A perfect example of backlink spam

I opened my email to a fun google news alert today (I have google alerts set up to send me mentions of ColorBliss).

Looks like ColorBliss was mentioned in the headline of an article on "Programming Insider":

6 Best Alternatives & Competitors to ColorBliss - Programming Insider

Ok, that's not my favorite headline, but interesting!

I clicked on the link, and things got even more interesting.

The Great Pretender

The article is written by Marc Berman, and in his intro, he talks about his "years of teaching art":

This is apparently the same Marc Berman who is also the founder and editor-in-chief of "Programming Insider":

And in addition to teaching art for years, has written thirty thousand articles over ten years (that math comes out to 8 articles a day for 10 years straight).

Hmm, even though it was already dubious that the editor-in-chief of a publication supposedly about programming was also an art teacher for years, I'm suddenly less convinced. Other recent posts by "Mark":

• Why Orlistat Is the UK’s Hottest Weight-Loss Pill Right Now
• Cutting-Edge Slots Provide Engaging Play With Enhanced Features And Powerful Rewards
• Sensual Bachata Lessons NYC: Learn the Art of Connection & Flow

Well lets look at the substance of the article

Can you believe the landscape has changed?

The article's intro discusses the "landscape" of "a new wave of digital platforms" that can help you make coloring pages:

I love that the AI writing this article is approaching this as if ColorBliss is like a bloated giant enterprise software company in need of disruption.

But, lets give it the benefit of the doubt, and see what "considered examination" of the "six leading platforms" can reveal to us.

The leading platforms

The article goes on to list 6 websites with pricing and a brief blurb about each.

You can tell who paid for the article because the first place contender is also the only one with a backlink.

I was interested to see the other "leading" platforms:

Particularly because I hadn't heard of any of them!

Here's what I found most interesting--4 out of 6 of the leading platforms don't exist. They are completely hallucinated.

Zensketch

Zensketch.io DNS doesn't resolve.

PaletteMuse.ai

Neither does PaletteMuse:

RelaxLines

Same with RelaxLines

CrayonCanvas

Surely CrayonCanvas is real, right?

Well at least someone ones the domain, even though nothing is there.

What about OpenColor.ai??

Finally, one of the "leading platforms" that exists:

I kind of like that hero image! But kind of weird that the "recent coloring page" is not actually a coloring page, don't you think?

Lets dig a little deeper and take a look at the about page...

Here's the open color about page:

And here's the ColorArt about page:

Can you spot the difference?

Yeah, they are the same, with just a different logo. Same "founders", same founding "story".

Surely ColorArt is legit right? After all, their home page brags that they have 1.2 million customers and 45k reviews. And it's even trusted by "Top Medias":

Personally, I have never seen a coloring page generator "powering" USA Today (despite having actually worked at USA Today's parent company way back when, and I doubt AP or yahoo does either).

Let's see what their landing page has to say about their photo to coloring page feature:

I love to bring my "cherished memories" of the UI of my CRM to life in a coloring page. I can't think of anything I'd rather make a coloring page, can you?

Ok so where did they get the article?

You probably don't care, I'm guessing I'm only writing this for myself.

But in case you are curious, you can purchase "guest posts" on Programming Insider for $80:

So, based on the guidelines there, here's what I've sorted out:

• Owner of ColorArt wants to get into the coloring page business
• they make a copy of an existing site (that already is pretty bad)
• they want to rank on google, so they start buy backlinks
• $80 for a backlink from a DR 73 site is pretty good!
• They use an AI to write an article and don't even read beyond seeing if it has a link in it
• ProgrammingInsider will publish literally any article you pay $80 for

Who wins here?

I think there are two winners here.

One, Marc Berman appears to be making bank. With 10 posts published today on August 29, 2025 at $80 per post, with no writing required from him, Mark Berman made $800. Not bad!

Two, I feel like a little bit of a winner here 🥲. After all, a competitor paid for an article that mentions my brand in the headline AND identifies ColorBliss as the "familiar" choice for coloring pages. If that doesn't shout "MARKET LEADER", I don't know what does.

Who loses?

But nevertheless, this is a sad state in my opinion for the internet. People are paying money to promote spam to promote a copy of a copy of a website. We all lose when more garbage is created. Seems like we are doing the same thing to the internet that we are doing to the oceans--creating islands of floating trash for someone to deal with later.

Anyway, dead internet theory has been on my mind lately (see Is there anybody out there?) and this is one more pile of evidence to throw on the heap.

Where does it leave me with ColorBliss? For one, I've never been more convinced that the way stand out now is just to be a real person. Have a voice, use your voice, develop a style, don't compromise your values, make it obvious to everyone who you are and what you stand for so that they can tell you apart from a machine pretending to be a person, or worse, a person using a machine to pretend to be a person instead of being themself.