The Wild World of TB!

So I got this forwarded to me and well, at least I am not the only one who feels this way.

Not much more to say other then if you don't like profanity, I would stay away/

Gay buttsex indeed!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LaeCJ9PfJY

I got sent this link, seems that there are still some guys out there that like to read PB Nation but have decided to not be part of the ad clicks.

Here is the site: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/27484

Use at your own risk, as I didn't write it, I don't know who did and you may or may not be able to trust it. I am running it however as I lurk through PB Nation and it seems to be ok with me.

Yep, you read that right! Seems my two favorite forums have a lot more in common then people want to realize. Like what you might think? Here in the glory of web statistics is how these two sites stack up to each other. To quote Ed, you might be surprised, hell I am sure he will be. He might just call them up and demand some money or you might see Special Ops in the swear filter soon.

So you remember Ed posting all these paintball sites that he said were no where near the mighty PB Nation? In sheer numbers? Guess he forgot about Special Ops, you remember the we are woodsball people. Now I am sure in the next few days they will show their 'geek' prowess and put up some real numbers but with my miniscle talents here are some interesting things when you compare the two.

PB Nation
405,276 Members
45,083,066 Posts
2,520,275 Threads

Special Ops
27,844 Members
1,614,268 Posts

Looks like David vs Goliath right? So then lets look at some traffic sites shall we?

Here is a quick comparison to the sites:

Yep you see that right, PB Nation beat the mighty Special Ops by a little 11,000 vistors and that's pretty small when you think about all those other sites that they compared. But look at the traffic trend, and think back to the spikes and what might have been the topics that drove people there. However look at the trend that PB Nation is facing, seems that they are shrinking, must have something to do with their attitudes, that or they are running out of web guys to create traffic for them. But look at the above, PB Nation has 377,432 more users then Special Ops, yet not much more traffic. What's up with that? Pretty funny shit, huh? I bet there are very few, if any drug or porno posts on Spec Ops and it is probably a hell of a lot more paintball related then anything PB Nation can bring out. And Spec Ops is a niche forum, PB Nation is supposed to be all encompassing.

And they quoted Alexa, you guys remember that right? So let's compare PBNation to Special Ops in Alexa shall we?

Page views per user and remember that this is based on the sheer numbers that PB Nation sports:

PB Nation:
Yesterday - 12 : 1 week avg - 16.6 : 3 mos avg - 17.4 : 3 mos change - up 11%

Special Ops:
Yesterday - 8 : 1 week avg - 13.9 : 3 mos avg - 12.1 : 3 mos change - up 25%

Wow, so Special Ops has just as many active users as the mighty PB Nation.

And on a side note, Special Ops beats PBNation in traffic is South Africa. LOL.

So can you guess who the biggest referrer of links to Special Ops is? Yep PB Nation. Seems Ed's board has a ton of inbound links to Special Ops. Guess he will be calling them up here in the next day or so and demanding some money from them or they might be going into the swear filter. Don't get me wrong, I mean PB Nation still beats Special Ops in just about every category. However Special Ops isn't plaugued with advertising or the drug and porno problem that PB Nation is. Gee I wonder why?

However the reason that they are both where they are is part of a little thing called keywords. You remember them right? Seems that if you reference PB Nation, they have 695 keywords, Can you guess the top 2? Think that they have something to do with paintball? You would be wrong.

The top 5 keywords for PB Nation are:
#1 : Emo Phrases
#2 : How To Make a Fleshlight
#3 : PBNation
#4 : K2 Stunt Skates
#5 : Aurora SL74

Funny huh? How about this, a full 35% of the keywords listed for PB Nation have NOTHING to do with paintball in any form. But you already knew that right?

Special Ops Top 5
#1 : Special Ops
#2 : Special Ops Paintball
#3 : Paintball
#4 : Paintball Camo
#5 : Armotech

And can you belive it, not a Tippmann in the tops 5, what the hell? However to be fair Special Ops has 482 keywords.

In comparison, sites that Ed liked to compare that aren't internet powerhouses have the following numbers:

68 Caliber has 10 keywords
Smart Parts has 44 keywords
Viper Paintball has 2 keywords
A5OG.net has 18 keywords
MCarterBrown has 66 keywords
Warpig has 134 keywords
WOTB has 3 keywords

So we can see who the king of geeks are, that's for sure. Maybe Ed should start an elite webmaster weekend or come up with some internet geek positions like a Sabre or a Dagger, oh wait that's right, he has mods and admins. Nevermind!

I am sure as more and more comes out, we shall see the empty shell that PBNation really is, but will it matter? I mean Ed can just create some more users and generate some more traffic and convince everyone that PB Nation is relevant. I think that once again, I have proved that they are nowhere near as relevant as they think that they are.

Yes, another post here about PB Nation and this one in a vein that has nothing to do with Scenario Paintball but it should show the 'average' scenario paintball player the scum that runs PB Nation and the hypocritical attitude of Ed and his staff. Now I am not an expert in the NPPL vs PB Nation debacle, however, I have read quite a bit about it the last few days including giving Ed some trafic by reading page after page of the posts on his website. In fact, this article will probably send some more traffic his way, but people need to read for themselves what this ass gnome loves to say and how his little jock holding staff that call themselves mods and admins defend his manifestos'.

So let's start with what started this 'War' between NPPL and PB Nation, shall we? This is the quote from Ed that started the whole damn thing:

Why we are closing the NPPL Forum and blocking the NPPL web cast

Sometimes you just have to take stand. This is one of those times.

We just learned that our friends from Monkey with a Gun and all the other paintball filmmakers have been locked out of center court for filming during the entire Boston event.

The short story is that the NPPL President has cut a deal with Fox to put the event on TV but this deal excludes all of the paintball filmmakers from access to the center court. They can film all the other courts just not the center court. All of you know how important the center court is to a NPPL event. This is the first time in many years that the hard working, dedicated individuals who promote our industry with great paintball films have been locked out of filming on the main field.

This season many of you have noticed that we have greatly reduced our coverage and support of the NPPL series and now we feel that we have to completely end our coverage and support of this series.

Enough is enough.

So to that end we have placed the live broadcast sites, the home page and others on the swear filter and we are also going to close and lock the NPPL forum in a few days.

We hope that you will understand and support this decision and also voice your opinion to the owners and management of the league so perhaps things can be turned around.

As always your continued support is greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Ed
President
PbNation LLC

And if you want to go and read it straight from the source and the page upon page of his admins and mods then go here: http://www.pbnation.com/showthread.php?t=2272705

Now what does this mean according to people who aren't mesmerized by Ed and his power in paintball? Well according to quite a few people it all came down to NPPL signing a media agreement with Fox Sports to have exclusive access to the center court at NPPL events. Now you heard that correct, Fox Sports. Not some fly by night film production company or some company who makes money selling DVD's of events, no a live production company that is in the business of sports production on a international level. Who would have thought that was 'bad' for paintball, right?

Well the rumors run down that Ed was involved with Monkey With A Gun (MWAG) and had some sort of alliance or (knowing Ed) a monetary agreement on DVD's sold and advertising on PB Nation. And this directly effected Der Der and MWAG who's main meat of business is DVD's of tournament paintball events. Now do you think that these yahoo's would have tried to get agreements with the NPPL before Fox Sport's did giving them exclusive rights? Of course not because then they would have had to pay the NPPL some money rather then ripping off the event by taping the event and then selling it. And Ed wanted to step into this and 'stand up' for the little guy? Yeah right!

Ed has stated time and time again, that PB Nation is his website and he can say or do whatever the hell he pleases. He is in the business of making money and that people who try to affect his money, his business or his family, well let's just say he thinks he is Tony Soprano when it comes to how he wants it dealt with. However he wants to charge people to post news and press releases, he wants to charge scenario promoters to post their events, he wants to charge fields to post their events and he wants to charge tournaments for posting their events. Seems Ed needs money worse then a hawg needs slop, and as I have pointed out, I don't understand why, I mean he makes quite a bit of money. Based on the research I have done, here is another set of figures to add about PB Nation.

You remember I mentioned his affiliate money right? Well let's look at what he gets from paintball, shall we? This is a quote from Paintball Journal:

First source of income: Supporting Members. I estimate the average rate of supporting membership is something like 1.5% of all registered members on PBNation. If that is true, then they are all paying $30 a year for that privilege.

PBNation has 388,000 members. That’s nearly 6,000 supporting members if my rate is close. That is…

$175,000 per year from supporting memberships.

That’s chump change compared to what they pull in from ads, though. I did a quick tally of their ads this month, and emailed them about their rates for advertisements. At the current rates, they’re raking in over $30,000 a month from the number of ads that I saw when I counted.

Assuming that the number of ads stays relatively the same throughout the year, I feel safe in saying…

$360,000 per year from advertisements.

That’s $535,000 per year total. Now, THAT is why I feel it’s a damn good thing that they’ve finally found it in their hearts to give back to the paintball community that’s made them what they are. Even with server costs and paying people to run the business side of things, it’s still an incredibly lucrative business, much more than anyone would suspect.

So a half million dollars from paintball, and you wonder why he went after the NPPL for not giving the little guy their due? But let's look at what other people had to say about the NPPL vs PB Nation debacle shall we?

http://paintballheadlines.com/2007/07/15/pbnation-to-nppl-were-hypocrites/

http://paintballheadlines.com/2007/07/17/pbnation-to-nppl-were-sorry-kinda/

http://paintballheadlines.com/2007/07/18/sd-feature-pbnation-sponsored/

http://www.paintballguns.net/nppl/pbnationcom-bans-nppl-who-should-be-crying/

http://www.paintballjournal.net/pbnation-vs-nppls-fox-deal/

http://www.paintballguns.net/paintballgunsnet-news/pbnation-did-it-again/

and finally my good buddy Dale,

http://www.68caliber.com/features/editorials/story042516.php

So what's the deal Ed? All these guys 'bitter' as well?

But here is where the news gets to be more current rather then ancient history. On Thursday of last week, this press release was sent out by NPPL and PB Nation:

"The National Professional Paintball League and PbNation are releasing this joint statement to the paintball community to inform the community that after several discussions the two companies have resolved their issues that derived from the 2007 Boston event. Regrettably a dispute occurred between the parties at that Boston event that had caused a rift in the working relationship between the companies.

“It’s time that we moved forward,” stated PbNation LLC, President Ed Rieker. “The history of PbNation has been to always support the sport of paintball and to help in any way we can to grow the sport. During the formative years of the NPPL, PbNation was one of the largest media sponsors and pioneered the live web casting of NPPL events. We appreciate the team at the NPPL for taking positive steps to resolve this issue”

“The management team of the NPPL is pleased to announce the resolution of this issue with PbNation and is looking ahead to producing a great tournament series this year for the paintball community,” said Bruce Friedman, Chairman of Pacific Paintball, owner of the NPPL. “NPPL management was happy to reach out to PbNation to accomplish this and greatly respects this leading brand in our marketplace.”"

Now I am sure some people think that is cool, but the reality is that I am sure that NPPL 'kissed the ring' before Ed and PB Nation did anything on this, that or they paid up to PB Nation. See that is how you get ahead with Ed, you pay money. I am sure that even I could get some great PB Nation love if I paid for it. Bought some advertising, maybe gave them some great cross links, kissed Ed's ass and talked about how PB Nation is the best in the world, shit like that. Trust me, that will never happen. In fact, I wouldn't PISS on Ed, if he was on fire. I would break out the wienies and marshmellows and start selling them with a glass of lemonade. But not even 4 days later, we are at this stage of things with NPPL vs PB Nation:

http://www.pbnation.com/showthread.php?t=2685855

Yep, it seems that because NPPL didn't cross promote the way Ed and his staff felt that they should have that all bets are still off until they comply. You heard me right, Ed is once again dictating to these people how they should run their business and how they should cross promote. And he isn't appealing to their business ethics or hell even a sense of didn't we just settle all this. Nope, he went right back to the billy club and attempted to slap the NPPL into place. What does that tell you? That in the 'negoiations' that prompted this reconciliation, evidently Ed and PB Nation felt like they had the stroke to control it. Most would assume it meant that NPPL blinked first and that they feel like they need Ed more then Ed needs them.

But here is a post from someone in that thread that really hits the nail on the head with regards to PB Nation and this incident.

To sum it up simply, PbNation was the billy club of the center court fiasco, which it had no reason to be involved with to begin with. This was an issue between the league and it’s other media outlets, not PbN. The pre-emptive strike made by the website was not only unnecessary, but reprehensible, both when it happened and even now, as they’ve “made up”, and yet the NPPL has not received the same level of service from PbNation as it did before. Can anyone say “grudge”?

I mean, how childish can you be? Is this why they are number one? Because they cater to the 'Killwithme.com' mentality of today's online youth? I mean, I think that I and others have shown that PB Nation makes a lot of money. And they have done nothing but get good at driving traffic into a website and then selling it to the paintball community as paintball traffic. Anybody remember when PB Nation looked like this?

http://web.archive.org/web/20010302162818/http://www.pbnation.com/

This is what advertising and money do for you, it makes you feel drunk on power. It makes you feel like you can do whatever you want and no one can stop you. And Ed knows that most paintball players are fickle and have a short attention span. And that most companies in paintball will posture but in the end if you wear them down, then you will come out on top. You just have to have the money and the time to do it. And when you have no inventory or 'expenses' then you are in an excellent position to try and be the top dog.

And here in this thread we have Chris Raehl still posting his tripe. Why does that name sound familar? Well he is supposed to be the president of the College tourney league that also helps with high school paitball ( http://www.college-paintball.com/ ). So why is he getting into this? Seems he is a little angry that someone might not have to swallow as much of Ed's nuts as he has had to get the coverage he has gotten. You might remember he got into the scenario producer thread as well, when the talk about charging scenario producers to post their events. And was he trying to do what some might assume would be good for the sport? Nope, he was supporting PB Nation in charging for everything that they can. Hell, you would think that he had a vested interest in the success or failure of the policies of PB Nation.

Well he does, I mean, if Ed fails then he fails. And he certainly doesn't want anyone to get something that he doesn't. But to put yourself into areas that you don't know, do nothing but show how much of a yes man you are. It shows that you only push the agenda as it is fed to you. You used your 'place' in paintball to drive Ed and PB Nation's agenda. In yet another example of someone who got to be someone in paintball by being in a position of something rather then gaining a rep as a player, this guy should be viewed as the choad that he is. When are you moving to Avondale Estates Chris? I mean Ed needs all the 'alternative' lifestylers he can get in his constuientcy.

So where did the title come from? There was an old Chris Rock stand-up skit about a interview in jail:

Chris Rock: They was interviewing a brother in there, they said now, "Sir, when a new inmate comes in and he wants some drugs, how do you initiate him?" The guy goes, "Well, the first thing I do is make him toss my salad." The guy's like, "'Toss my salad?' What's that?" The guy: "Well, having your salad tossed means having your asshole eaten out with jelly or with syrup. I prefer syrup." I'm not making this up!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTYMeitHNes

Guess Ed doesn't like jelly, so while NPPL may have eaten that ass, guess they just didn't do it to Ed's exacting requirements. Too bad!

Some people may remember that statement from the old Memorex cassette tape commercial. It was meant to denote that you couldn't tell the difference between hearing something live and recorded on the tape. And that is the subject of today's blog, is PB Nation faking the internet traffic that they have coming to the site? My anwer is that I think that they are. Can I prove it? Of course not! Will they admit it? Of course not! However using their free tools and traffic estimation plus having watched PB Nation the last month pretty close along with others, I can assure you that they have not had 1 million plus posts on that website in less then a month.

The reason that this done is money, and I don't mean paintball money. The paintball money for Ed comes now as a way to secure legitmacy as the internet advertising is really starting to crack down on fake traffic. But TB, c'mon it isn't that easy to create fake traffic is it? Why sure it is! Here are a few links to programs you can buy to do it! http://www.hotscripts.com/Detailed/41278.html is one that a lot of people use a simple PHP script that adds stats to your website. And that is the comercially available one. Think about this, the geeks at PB Nation probably know more about mySQL tables and user fields then some jocks know about the Falcons. You think that they don't know how to manipulate that? Well TB, you cant just change a database and show users, you have to have IP's and such. You're right, but here is a sliver of website for you to show how easy that can be changed as well: http://www.getafreelancer.com/projects/Web-Promotion/Fake-Website-Members-Traffic.html Now whatcha think about that?

See Ed and Company get checks every month from companies like google and yahoo and adsense because of the traffic that they have created and they don't like it when people manipulate that. What do I mean? Well here is something from a little over a year ago, I am sure none of the people remember or know about: http://scripts.diabloowners.com/ Now what is that you might ask? Well that was a 'script mod' who created a version of PB Nation that stripped all the advertising out so that when you surfed PB Nation you saw none of the ads and got nothing but the 'content' you know the 'reason' PB Nation is there, right? But here is more about that, feel free to read up on it: http://web.archive.org/web/20070105052142/http://scripts.diabloowners.com/index.php

So if you can create a script to strip out advertising, don't think you can create one to add it? Of course you can!

However some of the most interesting reading is in relation to affiliates and cost per impression advertising. I read more about this on dating sites and adult webmaster sites as these guys are the kings of traffic. And they don't make all that money from horny men looking at their porn. No they make most of their money with click through's and affiliates and such. It is why there are so many websites with the same actors spread out across 10 different sites. Some even re-use the video or re-edit it for 'different' sites. The only people who notice are really the pervs anyway, and who are they going to tell? Because porn can be gotten for free, these sites have had to come up with ways to make money, and that is by creating traffic. Is some of it legitimate? Of course, it would have to be for the ad companies to pay, but I can assure you at least 30% of it is not. Why does that matter in paintball? Because it is a model that PB Nation is using as well. You want to know the reason that Mcarterbrown or Warpig is not as 'BIG' as PB Nation? Because they don't care about CPI or any other advertising scheme, they don't make their money that way if at all. Let me put it this way, I am sure if someone wanted they could create a competing site and within 3 years have just as much traffic as PB Nation has. It isn't hard, just time consuming, and when you are a computer geek with no life, what else is there to do but hang out in an irc chat room talking about chicks and games and computers?

How did I come about all this? Simple, I am not as stupid as some people think. What I mean by that, is that I check my stats and I keep up on from where people post and such as that. Want to know who has become my top referrer in the last 2 weeks with over 1000+ hits a day to my site? Yep, that paintballvagina link. Since I posted the IP addresses, I started doing some more research as I get hit everyday and very rarely from the same ip addresses. Why would they do that? Well I don't have advertising so sending more 'useless' traffic my way doesn't help me. What they have done is calculated the amount of 'traffic' that my website generates, if you look at the PB Uprising post on the previous blog you can see that they know how to do it. Then there are scripts that cause PC's and such to constantly reload a website generating traffic to that site in an attempt to max their bandwidth. See most sites have a bandwidth limit, reach that limit and you lose the site until the month is over. Other ISP's charge you money for each MB over the bandwidth limit you go. However as I have told these jack off's, none of that affects WOTB. See my deal is a little different then you fucktards are used to, so all you have done is well nothing. So keep wasting your time, you are simply pointing out more and more of how you do things.

Because from the 'fake' traffic to my site, I started doing a lot of research into how this is done and why this is done. And if they do this sort of thing out of revenge or what not, why wouldn't they do it for profit? Don't belive me? Here is a google search for paintballvagina, you can see it is on my site twice and the orginal site. http://www.google.com/search?q=paintballvagina.com&rls=com.microsoft:*&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1 So where are these 'thousands' of hits coming from? Hmmmm makes one wonder doesn't it?

Wonder how much Ed and Co make off their fake traffic? Well one cant be sure as CPI pay differently, however if you are a 'niche' site which is why Ed harps on the biggest 'PAINTBALL' site, then you can get up to $1 to $3 per click. But most pay around $.20 and I know you think that isnt a lot, but lets compare it shall we? So say they get their 1,650,000 threads, most people would say that they can expect almost 3 times that in 'hits' and that so that equals roughly a half a billion hits in a month. Now most CPM would pay based on 1% of that, so they would pay the .20 on 5,000,000 and that my friends is a cool $100,000 a month in advertising paid to the largest internet 'PAINTBALL' site and trust me that they aren't getting that kind of money from the paintball advertisers. LOL! In fact, quite a few of the advertisers either give them product to give out or reciporcate in advertising and we all know how many times, Ed has bragged about their 'enterprise' level IT support right? How do they pay for all that? Simple, see above!!!

So as you can see the problem isn't porn, or drugs or anything else on PB Nation, it is in fact PB Nation that is the problem. It is not a community site or a news site, it is a business. It is a little money making piggy bank for Ed and his son's geeky friends. But this should really drive home the persepctive as to why they treat people the way they do and act they way they act. They don't care if you come back, they will just create more users and more traffic and still get that big check from google or yahoo or adsense. It is why so many of the real community (paintball in general) has left yet PB Nation endures. It isn't because it is so popular, it is because it is so fake. And people want to support that? No thank you!