sugarrae - 5:42 pm on May 30, 2010 (gmt 0)

"In reading the threads about pro spammers I noticed a lot of names that used to contribute a great deal of quality information, that have not posted in a long while. DigitalGhost, WebGuerilla, Paynt, Sugarrae--- these people added a lot of content and help. What do THEY think about these questions? Surely they left for some reason."

Howdy. I can't speak for the others, but I will speak for myself ;-)

First, I never "left" webmasterworld... I haven't posted regularly in a long, long time, but I've always called myself a "webmasterworld loyalist", still do and I haven't missed a stateside PubCon, aside from one, since 2003. Webmasterworld is one of the handful of ways I earned my stripes in SEO and I will be forever grateful for that.

As a way of giving back, I modded here for quite some time. And then I got busy... I am the CEO of three Internet marketing companies now and I worked hard over the last decade to get to a position where I can travel a lot... which means when I *am* working, my focus needs to be on work... the work that pays the salaries of all my employees and partners. I do however continue to speak at the webmasterworld shows. I know a few of the other names mentioned are also busy running the businesses they've built by getting into the industry early on and being good at what they do, but again, I won't attempt to speak for them in regards to the question posed.

My lack of presence on webmasterworld (the site) these days is everything to do with me and not webmasterworld.

That said, I'm pro links... always have been :) ... but I don't have time to come up with a useful/effective system to monitor for spam... so I've stayed out of the discussion.

And for the record... I'm not a spammer these days... but I still have a "live and let live and never report" policy in regards to it.