Say No to Comment Spam!

I think it is true to say that all bloggers like to receive comments. It helps to remind that there are people out there reading what we have to say and would like to add to the conversation. Likewise, leaving comments on other people's blogs is a good way of getting backlinks and forming relationships with other bloggers. However, within recent times there has been a rise in comment spam - by this I mean comments that are clearly automated or bear no relation to the post. As far as I am concerned this is pretty pointless - the comments on this blog (in common with most others) are moderated. So any comments that are clearly spam will be rejected.

My personal rule for leaving comments on other blogs is that I should contribute in some way to the discussion and say something meaningful about the post. Perhaps ask a question, or perhaps take issue with what the blogger has to say. At all cost avoid an unimaginative "nice post!" type comment. In turn, I expect commenters on my blogs to do the same. However, this blog (far more than my other blogs) seems to be particularly prone to comment spam - maybe it's something to do with being in a make money online niche.

Anyway, I have decided to bring in my own rules as to what I will publish and what I will reject. Therefore the following type of comments will be rejected:

1. Any comment that bears no relation to the content of the post.
2. Any comment that has hyperlinked text within the body of the comment - unless this actually contributes to the discussion. 

That about covers it I think. This is a dofollow blog, but only comments that are not blatantly self-promotional will be published.

Total Earnings for June

Another month past and time to review my internet earnings. Well let's start with the positives. Overall income is not too bad - not great, but not too bad. As well, income has been from a variety of sources. Income from Squidoo has continued its upward path with another record month - I don't tend to use the Amazon modules, instead preferring to use my own affiliate links, so I don't expect my direct Squidoo earnings to reach great heights.

On the negative side, I have not made a single affiliate sale this month (affiliate income this month has been from sales that I made last month). This is the first month since October 2009 that I have not made any sales.

Here are my totals for this month:

Ebay: $42.78
Affiliate earnings: $65.63 (Clickbank = $28.56, Think Action = $37.07)
Swagbucks: $5
Squidoo: $7.33
Blogsvertise: $5

Total = $125.74

The lack of sales this month has led me to change my strategy a little focusing more on finding specific niches and then finding ways to exploit these. What I am doing primarily is using Micro Niche Finder to find low competition keywords. Some of these will relate to specific products with brand names in them - where this is the case I am building a Squidoo lens focused on these keywords. In the instances where there is no brand name in the keyword I am buying a related domain name and building a niche site around it. However, I need to not get too carried away with buying domain names otherwise I will be spending more money than I am making. Anyway, let's see how this works.