Matt Coddington

I’ve launched another pet project, Oddball Gifts. The idea behind this blog is simple, it’s a gift ideas blog with a focus on weird & wacky stuff. Not only just gag or joke gifts but also some genuinely unique stuff (like a treadmill computing station).

For now it’s just a blog, but I do plan for this site to be the staging ground for my first adventure into podcasting. I’ve wanted to do podcasting for a while, but this blog just doesn’t seem to be the place for it. I feel that if I started podcasting here it would just turn into yet another “make money online” podcast full of advice that is heard but never followed (hence the main reason I got rid of NBB).

So anyway, if you feel up to it check out Oddball Gifts. My wifey will be posting there a bit too

Well it’s been a while since I talked about what I read (the last one being DJI), so I thought I’d do another. A blogger whose feed I haven’t been able to turn away from (which is painful considering he just recently slowed up on his updating) is Andy Beard’s.

Now I’ve been a reader of Andy’s blog for a long time now, well over a year. The man is smart and concise, which are two traits I have to have in a blog. He also tends to speak his mind, and no matter how different his opinion may be he tends to persuade.

He covers internet marketing, but he’s not a “tips & tricks” type of guy (although there’s some of that over there too). Mostly he just gives a seasoned and unique spin on current events, lately being no-follow, Google PR slaps, and TechCrunch hypocrisy. All fun stuff.

So if you get a minute, head on over to Andy Beard’s blog. You’ll enjoy it.

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.

80%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

I heard about this adorable little test from Daniel over at Daily Blog Tips (remember him from the Blogger Face-Off?) If you have a minute to kill then try it out.