That ESTA article

The way these companies work is normally to work Google searches so their result comes up first when you search for ESTA Visa or other paid for government service (there are some other similar “legal” scams). The sites all look very helpful and genuine and you’ll probably get what you want.
However I f they charged £1 or £2 it still wouldn’t be worth it as the sites that they “help” you with are government sites which are generally very easy to follow and use. The only thing you are getting with the charge they levy is another step in the chain and potentially less security as well – giving all you details to an unknown company for no reason – no thanks!!
If you were to compare it to a bike shop it would be like a group of people buying land in front of a bike shop and setting up huge banners to obscure the bike shop then having lots of brochures out showing you the bikes they can get for you and how they’ll make the buying process easier. Then after they charge £200 extra for the bike they just go into the shop and it then handover to you. If you get any issues you have to hope they are still around to be the middle man and hope the name and address and bank card details you gave them is secure too.

One other similar one is for Waste Carriers Licences – if you go straight to gov.uk a standard one is £154. However there are 3 paid for adverts if you search for that term on Google which come above the gov.uk result, all of which charge a lot extra, the one I checked charges an extra £110 – £264. It’s such an easy form to fill in on gov.uk and if you ring up they’ll take you through it if you want for free. It takes 10mins to fill in max and they charge £110 extra for it, a legal scam but still a scam.

I’ve had a long think on this and we’ve had a staff discussion today too. The decision to run this sponsored article was mine. They approached Ross our marketing guy and he asked me if it was ok. I checked the site. Checked they weren’t pretending to be something they are not. I checked their customer reviews. I judged it to be an authentic business with a high customer satisfaction score. So I told Ross we could run it.

However, I misjudged the reaction to it and in retrospect my decision was wrong and I should have anticipated that. That’s on me.

I’ve talked with the staff about what we do now. I’ve added the text from the e-visa website to add clarity about the service they offer. I’m not going to pull the article because we have a good faith agreement with the agency that provided the copy.

However, we (more accurately I) have learned from this and we will not run sponsored features of this type in the future.

Your strength of feeling is clear and I appreciate it. You expected more from Singletrack and on this I got it wrong.

Sorry everyone.

Mark

If you were to compare it to a bike shop it would be like a group of people buying land in front of a bike shop and setting up huge banners to obscure the bike shop then having lots of brochures out showing you the bikes they can get for you and how they’ll make the buying process easier. Then after they charge £200 extra for the bike they just go into the shop and it then handover to you. If you get any issues you have to hope they are still around to be the middle man and hope the name and address and bank card details you gave them is secure too.

Good analogy, if I want to be picky

– then having lots of brochures out showing you the bikes they can get for you and how they’ll make the buying process easier, but also pointing out you can go straight into the shop if you want

but also pointing out you can go straight into the shop if you want

…buried at the end of a load of guff, because if it were up front and central then nobody would buy from them. That just wouldn’t be a viable business without relying on people not noticing that aspect.

Anyway, totally respect your decision Mark. Thanks for giving this your thought and attention.

Mark – that’s a top post. Everyone makes mistakes, not many own up to them! Good on you. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

TS.

Full respect mark and other for keeping up on this thread even on the weekend. And thanks for the explanations it’s much appreciated.

The Google approach to this is what really winds me up @b230ftw … so many people fall for that … click on the first “result” and have your money taken off you for nothing. If only Google were anywhere near as socially responsible as Mark and the rest for the Singletrack crew.

Thanks for the rethink, and what I said was still out of order and my apology for that stands.

@edlong  don’t worry. We are still friends 🙂

+1 for your response Mark.
And +1 kelvin for your observation about Google.

Wow, top respect. That’s why I keep coming back to this site 🙂

Thanks Mark for the change of heart, much appreciated.
Have also renewed my cancelled sub, fwiw- realise that its not really fair railing against something if I’m not willing to do something to help out.

Excellent post Mark, not just for the decision, but for being so honest and up front about making a wrong call.

It’s not illegal or immoral, at worst it’s a bit of a rip-off

…so you’re saying it’s a rip-off, but moral? 🤣

Consumption of alcohol must not be linked to increased popularity, sexual success, confidence, sporting achievements or mental performance. Anything which portrays drinking alcohol as a challenge or as having therapeutic qualities is banned, as is anything that promotes binge drinking or suggests that alcohol can solve your problems.

Beer and bikes have been associated on this site as long as I’ve been coming here, since 2003, and it’s only now that someone is clutching their pearls and having a fit of the vapours, and is coming over all moral majority?
Jeez, get a sodding life already! #rollseyes

@Mark

What this says:

I’m not going to pull the article because we have a good faith agreement with the agency that provided the copy.

…is you value the relationship with the agency that provided the copy more than the one you have with your audience. That’s a dangerous line to tread, but its your website so your prerogative.

However, if you genuinely don’t want STW to become somewhere that you can just buy links to your site to boost your SEO then I’d suggest you consider adding “nofollow” tags to the backlinks on that article. I don’t know what STW charges for a sponsored piece like this but in my own experience its many times the number of readers you would need to click through and order their ESTA from them… that tells me that the marketing decision at their end was unlikely to be about getting clicks and ESTA applications from mountain bikers (especially since presumably very few UK based MTBers are planning travel to the US right now), but rather the purpose of the article is to boost their SEO by effectively buying links back from a highly credible, well-ranked site. So your “by the way there’s another option” box at the end helps out the STW readers but doesn’t help everyone who types “esta application” into google – we can blame google for that – but people who provide backlinks knowing that it boost the recipient’s pagerank must be at least partially culpable.

you value the relationship with the agency that provided the copy more than the one you have with your audience

I don’t think that is fair comment.  I took it as Mark sticking to what he’d agreed with the agency but wouldn’t take a similar ad in future.  That together with the text added on the page seemed reasonable to me

I’ve resubbed off the back of Mark’s post. My opinion but that ended right.

Thanks Mark, appreciate the update, seems a reasonable course of action.