Just like a forum, a blog receives its own fair amount of spam. “Is there a real way to stop it?” Kinda, there are ways to reduce spam, but there is no absolute way to stop it. There are a lot of plugins and methods you can use to prevent this and today I’m going to share my methods to prevent those evil spam bots from commenting on your blog.
1) Askimet
Like mentioned in the forum Edition of this series. Askimet is a pretty snazzy plugin for a blog. Askimet is probably the most used plugin to prevent spam on a blog, because it pings every comment someone makes to see if it would qualify as spam. Askimet has a dark side as it may qualify some posts as spam even though they can be completely legit comments.
2) Rename wp-comments-post.php
Renaming wp-comments-post.php to something weird, but simple like “siteabbreviation-comments.php” will reduce a lot of spam. This simple fix works, because a lot of spam bots look for the specific file named “wp-comments-post.php” to make the comment. So, renaming it prevents them from leaving a comment. The only problem with this method is that you are going to have to update your theme for the new name.
3) Block Proxies
Blocking Malicious Proxies from visiting your blog will reduce spam. This works because most bots are ran on a offshore proxies to prevent the user’s actual IP from being seen. So, blocking them will prevent the bot from accessing your blog.
4) Always Approve
This may not be an option for bigger blogs, but I have always set my blogs so that comments always have to be approved. This will allow you to inspect the comment before it is viewed by the public. If you would like to use this method all you have to do is sign into your blog and click the little check box next to “An administrator must always approve the comment” in settings -> Discussion.
5) Registration
This in my opinion is a last resort. I myself don’t like doing this as Im sure someone doesn’t want to sign-up to make a comment. Making a person sign-up to make comments will prevent bots from commenting as a lot of them don’t have the ability to sign up.
Those are the easiest ways to prevent spam and they all have worked excellently in the past and I’m sure they will in the future. So, what are your methods to prevent comment spam? Do they work?
I recently read an article in Deliver Magazine that 62% off American households own a pet, of those 65% own a dog.
The estimated dollars spent in the US on pets in 2009, was a staggering 45.5 Billion! And it’s said to only to rise every year from there. Most people treat their pets as part of their family and would do almost anything for them.
Here are some stats and facts:
Top 3 Household Incomes of Pet Owners:
100K+ ———- 30%
$50K-$74K —- 20%
<$30K ---------- 19%
22.5% of Baby Boomers own pets. Just so you know, approximately 76 Million American children were born between 1946 and 1964, these are your Baby Boomers, That means 17.1 million of them own at least 1 pet.
Here’s another Baby Boomer stat:
Baby Boomers control over 80% of personal financial assets and more than 50% of discretionary spending power, they are also responsible for more than half of all consumer spending in the US.
If you’re not targeting baby boomers and pet products, you’re missing out.
This is a follow-up to last week posts, Another AM Gone and also related to Logan Thompson’s I Don’t Read Your Newsletters
I have 4 new affiliate managers in the past 2 months and not 1 has reached out to me.
So to you, the new affiliate managers:
If you are a new affiliate manager with the company, or you have been with the company for awhile and have new affiliates because of someone leaving, reach out to your affiliates, but DON’T send me some stupid form letter. You know what offers I’ve run, you know what I’ve done in the past, don’t waste my time on telling me you have the best payouts, best converting offers, etc. (Because everyone has the best payouts and highest converting offers).
Pick up the phone, reach out to us on AIM, Skype, Twitter, our blogs, etc. If you’re going to send an email, make it personalized to us.
This weekend I received another email from yet another CPA affiliate manager who has left. This email comes on the heels that I have had no less than 6 other affiliate mangers leave in the past few months, not years, months. This does not count those who have change positions at the same company.
I have done affiliate marketing for awhile now and I have never seen a change in affiliate mangers in all my time of doing affiliate marketing.
Some of these affiliate managers have been with the same company ever since I even started. A few have been with me from the beginning. Over the years I have built relationships with them, both personal and professional over this time.
Some of these AMs came from some very well known CPA companies.
There were a couple of AMs that left that I was glad to see go, but some I was sad and disappointed that they left, some of those have reached out to me and hopefully we’ll do business again sometime soon. But a few have left the space completely.
So is it just a fluke with all these changes? or is CPA affiliate marking in trouble? (I know people have been saying that for a little while, but…)
Well 3 weeks into our challenge and I have officially launched 12 sites, 4 of them just this week. I plan on doing 3 more and I will be done. I have other projects that need my attention.
Currently some of my sites are starting to rank very well, in Google and Bing. Some are even on the front page.
So what have done so far?
Looked for offers through ShareASale merchants that have datafeeds
Bought exact match domains using http://bustaname.com and Google’s Keyword Tool
Installed WordPress using Thesis Theme and CSVPiG
Installed Google XML Sitemap plugin (and other plugins)
Submitted sites and sitemaps to Google and Bing Webmaster Tools
So far I have made $2.83 with Google Adsense and currently $0 in total commissions. I think that might currently put me in 2nd place.
Hopefully I will have some good news in time for the next update.
