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You are here: Home / Spam is Yummy!

Spam is Yummy!

Published on March 7, 2011 by Richard
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Mmmmm, I love spam. I just take it and eat it up and spit it out in the spam basket. It is a secret love that goes from my comment filter to my spam box and then directly to my trash.

I suspect many bloggers do the same thing with spam. But lately spam has started to disguise itself and has tried to turn itself into various forms of ham and other unsavory meats. Nonetheless, I classify these suspect comments the same way and treat them accordingly.

So, during my weekend road trip, I checked on my comments on occasion. One of the comments in my box was well written. It was long enough to be a short post. It contained a list of tips. In many respects, it was a quality comment. So, what was the problem?

It was cleverly disguised spam.

Here’s an excerpt from that comment:

It is a fact that affiliate marketing is among the simplest and most efficient ways to generate income online. However, you will have to make an effort right until you can generate income from your affiliate business. You must work hard if you want to achieve success and you will also have to apply certain tools in order to earn money. 

1. Commitment: The very first thing you have to do is to commit to yourself that you are serious with your choice, you’re serious with building your own business, serious about taking 100% responsibility with whatever you do. You might think that this sounds ridiculous, but it’ll guide you rightly on your journey. Once you can think, and are responsible like a real business owner, you’ll stand out from people.

2. Education: The next important part that can make or break your business is your education, or your knowledge about this online business. Most people failed because they did not know exactly what Internet Affiliate Marketing is, how it works, and how they can do things correctly. If you want to see results in the long run, you must arm yourself with enough knowledge. Don’t let something that you don’t know holds you back.

3. Focus: The laser beam can break through even the thickest plate of metal because it focuses its energy. You can break even everything if you stay focus too. Fact is, people have no advantages over you, everyone starts at the same level, the reason why some have success, some don’t lies in the word “focus”. Focus on what you can do best, on what you know the most, and go with them, you’ll join the 5% group soon.

4. Taking actions: Isn’t it true that only taking actions can bring you closer to your goals? You can’t achieve results just by sitting there, making a wish! It’s time to put what you’ve learned so far to real actions. I know this is the hardest part, but believe me that when you can do the very first action toward your goals, the next steps will come naturally. Whatever you do, make sure that it guides you to your goals!

5. Don’t quit: Quitters are losers! In fact, if you’re serious with your online business, having enough knowledge about what you’re doing, and are taking actions persistently, chances are you’ll never quit! Congratulations! Because most people came in fast, but they quit soon as well. If you just stay focus, taking actions, and don’t quit, you’ll be successful. Guaranteed!


 

Doesn’t it just look nice? It gives some good pointers in affiliate marketing. The comment lays them all out in bullet points. Overall, not a bad comment. So, why would I label this as spam?

Comments Should Match the Topic of Discussion

First off, this comment was left in a post that had nothing to do with affiliate marketing. It was left in my post about increasing traffic by having visitors to share with their facebook and twitter community. You can read that post here.

There should be a certain flow from a blog post to the comments. The purpose of the comments are to add a dialog to the post topic itself. It’s a section that allows the readers to add their own views to the post topic, ask questions, and open a discussion.

When I read a blog post and it segways into a comment that is on a completely different topic. There’s just a sense of disjointedness that I feel detracts from the overall discussion itself. Comments should add value to a blog post.

In this case, even though the comment itself contained useful subject matter, it detracted from the overall value of the blog post because it was not on topic.

However, there’s more that was wrong with this particular comment.

Don’t Use Commentating as a Method of Advertising Affiliates

The part of the comment that I took out actually contained an affiliate link. If you’ve seen a few sales pitches and email sales letters, you might recognize the general flavor when you read this comment. Doesn’t it just read as if it’s moving you towards a purpose?

What I left out at the end was the sale pitch. This comment basically ended with an upsell along the lines of “You can discover the top secrets and methods of…” blah blah blah, “to learn more visit my website…” blah blah blah affiliate link.

This is the kind of stuff I sometimes get in my email, or I might read in a sales type article. When I take a look at that, it’s obvious that this entire comment was just a sales pitch. It might have even been a part of the person’s affiliate advertising materials that they just cut and pasted into my blog.

Now, this comment takes on a more sinister flavor. Not only did the person just try to blatantly sell their own product on my blog, but they were completely indiscriminate about where they tried to put their ad.

In my mind, these two traits puts this comment squarely into the spam category.

Everything has it’s place

Don’t get me wrong. I go to great lengths to allow people to share certain links on my blog. I use the comment luv plugin to allow people to promote their own blog articles. This plugin allows a commentator to give a plug to their latest blog posts.

Not only that, but when you leave a comment, you can also put your URL in the information section along with your name and email. So, there are already two built in places for people to put their links.

I think that by itself gives the readers an invitation that says, “Please feel free to link in the clearly marked spots.” Beyond that, for the most part, there shouldn’t be a need to put additional links into the body of the comment itself. I have seen very courteous commentators who will refer a website or a service in their comments, but they will simply leave it in text as opposed to a hyperlink. I think that’s appropriate.

Secondly, if someone wanted to further promote themselves, they can also submit a guest post. I have an expanded Author profile as you can see in the guest articles. The author box allows one to put in a description of themselves and a link back to their website. It is a wonderful way to promote yourself. A well written guest article will bring a good amount of traffic back to your website.

Of course, I also have some quality controls for my guest posters, but nothing atypical of many other blogs. You can read about my requirements and the submission procedures for guest posting on Riches Corner here.

Finally, on many blogs, including this one, there is an area for people to purchase advertising. Many blogs actually allow people to post their own advertisements. On this blog, I have a section of 125×125 banners in the sidebar. You can sign up to post your affiliate advertisements here.

That said, it appears to me that when one tries to put their advertisement in a comment section of the blog, they are attempting to bypass the regular procedures of purchasing advertising space. Most bloggers monetize their blogs in some way by selling advertising space. When someone bypasses that, they are circumventing a process that helps the blogger keep the blog operating.

In my case, I sell my advertising space at quite a discounted rate of $2.50 for a week or $8.00 a month. If someone wants to advertise their affiliate links, they are welcome to sign up for advertising.

I Welcome Comments

With all this said, I welcome comments on Riches Corner. Many of you are regulars and contribute to the dialog. Some of you stop by almost daily to leave a comment. I love all of you!

I love an open dialog and try to err on the side of approving comments. However, at the same time, I need to be mindful of my readers. I moderate my comments to ensure quality control from my readers.

I appreciate all the commentators here and look forward to all of your continued comments!

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Posted in blogging | Tagged Blog, Blogger, Blogging, blogging tips

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Article written by Richard

Richard is a full time professional, husband, father and blogger juggling all the responsibilities of life and running a blog. Richard enjoys writing about life and online money matters.

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12 Responses

  1. Delena [email protected] says:
    March 7, 2011 at 9:39 pm

    I recently read a post Brankica over at Live-Your-Love wrote in January about spam she had gotten that was particularly sinister. A Google search revealed the exact same comment left at almost two dozen other blogs. Evil!

    My sister likes to say, "Don't bother idiot-proofing it; they'll just invent a better idiot." When everyone got wise to the insidious ways of spammers, they had to get sneakier and more sinister. It's annoying, I think.

    The first time I got spam I was actually surprised and disheartened. It's just so disrespectful. The only spam I like is when Eric Idle and John Cleese are singing about it.

    Delena

    Reply
    1. Richard says:
      March 7, 2011 at 11:26 pm

      It is a bit of a surprise whenever we get spam. Plus they are getting better all the time at disguising it. It's insidious!

      Reply
  2. Alex says:
    March 8, 2011 at 12:39 am

    Hello Richard,

    I searched a part of that comment you posted and I saw it on a lot of blogs, and almost everywhere people recognized it as blatant self promotion, because it is. I actually visited his affiliate links and it was a get rich quick scam (oups, I mean scheme, get rich scheme).

    I always try to keep my self-promotion to a minimum wherever I got, because I don't want people to take me as a one time hitter, or as a man who's only in for it's own benefit.

    If there would be a program that would give me a cent for every spam I got, I wouldn't work a day in my life!

    Reply
    1. Richard says:
      March 8, 2011 at 12:55 am

      I suspect that it was a cut and paste sales mailer that he posted all around. It did have the flavor of self promotion even after I left out the affiliate link.

      I'm also very careful about self promotion on other people's blogs. I try to add supportive comments for their ideas and themes.

      Reply
  3. Mike says:
    March 24, 2011 at 1:36 pm

    Do you think the commentluv app cuts down on spam? I'm thinking of using it, also but worry about what kind of comments I would get. I'm almost anal about controlling most comments I get, but I'm sure I let some spam get through. Anything with adult comments, tags or links, and now drug sellers ( viagra etc..) mostly get caught in the filters now, but some still get approved before I go in and manually remove them. Do you find you get more or less "quality" comments with commentluv?

    Reply
    1. Richard says:
      March 24, 2011 at 1:54 pm

      I don't think commentluv increases spam at all. Most people that leave comments that have the commentluv links give really good insightful comments. You can see the comments on here with commentluv links. They're all great.
      I find the spammers don't really use commentluv most of the time.

      Reply
  4. Kavya Hari says:
    March 27, 2011 at 11:44 pm

    Comment is nothing but to give your opinion, ideas and so on here. But, its really good effort on here, Richard on here. Thanks Richard for given your article on here.
    My recent post VPS Hosting And Its Benefits

    Reply
  5. vincent says:
    March 31, 2011 at 11:34 pm

    Your are an excellent blogger I learned a lot from reading just to of your blogs I have some work to do to get my house(blog in order) thanks for sharing!

    Reply
  6. SEO Agency says:
    April 1, 2011 at 6:08 pm

    So long as the comments stay on track, I would pretty much accept any comment. Well, as long as they weren't too 'spammy' 😛

    Reply
  7. Mike says:
    April 6, 2011 at 9:19 pm

    Heh. This guy even put an email address in the comment to look legit. I'm good at spotting the spam, but I had to google it to be sure. Shonuff, I ended up here.
    My recent post Does Google Sniper Work

    Reply
    1. Richard says:
      April 6, 2011 at 9:24 pm

      This was a tricky one to be sure. Spammers are getting more sophisticated all the time. I'm sure I've missed a few, but the links in the body are a tip off. Email in the body of the comment raises a red flag for me as well, since there's no need to leave an email in the body of the comment.

      Reply
      1. Guy says:
        April 7, 2011 at 3:33 am

        Whilst I do tend to use keywords as my name when commenting on this blog; I'm not actually a bot (believe it or not!) and just to show you; I'll use my name this time 😉

        Reply

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