Would You Buy Blog Comments?
written by John Chow
I guess my evil is starting to rub off on other people. I got an email from my Jon Waraas saying he started a new site call Buy Blog Comments.
Blog comments help your site rank better in the SERPs. We hired a few people who go through a list of blogs in a database we set up and pick out blogs that are in your niche. They then read through blog posts and leave a comment that has to do with the blog post they read, that way it wont get deleted. Your backlink will then be on a targeted blog, giving you more weight in the search engines.
The service is similar to a paid forum posting services like ForumShock, which help to make your forums look popular by having a bunch of people posting on it - fake it till you you make, as they say. With Buy Blog Comments, you’re paying someone to go out to a list of targeted blogs and commenting on their posts. Since these are live people making the comments, it should pass through all the spam filters. No doubt, the service will be targeting blogs that turned off their nofollow tags so they can get maximum Google juice.
The initial response from other bloggers have been extremely negative (here, here and here) and they recommend everyone stay away.
I’m going to recommend against this service as well, not because it’s a bad idea (it’s actually an OK idea), but because the price is too high. If the service actually does what Waraas claims it will do then most webmasters wouldn’t notice nor care. Let’s face it, all blogs want more comments because it makes the blog look active. And if the comments are related to the post topic, do you really care if it’s being done by a hired gun instead of the true commentator?
Many bloggers make commenting on other blogs as part of their marketing strategy. It helps bring traffic and gets you noticed by the blog owner. Waraas is betting that instead of spending the hour or two a day it takes to comment on your favorite blogs, you’ll pay him to do it for you. However, I don’t see many buyers at $19.99 for 100 comments.
If you want to hire someone to comment on blogs for you, then I recommend you go to Your Man In India or Get Friday and hire a virtual assistant to do it. You can get an VA for as low as $4 an hour and I’m sure she can make 100 comments in that time.
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(4 votes, average: 2.75 out of 5)
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I have reviewed his site, and I like the ideas in the construction of his house… but I say no thanks to the new project. Not my cup of milk.
Yeah. I have a easy way to generate comments. I’m the Comment King. I have different promos to get comments. But they’re free for now. ! =)
any way to make more money
i salute to people who keep their think cap on all the time!
Cash for Comments is one the Southern California Bloggers! I’m supporting him instead of paying some guy for something i can and like to do for my own!
Thanks MR. Gary Lee. Don’t forget about Mr. Gary Lee’s infamous iPHONE giveaway. check his site out!
indeed…you are the king of comments
and they don’t even cost anything!
Thanks Ms. Danielle. Where or where is that Zune! haha
Seriously. Come over to my blog and hook me up, man.
I stopped by to your blog. Check my promo out for comments.
Just did it. Thanks.
Cup of milk? Oh! John Cow is gonna LOVE you!
John, I think you got the basic idea of the site wrong. The point is not to make your site look popular with comments, though it could be used for that, but for “other” sites to benefit from the URL left behind while commenting on blogs in terms of SEO.
Hmm it looks like other idea… Could have service for looking popular.
but I don’t think it helps if they have the nofollow on
Really that would just add to the spam. Just like sponsored links theme which got flagged(no longer reviewed on WLTC and removed on the theme viewer), popular spam tools like Akismet might later flag this too.
It could be good for some but I won’t do it. Also, they may write better English than me but will they understand a niche market? What kind of quality the comment will be? “Nice post”, “lol” .. won’t cut it. Would they leave a comment under the client name or just write the URL in the comment itself thus not direct link?
Unlike you, I think the pricing is not that high but the price structure is not good. You should pay less when buying more(Costco Style)
Pricing:
100 Blog Comments Only $19.99!
500 Blog Comments Only $99.99!
1000 Blog Comments Only $199.99!
Should be:
100 Blog Comments Only $19.99!
500 Blog Comments Only $79.99!
1000 Blog Comments Only $139.99!
I personally wouldn’t use this service either. I actually like making comments myself and enjoy reading what people have to say.
Exactly and I don’t want the same comments showing up on your blog as on my blog. Particularly because they are differnt topics.
This just highlights the lengths that people will go for a buck, and also how far people will go to shortcut the process of building up sites. Also highlights the laziness of people these days. This would have NEVER happened in the 50’s! (yeah, yeah, they didn’t have computers then, I know)
cooliojones you are right. it amazes me how people come up with an idea and try to fast track it, instead of putting in the time and effort. Hard work and passion = sustainability
Yeah same here. Comments are the lifeline of my blog
does this site have anything to do with http://www.johncow.com/
Since no one else seems to be answering your question, I guess I might as well do so. John Cow is NOT affiliated with John Chow or this site in any way. As a matter of fact, John of John Cow dot Com was created by Bob (assuming thats his real name too) of Bob Meets World. You can read about it here…
http://bobmeetsworld.com/a-tribute-to-john/
It was created as a parody apparently in tribute to John’s rising fame. It was one heck of an evil idea to drive traffic to his site
interesting. I wrote a blog of JC look a likes. And I found out that John Chow dot com dot com was available. I know sneaky bastard move. But I posted it on my blog then someone bought it the next day. I wonder who did. I can’t wait to see that parody
^^^ What he said! Also I think Chow really respects Cow, and there is — as far as I can tell — no bad blood between the two. I think eventually they will meet up and do something together. it only makes sense!
Unfortunately I think that spam lover will have loads of success. A lot of people are willing to trade their souls for money. Not me…
I just can imagine the kind of comments people will start to have on their blogs:
“Nice job! I love your blog… bla bla bla…”
What’s the point of that kind of comments? Pure stupidity.
Beijinho (Kiss)
This is beyond lame.
Doesn’t anyone have any creative ideas any more? I mean ones with some actual VALUE?
Was no one online 5 years ago when you could buy 50K visitors to your web site for $100? Why don’t you see those ads anymore? Because THE TRAFFIC is WORTHLESS. It just took some people a little time to figure that out.
If you can’t muster some enthusiam from REAL PEOPLE to comment on your blog…you’re probably not saying anyting worth hearing. And if that’s the case, what the hell is the point of blogging in the first place? Go do something else.
Sheesh. (crawls back in his cave and goes back to sleep)
hahah NOW that was a COMMENT. good job. have fun in your cave. I guess people are lazy, but 50k? that pretty cheap.
I prefer to leave my own comments manually. That provides both the opportunity to meet great folks like y’all and learn new evil strategies from John Chow.
yeah this guy has lots of em. You Darth Vader you!
Oh, great.
Now John has gone desperate on us. He’s doing the “magic underlined words” ads on his site.
Bad form, John. You’re making plenty of money with non-intrusive advertising. This kind of thing stinks…not classy at all.
Maybe John Cow has taken over this blog after all.
I don’t really expect fellow bloggers to click on the ads. Do you? The non-bloggers are my audiance of interest.
Um, according to his PDF, you are not the audience he is looking for. He doesn’t expect you to click.
These have been around for a while, have they not? I can’t tell, I’ve got Firefox and Ad blocker plus
Uhh, where have you been chuck? its been on here for a while now. While Im not a fan of them, I dont really click on them either.
You write - “The service is similar to a paid forum posting services like ForumShock, which help to make your forums look popular by having a bunch of people posting on it - fake it till you you make, as they say.”
Sorry John - but it’s not similar at all apart from the comments being fake. The difference is that with ForumShock you’re paying someone to come and comment on your own forum - the ’service’ offered by Buy Blog Comments is targeting other people’s blogs without their permission.
I guess the question that I’ve asked other bloggers is simply - ‘would you mind this service targeting your blog?’
I guess the answer says something about how valuable people see the comments section of their blog being and what it’s purpose is. For me, comments are about community, learning together and sharing knowledge. I don’t see how this service would add to any of that for a blog that is targeted by this service.
Some argue that the comments are genuine - but as I’ve pointed out on my blog - at 19 cents per comment it means that comment leavers would need to leave 500+ comments per day for them to make $100 (1 comment per minute over 8 hours). Of course Jon will take his cut so it’s probably more like 700-1000 comments per day (1.5 to 2 per minute). For a post to be genuine the person would need to read the post.
I can’t imagine that these comments will be really that on topic of genuine and any company buying them is going to run the risk of being labeled as a spammer and on spam filtering blacklists.
I just don’t see why any blogger would endorse this type of thing if they’re trying to give their readers a valuable experience.
Just my two cents.
You bring up a very good point about the blog receiving the comments suffering. If you purchase 1000 comments, I’m sure that quite a large % of those comments will be on the same 10 or 15 blogs. I’d hate to be on the receiving end of 50 or more of these so called ‘relevant’ comments.
Personally, I don’t think any blogger should want a comment in his/her name that is below the standard of commentating they usually post.
Hi Darren
Just wanted to highlight one of the things you said:
Comments is targeting other people’s blogs without their permission.
For me this is the biggest problem this kind of “service” will cause in the long term.
PS: You and John must get ready to fight comment spammers (again).
Beijinho (kiss)
You bring up some extremely good point and I agree with all them.
My point is that this would only work if it does what Warass claims it does - that these are real people who will actually interact with the blogs targeted for comments.
If all they’re going to do is copy and paste the same comments over and over again to a bunch of blogs, then it’ll fall flat on its face.
But as long as the comments are relevant to the posts you’ve made and aren’t just clear cut spam, it’s hard to say you wouldn’t want them on your site.
I disagree with Darren on how long it takes to read, comprehend and leave a comment. Especially on websites such as this one, where you can comment on other people’s comments, I can spit off almost 3 comments in one minute, all relevant to the topic at hand. Granted I do it for different reasons, mostly because I do have something useful to say, but it can be done. But even if I could do 100/hour, it simply isn’t worth the eyestrain and brain power necessary to go from blog to blog leaving your two cents. You’re supposed to work smarter, not harder, and this is just unskilled and borderline unethical behavior. This is simply outsourcing gone bad.
no one’s doubting you can do 3 in a minute - but can you do it every minute for 8 hours?
I smell a challenge!
I saw this on Problogger, I guess he’s contacting all the top bloggers!
It is a great idea, it’s just way too pricey. We have commentators at this blog that make almost 100 comments a week!
well, you’ve noticed…
A week? I think we’re vying for every 3 days!
I want to be a top site so Darren can leave me a message too!!
this is just word-of-mouth marketing with a different label. i don’t think it’s “good” or “bad” either, but what i don’t like are spammy comments on my site.
I’m not a spammy guy on your site
thanks browie!
yea i agree that comments create a feeling of community. if it’s about getting comments on your site (versus leaving spam comments on other sites), building a good network around you and creating valuable content will naturally get good comments. at least that’s what i think. i would never pay someone to come to my site to leave comments. it’s actually like reverse word-of-mouth marketing, then. it doesn’t make any sense to me…have your friends leave comments. that’s free.
true that. But i wonder how JC feels when he gets about 200 comments or more a day. Do you have a team to just read your comments?
Spammenters bad. Contributers good.
oh..hi derrich. funny seeing you here
John - Where have you seen a virtual assistant for $4 per hour that has enough english exp