More and more people are using Blogs as ways to earn extra money. Many have heard if you leave a comment on another Blog it will get you on page 1 of Google. True however only if your comment is useful.
Each day I check the comments people have left on my Blog. None of the comments left on this Blog are published automatically – period. This is my Blog and my reputation on the line so I moderate or ‘check; every comment. Some days there are 30 comments to check. You may think that is a lot of work. Well the surprising thing is it’s actually very easy. Because 95% of the comments end up in the trash. Why? Because this is the type of comment many people write and think I will accept – ‘Hi, I really like what you have written here. I have bookmarked your site’. It’s quite obvious they have given no thought to what I have written and simply looked for a post in their market area and then done a ‘cut and paste’ comment.
So if you want to waste your time and have all you Blog comments end up in the trash follow the above approach. However if your really see Blogs as one of the ways to earn extra money then be respectful. Read the post think about it then make a comment that adds value to the discussion. That way it’s a win – win, the Blogger gets decent comments and you get more potential traffic to your site.
Andrew Peel
Tags: Andrew Peel, APeel Solutions, Direct Sales, earn extra money at home, earn money part time, earn money quickly, make extra money at home, make money on computer, making extra income, making money package, Ways To Earn Extra Money
In fact comment moderation it´s the greatest tool to avoid spam on blogs, software platforms should motivate it instead of using web killers resources like the nofollow tag on links.
Nathan Rodriguez@Perfume Cuba´s last [type] ..Breezes Resort Bahia
Nathan,
I think the proof that moderating your own Blog works comes from what I did today. I had 20 comments 19 of which ended up in Trash. The reasons were porn and drug peddlers actually thought I would allow their filth on my Blog. For the rest they simply randomly selected post and put in cut and paste comments. As you have followed my Comment Policy I have published your comment.
Andrew
Andrew,
Are you running the Akismet plugin on this blog? It should automatically flag the nastier blog comments without need for manual review. I run several blogs and know what you mean about worthless comments. The spammers have become a little more creative, scraping content from other places in an attempt to make comments appear legitimate. It’s too bad, because the idea of rewarding visitors for interacting on your site is in theory an excellent idea.
James@Nail Polish Holder´s last [type] ..Where to Buy Nail Polish Display Rack
I am testing avoiding using Askimet because it is seriously flawed. I find it a little more work to moderate. To be honest the spammers are so lazy they are farming out their comments to people so incompetent they are easy to spot.
I don’t know that I agree that comments like “Great post” or “I’ve bookmarked your site” are all necessarily comment spam. Some people do genuinely like to leave compliments, but it does have to be taken into the context of the post. That’s why moderation is a must, even though it may limit some conversation, because machines can’t read the intent of a poster.
I’m looking into ways to increase the participation on my personal blog myself without giving up the quality of the posts and conversations and have been considering Keyword Luv. What’s been your experience with it? Has it increased the participation of your readers?
Brad,
My experience has been that at any one time when I check for comments there can be up to 30 comments awaiting moderation. Some spammers have clearly targeted my Blog because it’s Alexa rank is climbing.
What amazes me is now I have a link to my comment policy at the point you comment. Yet still 95% of the comments are trash or spam. By the way the ‘I found your site by stumbling across it and bookmarked’ must be what they give to people whose English is bad. I have checked the IP addresses and they are from the Indian Sub-Continent. This is business owners simply too lazy to spend 30 minutes a day reading two articles on quality Blogs in their market and commenting they pay a couple of cents a comment and believe they will get quality links. Well most quality Blogs are moderated so they may as well give that money to charity.
I am pleased that comments such as yours and other that add value get through and give me the chance to have a conversation like this. More ‘real’ joint venture partners have contacted me through my Blog since the redesign and my adding a contact form with a CAPTCHA check.
Thanks for commenting.
Andrew
Andrew, I sooo know where you are coming from!
I have Akismet installed on my blog and it “traps” on average 10 to 15 spam comments every day. It takes me a couple of minutes, OK…maybe five or so to check these comments & identify them as true spam. I do this by looking at the “commenters” website url that they have put in as their link. If this is not connected in any way to the theme of my blog, I automatically classify it as generated spam & delete it permanently.
What really beats me is that these spammers really think that these are “getting through” & will be allowed to remain on legitimate blogs running strong content that is updated regularly.
What’s with that?
Michael B Wilbraham´s last [type] ..7 Reasons Why You CAN Be Successful With Network Marketing
Michael.
Welcome and thanks for your great comments. I have to say I have got to the point where trying to figure out how a spammers mind works has defeated me. They must send out so many comments and work on the law of averages that some will be accepted. However as you say no legitimate Blog is going to allow them.
Andrew
Twitter: tltconsulting
I moderate and use Akismet but still go through the spam folder daily because Akismet does make those occasional errs. I enjoy that time of day when I moderate the comments and reply by hand, It is sort of a down time for me from my endless projects. I noticed some of your blogs have the captcha and some don’t, do you notice a significant drop in spam using it? I guess it would get the auto-posters.
Terry Tiessen´s last [type] ..My Problogger 7 Link Challenge 7Links
Terry
Thanks for the comments. I stopped using Askimet after reading you can loose a lot of legitimate comments because of it. This is because Askimet classes a Spammer as anyone who is marked as a Spammer by another Blogger. As different Bloggers have different views of spam then that means some comments get ‘blacklisted’ and you never even get the chance to get them out of your spam bucket as they never made it that far. One Blogger who is in the ComLuv network admitted his definition of spam included people who criticised his views or he thought were ‘stupid’. That is Trash as opposed to Spam. He has now unwittingly caused those people to be ‘blacklisted’ by Askimet.
Askimet have never refuted this story since it came to light. If you are moderating daily as I do then I took the decision to remove Askimet and mark all comments for personal moderation. This resulted in 90% of the daily comments being from spammers targetting my Blog. Today I decided to install a nicer CAPTCHA form which I hope you found easy to use and there were three commenters yourself and two other people. One who spammed the same comment to three posts. He has been added to my blacklist so that’s one more spammer dealt with. The other comment bore no relation to the post so was trashed. This gave me more quality time to your quality comment.
Andrew
I agree with writer on the best way to write Weblog comment, it’s quite significant. Folks need to create down words associated the topic, not just say thank you, I like etc,. mainly because it will likely be viewed as spam.
You’re actually quite brave to moderate your comments this way. If I wasn’t using Akismet, I don’t think I would have the energy to deal with the comments on my older, less popular blog site. Because it’s been around for a long enough time, it seems to be on everyone’s spam commenting list.
Ya – the Akismet system is a bit severe. I’ve heard that once your site gets listedn on Akismet, it’s quite hard to have it removed. But still, it’s the best system that’s available today. If it makes people act a bit more politely when they go to comment, I don’t think that’s such a bad thing.
Danny
Thanks for the comment. The implications is Askimet are quite far reaching because they still refuse to even answer the criticisms of their system.
For example your’s is the only comment I have approved this morning. The others were spam it’s just that for some bizarre reason they thought because they had filled the CAPTCHA I would allow it.
It took me 30 secs. to Trash their comments and gave me more time to reply to you. As I have no auto Blogs or other Blogs to moderate this approach is getting better comments to my readers.
Andrew
Couldn’t agree more. 90% of my comments seem to be in foreign languages – as if I’m going to accept that. It’s okay for someone to leave a comment saying that they enjoy the blog if they actually say something that contributes as well. I enjoy reading blogs and commenting on them where I feel it is neccessary – I”d soon get bored just copying and pasting ‘nice post’ to thousands of blogs.
Andrew
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us. I am also someone who looks for Blogs with useful information and I will leave a comment if it has interested me. I find I develop better relationships with other Bloggers this way. Relationships are the key and a spam comment will never be the start of a relationship.
Andrew
Andrew,
I’m a newbie to the whole internet blogging, marketing, business etc. I do take the time to read each blog I comment on and I hope the comments I leave are useful to others. I have gained a lot of useful information by reading different blogs, in fact as I was looking around your site I happened upon your comment policy, which was actually the first thing I read on your site. Believe it or not, I found your policy very informative and useful and will help me leave better comments on other blogs I read!
I do have to disagree with the comment Michael B Wilbraham left. As you can see by my website url, it isn’t relevant to this blog at all, but as I have been working on marketing my website, trying to drive traffic and increase my listing in the SERP’s, I have come across new was of doing this. One of which is creating a blog. So as I been doing research on blogging and as I find useful blogs, I do comment on them. So, for me, it is a win, win situation. I can hopeful gain one more backlink while learning new ways to market my business.
Bottom line, thanks for some really useful information that does give me some insight into what the blogger goes through. I had no idea that there was that much spamming going on. If you should decide to trash this comment, I only ask that you take a minute to send me an email with why!
Thank You,
Mark
M. Sullivan´s last [type] ..Boat Propellers
Mark
All I can say is your research has paid of. You have provided an excellent comment and I am glad I was able to assist in some small way with my Comment Policy. I had a quick look at your site. My main piece of feedback would be to add different ways for visitors to interact with you. Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and especially a good YouTube Channel would fit your business ideally.
Andrew
Hi Andrew, This is such an important post.This is indeed a topic which has been ignored by many experts & professionals. You have done a great job by bringing this topic into light. I hope quality discussions follow this post. Great job. Good luck with the challenge and with your business.
Cressanta @ princess peach costumes´s last [type] ..About Us
Twitter: pAfiQtzGNPyvzHp
Congratulations on receiving your awards!
Cressanta
Thanks for the support and your excellent commenty. Note to other commenters; make comments like this on my Blog and it will always be approved.
Andrew