Tag Archives: Commerce

Spam comments

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I never ran a site like this before, although i do get ‘comment e-mails’ from another site, reporting to me that someone commented on the blog. So I do know the other site gets a lot of spam comments. Running this site though makes me, well, don’t know what to say, I guess just sad.

Reason for this post is that just now I just saw there were more than hundred comments waiting for approval. And the ordinary blogger would be really happy, as many of those comments are very flattering and inspiring. So they might approve them and think someone really read their articles and was happy about them.

Looking a bit further you will find one or more links to all kinds of websites and an e-mail address that does not exist. So these are just ‘spam comments’, comments of which the only purpose is to create an additional link to some website (and being paid for it).

To me this is really sad as it seems there are thousands or maybe many more people either writing software to post these type of comments or just writing these comments. And it is even more sad towards the bloggers, the people doing the effort to write valuable articles, who think someone visited their site, their post, liked it and even took the effort to post a comment.

I am starting to understand that this is how the world works and I even realize that I am even part of it, as i also bought some cheap link building for customers. I also know that it would not be easy to change the system, as Google dictates the world by appreciating links. And I also know that the thought behind counting links towards sites is a very good idea.

However, I think this is not how the world should work, similar to what i think about advertisements paying for ‘content’, for ‘information’.

What do you think? Should we continue like this? Would we, as humanity be able to change it? Would we be able or willing to pay for the ‘real’ stuff?

Please let me know your thoughts below. And maybe yes, if you are a spammer posting a spam comment, please also post a comment. If it is useful comment we may approve it including the link or links.

Doing what I like

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Yesterday and the day before I had some nice talks with a friend of mine about life and doing what you like and a bit about this site and being successful in life. One of the things we talked about was my desire to make this website as my primary job and my primary income. I just notice that whenever I work on this site I just enjoy doing it, enjoy writing, enjoy improving it technically. This is just ‘my site’, ‘my message to the world’, my sharing to the world, and it feels good, makes me happy to work on.

And that’s what is one of my goals in life: doing things that make other people happy AND make me happy. So maybe this site, this project might be the way to do it. However, until now I have not made a final decision on how to monetize the site. I still just prefer you guys pay me JUST ONE DOLLAR if you like what I write (see my donate page), if you consider reading what you like a value of two dollars of more. In that case we both win. I like what I”m doing and get 1 dollar per visitor (or visit) and you get a value of two dollars or more, so I guess that’s a good deal for both of us.

However, that’s not how the internet works, at least not in 2013. And this site even is teaching me how bad commerce has gotten as I just got around 20(!) comments with all kinds of positive remarks, which of course would flatter me or any other blogger. However, the only purpose of those comments is creating links to other sites, so there are just people out there being paid to put nice comments in my site just to get links. So to me that is very sad, people getting paid for that type of ‘cheap’ link building and playing with my feelings as of course, especially as this site has no real traffic yet. So if I wouldn’t know better, if I was just an ordinary blogger without knowledge of link building, I might just be flattered and presume these comments are real comments and real readers of my site.

A similar thing that is sad to me, and yes, I do it on some of our other sites, that many sites can just survive on the indirect income from advertisements and affiliate links. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against it and sometimes I click on an advertisement if there is something that appeals to me, but especially for this site, where i put all my heart, all my knowledge, try to make something useful, try to inspire people, try to inspire you, it would hurt me to really go that way as I believe if what I am writing here, including some of my very personal experiences, my suffering, deserves to just be paid for itself, not through indirect advertising, although there are some exceptions as I’m OK with earning a little profit from Amazon links for the books I like, as I just like the books and promote them.

So I guess I made my decision, I will probably go for the direct payment option and not for the advertising option. I will make the decision soon, but not after discussing it thoroughly with my Master Mind group. Yes, I think I deserve to be paid for what I do directly and I think that would apply to many more people. I’m not sure if it is the right thing to give so much power to the advertisers with the large budgets.

And yes, I believe I have some messages to the world, especially that in our daily business it seems we forgot we are humans, not robots behind the counter of the supermarket of link builders posting fake comments to people who do some serious writing.