The week after Thanksgiving I found tons of spam in relation to hostgator and Black Friday.   It was everywhere email, this blog, my personal twitter account and my YouTube videos.  I suppose its not all Hostgators fault.  They did say not to spam forums and email.  Though I did get spam by email, and so far my forum seems to have been ignored.  Yet they offer a super cheap package which is hard to resist when you don’t understand the ramifications of overselling.  After all a three year unlimited account for roughly $36 a year, and yet still get $50 – $125 per sale.  Even some one as bad as marketing as myself should be able to manage a few sales with that kind of a deal.

The pre-Black Friday Hostgator Promotion

Be ready to see a huge amount of activity and unbelievable sales numbers that will only come around once a year!

Here’s what we want you to do:

Post about the promotion on your blog
Post on Twitter and Facebook
Post about it on forums (follow all forum rules and don’t spam)
Tell your E-mail lists (Again, no Spam!)
Refer friends and family
Push all of your hosting related traffic to HostGator and EARN BIG!
Tell everyone you know!

Which leads to hostgator spam

Spamming a blog is ok, because Hostgator did not say you couldn’t right?

I suppose hostgator can use the argument that their terms of service and their mail outs stated not to send spam via email and forums.  But this line motivates people to get a high payout “Any commissions earned during our Black Friday special will receive a FULL commission!“.  Top that off with Shared hosting” $4.95/month AS LOW AS $0.99/month.  How hard is it to resist doing spam for an offering that is super cheap when there is a chance for a big pay out. It may be questionable if Hostgator intended for there to be spam, but its clear what happen.