Buy Blog Comments and Blogosphere Outcry
Most people probably consider Jon a little shady - I guess he sort of is. He makes it no secret that he enjoys making money online and is open to doing so in any way possible. He makes a killing running Myspace resource site(s) and has tested with numerous blackhat techniques, including but not limited to arbitrage. So I really wasn’t surprised when I got an email from him telling me about his new project: Buy Blog Comments.
The blogosphere has, not surprisingly, risen in uproar over the new service. The main concerns seem to be 1) this is promoting paid spam (no argument there) and 2) the ones receiving the spam get no compensation (which obviously, they don’t).
Although I don’t support spam, I really don’t think Buy Blog Comments is going to have that negative of an impact on the blogosphere. First off, the comments will *have* to be of at least decent quality of Jon has any hopes of receiving repeat customers. Poorly written or obviously spammy comments will get moderated out by most bloggers leaving Jon in a position of either under-delivering comment volume or spending too much time and money to deliver.
Secondly, this is no different than blatant self-promoting commenters. Why is it that bloggers can recommend people comment on other’s blogs for no reason other than self-promotion and in the same breath say that a paid comment service is wrong? In an ideal world every person who ever comments on someone’s blog is doing so because they have something valuable to share, but in reality a lot of blog commenters are there solely to promote their own sites. This service just saves them time in doing so.
Thirdly, I don’t think Buy Blog Comments will ever really get big enough for bloggers to worry about spam invasion. Jon is targeting black hatters with this service, but real black hatters will find more affordable ways to deliver blog comment spam whether it’s through automation (most likely) or a $2/hr employee from the Philippines. Buy Blog Comments just doesn’t come across to me as being cost-effective.
I think the moral of the story, at the end of the day, is that the blogosphere is friggin whiny. Buy Blog Comments *will not* introduce a new dimension of blog spam and it *will not* destroy blog comments as we know it. What harm is being done? Someone is being paid to add thoughtful, relevant comments to a blog. Damn, that’s just awful.
Very well said Matt. I am also curious to know if his blog comments will be as blatant as the self promoters out there.
Posted by David Lithman on July 12th, 2007 at 5:45 am
I think the problem with this is the comments will not be made on random blogs “in the blogosphere”. He has a database of blogs that will be targeted, blogs that have no nofollow.
Spam comment links will never be able to compete with actual links that can be achieved through true link building, Jon already knows that but will take the money of those ignorant to this fact anyways. You are right, this guy is shady.
Posted by Danielle on July 12th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
Thanks for the post Matt..
Posted by Jon Waraas on July 17th, 2007 at 4:30 am
Why would you buy blog comments when there are plenty of people at digitalpoint who would post a comment just for the link?
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