
That is a shame!! I have seen this before. I dont understand why they have to choose a popular blogger/marketer to win the contest and not give a shit to the ones who deserve it..
December 8, 2009 at 11:37 pm
Khalid from Invesp is a trustworthy guy and the marketer of the year linkbait is a pretty good idea. However, I think the biggest flaw is using a voting contest to determine the results. Of course most people are going to vote for selfish reasons and there is going to be a lot of gaming of the system.
Not sure why you guys are pimping ZK for this, but that pretty much exposes the flaw with the voting.
Anyway, we’ll see how the list turns out. Haha, can’t imagine ZK beating out guys like Shoemoney, JChow, or even Seth Godin.
December 8, 2009 at 11:48 pm
Why put him as a nominee if you don’t want him to win?
I think the contests are stupid personally… always boils down to a popularity contest.
It was a unique idea 9 years ago.
December 9, 2009 at 1:05 am
Thanks Shoe for promoting me
my votes were about 7.8 % after your post …they are now at 1.2 %
Maybe someone from Invesp has the answer
They never thought you guys would nominate an unknown guy from the list and make them look stupid
I am sure this is their last dig at top internet marketers list
December 9, 2009 at 1:21 am
I second what Gyutae said. Khalid is a good guy. This contest so far has been heavily gamed. You should have seen what the vote looked like when the contest *just* was announced; there was one person with the majority of the vote. One can only guess how he got there.
To answer your question – nomination was completely open. Maybe ZK nominated himself. Maybe someone else nominated him. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter… but yes, the popularity contest (and the fact that the voting has been truly gamed) makes this contest not about “best internet marketers” at all.
December 9, 2009 at 1:59 am
Yeah, I agree – unfortunately stuff like that always turns into a popularity contest. I’d like to see a list based on real profit/revenue numbers not on a bunch of fake/ambiguous votes. Can’t really argue something like that. Although most people probably wouldn’t be willing to share too much…
December 9, 2009 at 3:56 pm
If this is based on profit and revenue, then I am definitely down for that game.
I will P&L my work at BC, although I don’t think LM would appreciate me sharing those numbers.
But seriously though, great idea about revenue.
December 9, 2009 at 5:58 am
yeh, this is going to happen with any type of voting system like sms, clicks etc..
But once it’s up, it should run as it is..
best luck guys..
December 9, 2009 at 12:59 am
@GP
Would nt that be awesome
December 9, 2009 at 4:07 am
This khalid guy does not seem trustworthy at all.
December 9, 2009 at 12:07 am
I have run a few contests over the past few years. Some of them have been complete wastes of time and money. Others like the one I did with Andy Liu for his charity, which won Gyutae
, and the recent one I did to get in the Pubcon Poker tourney, were hugely successful.
I find the more transparent I can make them, the better they turn out.
Also, you never know where they will end up, so once you state the rules and the contest, you better be ready to roll to wherever it leads.
December 9, 2009 at 2:02 am
Yep, that was an awesome contest you and Andy ran.. great stuff, can’t thank you guys enough.
Your next one for ASW should be pretty sweet as well.
December 9, 2009 at 12:12 am
they remove his vote??? so they already know the winner???… their system just lost any credibility…. any awards suck…
gonna say like jay-z
“men and women lie, numbers don’t ahahahahha”
December 9, 2009 at 1:08 am
Jeremy, the only votes the system removes are duplicate votes (from the same IP address). As of today, the system had about 8k votes. After removing duplicate votes, we are down to 6k votes.
ZK had close to 60% of his votes from the same ip address. We had also instances where scripts where used to insert votes to the system. Of the 223 people on the list, there are less than 7 nominees who are getting 90% of the duplicate votes. We thought of removing these nominees from the list.
Why did we allow these people on the list? We had 600 nominations over a period of 3 weeks and we wanted to give those who we felt are making an impact online marketing a chance.
Also, the final votes will count only towards 20% of the final ranking. I would think that you could have easily inquired rather before posting this and without knowing the truth.
December 15, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Is it 50% or 60%?
December 9, 2009 at 1:45 am
Oh thats bad to know that they are removing votes.. It is possible that request for vote like you did against Invesp contest rules
what did you say?
December 9, 2009 at 2:02 am
Jeremy, the only votes the system removes are duplicate votes (from the same IP address). As of today, the system had about 8k votes. After removing duplicate votes, we are down to 6k votes.
ZK had close to 50% of his votes from the same ip address. We had also instances where scripts where used to insert votes to the system. Of the 223 people on the list, there are less than 7 nominees who are getting 90% of the duplicate votes. We thought of removing these nominees from the list.
Why did we allow these people on the list? We had 600 nominations over a period of 3 weeks and we wanted to give those who we felt are making an impact online marketing a chance.
Also, the final votes will count only towards 20% of the final ranking. You could have easily inquired before posting this.
December 9, 2009 at 2:21 am
I guess they don’t like your idea to beat some biog boys thorugh ZK marketing. though i feel he deserve to be in top TEN, No doubt he is a great guy.
December 9, 2009 at 4:01 am
pretty bad they are removing his votes cos i bet he should have won
December 9, 2009 at 4:33 am
Did they react to the post here and over at johnchow.com? I would love to see a reaction from them.
December 9, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Has anybody checked their bot filtering system? It looks like a very basic voting system to me so isn’t it possible that maybe 1 or 2 of the other guys have found a better way of gaming it than using a couple of A-listers?
When it only shows votes as a percentage of the total how do you know if some votes have been removed?
December 9, 2009 at 1:22 pm
f’in LAME
December 9, 2009 at 1:47 pm
I ll take being featured on John and Shoe on the same day as a much bigger achievement than being in the list by Invesp. You guys rock , thank you all for your support…Thanks Shoe for all the support , God Bless
December 9, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Good call and nice vision… no matter how you look at it – you win!
December 9, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Really bummed to read all of this guys/ gals.
I was hoping that people would of made a bigger stink that only 30% of the listed names were women.
I think that’s a much more interesting conversation.
Instead of putting comments that can be construed as slanderous, support your friend/ favorite by asking others to support them, not by multi-voiting.
Obviously you can game this by doing a chache refresh. But, I think Invesp is watching for that exact thing.
ZK seems like he’s a good guy, obviously well loved. It helps him if you use your tools to get votes.
I emailed friends, family and colleagues. I wrote an article, posted to Twitter and Facebook, and even went on linkedin.
Considering the turn out I got from my minimal efforts, think of how much more you can do, if you support him with the same.
Keep it positive, it makes us all look bad when we’re trying to slag and undermine because we don’t like the rules of the game.
Best of luck to you ZK.
Cheers,
Brad Fredricks ~ @digitalsavant
December 9, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Yep, that’s what I thought. Since there is no way to check the legit person in a first place, these polls are no value to me at all.
December 9, 2009 at 3:45 pm
What a bunch of fools over there, it just killed their reputation.
December 9, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Tweeting away …
December 9, 2009 at 4:24 pm
I’m not knocking ZK here, but don’t you think your endorsements artificially inflated the results?
How many people do you think are going to vote for ZK just because you said so? I bet most of them have never even heard of the guy.
That’s not very fair for the other contestants.
On another note they left out a lot of great marketers who made big things happen in 2009, so to hell with their contest.
December 9, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Sure as I said these are always a popularity contest… rarely does the real winner win.
December 13, 2009 at 12:16 am
Isn’t marketing a popularity contest? and isn’t getting endorsements part of marketing.
No fair, “insert popular celebrity here” is endorsing my competitor and they have an ad on the Superbowl.
Which came first?
The resources to get the celebrity endorsement and ad placement,
or was it a build up of all the other marketing and business success that earned the resources to to get the “winning advantage?
December 9, 2009 at 4:25 pm
As I mentioned on JC’s site, so many “contests” are rigged anyway. None of this should surprise anyone.
December 9, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Rest assured, Invesp is not trying to rig the voting process. We have no bias against ZK or anyone else. We are merely trying to minimize ballot stuffing by removing duplicate votes that come from the same IP address. This is done in batch and not in real time. That’s why ZK and other nominees lost votes all in one fell swoop. In the spirit of complete transparency, I am making the data backup file from prior to the du-duping available for examination (minus the database identifiers):
http://www.invesp.com/bak.mysql.2009-12-07_03.33.26_db.jos_apoll_votes.zip
With any public voting contest, it’s a challenge to keep all the gaming in check. So any advice on how we can do this better would be welcomed.
Hope this clears things up.
December 9, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Khalid just fyi I was not moderating your comment…
Your ip 68.40.143.44 is flagged as spam by wordpresses akismet plugin.
December 13, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Classic, +1 for Jeremy. I will have to add that IP to my blogs.
???Invesp???
You ran a contest that counts clicks, and you didn’t block duplicate IP’s to begin with???? Did you even take steps to block proxy votes? I didn’t even bother to take the time to look a the file you linked to. You made it, so how trustworthy is the source?
December 16, 2009 at 2:49 am
lols.. i think i voted 100 times in half day..
December 9, 2009 at 10:32 pm
Ouch.
December 10, 2009 at 5:40 am
It’s very dissapointing to see just how corrupt society in general has become.
December 10, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Just a silly contest so why bother so much?
December 10, 2009 at 7:28 pm
Give Khalid a break. He has explained why the votes were removed and provided a file also.
December 11, 2009 at 1:02 am
Why? (Link?)
December 11, 2009 at 11:31 am
Here’s the link:
http://www.invesp.com/bak.mysql.2009-12-07_03.33.26_db.jos_apoll_votes.zip
I concur with Gyutae’s statement below that Khalid is a trustworthy guy. I’ve referred folks to Invesp before and they’ve never made me look bad.
December 10, 2009 at 11:45 pm
The voting process seems to have stopped since yesterday …the site mentions it ends 12/13/2009 mid night , still 3 days away…you don’t see the radio buttons next to the nominee names and there is no vote button on the page…Am I the only one seeing that page or is everyone seeing it ?
December 11, 2009 at 12:37 am
Most people here probably never heard of ZK – so wouldn’t it be unfair if they voted for him just because he got a post at this blog?
December 11, 2009 at 1:14 am
Hay nice post dude.
December 13, 2009 at 1:05 am
ay shoe$ ur a boss man, ur so kool for rippin on ppl when its not even true. honestly get a life, we all know that ur a very trustworthy man. eyyeyeyyeyeyynnnzaaah, but srsly plz dnt talk anymore its really obnoxious!!!
sanks
December 15, 2009 at 5:25 pm
You Invesp employees amaze me with your grammar and wit!
December 30, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Ya sounds like a shady move by them.
December 30, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Looks like they killed the contest. No results were released. That’s kind of a bummer.
January 3, 2010 at 12:52 pm
this is awesome … can’t believe you guys just fool the systems again
January 11, 2010 at 6:58 pm
Invesp is getting gamed! Keep up the good work Shoemoney!
February 14, 2010 at 7:28 am
I was hoping that people would of made a bigger stink that only 30% of the listed names were women.I think that’s a much more interesting conversation.Instead of putting comments that can be construed as slanderous, support your friend/ favorite by asking others to support them, not by multi-voiting.