Overly Promotional Hub.

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   jeffthomsonposted 11 years ago

   Hey,
   
   Hopefully someone can help me out with this. The other day I wrote a hub about how to access Netflix from Australia. This requires special instructions because you need to get around the geo-blocking.
   
   My hub was unpublished and marked as overly promotional. So I reviewed it and saw that I had linked to the same domain three times, so I removed one of those links and resubmitted the hub. But it has been marked as overly promotional again.
   
   The description of what overly promotional means says " It may contain too many links, links on short or 'teaser' content, too many Amazon/eBay capsules for the amount of text, or appears solely designed to procure back links. "
   
   It's not teaser content (it's nearly 1000 words), has no Amazon or Ebay capsules, nor is it designed to procure backlinks since the sites I link to are not mine. So does this mean that it has too many links? All up there are seven, two to each of three websites, and one to another hub. Two of these links are affiliate links, but they are very relevant. Seven links doesn't really seem like that many.
   
   Or is the hub being marked as overly promotional simply because it provides instructions for using specific online services and apps? Since if this is the case there isn't much point in my revising the hub further since providing these instructions is its only value.
   
   I'm just trying to work out if it is worth reworking the hub, or abandoning it. People's past experiences and thoughts would be appreciated.
   
   Thanks.

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      Barbara Kayposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I don't think you are allowed any affiliate links except Amazon and Ebay. Then you need to use the Hubpages capsules to create them.  Having those two affiliate links is probably the problem.

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         jeffthomsonposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         I thought this might be the case, but I haven't been able to find a definitive answer to this.
         
         On this page http://hubpages.com/help-answer/alert/o … omotional/ it seems to suggest that affiliate links are fine as long as there aren't more than two.

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      relacheposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      In my experience, all of the above combined is why your Hub is considered overly-promotional.  It's both what you are doing and how you are doing it.

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   psycheskinnerposted 11 years ago

   Once you get past overly promotional you might get hit by "possibly not legal"?

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      jeffthomsonposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Wouldn't surprise me, though the general legal opinion seems to be that circumventing geo-blocking is perfectly legal, just annoying like buying dvds from overseas with a different region code.

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   psycheskinnerposted 11 years ago

   No, you can't have affiliate links.

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      jeffthomsonposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Okay, I'll remove those affiliate links and give re-submit it.

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   Simone Smithposted 11 years ago

   If I understand correctly, the issue is actually providing procedures for circumventing geo-blocking- it probably violates our Terms of Service. So unless you completely change the subject of the Hub, you probably won't be able to publish it on our site. I'd just leave it be and work on some other subjects.
   Sorry for any confusion!

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      jeffthomsonposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Alrighty, that's fair enough.

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   delleaposted 11 years ago

   Circumventing geo-blocking is not legal... it is imposed by the entertainment industry and it could get you into trouble. If it were legal then the industry would not impose geo-blocking in the first place. I'm not flaming you, I just don't want you to get into any trouble.

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      jeffthomsonposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Just because someone makes something difficult doesn't mean it is illegal. From what I have read it probably isn't illegal under Australian law, however it is a grey area which hasn't been tested in court. But I'm not an expert by any means, so you may well be right.

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   psycheskinnerposted 11 years ago

   The way I see it geoblocking is a way people manage their content. I pretty much respect their right to manage their content, because I would everyone else to respect  how I manage my content.  I know people break, mask, pirate etc.  But it makes more sense for that to be an underground activity than an open one--especially for a site like this one.

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   lovebuglenaposted 11 years ago

   I'd contact support about this.. Maybe this message pops up automatically and you need an admin to remove it.. I know it is not 100% relevant to this but I had written a hub on how to say certain things in foreign languages that I wasn't able to publish because there were words in it that were not English. I forgot what the exact warning was. Anyways, I contacted support and told them that this was an education hub and the removed the block and I was able to publish the hub.

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