Tag Archives: commenting

Blogging

Fake Commenter Names

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I’ve been thinking about the use of fake blog commenter names a lot lately. Actually, I’ve thought about it before, and probably for a long time. I really started thinking about it a lot more after I wrote my post on the person who was hiding behind a fake name and defaming the model; she got hers in the end. Earlier in the summer I also wrote on the anonymity of bloggers and how I will agree that, sometimes, a blogger has to keep their name secret to protect themselves, but how generally I don’t believe that’s the way to go.

I’ve also written many times on leaving valuable comments instead of throwaway comments. One such post was about commenting and not wasting people’s time with a terrible comment. Another post was a little rant about why it behooves you to comment on other blogs. People appreciate when you comment on their blogs, and if they like it you might get some love back; who doesn’t like that?

Anyway, back to this name thing. I’m someone who likes to respond back to people who leave pretty good comments on my blog. I don’t expect perfection, but I expect realism. I know to delete all those posts that ask me where I got my theme, especially when I haven’t ever written a post about blog themes here (well, that’s not quite true; I did write one that was more about gravatars than themes but mentioned it, and another one reminding people to move things after changing their theme, but that’s it).

When I don’t have a name to respond to, I feel a little bit silly if I want to comment and I have to use the fake name, which I know some people like to refer to as a keyword name. I will often look at the email address to see if there’s a name there, and if so I’ll respond to that email name and leave the keyword name. If not, then I change the keyword name to only initials, then I’ll comment on it. But that takes time that I shouldn’t have to deal with.

I’m easily not alone on this one. There are posts galore from people about hating keyword names, such as this one from Neil Shearing, this one from Success Creations, and this one from Blogging Startup. There was even a post from Remarkablogger on writing keywords in comment posts that I thought was very good. Even my friend Sire addresses this in his comment policy.

I’ve always deleted links in comments that have nothing to do with the topic I wrote on. They’re not needed; this always tells me that some folks have no idea what CommentLuv is all about, which they see at the bottom of every post. If you’re writing from a blog, CommentLuv will go and find your last blog post and add it automatically. If you go to the CommentLuv site and sign up for an account, it will find your last 10 and you get to select which one you want to highlight. I mean, that’s just a great thing.

If you’re not writing from a blog, then just post the link you want in where it asks for your domain address, and you’re good to go. I don’t have a real problem with that, unless it’s a TinyURL or to a site that’s easy to discern as bad; I will delete those, and have. I hate hidden links as a general rule, and it’s one of the things about Twitter that makes me wary at times.

Why do people use keywords as their comment name anyway? It seems that many years ago some people were writing and saying that it would help them with their SEO efforts to do it. Gang, that’s just not true. It only helps if you’re doing it on your own blog or website. By putting it on mine, all you’re doing it either helping or hurting me if your name does or does not equate to the topic I’ve just written about. And it generates a lot of spam; many other folks seem to say that they get way more blog commenting spam when they’ve been allowing fake names, and I do get quite a bit.

I’ve given people who comment on my blog a lot of benefits. I’ve added CommentLuv. I’ve made this a dofollow blog, which means you’ll get your little bit of juice by commenting. And I don’t turn comments off after a certain point in time either. I even respond to almost every comment (I mean, there’s a point at which I might have to determine who gets the last word, and it’s not always going to be me). All I ask is for a little bit of decorum coming back.

So, from today on, I ask everyone to at least give me a real name that I can respond to before you write your keyword name, if you really feel that you have to do it. Either that or put your real name at the end of your comment, which our friend Steve of Trade Show Guru fame does. It helps us develop a relationship, and keeps me from having to go in and edit names. And, if you can, use CommentLuv or the domain name area for your links, unless you’re adding a link in your comment to add to the discussion at hand.

From today on, I will be reducing those keyword names without a real name preceding it to one letter; if I’m going to work, I’m going to make it easy on myself. And we’ll proceed from there. I think it’s fair, and so would our friend Dennis, who also wrote a fairly good comment policy, which at the time I thought was pretty tough.

And there we go. Something for a Sunday morning before football starts, where I’m hoping my Cowboys will remember why they’re known as America’s team and actually starts playing some better football.


Marketing

Top Three Do’s And Don’ts

32 Comments

Earlier in the week I was reading a Tim Bossie’s blog, with his article titled 60 Quick Dos And Don’ts For Online Advertising. This is a great list, and I hope everyone goes over and absorbs this entire list, as it pertains to online advertising, affiliate marketing, internet marketing, MLM marketing, network marketing, email marketing,… well, you catch my drift.

Anyway, I decided that, out of this great list, I’d say what I felt were the three top do’s that he mentions, and then what I feel are the three top don’ts on his list. By the way, I’m not sure if that’s how and where one would put the “s” after “don’t”, but I did search on the internet and it seems this is how other people are doing it, so I’m going that route.

First, let’s do the don’ts first (wow, that looks weird, doesn’t it?), to get those out of the way:

1. Don’t comment on blogs with “Great Blog!” and leave it at that. It’s comments like that which makes it harder these days to determine what’s spam and what’s not. As you know, I hate spam, but I’ve also talked about how it’s getting sneakier and smarter these days. Our friend Peter talks often about people who drop by and leave lots of one line comments just to move up the lists of those people who have top commentator listings, like mine over there on the right (and look who’s at the top). Whether or not it’s truly spam, it looks like spam, and it’s disingenuous to the person who’s writing the blog.

2. Don’t limit yourself to just one advertising method. Y’all see all the things that I test here, then tell you about, but I know I still have a lot of methods that I’ve yet to try. There is no one way that will work for everyone; man, I’ve proven that! If you’re not making $500,000 a year, you probably need to change something around, keep tweaking, and keep learning. Yeah, I know that’s a super lofty goal, and most of us would be happier with a lot less than that from blogging, or from our websites, or from any other internet marketing in general, but I like to dream big.

3. Don’t get discouraged if you don’t see overnight millions. Let’s face this fact; there are a lot of dead blogs and websites out there. A good number of those folks tried to make money online and failed. Some of those people participated in programs like Jeff Paul’s Internet Millions or Stores Online programs.

Think about it this way; just how many blogs are there out here that consider themselves “Make Money Blogging” blogs? Folks, in one way or another I’ve been at this for four years, and it’s not until this past year when I’ve actually started making any money at all. I feel it’s because of things I’ve learned since I started writing this blog. Obviously, it’s a long process. The best part about all of it is that it doesn’t cost a lot to try these things out, and to stick with it just a little bit longer. As Jesse Jackson used to say, “Never give up; never stop trying; keep hope alive.”

And now, the do’s:

1. Be persistent in continuing to learn advertising and marketing. Now that’s really what this blog is all about. I try to learn more and more about affiliate and internet marketing, and as our friend Steve says, I tend to process a lot of information.

Unfortunately, there’s also a lot of information that I probably don’t put into practice for one reason or another, so I’m not making the kind of money I should be making. That doesn’t mean I’m not always learning. If things so well, we’re going to get some specific questions answered from a big time internet marketer soon, which I think would help everyone out.

Still, you see me testing things and telling you about them; you see me sharing my stats; you see me sharing websites I find; and you see me sharing ebooks I’ve obtained here and there, free ebooks that I’m allowed to share with you. And I try to write something different than what everyone else is writing.

You saw my rant on this idea of massive traffic; well, since I wrote that, in Twitter, I’ve probably seen at least 20 new posts that have said the same exact thing as everyone else. Is there something new? I don’t know. But I do know that there’s always something new to learn, a different perspective, a different tactic, and I’m going to continue trying to learn more and more; I hope you keep coming back to learn, and to teach me some things.

2. Comment, Comment, Comment on other blogs in your niche. Actually, I want to extend this one further to say comment any place where you feel you can make a contribution in some fashion. I actually do understand the tactic of commenting only on blogs that fit your niche, in that it presupposes those people will see your comment, figure you’re some kind of authority, and decide to come by.

But I’ve had more fun and met some great people on blogs that have nothing to do with my niche; heck, do I have a niche anyway? I write three blogs, and this is probably the only one that doesn’t really have a niche, as much as a concentration. I have varied interests, so I comment on blogs every and anywhere. And I try to offer something with each comment, even if it’s only two lines. There’s a lot of great stuff out there; take the time to look at it, then comment on it, and finally,…

3. Spread some link love in your own articles and blog posts. Well, that’s what started this article to begin with, isn’t it, acknowledging the great job Tim did in writing his post, then expanding on a few points of it for my blog. For those of you who say there’s never anything to write about, you’re just not trying.

If I look at any five blogs, I can find something to write about, and probably get 500 words out of it. I’m a genuinely curious person, and I haven’t even brought up my interest in psychology, the universe, quantum physics, poker (well, I have talked about poker), history, music, and the like. But I’ve shared tons of links with y’all, even on this post; have you noticed that not all the links here are to this blog? Well, I’ve also done a lot of internal linking within my own blog, as well as this post. Internal linking is important to your own SEO (oh yeah, I’ve talked about that also), and it gives those who might like what you have to say more pages to explore if they like even a little bit of what you’ve written. Last night, for instance, I liked this one blog so much that I read 10 of his posts, though I only commented on one of them; I wish I could remember right now who it was, because I’d share it with you.

But there you go, my top three of each category. All that, and if you go to Tim’s blog, there are 54 more gems for you to absorb. Who could ask for more than that? Oh yeah, lots of links on this one, aren’t there? Well, I wanted to do something special for post #399; I hope you enjoy some of them; take care, and enjoy your Saturday.