This Doesn’t Make Any Sense At All - BuyBlogComments.com
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Darren from Problogger also wrote a post about that. And judging from the response his post received, I guess many people are not so happy about that new service. I really do wonder how people can come up with such ideas… black-hat, spam, fake comments… what a business model!
*Please Note: I will not link to BuyBlogComments. If you want to visit this site please type the address in your browser. I’m sorry but I just won’t give that guy any Google juice. Thanks for your understanding.
So Who’s Behind This
The guy behind this brilliant (sarcasm here) new company called BuyBlogComments is Jon Warass (jonwaraas.com), he also runs BuzzBums (buzzbums.com) a community site. I had a BuzzBums badge in my sidebar, but needless to say that the first thing I did after reading those 2 posts by Liz and Darren, is I took that badge off my blog. Keep reading you’ll see why.
A New Service? So What?
It’s not the typical service, or community site. This company offers blog comments. For $19.99 you can order 100 comments, $99.99 gives you 500 comments and for $199 you get 1000 comments. What that means is you’ll have to watch the comments on your blog very very closely. You definitely don’t want some random fake blogger to leave fake comments on your blog, especially if your blog has DoFollow enabled.
Picture this: a blogger orders 500 comments through this new company, he/she pays the hundred bucks. Then a team of 6 people will find 500 blogs and leave comments on them (supposedly relevant comments). Then the blog owners will approve them and even reply, and of course share some Google juice. Let’s not talk about the impact on Technorati rankings…
Doesn’t sound good huh?
It gets better:
We have gathered a list of people who don’t support the nofollow tag, and some types of blogs that do not use the tag at all. So don’t worry, you will still be getting weight to your site. BuyBlogComments.com
This is, in my opinion, highly unethical.
Wendy Piersall disabled DoFollow on her blog, so now all links in the comment section have the rel=nofollow attribute attached to them.
I don’t want to have to do this on SmartWealthyRich. But I will if I have to. Like Wendy, I don’t want to loose credibility or trust.
Your Turn To Talk
I’m really really interested in hearing (reading) what you think. Please share your thoughts. I’m hoping many of you fellow bloggers/writers will not buy into this and will never buy comments. I feel this is really unethical and just plain wrong. I would like to know your what’s your take on all this.
**Note to Jon Waraas and the people working with him: I will try my best to delete comments your team may leave on this blog, will track the IPs, block them, and do whatever I possibly can to make sure you stay as far away as possible from my blog. I’m dead serious.
For everyone else, please leave a comment below and share your thoughts. I think this will be interesting. :)
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This guy is sure getting a lot of coverage albeit negative, there’s a mention on nearly all the blogs in my RSS feeds!
IMO not all marketing is as straight forward as it seems, this reaction to his service I doubt is any shock to him, so i’m suspicious of the attention he’s getting is exactly what he’s after?
I really, really think this is intentional, and it’s a win-win situation. If people embrace it, he makes money. If not, he still gets traffic from the curious people. I think people who embrace black hat methods will probably be the ones who embrace this.
Daniel, you’re right, I think when he got that idea he knew many people would give him bad press, which is maybe what he’s looking for. He probably knew he would get bad press, from reading a post on his blog, he kinda expected that. Well now his name is being associated with blackhat and spam.
cooliojones, good point there, some will use his service and some will fight against it. We will just all have to watch the comments on our blog(s) very closely.
But he makes a good point.
Darren pointed out something - the Akismet blacklist. Before long, Warass’s clients will be punished when they try to leave valid comments that go straight into the arms of Akismet, forever being prepped for deletion.
Angela, you have a point, and to validate the comments we can always check out the blogs and check out the about pages, and see if the names match, maybe even start a group in a forum or something, where people could discuss this and list e-mail addresses, blogs, names and IPs of those spammers (though they will probably use proxy to leave comments), and we could all share that list. Just an idea :)
As this new, so called SEO Service will only affect english sites, as he has only english speaking people working for him, it is the first time now, that I am happy that my blog’s language is german. ;)
But anyway I don’t like such a ‘Service’ at all and just hope that very soon their IPs will be blacklisted and Jon’s customers will get what they are paying for.
Torsten, hehe well I’m gonna start a french blog then :)
I read the buyblogcomments.com page, and seriously the guy needs to use spell check, at some point we will probably be able to spot those spam comments just cause oof bad grammar and spelling lol
I don’t think disabling “dofollow” is the answer unless they’ve already latched onto your comment section. I watch mine like a hawk. If I get an irrelevant comment, I check the source and delete when necessary. Heck, I usually check the source anyway as part of my routines.
I use a 1 day delay on my do-follow plugin giving me time to remove any unwanted comments should they slip through before they get any ‘Google Juice’.
RT, I don’t think disabling dofollow would help either, unless, like you said, you find out they’re already spamming you. I just don’t want to have to moderate comments 24/7
I like Daniel’s idea of the linklove or dofollow plugin where you can chose the number of days before nofollow gets removed from the comment.
Wendy’s move makes me think about my own situation, because I’m spending more and more time moderating comments these days, and more and more appear very skeptical.
I’m all for sharing the link love, but it does make me wonder.
Thanks for the education here Jonathan. I find the Waraas business model appalling and digusting. Yes, he will get publicity, but in the end, I doubt if any reputable and credible business will have anything to do with him. I certainly will not.
As far as comments are concerned, I’ll take the same actions as you have stated. Idea Sellers is a TypePad-platform blog , so there is no inherent comment following abilty. I have instituted a go-around using the new “pages” feature from TypePad where I have established a page specifically designed for links to those who leave comments. It’s manual, but worth it!
Keep up the fine work Jonathan!
David, same thing here! I think Wendy did the right thing, she has a very active blog, and I can understand why she disabled dofollow, but I don’t wanna have to do this on my blog. But at some point maybe we will have to.
Daniel, hey I didn’t even knew that about Typepad blogs, thanx for the info :)
One thing’s for sure, Waraas is not getting any good press, I wonder how many people already purchased comments through his site…
How is this any different from ghost writers and forum posters which have been around for a long time?
Natron, the main difference i sthat ghost writers are getting paid for proving content for websites, it does not have any impact at all, in fact it helps the website owner, but this buyblogcomments thing offers something no blog owner wants to have to deal with.. spam, and fake comments.
That’s the same thing that I posted on my blog earlier….I wasn’t linking to him either….I said that it’s just what he wanted, the publicity without the work…..
@Daniel - That one day delay on dofollow is a good idea, I just changed it from on my site. thanks
Roberta,
nice! I didn’t wanted to give him any Google love either (so he could turn that traffic into money?.. nah!). Well Darren did link to him in his post, but he added nofollow to his link. I think Waraas found a sneaky way to get links from high authority blogs…
Now I’m thinking of putting that 1 day delay too :)
Jon, I disabled all spam filtering except Simple Spam Filter and Akismet. With a little tuning, I haven’t had a spam comment get through for more than a month.
RT, wow that’s awesome! Do you sometimes check your spam filter to see if any good comments got caught? It happens sometimes Akismet will catch good comments and mark them as spam
Does he tie a pork chop around the dog’s neck, too? :) It’s kind of pitiful, really. And it doesn’t make any sense to buy into it, unless someone has a way to make tons-o-money by simply spiking the ranking systems.
IMO, it won’t last long. Too shady, too shaky.
Hi Carolyn, hehe yep pitiful, shady, shaky, well I could think of thousand words to describe this, but I don’t wanna go there lol :)
it’s just unbelievable to me the lengths that people will go to…makes you wonder what the heck is next…sheesh!
Yes, Jon, good comments get caught by Akismet, but not very often I check it once a day.
Lisa, I’m wondering about the same thing here!
RT, cool, I check it from time to time also
[…] stumbled upon Liz at Successful-Blog, Darren from Probloggerand Jonathan of SmartWealthyrich.com respective blogs today and guess what? All these popular and respected bloggers wrote about this […]
I just wish Google can read this right now… Please ban “BuyBlogComments.com” now for us to prevent this spammers to succeed.. Thank you Jonathan for this great post…
Hi Melo, hehe I too wish Google could read it! Prob is they’re not gonna ban buyblogcomments, unfortunately.
Thanx a lot for the linkage Melo! :)
I believe I may have already been hit by this company. I just last night came home to a TON of spammy comments.
It’s sad that anytime there’s something good(do-follow), there’s always someone waiting to exploit it.
ouch, that’s bad! if you can track the IPs, or you find it all comes from the exact same place, make sure to blacklist them, and ban them from your site. That’s probably what I’ll do if I find any on here.
It is indeed sad, but we have to keep doing what we do best, write posts and interact with each other :)
Yeah, I had 10 or 15 comments, and they all came from 3 different IPs.
Anthony, and you have dofollow on your blog? If you got 10-15 comments and they were with different names but same IPs, you probably have been hit by buyblogcomments…. that’s exactly the reason why this service is bad for the blogosphere, we already spend a lot of time writing posts, managing our blogs, replying to real comments, no need for fake comments
1000000s of daily spam comments already, now a company that is paid to comment - what next!
this is horrible, I have been reading this in some blog discussions and other blogs and I do not like this one bit - now there is no use for the no follow - how can we support bloggers if this POS is tryin to make money off comments/discussions!
[…] Jonathan from SmartWealthyRich: You definitely don’t want some random fake blogger to leave fake comments on your blog, especially if your blog has DoFollow enabled. […]
Hey Jason, yeah I know, prob is those comments will be “relevant” to the posts, which makes things even worse, cause we’ll have a hard time finding out which are the fake ones and which ones are real. Gotta know your commentators :)
Ian, I agree,that won’t be an easy one… Well best thing we can do is keep doing what we do best and interact with each other, and discuss topics, I have a feeling people will watch their comment section very closely and soon people will start sharing lists of fake commentators and IPs, and start deleting them.
If anyone finds any fake comment, or know for sure that a comment is fake, please let me know
Don’t you think that the quality of the comments that the service will leave will be questionable.
Someone needs to sign up for the service and do a blog post about the results…any takers?
I was thinking of creating maybe a page on my blog of all the IPs I find or maybe buying a domain against this - not sure yet - maybe I will recreate a “nofollow proud, I hate buyblogcomments.com” button or something
this will definitely be hard to fight off
Adam, good idea, but I’m not the one who’ll go and sign up lol
He says the quality of the comments will be great, and he’s working only with “english speaking people”.. problem is, the guy can’t write, there are so many grammar errors on his page, it’s actually pretty funny :)
Ian, I think this would be a good idea, but the only prob I see with that is that they too would have access to that list. Would be better to have a private forum or something.
Hey makes me think, I have a forum, we can use it for that, I don’t mind, a private forum. :)
Wow, you mean he’s actually paying people to leave comments on “Other” blogs? I have heard of paying people to leave comments on your own blogs but not the other. I ‘m guessing to raise page rank?
I have a blogger account so I just delete comments when they go to some site and I can tell they are spam.
BTW- saw ya on mybloglog list.
Hi Homemom3 :)
well, he’s paying people to leave comments on other blogs, but with a specific URL in the coment form. And he’s targetting dofollow blogs (we do share the google juice with our commentators, so by leaving a relevant comment you automatially get a link back :) )
Paying people to leave comments on your own blog to make it look like it’s more “active” would be one thing, but what he’s doing is offering people to post comments on other blogs to get links back (which in other words means “using our comment section as ad space). So, say a less ethical blogger want to get a better page rank, and more links back, that bloggers buys a package on buyblogcomments and the BBC team will start posting comments on a bunch of different blogs, with the URL of the other blog in the comment section, so it’s really using our comments section to “advertise” other blogs, and those bloggers would pay him to do that, on our comment section. while that company keeps the money, and uses our blogs to advertise for free. and needless to say it’s unethical and can definitely make a blog look a lot less credible.
Look, I know comments are important. More important to some than others… but if I can’t get comments the old fashioned way, then I don’t want them. If I write something that inspires you to comment, that is lovely and great, it does make me happy… but tons of fake comments all over my blog? No freakin’ way. It’s just not happening.
Hey Gerri, hehe I think we’re on the same page here :)
We’ll have to watch our comment section very closely. On a more positive note, we will probably get to know our commentators better, since we’ll definitely have to go and visit the blogs, read a little, check out the about pages and all, never know, I’m trying to find the positive side hehe :)
It’s finally in the public, but who here doesn’t think this has been going on for some time already? Look at all the blogs with one line “good post” link from the same people over and over. A lot of folks do it themselves (I make all my own comments to be clear), but I think you’re kidding yourself if you think this is a new idea. Just more public now…
Hi Zen Zoomie, thanx for replying!
Well it definitely has been going on for some time now, no doubts there, probably for years even.
It rarely happens on here that people will write just “nice post” comments, and usually it’s pretty obvious that it’s spam anyway, so it gets deleted.
You’re right i think, the only difference now is that there is a company making money by abusing my trust and using my comment section as ad space, and honestly i don’t like the sound of that.
Definitely something we’ll have to keep an eye on, until this “service” goes under. Sadly though, it may not.
As long as there has been internet, there have been internet scammers and spammers. This guy may not be that intelligent but a LOT of them actually are very smart.
I’m with you and Lisa.. what will they come up with next? No doubt it’ll be worse than this. This guy is stupid, the next one may not be.
Gerri, right on the money, I have a feeling this won’t last long, but thing is, like you said, people have been spamming since day one. I just think we don’t need “one more” of those, especially since we’ll have a hard time figuring out which commentsare real and which ones are fake.
oh well, we could also serve Jon Waraas his own medecine, that would be fun, unethical and not politically correct, but fun nonetheless :)
I don’t agree with it and I wouldn’t use it.
But unfortunately, I think Waraas’s scheme has the potential to make a lot of money. And the people that use the service have the potential to reap some big benefits. The ugly side is that it’s not just deceitful, but it’s at the expense of a lot of other people.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he quickly found himself competing with others offering a similar service. There’s been a rash of companies that offer “professional gaming” over the last year.
You’re right Shane, it definitely has the potential to make money, he probably already got many many orders.
I think once people find a way to ban him and his team or delete his comments, people will start to realize it doesn’t work that way, and think twice before ordering, I don’t think anyone with a little common sense would want to be associated with him, his company, black-hat, or anything like that.
Well, he now has a profitable business, but he’s not making friends, which is probably not what he’s after anyway. It’ll hurt him in the long run, since his name is now associated with spam. (which is something you don’t want I think)
:)
I’m thinking of setting up a fake blog, ordering 100 comments, get an idea of what the service is like, see what kind of comments his team will leave on blogs (that’s the part I’m not sure about, since I wouldn’t want to annoy other bloggers), and then take the information back to my readers. kinda like a case study.
What d’you think?
That’s just a horrible idea! Period… I mean if you are going that route just make up fake e-mails and write your own **** comments. Seriously. saves you money or hire me.. it’s costs $1 per comment. ok, totally kidding. Do not e-mail me with your offers ;)
Susie, how much do I owe you for the comments? :) (kidding)
Yeah I know, it’s bad, definitely not a good business, though Waraas is probably making loads of money right now, still it’s [insert random bad word here]!
Haha - Great idea Jon. Nothing like a little investigative reporting!
Shane, lol, will you leave comments on my new fake blog buddy? ;) (kidding)
I’m really thinking on doing it, and see what happens. I’m thinking it’ll be annoying to many bloggers, just for the time 100 comments gets posted, but we’d have a bunch of useful infos on what to do to spot those spammers :)
I’m still trying to wrap my head around all of this. I have been reading articles on it for a couple of days and I just cannot see how his business plan can be lost lasting.
I would hate for this to spoil the dofollow attitude. I will not be removing the dofollow from my blog, but I will be more apt to strip URLs. I hand mod all comments anyway. It is a lot of work, but the end result is a pristine blog.
that would be great a forum to post all the ips so we all can be kept up to date
this one person is defending this on my blog post about it, speaking if the comments are legit it is fine
> Angie, this is bad for the do follow community, since his workers are looking specifically for do follow, I have taken my button down but support do follow still, I have even configured it to remove the do follow after one day, in hopes maybe I will not get scanned by this
Angie, I know, it’s bad, I feel the same way. I’m really trying to find a way to spot ‘em and then share the infos with people. The last thing the blogosphere is spammy “relevant” comments.
Ian, I wrote a mile long reply on your blog (kinda in reply to “Jack”), but when I submitted my comment it appeared blank and from “anonymus”, I don’t know if it got through.
I did exactly what you were considering doing, that is to enabled nofollow. I had been using the DoFollow plugin up until now, but after I read about this website, I had to re-enable nofollow.
Jared, yep, probably many people will re-enable nofollow (although I really don’t wanna have to do this), which is sad, cause now, in an overall friendly place (the blogosphere), we’ll have to watch it like crazy…
thanks Jon, that really means a lot - especially to a person that is not open minded about the situation and thinks he has the answers to everything
Ian, hehe no prob :)
I think Jack brings some interesting points, and it’s good to have the opinion of a SEO on the topic. But I really think there’s a lot more to blogging than trying to game the system by buying fake comments, I really think it’ll hurt more than it’ll help in the long run. Oh well, everyone can have their say, there’s an opinion for everyone out there.
http://www.ianfernando.com/2007/buy-blog-comments-a-dark-day-in-the-blogosphere/
:)
[…] things considered, I must agree with Darren, Liz, Ian, and others that this service only facilitates human submitted spam and over time, as more bloggers flag it as […]
I keep reading a blog because of the posts and the author not the comments. If I get some junk comments, I simply delete and keep writing…keep up the great information.
Hi Lewis, same thing here, I read many blogs that are not “conversational” because they offer excellent information and I like the writing style.
In the end, we just have to keep doing what we do best, writing :)
this is soo sad how desperate do u really hv to be to buy urself comments!! its juts a stupid service…. its too much whats next??buying posts, buying links buying comments what about buying blogging friends and buying peoples interest in ur blog!! this just really screws the whole idea of blogging!! like making friends , getting urself some loyal readers! the sense of community!!!
[…] This Doesn’t Make Any Sense at All – BuyBlogComments.com from Smart Wealthy Rich is just one article this week on the topic of a controversial new service that lets users purchase blog comments. Landing Page Optimization – Potentially More Rewarding Than SEO from SEOmoz provides a statistical look at the monetary effects of creating better landing pages. Comment Spammers the End of the Do-Follow Movement? from Chris Garrett discusses the effects of the new service that sells blog comment spam and on blogs that do not use no follow tags for links. […]
confessing7girl, yep I know. I just can’t wait till I catch one of those spam comments! There’s probably a couple (I have some in mind) already on my blog, but I’ve yet to find a way to spot ‘em.
hahahaha, buying friends, woah!
Well a lot of people are already hiring ghost writers, which I think is fine, although I wouldn’t use such service, but buying fake comments just to rank higher.. I mean, can’t they just leave the comments themselves? I still don’t get it.. and some pseudo SEO experts are saying they’re fine with it.. that I really don’t get…
Even though my blog is fairly new and without many comments, I do not get as desperate as to buy blog comments, whether it is to make my blog appear like I have readers or to get links to my blog.
There are many more other avenues which are FREE to get links to my sites and I do not see any point of paying for such service. I’d rather do it the old fashion way if needed :P
Hi, same thing here, I didn’t get a PR4 and that technorati rank and met new friends and business partners by buying blog comments, I did it the traditionnal way, by being genuinely interested in the blogs I comment on, and writing the comments myself. :)
Hi—Jon:
Good post. This is bad business, and not too smart a way to add activity to ones blog. A blog is more personal than a forum, so a fake comment or reply is bound to stand out more in a blog. I would rather stick to my few weekly, then a ton of fake, spammy, or irrelevant ones. I have faith that (in time) my new blog will have comments naturally from interested readers and visitors. Just like like my first blog did. Missy.
Hey Missy, exactly, as they say “build it and they will come”, I totally believe in that! Just have to keep writing and leave good comments ourselves on other blogs. To me, there’s no other way.
They’re targetting “unethical” bloggers (I guess there’s a market for that seeing all the comments on Jon Warass’s blog), so I don’t mind deleting comments from those “unethical” people. But I’ve yet to find a way to spot ‘em…
If anyone finds a way, lemme know :)
Jon - I’m so paranoid now! Hahaha.. maybe it was better if I didn’t know about this (kidding). But now anytime someone I haven’t seen around before leaves a comment I’m wondering.. LOL..
I’m gonna hate it if they are leaving good comments and I publish them and then they have a good laugh about it. - Haha.. we got in when she said we wouldn’t!
Hey Gerri, lol, I know, it’s the same thing here, and strangely enough, just after I posted about this, I started getting a couple of spam coments, not the kind akismet will catch, but ones you kinda have to decide you approve or mark as spam.
[…] allure is huge. Every time you turn around, someone is gaming something. And even if you’re 110% against it … wouldn’t you like to game the gamers? Just […]
has anyone here received an email from John Waraas about his new site?? I am curios to see if he only targeted the writers that wrote negative about his project or towards a general audience
Hi Ian, I also received an e-mail from Jon Waraas… about “freeblogcomments”…
It’s actually a directoy of blogs that would like to receive more comments, and from what I know they will use this database to leave their comments, instead of using our comment section as advertisement space. oh well..
thank you Jon Waraas, but I like it when my real readers leave comments because they like my posts!
I’ve used and reviewed BuyBlogComments; you can read my comments at http://seorant.blogspot.com/2007/08/buyblogcommentscom-review.html .
Hi SEO Ranter, thank you very much for posting this, as I’m sure some people will benefit from reading your post.
From what you wrote I assume it was “worth” the 20 bucks, but on the other hand, quality is definitely not there.
I believe this is not a good business model anyway, Jon Waraas definitely needs to re-think his long term strategy (or he’s just doing that to make a few bucks)
Thanx again SR :)
Even though I agree with all of you (that it is unethical) I must say that I think he is going to get a lot of customers wanting this service.
If we try to look at it from a positive angle there is not much we can do to stop it. All I hope for is that they will leave relevant comments in the blogs so that everyone gains something.
If I get comments that look relevant, but I suspect they are from something like this, I de-link them. If they look like crap comments, I throw them in spam. It’s really sad that people would do this to get more rankings. Pure madness in my opinion.
Wow, this is pretty incredible. Spamming for the lazy.
As far as dofollow, I just today added Lucia’s Linky Love, a dofollow plugin for wordpress where you can determine the number of comments someone has to leave before the “juice” kicks in. I like this because it rewards your regular commenters and subscribers while not giving any help to “hit and run” comment spammers.
I really like the blog! I’ve subscribed!
I 100% agree with this. A valid point.