As a newcomer to the Hubpages community I've been spending a lot of time nosing around, reading some great content and some not so great content, and just generally poking around and settling in.

In the course of my wanderings I've stumbled across quite a few things that pique my curiosity and when that happens I tend to dig a little deeper.

I make no bones about the fact that I am an affiliate marketer and my reasons for joining Hubpages are both commercial and social. I love to read and I love to write and I liked the look of the platform and wondered why I didn't sign up years ago. However, I digress.

When looking for writers on topics that interest me I stumble from one hub to another, and, as human nature compels me to do, I often navigate to a user's profile to see what they claim to be about.

Today, during the course of one of these forays, I came across a very new Hubber who had signed up a few days ago. His profile contained a picture and a pseudonym (not uncommon, I use one myself) that he goes on to explain is based on his real name. It was actually misspelled, but maybe intentionally.

At this point, I'm going to keep the details to myself to save any embarrassment for the person involved, and I will talk in general terms only about the content.

As a new member, there was only one hub under his profile, and it is a review/promotion of an affiliate marketing membership site. It's one of those sites that has seen very heavy exposure in the low rent end of online advertising so I wanted to see what the Hubber had to say about it. As it turned out, it was the usual vague content and its only real purpose seemed to be to try and persuade visitors to visit the site on the chance they might whip out the trusty credit card and sign up.

So, nothing really new there. The writer had also linked to a blog however, and my curiosity led me there to see just what kind of content was to be found. Aside from another article on the same topic and more promotional banners, there was only one other post. It was also a rather wishy-washy piece about web traffic, just rehashed and incomplete information so commonly written by hopeful new affiliates.

There was a product graphic on the page, linking through to a decent Clickbank product, but the article itself was not about the product. It was relevant and on topic, but looked more as though it had been added just to pretty up the page and get an affiliate link in there. Nothing wrong with that although its effectiveness is probably debatable. I checked out the links revealing that the writer knew a little about redirecting or cloaking affiliate links, but was obviously very new to it judging by the inconsistencies in the methods used and the URL's posted. Anyway, it was a new blog by someone who by now seemed to be pretty much a beginner and everyone has to start somewhere so certainly no crimes being committed :-)

The domain had been registered only a couple of months through a well known registrar and was registered for 12 months. Interestingly, for such a new domain and a site with zero content it had already been granted page rank by Google although it was getting very little traffic.

I used a couple of site checking tools that are free for anyone who wants to research a particular site and its traffic etc. and they are indispensable when checking on the grand claims of many webmasters. Whenever I see people claiming to know how to drive traffic for example, the first place I look is at their own sites and it's invariably quite revealing.

WhoIsHostingThis and Quarkbase can tell you pretty much all you need to know.

My reasons for digging a little deeper were that this new member had already called out another Hubber on a post and was questioning the guy's honesty and ethics. That seems pretty aggressive behavior for a newb, and as it was a post talking about spam and blackhat methods I was quite surprised. the standard of English was also a little poor and sounded as though it had been "penned" by a different hand from the one that had created the profile.

On checking the domain for the aforementioned blog, the details in the Whois database did not correlate at all with the profile of this new Hubber but rather to someone in Romania with a completely different and very Romanian sounding name. It was a very far cry from the strictly Anglican and very common name claimed by the person in their profile.

Another quick look around a few social networking sites led to two more different names for the same person, one a pseudonym and the other another eastern European sounding name, but not the same as the one on the Whois database.

As Sherlock would say.."The game is afoot...." and as an old English idiom cautions, "people who live in glass houses....".

The trails you leave on the web are invariably easy to follow, unless you really know what you are doing when it comes to erasing them, so guard your reputation carefully.

Photo Credit: Dyanna on Flickr

My questions are these:

1) Many people desire anonymity online for many different reasons. However, would you trust a person who goes a step further and fabricates an identity or attempts to do so?

2) As someone obviously hoping to recruit paying customers, is it wise to set out on a path that calls for dishonesty on the first step?

3) If you have faith in what you are doing, what possible purpose or reason would you have for such cloak and dagger games?

4) Would you trust a person, or trust your money to a person,  who feels any need to hide behind a web of misinformation?

I know my answers and I suspect they will be the same for the majority of folks. Stand behind your business and your brand, accepting that you may make some mistakes and will never be right about everything. Offer help and advice when you can, and remember that online, your reputation is all you really have. Above all though, do unto others as you would have them do unto you: a good enough mantra for more than just your business dealings.

The online arena is not as anonymous as so many seem to think, despite the countless examples that have become major news stories for both good and bad reasons. I guess some people just never learn.

Now, there could be a very valid explanation for such inconsistencies but you have to admit that waving a red flag at the start of an online venture to make money is either a genuine mistake, an example of following the wrong people's advice, or just being dishonest because dishonesty is all you understand.

Let me know what you think Hubbers :-)