I’m a little late to the BuyBlogComments debate, but there’s no way I could resist chiming in on such a topic…

If you haven’t heard, BuyBlogComments is a new service letting you pay people to go comment on blogs and leave your URL, supposedly increasing your SERPs. They claim it’s not spam, even though it sounds quite a bit like spam.

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 won’t get deleted. Your backlink will then be on a targeted blog, giving you more weight in the search engines.

OK, so we all know what good comments are and how to spot comment spam, and we have a good idea of what this service does. Or do we? Until we actually see case studies, we’ll never know if their comments are any good.

And that’s a big deal considering the price. It costs $20 to get 100 comments. If you are a high roller and order 1000 comments, you’ll pay $199. Yep, you save an entire $1 by buying in bulk!

While we might not like the service, being the savvy bloggers we are, we know what linkbait is - I’ll be the first to admit that this service is working as a nice piece of linkbait for this Jon Waraas character!

I don’t really need to go into the debate of whether or not this is a good idea, because Darren at ProBlogger.net already gave a good opinion on it. He has a good debate going there, so check it out.

But what I will go into is what can happen if this service doesn’t fulfill its promise 100%…

And I’ll do it by telling you a little story about what happened today…

Around noon, I noticed a weird comment that slipped past Akismet. It was a well-written comment, but it was about golf, and I don’t write about golf on here. So that gave it away that this was a spammer…

Hello Everyone,

I am a golfer myself and I like to play whenever I get a chance.
A short while ago, a very good friend of mine told me about a great golfing equipment and accessories website that has discounted prices on all their products, same day shipping in most cases and there is no state sales tax, they are paying that.
So if any golfer here is ready to save some money on quality products at highly discounted prices, you might want to check out their site at; http://hoffmangolf.com

(Click here to see the screenshot.)

This idiot pissed me off enough to go to the site, ready to complain. But when I clicked his link, that URL redirected me to GolfOutletsUSA.com, a real golf store. I was a bit puzzled… then I saw a link to their affiliate program!

I think we have an unscrupulous affiliate here that is partaking in blatant blog comment spam, trying to get traffic through his link to the golf store, so he can earn a commission. I doubt the merchant approves of this tactic. (I’ll be contacting them just to check, though.)

Now how does this relate to BuyBlogComments?

Well, let’s just consider that the commentators working for BuyBlogComments are human. And humans make mistakes sometimes.

If one of those commentators leaves a lame comment, or leaves the wrong comment by accident, your site could be in trouble!

Think about it - bloggers are going to be extra vigilant about their comments now because of this service, and if they think you are spamming them, they might just let everyone else on the internet know about it. It could be considered as publicity, but it could result in people hating you…

Your choice

[This post originally appeared at InternetMarketingSucks.com]

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I’ve mentioned a few things about social bookmarking before, from putting buttons on your blog to some social bookmark submission software, but never written specifically about a service called OnlyWire.

I would go as far as to say that OnlyWire is the best social bookmarking site there is, and get this - it does not store your bookmarks and it doesn’t let you socialize!

But it does something even better…

It allows you to submit your bookmarks to 19 real social bookmarking websites with just one click. (Well I guess it’s two clicks because you have to confirm the submission, but that’s a lot faster than submitting to sites individually!)

It works like this:

1. You sign-up at OnlyWire.com
2. You fill out your profile with login details for your various accounts for the other social bookmarking sites.
3. Drag the OnlyWire submission button onto your bookmarks toolbar.
4. Then just start using the OnlyWire button instead of individual buttons.

Like magic - your bookmarking becomes 19 times faster!

That one click will submit the page to Backflip, Bibsonomy, Blinklist, Blogmemes, Blue Dot, de.lirio.us, del.icio.us, Diigo, Furl, Jots, LinkRoll, LookLater, ma.gnolia, Markaboo, Rawsugar, Shadows, Simpy, Spurl, and Wink.

At each submission, you can pick out the title and tags, and you can choose which services you’d like to use (just in case you don’t want the bookmark listed on every single account.)

Like I said, it’s fast and easy and great. The only complaint I’ve heard is that it’s not natural to have your site bookmarked at all these sites under the same title (i.e. anchor text.) I don’t really see a problem with that though, because the title field defaults to the page title of the web page, and I imagine that most people just use that default title. So it actually would be natural to have a lot of social bookmarks under the same anchor text.

But if you don’t like it, whatever. It works for me

[This post originally appeared at InternetMarketingSucks.com]

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If you haven’t heard, 2007 is The Year of The Domainer. That means that while it’s already extremely hard to get a good domain name, it’s just gotten that much harder!

So put on your thinking caps (or research caps) and find a good domain - and register it as soon as you find it. (There’s nothing like finding a great domain and waiting till the next day to register it, only to find that someone grabbed it out from under you overnight!)

I could just leave it at that, as a warning, but I’m in a good mood, so I’ll give you some helpful hints when it comes to finding new domain names. I also have enough domains to keep me busy, so I’ll leave some for you

Start by paying attention. To everything. Keep checking upcoming Digg stories, popular bookmarks, the latest Web 2.0 headlines, trends, and the hottest celebrities. Just to name a few.

You need to watch the headlines 24 hours a day and put any interesting words into a Whois tool. I use Ajax Whois while doing this since it’s so quick.

For example, I was taking a look at ViralBabble and saw a headline “DIY Drinking Strawz.” You never know when some stupid idea will get wildly popular, so I checked strawz.com. It was taken, unfortunately, but drinkingstrawz.com was available. (Feel free to grab it - I didn’t. ThinkGeek even has an affiliate program at CJ you could promote…)

So it’s pretty simple, you just need to keep a watchful eye and have a fast clicking-finger.

Let me demonstrate with pictures if that helps…

1. Browse the latest headlines looking for neat new words and phrases

2. Check any domain ideas in Ajax Whois.

3. Register the domain name if it’s available.

And that’s how you get a good domain name or waste your day trying!

(Next you’ll need to park the page and/or list the name for auction, but that can be saved for another day…)

[This post originally appeared at InternetMarketingSucks.com]

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RSS is a great way to distribute and syndicate content to your readers, but it also makes it easy for the spammers to steal your content. One way they do this is by setting up spam blogs, or “splogs.” These blogs have no original content; instead, they pull in your content via RSS and pass it off as their own.

They’re using your content without so much as a link back to your site!

Earlier this year, this very blog was included in one such site at adwhores.com. I wasn’t too pissed considering the blog had a PR5, and if I played my cards right, I could get some nice backlinks. But then I noticed the PR5 was faked…

The good news, though, is that the splog got shut down within 2 days. Even better, I learned a thing or two about dealing with this problem (other than a typical DMCA notice to Google.)

And it’s a good thing, because that splog is back online and stealing more content than ever! They’re even stealing Shoemoney’s feed!

So here are a couple things you can do to protect yourself from splogs, even if you don’t know they’re out there:

First, always link back to your previous posts when you mention something you’ve blogged about before. Or link to one of your category pages. Whatever you do, just be sure to have links to other parts of your site within the post itself. That way, anyone stealing your content is giving you backlinks, and maybe even traffic.

Second, you can put a little notice at the bottom of each post. Something like “this post originally appeared at mysite.com.” That should get you a little link love, too. You can even use Adsense Deluxe to automate the process.

Third, make use of all the Feedburner options. Feedburner allows you to place links in your feed such as “Email this” and “Save to del.icio.us” If those are in your feed, they’ll show up on the splog. So if someone decides to bookmark the post that way or email it to a friend, they’ll be saving your URL (not the splog’s.)

(Notice my feed URL in the status bar )

And if you do know about the splog, and it is totally worthless and spammy, just file the DMCA notice along with these tips from FightSplog.

[This post originally appeared at InternetMarketingSucks.com]

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If you haven’t figured it out by checking out Internet Marketing Sucks and Buy My Stupid Ebook, I’ve Tried That has a guide to spotting an ebook presell page.

It gives you the low down, just like I would say it. Which is good, because it means now I don’t have to write it myself!

[This post originally appeared at InternetMarketingSucks.com]

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Ready to get into domaining, or just looking for a better way to find the domain names?

There’s a site out there called Findeteer, that makes it very easy to find the right expired domains.

It’s a simple search box allowing you to put in a word and select if you want to see recently expired domains, about to expire domains, or both. Your search will probably return a LONG list of domains containing your chosen word, but you can filter the results by length or choose “exclude numbers,” which should help cut out the crap names.

Findeteer will list the domain name, expiration date, and quick links to check Whois data, indexed pages, and backlinks for the domain. If there was a PageRank checker too, it would be perfect.

Note: There is a PR checker at the bottom of the page, but if it was integrated, it would probably be much sweeter! But it would probably slow down page loads, which would suck!

The other link is to “buy now” which forwards you to what seems to be their sister site, Buyeteer. You could buy there or just go to your current registrar and get the name.

Overall I’d say this is a useful tool for domainers going after expired domains.

It could also help out if you can’t decide on the right domain name. Maybe someone else had a good one and let it expire, and you can find it there.

Update: Now that I think about it, what would make this site a lot better is if the site could read your mind and automatically narrow down the list of results to the ones that you would like! I’ll be looking for that in Web 3.0!

[This post originally appeared at InternetMarketingSucks.com]

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I was re-reading a great post at DoshDosh about increasing your Alexa rank, specifically the part about Alexa redirects, and it hit me. I could combine this with SiteShuffle to quickly boost my sites’ Alexa rankings!

Let me explain…

Using an Alexa redirect would be using a link like http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.internetmarketingsucks.com instead of just http://www.internetmarketingsucks.com. Each time someone clicks on that redirect, it will go to my website just like normal, but the visit will count towards a better Alexa rank.

I wanted to make a list of places I could use those redirects, and the first place I thought would be forum signature links. Then I considered it for my internal site linking structure, but I don’t know if I want to go that far. But then I realized it fits in nicely with SiteShuffle.

From now on, when I add a site to my SiteShuffle home page, I’ll use an Alexa redirect link. Then I can visit my SiteShuffle homepage and visit all those links quickly and easily, increasing my Alexa rank overnight!

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