Why I’m asking you about something like that?

Let’s start with short introduction…

I plan to write about something else, but last week something happened which changed my plans. Last week there was 1^st anniversary of CommentLuv – great WP plugin from Andy Bailey (I mention this plugin some weeks ago here: How to Stop Spam in Comments – AntiSpam Tips for Bloggers). To celebrate it Andy “squeeze” prize of it (developer’s license costs between 20-30$ instead of 97$!). And a lot of bloggers start to promote it – recently I found a lot of blog posts about it and I also received a lot of emails about this promotion.

I totally understand it – a lot of bloggers want to get money via it. But what do you think – how many of them (of us) will earn “real” money from this promotion, let’s say more than 100 dollars? Few of them (us)? Maybe a dozen

What I want to say is that it’s very difficult to make money promoting other things, especially when almost everybody in your niche is doing it. And blogging niche is one of the most crowded niches. But bloggers in this niche are trying to make big money. In most cases without success…

I know only few bloggers which make a lot of passive money blogging (Pat Flynn, Daren Rowse, John Chow, Jeremy Shoemaker – if you are interested you can read 5 Most Powerful Blogs About Blogging And Making Money Online), and other bloggers make money via other niches (or blogging isn’t their most important source of income).

Do you want some examples – okay, here you are:

Steve Scott – he earns money not from his great blog, but from niche site(s) (see his income report). On his blog he writes not only about blogging and making money online but also about authorities’ sites. But he didn’t reveal what his niche is

Justin Cooke and Joe Magnotti – owners of Adsense Flippers.com  – they earn money mostly from niche sites. They earn money via selling niche sites and via Google AdSense ads.

Josh Escusa and Trevor Welsh from WSOtesters.com – they also make most money via site sales and Google Adsense (placed on niche sites).

Dean Saliba, Michael Chibuzor, Mitt Ray, Bamidele Onibalusi and thousands of other bloggers – they make money via writing for others. They are content creators for others – you can find their posts on other blogs, on popular websites and even on some big portals. They run blogs (and sometimes write guest posts) for promoting their writing services.

There are also some bloggers which promote their own services – not only writing but also website design, SEO or marketing services – and they earn money on it, not on blogging about it…

What’s more – I also make some nice money on my niche sites, but from this blog I earn maybe 100$… And I spent lots more…

So please think about it – is your time and effort invested in blogging (about blogging) worth it? Or maybe it’s a huge waste of your time? There are a lot of possible ways of making money online, for some of them you even don’t need a blog! If you don’t have ideas about it please read some of my posts listed below:

Online Passive Income – 5 Money Making Ideas for Bloggers

How To Make Money Online – 10 best ways for doing it!

How to Earn Money Online with Niche Sites

What is Your Business Model – Authority Site, Niche Sites or Something Else?

Do you still think you can make money blogging? Of course, it’s possible… But do you really make passive income via your blog? I don’t. And I suppose you also don’t do it (but maybe I’m wrong).

Please share your own point of view and ways how you earn money online in comments below this post.

And there is a connection – the more popular blog is, the more spam comments it will get.

In this post I will try to show you how to stop SPAM in comments, most popular antispam software for bloggers and some funny examples of spammy comments.

If you like this post – share your love by tweeting, liking or give +

Okay, first of all – how you can operate with comments?

1. You can accept all of comments – Google and your readers will hate you, spammers will love you…
2. You can don’t accept comments below your posts – I don’t like it, blog should live…
3. You can check all of your comments manually – it’s never ending job. Instead of doing it you can write a guest post for NPI…
4. You can install and configure anti spam software for your blog. It takes only some minutes, but it saves you tons of work

After choosing 4^th answer (did you choose another one?)  we must decide, which software we can use. There are a lot of free and paid commenting systems we can use on WordPress, but I’ll concentrate only on most popular systems.

1. Facebook Comments

Some of blogs use FB system for commenting. I don’t like it because I’m not the host of the comments (Facebook is the host). FB changed a lot of things recently – for example landing page disappeared. Do you want to lose all of your comments?

2. AKISMET

AKISMET was the system I was using for a long time (on Polish market I still use it for some of my small niche sites).

But AKISMET isn’t perfect. Sometimes it treats real comments as a spam, and sometimes treats SPAM like normal comments.

What’s more, some weeks ago I made about 100 comments on a lot of blogs in two days.

After it AKISMET ‘s spamfilter qualified my comments as a spam. I don’t know if they have blacklist or something similar, but on blogs where AKISMET was in use, my comments go to spam folder, without any information. Luckily after contacting with their support, problem was resolved.

3. Comment Luv free version with G.A.S.P.

CommentLuv free version is the commenting system I used prior to paid version. It has some features, which other systems don’t have.

For example:

• It gives to commentators possibility to choose from their 10 recent posts to link back to own blog (it use RSS for this purpose)
• You can set who can choose from 10 last posts – only registered members, nobody, everybody
• You can set dofollows or nofollows for comments
• With another plugin, Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin, it protect you against spammers (there is a checkbox hidden from SPAM bots)

4. Comment Luv Premium Version

It’s paid version of this tool. It has all of the features from free version and lots more. For example, in CommentLuv Premium you have:

• Integrated GASP
• Integrated Twitter link
• You can ask your commentators to pay for some “link juice” (you will get more posts to choose from)  via Tweeting
• Top Commentator Widget

It’s not free, but it’s worth to buy it – you can try it in comments below

5. Disqus Comments

Some of my friends use Disqus. I don’t use it because it doesn’t give a prize for commentators – backlinks.

6. Triberr Comments

I like Triberr because it’s the best social tool I use, but commenting system is not my favourite. Triberr, similarly to Disqus, doesn’t reward commentators with backlinks to their websites.

7. Own AntiSpam System

If you are software programmer, you can stop SPAM by modifying code of your WP, for example by modifying   ‘.htaccess’ file. If you don’t know how to do it, you can find free guide about it below this link – it’s site of my friend Sandeep Kumar

8. Other Commenting Systems

I don’t know them – so I can’t introduce it to you

All of above mentioned systems can stop automatic SPAM made by SPAM bots (it’s about 95-99% of SPAM). But we still have manual, human spammers (in last two weeks I got ~40 handmade spam comments).

How I manage with them? – I put them into trash or spam folder

And how I separate the wheat from the chaff? Read carefully, below I reveal my tricks.

How to check if your comments are or aren’t SPAM

• Gravatar

First of all I’m looking for photo/image from Gravatar. Comments from my friends are accepted almost automatically

• Name

If name of commentator is filled up with keywords, I’m looking for another signs of SPAM

• Using  author name in a comment

When someone use name of the author in the comment, I’m almost sure that it’s real comment

• Coca Cola test

I perform „Coca Cola” test. It means, when I’m not sure if something is SPAM or not, I imagine that the comment is placed below post about Coca Cola. When the comment is too general, it will fail this test

Below you can find some examples of those types of spam comments:

But sometime spam commentators try to be even smarter:

“good post about… (and here is a title of your post)”

 Nice comment with great value…

There is only one more issue to discuss about SPAM – should we accept automatically comments from people who made some real comments before?

Some bloggers accept it, some bloggers don’t accept it.

Why I don’t accept comments automatically?

There are two main reasons.

1)      I want to know who participate in commenting and I don’t want to lose some comments (as you know, I’m answering on almost all of comments on NPI)

2)      Commenting systems in most cases check email, name and website to identify the commentator. But sometimes, if spammer knows some emails of your friends, he/she can pretend to be someone else and post spammy links inside the comment.

Okay, I wrote everything I want about SPAM in comments, now it’s your turn.

So, please share your experience with comments and anti spam software you use on your blog(s).

I don’t remember who, but someone told, that “comments are blood of the blogs”. And I agree with that statement. What’s more, these days comments are even most important, than some years (or even months) ago.

You should have comments to prove, that your site isn’t dead. On the other hand, comments on other sites, which link to your blog, help you in SEO and getting traffic to your blog.

If you don’t believe me, please let me give you simple example for it.

This blog, NoPassiveIncome.com is relatively new blog. I started it on the beginning of this year, but in reality, I concentrate on it since one month. To have a lot of visitors and huge traffic, creating quality content isn’t enough today – you must promote it. And since one month, I’m adding each day at least few comments on blogs related to mine.

You may ask – is it working for you?

For me it is. For example on 1^st May my Alexa rank was about 8 000 000. Now it’s about 1 500 000. Maybe it’s not first 10 000 (where I want to be in May 2013), but the range of growth is enough for me. The amount of visitors is also growing each day, and some of them are making comments on my blog. Nice, because one of my goals for this blog was, and still is, building my credibility in “English-speaking blogosphere”. And you build your credibility as a blogger for instance via creating relationship with other bloggers.

Below I’ll show you in few points, how to get traffic from comments on other sites, and how to get more comments on your blog

Comments on other sites

1)      Make your comment useful

Your comment must be useful for other readers. Otherwise, why they should be interested in visiting your blog? What’s more, comments like this “great post” don’t give any additional value to the discussion – so blog owner may, in the worst case, don’t accept it…

2)      If you don’t know, what you want to say, don’t comment

Sometimes you want to comment, but you totally don’t understand the topic, or don’t know what to say. In that case, silence is better, than writing something stupid…

3)      Make your comment as a person

Maybe from SEO point of view it’s not the best solution, but if you want to build your credibility, you must sign with your real name, or alternatively with your blog name or address. If possible, for commenting purpose use your email, which is active on Gravatar – it is more personal. Besides, administrator or blog owner see, that you are a human, not a bot

4)      Try to be first commentator

If you want to be visible not only by author of the article or Google bot, please try to be first commentator or at least in top 10 of first commentators. If the post, on which you are commenting, has hundreds of comments, nobody (or almost nobody) will read comments at the bottom of the page. But be careful – some blogs have another commenting system, where last comments are on the top (just below post). You should try to comment on sites like this not only as a first commentator, but also some days after post was published

Comments on your blog

There is a lot blogs and websites, where people can comment. Why they should comment on your site? How to get a lot of comments since first day of blogging? Please read these tips for getting more comments on your site

1)      Make people reason for comment

If you want to have great response on your post, write for users. It must be quality content not only for you, but also (or maybe first of all) for your readers

2)      Ask for interaction

At the end of your each post, you should place call to action statement. It may looks like:

“And what about you? What do you think about these tips? Or maybe you have your own tips about comments? Please share them with us!” It really helps in getting comments

3)      Answer on comments

If someone took pains to make comment on your site, you must answer him or her. If some questions are repeated in a lot of comments – you may prepare blog post with answer on these questions, and in your future answers for the comments, you will link back to that post

4)      Make it easy to comment

Sometimes I read great article on someone’s blog and I want to comment. But there is difficult captcha, requirements for login via Facebook or something similar, which makes commenting very hard. Please make it as easy as possible

5)      Fight with spammy comments

Of course there are always pros and cons of simplifying your comment system. If your site is easy for commenting for users, it’s also easy for commenting for spammers. But you could use some tools or plugins to fight with spammers – for example Akismet It’s very simple to use, and for noncommercial use it may be even free of charge.

6)      Install some plugins, which may add some more value for commenting on your site

Today I turn on 2 plugins on my blog – below you can find them. I suppose, that they will help me in getting more comments, but we will see

1.       Commentluv

commentluv is a WordPress plugin, which reward commentators by placing a clickable link to their last post on the blog. There are some paid versions of commentluv, but basic version is free of charge

2.       Top Commentators

Top Commentators is also a plugin for WordPress, which award your most active commentators. You may set here, how many top commentators will be shown, what is your “reset period” or if your links will be dofollow or not. For this blog, I set this plugin to show top 5 commentators, with dofollow links, but only on homepage.

And how do you comment on other sites? Or maybe you have your own magic formula, in getting a lot of comments? Please describe it below.