The Blogosphere Is Letting Ashwin Khanna Know He Sucks

It’s official: the blogosphere really doesn’t like Ashwin Khanna now that his bogus blog contest and scam to get backlinks from other unsuspecting bloggers has been uncovered.? A while ago here on Contest Blogger, we uncovered this guy to be the cheater that he really was–and it’s produced quite an online backlash.

All across the web, other bloggers have been writing features about Ashwin and his bogus contest.? If you aren’t familiar with the story, here’s what happened: Ashwin said he was running a contest that would award some lucky person $2,500, and that all you had to do to enter was link back to his site from your blog.? Lots of people linked back to him and fell for his scam, and he ended up not awarding the money to anyone.

If you don’t already know this, it’s worth repeating: backlinks are very valuable if you’re a blogger or webmaster, and you should be very selective in just who you link back to online.? By getting so many backlinks from across the web, Ashwin’s blog ended up getting a lot of search engine juice and ranked very high for relevant keyword phrases . . . but it all backfired on him.

When everyone who had linked back to Ashwin as part of his blog contest realized that they had been taken for a ride, most of them deleted their links and posted about the scam they had fallen for.? Ashwin himself eventually had to give up his blog and delete his content, since no one would take him seriously.

So, what’s the lesson from all of this?? Simple: always make sure that you do a little research before entering a sweepstakes or blog contest.? If a prize seems to be too good to be true, then it probably is.? And if you’re running a contest on your own site, make sure that you don’t promise anything that you don’t intend to deliver.