www.affiliateconfession.com

I guess you know when your blog really starts to get noticed in the blogosphere because your Akismet Spam increases dramatically. This of course means that spammers the world over have located your blog and are targeting it with worthless comments hoping to get a link somewhere on your site.

Almost from the start, a new blog will get spam comments immediately, but then, out of nowhere those spam comments double or triple overnight. That happened to Affiliate Confession some time this past week. I haven’t been paying that close attention to my Akismet Spam count, but just noticed today in my comments interface the count is at 106 when it had been hovering between 40 and 50. Total spam comments caught by Akismet are at 1,155 since starting this blog. That’s not huge compared to other bloggers or some of my other blogs (42,460 blocked at our healthy diet podcast), but it’s the sudden increase that makes me suspect the flood is coming.

It is beyond my comprehension that some individuals still think you can benefit from trying to post useless garbage comments on other blogs and still purchase auto posting comment software. I’d like to know if anyone at this stage of the blogging game still benefits from time wasting activities such as this.

If you aren’t using Akismet, it comes free with your Wordpress install and it really is essential in your blogging ventures. It blocks 95% or so of the spam comments from you having to moderate them and keeps track of the kind of spam that does get through so it can be stopped in the future. You have to get a WordPress API key to use it which is a simple procedure and that helps the main Akismet database learn more about comment spammers and trap even more mindless comments. Once you get your API key, you can use it for any WordPress blog you have. All you have to do is activate it from your WordPress plug-ins interface, put in your WordPress API key and you’re all set, nothing more to do.

If you aren’t using Akismet, you are spending way to much time moderating comments on your blog.

Alan
PS - Posts will short and sweet for the next several days as my dad just got home from the hospital Wednesday after his open heart surgery and I will be spending time helping to deal with his situation and will be working on a few new projects. Consequently, I won’t have much time to blog.