I won't be at the top of the Blog-Train for much longer... because of a cheat!

It's been a nice long run, but, owing to a cheat with a pretty pink DIY crafting blog who only appeared two days ago and has racked up nearly as many points in that short time as I did over the last month, I probably won't be at the top of the Blog-Train by the end of today.

My blog is to the left. I've blurred out the cheat.

When I last looked at the scores, I was on 25688 points and the cheat was on 24651. They are only 1000 points behind me now when, just before I went to bed, they were over 3000 points behind. I only got that lead because I started building up my points just after the scores were reset so there's no way that anybody should have been able to catch up to me.

I have no idea how they did it. I found that there were no more blogs to click on and accumulate points from quite a while ago. Other than clicking on the "Take the next train" link every 10 minutes, or posting a voting link on Facebook, Twitter or message boards (which I have, but I can see that they have not done!), there's no legitimate way of getting any more points. Their number of GFC followers may be more than mine but that really counts for nothing when internet people are as apathetic as they are. I've ruled out the voting by mailing list option.

Thus, they've either been clicking on the "Take the next train" link in two time zones 24/7 or they have something automated going on. Somehow I just can't see the pretty German lady whose face is all over that blog sitting in front of her computer like Desmond in "Lost" watching the countdown to click a button every 10 minutes. Just so you know, yes, I have been pathetic enough to sit here doing that very thing myself while watching movies at the same time.

As the point of their blog is to sell a load of overpriced knickers and drawstring bags made out of garish curtain material via Etsy, I suspect that they have the help of a friend or family member in another time zone. The blog picture only changes if you log out of the site and back in again, and I've seen their blog picture change three times now. I wouldn't put it past them to be using online web proxies either. If it's the latter, there's no way of proving it.

I've reported the situation, but I don't expect the Blog-Train site owners even care as long as a few people are still stupid enough to keep paying to be "First Class Passengers" for $10 a month.

Honestly, people who cheat like this make me sick. The whole Blog-Train thing is just a free bit of fun for most people anyway, but they just had to go and spoil it for everybody.

Since I've had none of the page hits or huge amounts of new followers which were promised by the Blog-Train, I will never be returning to it. My Stats show that I've had only 9 referrals from the Blog-Train overall. What a waste of time!