Ezine @rticles had to go

OK, I guess I've had enough spam. I hate to have to "unsubscribe" to a pet blog, but I just couldn't take the spam on Ezine @rticles any longer.

For anyone unfamiliar with the blog, I started counting how many articles were actually useful vs. how many articles were of such baloney, I had to laugh out loud at them. My best guess is that 96%, or 29 in 30 of the articles that come out of here are completely unfounded and made up. My favorite was the article about how to throw a birthday party for your dog. It gave some very non-specific advice....send out some invitations, create a guest list, think up some activities to play during the party. It doesn't actually give you any ideas for any of these things, or some good places to get things like dog invitations, and then the final paragraph was "Don't forget to buy some dog apparel and collars for the occasion" with links to her website, which mostly sold dog apparel and collars.

I know that dog apparel is apparently hurting right now, as this was polled as the first thing dog enthusiasts would cut out of their budgets with high gas prices and a possible recession, but come on! This type of blogging is ridiculous. Now, I know full well that not everything I post is of interest to everyone, and sometimes I go on tangents, but you don't see me writing articles about dog clothing, and then finish the article about how well a peanut butter soft bite goes with that new collar you just bought.

OK, here's a note to all of you Ezine bloggers out there. Can you come up with something that has a point, that is semi informative, has even a tinge of research, talks about your local community, or has something of interest? That birthday party article took someone 2 minutes, had absolutely no research, and was mostly a plug to get a new link out there in the wild back to your website. That is why I am unsubscribing to this blog. My blog reader actually sighed from relief of all of that spam.

Don't get me wrong - I realize there are different reasons why people blog. Some do it as a journalistic outlet. Others educate. Others like to record their daily life for posterity. I try to keep our readers informed of the events that are happening out in our community, talk about pet issues that might effect them, talk about pet products they might be interested in or need to avoid, introduce other pet businesses to everyone else. I see this blog as a channel to update our friends out there on whats happening in the NWA Pet World.

I will, very shortly, write an article on how to throw a birthday party for your dog, and I will actually do some research so that it's useful. I may plug our barkday cakes, because there are still people out there that don't know we do them, but I will also tell you where to find edible dog invitations, the most popular dog apparel for a birthday party, plus other products that are out there you may be interested in that we might not even carry. It will be the authoritative, complete guide to dog birthday parties (tongue in cheek).

p.s. - if anyone has any pointers or complaints for me, I will at least listen. Send me some comments. What can I do better for you?