• Meaningless comments, such as “thanks for sharing”, “great articles”, etc. Commentators are motivated solely by dofollow signature links.
• People use anchor text or keyword for their comment name instead of real personal name. Anyway, business name sounds salesy or spammy.
• Leave unrelated links on comments. It’s fine if other readers can benefit from this URL, otherwise it’s just another spam comment.
• Malicious comments with competitor’s URL.
• Foul/unpolite language.

The straightforward solution is that you add your own comment policy to let commentators acknowledge it before leaving a comment. Readers who want to comment on your blog post will see the comment policy, and know that you are serious in fighting against spam comment.

This is WebmasterCrunch.com comment policy. You can add comment policy manually by editing comments.php.

Read This Before Leaving a Comment!
Please make sure your comments follow our guidelines:
1. Use your real name, not keywords
2. No signature links in your comments
3. No foul language
Comments that do not adhere will be deleted or marked as SPAM.

If you are not familiar to WordPress templates or don’t want to touch any dirty source code, ProfitPlugins has released a Comments Policy for WordPress plugin, you can easily handle the comment policy with custom content and design.

How do you deal with semi-spam comment? Do you have any comment policy on your blogs?

Original Post: Why You Need Comment Policy

Look for reliable web hosting plan? DreamHost offers unlimited disk storage, unlimited monthly bandwidth, and a free domain for life, all for only $8.95 per moth!
Boost your AdSense CTR! Try out the killer AdSense Ready SEO WordPress theme.

Annoyed by adverts? Troubled by tracking? Bothered by banners? Install Adblock Plus now to regain control of the internet and change the way that you view the web.

It’s right sometimes when you visit a website, a full page Flash ad or popup block advertisement is quite annoying, and then you may consider to install a plugin on your web browser like Firefox & Google Chrome to block these ads. As a general reader, it’s not a big deal to block the ads. But if you are a publisher, blogger and webmaster, people who use Adblock are selfish and looks like a thief.

Adblock is a very powerful application that almost block any type of ads including HTML banners, Javascript and Flash in a finger-tip. If you use Adsense on your sites, you may probably know that Adsense allows publisher to add maximum 3 ad units and one link unit on a single web page only. Do you think whether it’s reasonable to block these Adsense ads? Is it annoying and disturb you online?

Like many other webmasters, my point is clear. People should not use Adblock on serious websites and blogs except those spammy sites. For publishers who offer and share free content, they should have the rights to make money form selling ads. It’s not evil and i would say it’s a win-win deal. For example, bloggers spend lots of time to research and write quality posts, it’s a bonus to encourage them to publish more value content for free if the blog can generate revenue form advertisement like banner ads on sidebar. And the money can also cover the charge of web hosting, domain name and other potential cost.

How to fight against Adblock? You can quickly search with the term “how block adblock” to find a solution to block Adblock, we won’t disclosure here. If you are a WordPress users, Anti-AdBlock is a handy WordPress plugin to detect and then displays a notification message to those visitors who have turn on Adblock and then humbly asking them to turn it off. This plugin can actually block Adblock, it’s still a nice touch though. Moreover, Who Sees Ads is an advanced ad management that allows you define what condition your visitors can see the ads. There is a bunch of rules to decide whether to display the ads. For example, you can disable ads for visitors who are general readers of your site. It’s an alternative solution to fight back Adblock.

Someone might worry about the traffic sue to blocking Adblock. Anyway, i don’t believe your audiences will leave it right away and never go back since you block Adblock. It’s simple and true. People will continue to read your site if you can offer good content. In summary, as a blogger and webmaster, we should first ensure that all ads are not annoying and bother your audiences. Share your thoughts with us on comment.

Original Post: Webmaster, Should You Block Adblock Visitors?

Look for reliable web hosting plan? DreamHost offers unlimited disk storage, unlimited monthly bandwidth, and a free domain for life, all for only $8.95 per moth!
Boost your AdSense CTR! Try out the killer AdSense Ready SEO WordPress theme.

CatWhoBlog had shared a solution to display average Feedburner feed readers. This method works well on any PHP site with cURL enabled but not only WordPress. Follow the steps below to display a plain text average RSS reader counter. You can see what it exact look like at my top menu bar.

1. Login to Feedburner dashboard, under Publicize, active Awareness API.

2. Paste the code into your WordPress function.php.

function get_average_readers($feed_id,$interval = 7){
	$today = date('Y-m-d', strtotime("now"));
	$ago = date('Y-m-d', strtotime("-".$interval." days"));
	$feed_url="https://feedburner.google.com/api/awareness/1.0/GetFeedData?uri=".$feed_id."&dates=".$ago.",".$today;
	$ch = curl_init();
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $feed_url);
	$data = curl_exec($ch);
	curl_close($ch);
	$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($data);
	$fb = $xml->feed->entry['circulation'];

	$nb = 0;
	foreach($xml->feed->children() as $circ){
		$nb += $circ['circulation'];
	}
	return round($nb/$interval);
}

3. Paste the following codes where you want to display the counter, and don’t forget to replace webmastercrunch by your feedburner id on line 2.

<?php
$nb = get_average_readers('webmastercrunch');
echo "I have ".$nb." RSS readers";
?>

The function display an average of 7 days, but you can define the desired number of days using a second parameter.

<?php
$nb = get_average_readers('webmastercrunch', 30);
echo "I have ".$nb." RSS readers";
?>

Don’t want to show the exact average number? Okay. Using this code you can round the counter by replace the last number with zero and add a plus sign. For example, if you have 163 RSS readers, it will show 160+ readers instead.

<?php
$nb = get_average_readers('webmastercrunch', 30);
echo substr_replace($nb ,"0",-1).'+ readers';
?>

Original Post: How to Display Average Feedburner Feed Counter

Look for reliable web hosting plan? DreamHost offers unlimited disk storage, unlimited monthly bandwidth, and a free domain for life, all for only $8.95 per moth!
Boost your AdSense CTR! Try out the killer AdSense Ready SEO WordPress theme.

Recently i came across a blog and commented on one of the posts about website submission tools. There is no any option on the comment section to allow commentators select whether subscribe or not to the post comment. See below, a few hours later i was alerted by an email:

The question here is i never subscribe to this post comment, why they send the notification to me without my permission? It’s absolutely an offensive trick to attract more traffic. The worst thing is you can find any unsubscribe link on the email. Right, you can see that i have received several comment notification emails on the next few days about the same post. Finally i dropped this annoying email address to my spam folder, thanks Gmail did a great job! You can imagine the blog owner will probably use all their readers’s email to do something dirty, such as send spam emails or resell your email to someone.

You know you can’t leave a comment without an email, so create an exclusive email address to blog comment usage only. Do you think whether it’s offensive? Will you use this dirty trick on your blog? Share your comment below.

Original Post: Subscribe Blog Post Comment without Permission

Look for reliable web hosting plan? DreamHost offers unlimited disk storage, unlimited monthly bandwidth, and a free domain for life, all for only $8.95 per moth!
Boost your AdSense CTR! Try out the killer AdSense Ready SEO WordPress theme.

#1 Show the Advertise Here banner

Create a “Advertise Here” banner to let your visitors know your blog has banners for sale. If you don’t open spot and let your potential advertisers know what exactly their ads are visually, you won’t sell any ad. So make sure to keep that “Advertise Here” banner up and running.

#2 Set Price from Low to High

At the beginning, you should better to start a lower average advertising price than you normally would like to get for these ad slots, since you need to attracting more advertisers first. And then once you get a steady amount of long-term and satisfied advertisers, try to increase the price slowly for a acceptable rate. Anyway, give away a special discount for the very first banner sold.

#3 Social Media Promotion

How about tell your friends or followers via social media platforms that your blog has advertising slots up for sale? Twitter, Facebook and many popular social medias you can use to promote for the ad spots. Sometimes it works very well for particularly niche sites.

#4 Place Banners above the Fold

If ads are visible immediately when someone visits a web page, those ads are above the fold. In other words, when people need to scroll down a page to see your ads, this placement is considered below the fold. If you want to sell more ads, try to have a “above the fold” placement for these ad spots so that they are visible without scrolling.

#5 Blog Yourself Your Advertisements for Sale

This is the most straightforward and easy method to let all your readers know and sell banners ads directly. Since you are a blogger and won’t be shy to tell about the new advertisement spots on your blog. This is also very important step because your loyal readers always would be potential advertisers source. Don’t forget it!

#6 Don’t Over Sell!

If you were advertiser, you won’t be happy to see that the blogger show too many ads on the same page. never over sell your ads spots, try to limit certain number of ads such as 4 or 6 you can sell overall. It’s also a selling point for other advertisers and encourage them to renew next month, otherwise they will only close the advertising relationship very soon.

#7 Creating a Advertising Page

A good advertising page should include blog description, current available advertising regions, monthly price, traffic & RSS feed stats, testimonials from previous advertisers or even audience demographics if you have any.

#8 Review and Approve Your Advertisers

Cash is king theory is invalid if you want sell more advertisements. Like we have mentioned above about the oversell point, you must review the coming advertisers what services/products they offer and ask yourself whether you can put the banner up on your blog. It absolutely hurt your other advertisers if you approve a gambling or adult ads that are not improper definitely on your family friendly blog.

#9 Research Your Potential Advertisers

It’s a top secret tip for all of you here! If you have a quality blog, it won’t be hard to sell ads. First you need to research your competitors at the same niche, find their advertisers and then email them directly. It’s critical to let them acknowledge that your blog is worth to pay for. You need to list the monthly price, ads placement and tell them why they should buy ads from your blog. In my past experience, you usually can get response within several days, or you should find another potential advertisers again. If you get any inquiry email, don’t miss the chance even you offer a further discount for a longer business relationship.

Do you agree with me? Tell us about the 10th point you know on the comment below!

Original Post: How to Sell More Advertisements on Your Blog

Look for reliable web hosting plan? DreamHost offers unlimited disk storage, unlimited monthly bandwidth, and a free domain for life, all for only $8.95 per moth!
Boost your AdSense CTR! Try out the killer AdSense Ready SEO WordPress theme.

Ping services allow you to automatically notify search engines and blog directories that your blog has been updated. There are many ping services which track blog updates in the blogosphere. When you blog, a ping list is notified about your latest post, and your latest feed content is indexed across blog tracking services, blog directories and search engines. Ping update services can help your blog get faster indexing and have a higher chance to receive traffic from those sources. WordPress default installation has enabled the ping update services, just there is only one single source which is pingomatic.com. Now we can enhance the ping services by adding a list of new ping services. If you are WordPress users, you can modify their ping list on the Control Panel, then Settings, under then Writing tab. When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services. Separate multiple service URLs with line breaks. You can also download the WordPress Ping List plain text file, and simply copy and paste on your Ping Update Services list.

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://1470.net/api/ping

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://bitacoras.net/ping

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc

http://blogmatcher.com/u.php

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt

http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/

http://ping.amagle.com/

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc

http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/

http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://ping.weblogs.se/

http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2

http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/

http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.newsgator.com/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php

http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b

http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.blogoole.com/ping/

http://www.blogoon.net/ping/

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1

http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php

http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud

http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php

http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2

http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

http://api.feedster.com/ping.php

https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/pingPodcast

http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc/

http://pingqueue.com/rpc/

http://ping.blogg.de/

http://rpc.britblog.com/

http://rpc.tailrank.com/feedburner/RPC2

http://rpc.wpkeys.com/

http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx

http://signup.alerts.msn.com/alerts-PREP/submitPingExtended.doz

http://www.holycowdude.com/rpc/ping/

http://www.imblogs.net/ping/

Original Post: Wisely Enhance Your WordPress Ping Update Services List for Faster Indexing

Look for reliable web hosting plan? DreamHost offers unlimited disk storage, unlimited monthly bandwidth, and a free domain for life, all for only $8.95 per moth!
Boost your AdSense CTR! Try out the killer AdSense Ready SEO WordPress theme.

PingShot

FeedBurner has a great feature “PingShot” that notify most web-based feed reading services to check and update your feed instantly instead on their own time schedule. First login to your feedBurner account, select the appropriate feed, choose “Publicize” tab and then enable the “PingShot” services. You can now see your post on RSS fed reader almost instantly when you publish new posts.

Ping FeedBurner

Do you know Feedburner updates automatically your blog RSS feed after 30 minutes of creating the new article. If you have edited your post content, Ping FeedBurner is a handy tool to help you update the RSS feed immediately. Simply enter your blog address hosting the source feed and hit the Ping FeedBurner button, it will give a push to force FeedBurner to update your feed instantly by pinging it.

Resyncing Your Feed

If you can’t fix the trouble of your RSS feed such as feed out-to-date issue, pinging FeedBurner problem, or your podcast files are not being turned into enclosures by our SmartCast service, go ahead to use the final resort – FeedBurner “Resync” option. FeedBurner advice to use this resync option only if your feed has these issues more than one hour. Once resyncing enables, it would clears FeedBurner cached version and refreshes its content from your original feed, and creates podcast enclosures for items that did not previously have them and contain links to podcast content.

Original Post: PingShot, Ping FeedBurner and Resyncing Your RSS Feed

Look for reliable web hosting plan? DreamHost offers unlimited disk storage, unlimited monthly bandwidth, and a free domain for life, all for only $8.95 per moth!
Boost your AdSense CTR! Try out the killer AdSense Ready SEO WordPress theme.