The Other Spanking Blog
This post hurts a little bit, but I gotta do it.
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I don’t agree — I think money is the sincerest form of flattery — but imitation is right up there.
A couple of months ago, I heard from some of the people (including the owner) at one of the bigger commercial spanking websites. They had noticed Spanking Blog, and wanted to know a little about what I was doing. They were curious and interested. We talked some business, exchanged some emails, and so forth. They wound up buying a banner ad, and I put up one of their affiliate banners on my spanking toplist and other places. Good business, productive exchange, yadda yadda.
Time passes. Then what to my wondering eye should appear, but a new spanking blog run by the owner of the company. First post: less than a week after the exchanges with me. And what’s it called? “The Spanking Blog.” The domain name? It’s “thespankingblog.com”.
I’ll be honest: all flattery aside, it made me grumpy. These guys have a well-established brand they could have leveraged, but instead, when it came to choosing a name or domain, they settled for imitation. I’ve emailed the owner, and we’ve had a frank exchange of views, and he of course doesn’t see it my way (although he’s frank in crediting me with prompting him to realize that there was an untapped market for his products in the blog world.)
But here’s the real kicker: He’s doing a damn fine job. His blog is good. Not very interactive, but with long essays about his time in the spanking business, and inside impressions of the models, with lots of good stories about what it’s like to produce spanking pictures and videos. All, of course, illustrated with the lovely photographs for which his company is justly famous. And designed by one of his on-staff designers, so it all looks smooth and professional.
By my own blogging standards, I have to link to him. You, my readers, will enjoy his blog, which is the only link criterion that’s truly important. But what I cannot bring myself to do, is to assist him in creating the brand confusion that he sought when he chose a name and domain so close to this blog’s. Thus, all future references and links on Spanking Blog will simply refer to “The Other One”. (That way, I won’t be contributing to the confusion between our spanking blogs that he seems to be hoping for.)
If you decide to link to The Other One, I hope you’ll join me in linking to it this way.
I finally had a chance to look at the “other one” and I wasn’t overly impressed. I mean it’s pretty, sleek, and flows well but I think it has a “holier than thou” quality. I kinda got the feeling that he didn’t feel as if anybody else’s website measured up to his. The other thing I noticed about his blog is that there were several comments posted and no replies. Not only can we find your wit in the blog but we can also find it here in the comments section. I have to say my loyalties haven’t changed…here I’ll stay!
~B
I agree with you on this one. It was
sleezy of these people to use a name
so close to yours. I put a comment
on their web page stating just that.
Other than this, as you say, it’s
a very nice blog. You showed a lot
of class adding a link.
The plagiarism is rather blatant, but I must admit that as a fairly regular visitor of your site I think this new blog may provide you with an incentive to raise your game.
Of late I have thought that your site has become a little lacklustre, with quite lazy postings and too much about the Dan/Bethie relationship, at least to excite my interest. The eroticism has been missing too.
I had intended to comment on these lines, then, in the last week or so, things have picked up.
I must admit that much as I like spanking a girl, my main aim is having sex with her. I therefore prefer stories or pictorials that have content that at least points to a sexual aspect. Maybe the new blog will head off in that direction.
As I was writing my comment above, someone else (a bear of little brain) left his remark. It was more concise than my comment about plagiarism, and I agree with him that it was very honourable of you to include a link to his site.
By the way the email address in my forst comment has a typo, so if anyone uses these things please don’t surprise the innocent user of the address I posted in error.
You will always be 1st SB.. and you have your own unique product that you invest time in, scavenging lists and search engines finding things and bringing variety to your readers.
Your collecting and sharing approach opens doors to others who make this a starting point for their meandering around the spanking, and related subject matter web… frankly I doubt you’ll loose traffic to the other blog, instead you’ll more likely be a conduit to it. If I were looking for this blog and ended up there thinking I was coming here, I’d actually be annoyed.
Theirs is a somewhat limited nich market, not a magazine filled with variety…. consumers aren’t stupid… it’s entirely possible they’ll shoot themselves in the foot with the obviously transparent ploy.
Hang in there…
My 2 cents: I like the Dan/Bethie posts, although I can get that on Bethie’s blog too. If now is the time to complain about content, I like the geek speak posts the least… but I can skim them quickly so it would never stop me from reading here. Although The Other One seems to be good, the Spanking Blog will remain my first stop online as it has been since it began.
SB, you did show a lot of class in linking the “other one,” but I’m with patty — that site is not really that good. More a combination of advertorial and some tired other material thrown in. . . .
Because this series of comments seems to be focusing on our views of your blog, let me say that I too enjoy and value the Dan/Bethie posts! As a relatively new spanker, they give great insight into the development of such a relationship.
If there were an area where I would like to see you do more, it would be video reviews. Your comments on these are quite interesting. Also, like AMD, I see spanking as mainly a forerunner to more explicitly sexual activity, but find that many of the video producers seem to treat spanking as an end in itself (possibly to avoid problems with censors or customs inspectors). Nothing wrong with that, but I’d like to know it before I decide whether to buy.
Sorry to go on and on: Thanks again for all your hard work — and thanks to Bethie for providing you with a Muse!
Spankboss,
What a dilemma! I admire you for adding the link and taking time to explain the situation to us all.
His blog is good, true. I enjoyed my visit there today. And it is very sleek and professional too – just as you said. But he is missing a critical resource that you have in abundance – yourself and your endless wit. That will always make this blog stand out.
I agree with AMD that the posts here seemed somewhat lackluster as of late, but that seems to have turned around now. We are all only human after all and there will be times when we’re up and times when we’re down (even your brilliance has its limits). Let us wait and see if The Other One is really in it for the long haul and is able to maintain his steam as long as you have.
~hugs~
Invidia and all, thanks for the supportive comments. I’m sure it’s true that I’ve had off periods here on the blog — sometimes I get inspired and sometimes I simply don’t. I don’t worry about it overmuch — it is what it is.
Hang in there SB – “The Other One” just doesn’t compare.
What a sleazy move – going for stealing your “brand” in such a blatant way.
You’ve shown yourself to really have a whole lot of class linking to those guys.
Good on you.
I think their site is nowhere near as nice as yours. It’s slicker, it’s prettier, but the content is, quite honestly, boring. Blonde girls that he likes on the paysites, pictures that I’m fairly sure you’ve already shown. Pathetic creature, he is. You keep your good stuff coming and I’ll keep popping on by. :)
Well, another one that Spanking Blog has outlasted. Michael posted a lot of good content and thoughtful essays over the years so I am sad to see he let the blog crash, but he hadn’t been updating it for about 5 years.
(yes, I’m so old I remember this blog post the first time around)
Ha! This was a long time ago. Nice to know a few of the early readers are still with me!
Even though I was grumpy about the naming similarity 18 years ago (gulp) we’ve always maintained a bit of business connection at a very low level, and exchanged a few cordial emails over the years. Micheal’s spanking sites are among the very few that still generate a small volume of affiliate sales for me, suggesting to me that his blog is worth keeping on the air. Usually a crashed database table can be readily repaired or restored from backups, if anybody cares to do it. And since the now-crashed blog had a LOT of top search positions, it had to have been making money even without updates. I would expect to see it up and running again. On the other hand, it’s been down since early March at least, so I guess we’ll see!