Jan

3

Blog Spammer Fooled Me

Filed Under Blogging News | 4 Comments

I really liked this post. Can I copy it to my blog?
Thanks in advance.

Sincerely, Timur.

I recently received that comment on my blog.  I was pleased that Timur liked my blog post and wanted to copy it to his own blog.  You know you’re doing things right when you get blog comments like this - right?

Well, not in this case!  I have more than one blog, and guess what I found?  This same exact comment showed up on more than one of my blogs.  This is a blog spam comment.

I have to admit, I fell for it when I saw it the first time, but of course when I saw it on the second blog I knew it was spam.

The comment was flagged as spam by Spam Karma on my other blog, so someone had already caught on to this spammer and had flagged them as spam.  I also flagged it as spam, so Timur (if that’s the spammers real name) will not be getting as many backlinks as he thought he would.

The lessons learned here are, that you must be using a spam detecting plugin like Askimet or Spam Karma on you blog.  And, you need to be on your guard for these clever comments that appear real and flattering.

Mike

Dec

22

Blogging Goals for 2009

Filed Under Blogging News | 5 Comments

Blogging Goals for 2009

I’ve been thinking (always a scary thought) about my blogging goals for 2009.

I’m not big on goal setting, like writing short term goals and long term goals, and posting them where I see them every day.  I’m not big on it because it’s been my experience that when I don’t accomplish those goals, that’s a negative and I want to keep my business thoughts positive.

So, I will think through what I want to accomplish at a high level and then set those goals in my mind.

My blogging goals for 2009 are blog more consistently, and bring more of a personal touch to my blogs, and provide good content.  I get my blogging inspiration from Albert Hallado and have blogged about his blogging style on my internet marketing blog.

As you can see, that blog, and this blog have not been updated for way too long.  So, as you can see blogging consistency has not been one of my strengths.

I have to admit I have been busy with my Online Tech Guy business and that has limited my time somewhat.  But still I should be able to carve out a half an hour to update my blog.

In 2009 I will schedule and hour each week to drop whatever I am doing and write a blog post.

The second thing I want to do is to share a little more about who I am, and let you get to know me a little better.  The internet can be an impersonal thing, with people hiding behind a keyboard.  I want to be more than that.

Now, I’m not going to share too much :-) , but I do want to reveal more about who I am as a person and I hope to get to know my readers better as well.

My third goal is to provide good content.  It does me no good to be a consistent blogger, while providing content no one wants to read, so I will strive to always provide something of value.

Have you thought about your blogging goals for 2009?  I’d love to hear them.

Submit your goals in the comments and you will get a DoFollow link back to your site.  Only quality comments will be accepted.  Comments like “my goal is to be a better blogger” will not be accepted.

Nov

14

Askimet and Blog Comment Spam

Filed Under Blogging News | 18 Comments

Blog spam is definitely a problem and I don’t want to pretend it isn’t, and anti-spam plugins like Askimet are great plugins.

But, if you are moderating comments on your blog, you need to make sure you are flagging true spam as spam with Askimet, and deleting questionable comments.

I have heard from some people that a comment of their’s was flagged as spam with Askimet because the owner didn’t approve of the content of the comment.  If you don’t approve of a comment delete it, don’t flag it as spam especially with Askimet because if the comment is not true spam, you have just screwed someone.

In summary, Askimet is a Wordpress plugin that is used by thousands of bloggers.  Blog comments are sent to Askimet and Askimet uses it’s rules to determine if a comment is spam or not.  Of course Askimet is not going to tell us how they determine spam, which is good since the spammers would find ways around the Askimet spam rules.

So, if you flag a comment as spam, it’s flagged by Askimet as spam.  Once a comment is flagged as spam by you, Askimet will flag it as spam the next time that person comments on a blog post.

I have read that URLs are sometimes flagged as spam, some keywords are flagged as spam and I suspect IP addresses may also be flagged as spam.  The next time the person you flagged as spam submits a comment on another blog, Askimet may identify it as spam, and the comment will never be approved - even though it could be a perfectly valid comment.

From what I have read, from people who have ended up being flagged as a spammer by Askimet, is that you won’t even realize you were flagged as a spammer until you somehow figure out your comments on blogs never show up.  Some tested by commenting on their own blog to see their comment being flagged as spam.

To get of off the Askimet spam system, I’ve seen people suggest you comment on blogs of people you know, and ask them to mark your comments as not being spam if Askimet flags them as spam.  This is called a False-Positive by Askimet.  As blog owners approve the comments as not being spam, Askimet is supposed to learn.  So if you continue to post comments that are not flagged as spam, you should come off the list.

The best way to stay out of the Askimet spam system is to provide good comments.  But someone having a bad day could decide to flag you as spam for no good reason.  You wouldn’t want someone doing that to you, so be careful when flagging comments as spam when they really aren’t.

If you have questionable comments on your blog, go ahead and delete them, just make sure you delete bad comments, and flag true spam as spam.  I delete far more comments than I flag as spam.  A blog comment has to clearly be spam before I will mark it as such, and Askimet catches most of those for me already.

I also encourage you to periodically look at comments Askimet flags as spam on your blog.  If you find comments that are clearly not spam, remove the spam flag.  You would appreciate if someone did that for you, so do the right thing for them.

Askimet is a great plugin for controlling comment spam on your blog, but be careful how you use it.

Disclaimer:  I am not an expert on Askimet, but I did some research on it to better understand how it works.  If you have more information on how Askimet works, I would appreciate your comments below.

Mike

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Oct

28

Blogging is Dead

Filed Under Blogging News | 44 Comments

Did you hear the news?  Blogging is dead!

The revelation that blogging is so 2004 and not worth doing any longer was sure news to me.

Paul Boutin over at Wired.com States “Thinking about launching your own blog? Here’s some friendly advice: Don’t. And if you’ve already got one, pull the plug.”

Paul is right, that the top blogs on Tecnorati are no longer the personal blogs written by the individual, they are now the blogs of corporations and political heavy weights.  The small time blogger like you and I no longer have a chance to reach the top of the blog directories.

So you need to stop blogging today.  Do you hear me?  Everyone stop blogging - please.

According to the above article, some bloggers are moving over to Twitter and Facebook.  Yes, Twitter and Facebook are great services and I think all blog owners should use those services and just stop blogging - blogging is just a waste of time.

There are just too many blogs today, too much competition to make it worth while.

I guess the ease of use of blogging platforms, like Wordpress, has doomed all of us in the blogging world.  Now virtually anyone, without technical expertise can blog, and blogging is no longer the darling of the technically skilled.

The blogosphere has created it’s own demise since it is so easy to do, and there are so many people teaching others how to blog.

With the millions of blogs out there, how will your blog ever get noticed?  It won’t - so stop already, pull the plug, go Twitter everyone and let them know you will be using Twitter to communicate with them, because you are pulling the plug on your blog.

Let’s start a “pull the plug on your blog” movement, and spread the word to everyone we know.

Wait a minute….what are you doing here?  How come you are reading this?  Don’t you know blogs are dead?

Seriously, even though it has become tougher to compete in the blogging arena, there are still plenty of benefits to blogging.  The internet is still all about content, and blogs are content.  Plus, the search engines still love blogs and content and always will.

If some find blogging no longer worth doing, and turn off their blogs, great - that just leaves more potential visitors to our blogs.

The real key to blogging today, is to find niches to blog about.

For example, if you try to get traffic to a general political blog today, you will have a hard time competing with the big boys.  But, if you decided to blog about something like politics from a Christian’s prospective, or from a lawyer’s perspective, or an internet marketer’s perspective, you should be able to find an audience.

Blogging is dead - NOT!  It’s just like everything else on the internet, you just need to adapt to the times and competition.

Blog on!

Mike

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