The Friendly Spammer

In this great world of outsourcing and link whoring, a new breed of spammer has come to a comment section near you. This spammer doesn’t just include 16 links to Cialis in the comments. Oh no, this spammer is friendly. Personable. And oh-so-thankful for your post.

Surely you’ve seen the comments that read “Thanks for this post – very informative!” A quick glance at their trackback URL and you’ll see that they’re flogging pills, porn or even lightbulbs. Yes, I had one last week for lightbulbs.

Here’s the thing: I don’t loathe these spammers for their attempts to get traffic. I just think 99.9% of them suck at it.

Anyone who works in any kind of web marketing knows the value of leaving relevant comments at a popular blogger’s site. There’s no harm in it. But most of these bloggers are ruthless when it comes to dumping spam comments (Personally, I usually dump them and then email the spammer with a kindly “Fuck off”). However, there are ways to slip past the Fuck-off-o-meter.

If you make an actual relevant comment on the post, you will get through every time. Instead of just saying “Great post!”, why not take 30 seconds to READ the damn thing and pick something – anything – that you could say was great about it? For example, leaving a comment on this post that reads “Thanks for this!” and a link back to your furniture store will probably get you vetoed. But what if you wrote “Ha, funny! Do you seriously send Fuck You notes to spammers??” will eliminate the chances of you receiving one!

The Friendly Spammer is far more palatable to bloggers, and if they would just make a little more effort, they would pass muster on more blogs.