"have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?"

[DaveN]

Well have you or more to the point WOULD you,

If someone give you the the chance to make $5,000 and all you had to do was register a domain and host the site would you ??

But when the site gets uploaded it blackhat spam, 1000's of bloggs, guestbook etc link to it, but hey it's bringing in $5,000 a month.

would you cross the line to the darkside ?

[DianeV]

Hm. Is there a problem, Dave? :-)

[Nick W]

What do you mean cross it?

<runs quickly out the róom b4 IHU gets here... .hehe>

Nick

[DianeV]

Not my style, really, but then I'm technically a designer.

[DaveN]

No problems I know and my friends know who I dance with

[Nick W]

In all seriousness, what would possibly be the problem? $5K is $5K right?

Nick

[DaveN]

Nick Thats the way I see it, But other people have a problem with it.

[Nick W]

>>other people have a problem with it

I eagerly await their rationale on such views...

Nick

[rustybrick]

$5,000 a month for hosting is a good deal. I would set this guy up with a nice server, dedicated set of IP addresses, nice amount of bandwidth and let him host everything he wants except for pornography.

You want hosting companies to be banned by Google for allowing their dedicated or colocated hosting clients to use black hat methods?

[I, Brian]

Blackhat or not, why on should anyone feel a need to pay someone else $5,000 for a domain reg and hosting, when they could get all that for far far cheaper??

That's the part I really don't understand.

You can lease servers in the US for next to nothing, so why would someone need to pay anyone else $5,000 for a package??

If we're talking about a cluster of Dell servers using terabytes of bandwidth it would make sense. But for general hosting? Smells like fish, unless there's something I've completely missed here.

[DaveN]

A really good safe house is hard to find these days, we run out of many dedicated and shared hosts, but when the site gets kicked it can cost a lot more than 5k. We aren't talking the best designed sites on the net these are black n white, "sniper" and "shotgun" sites highly target in very competitive market places, it easier to cut a deal whether it be a Joint Venture or just plain insurance ....

When testing new techniques to break, the sandbox, slow death, 301, meta-refresh it’s even more important to keep the sites up and not disturbed.

You need to know that I have two hats and W~hat for clients and a really really big B~Hat for testing and Aff stuff.

we all need to know the boundaries B~Hat and W~Hat and I guess I have been kicked by hosts more times than Google has given me hand jobs...( well almost, if you are reading this Matt )

[rustybrick]

IP delivery for many large sites can require huge boxes. Then include all the mod_rewrite scripts, huge databases, and heavy traffic load from all the optimization tactics - $5,000 a month for a dedicated and semi-managed set of two,three,four boxes seems about right.

[greenleaves]

I would do alot more then that for 5k a month... I see no problem.

[Chris Boggs]

sounds pretty good to me...I agree that this amount could buy a nice dedicated server and a few extra souvenirs on your vacations...I do not know if I'd be able to sleep at night knowing that I had crossed to the very dark side, though

[Affiliate Program Manager]

What goes on with you & the SEs is of absolutely no concern of mine DaveN.

[seobook]

is the theory / question behind this thread actually another way of saying "PM me if you are willing to host shady stuff?"

[Affiliate Program Manager]

Originally Posted by seobook

is the theory / question behind this thread actually another way of saying "PM me if you are willing to host shady stuff?"

DaveN is willing to see what others might say about this subject - imho

<IHU baiting> Interesting </IHU baiting>

Maybe

[I, Brian]

Sorry, but I still think the hosting is over-priced.

[Chris_D]

If I'm reading this thread correctly - I assume that you haven't seen this story:

Microsoft Sues Web Hoster, Others Over Spam
Thu 23 September, 2004 22:41

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. filed nine new lawsuits against spammers who send unsolicited e-mail, including an e-mail marketing Web hosting company, the world's largest software maker said on Thursday

With the latest batch of lawsuits, Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft said it is involved in more than 100 legal cases against spammers, including more than 70 lawsuits filed in the United States.

.............Microsoft said it filed a lawsuit last week in Washington State's King County Superior Court against Web hosting company National Online Sales and its owner Levon Gillespie, as well as those who used his services, for offering "bulletproof" services for those seeking to send marketing email.

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle...3&section=news

I think that's the answer to your comments Brian - in view of the fact that Microsoft is now making cleaning up the net its own crusade - how much would you want to be paid?

[I, Brian]

That's e-mail marketing. The original post was about SEO and hosting 1000s of blogs, etc - ie, just websites with heavy linkage. I tend not to regard bulk commercial e-mail marketing as SEO activity, because SE's traditionally do not read links in e-mails.

Besides - I don't think most people are webhosts here - and I don't think the point of the original post was to ask about webhosting issues.

The point of the original question seems to be "How much buys you?".

The answer of which can only depend on the consequences. As a webhost - sure I'd host blackhat. But would I practice blackhat SEO for $5,000/month? I don't have the experience to make a success of it, so I wouldn't dare take on the risk. Better to keep with what I have experience of, and know what works from that. Building link networks? I'm fine with that. Cloaking and doorways? Not my speciality.

But, darn, I sound so self-serious now.