Thin, Useless Blog Comments That Offer No Value? No Thank You!
I've seen this topic brought up many times on Wealthy Affiliate and this is something that I am quite adamant about - disapproving comments that are not worthy of being on my website!
**UPDATE** - please read Kyle's blog Site Comments A Constant Focus On Improvement
We all spend a lot of time working on our websites and trying our best to make money online. One thing that we are encouraged to do is to comment on other WA'ers websites and to gain comments on our own websites.
This is the problem that comes in for me - when I leave comments I go and read the post thoroughly and then I think of something genuine and insightful to comment back. I do not leave just the bare minimum words to gain a credit either to make money from or to use to get comments on my websites in return.
I make a point of giving as much value as I possibly can.
When I then request comments on my new blog posts and all I receive back are thin comments that offer absolutely nothing of value to my website I reject them. This is not rocket science for me. It is about getting what I deserve in return for my hard work and efforts.
Anyone that has received a comment from me will know that I spend a lot of effort in giving that comment. I may not give a lot of comments because I spend my efforts making sure that what I do give is worthwhile and valuable. I would rather give one good comment in a week and make it brilliant than give 50 thin comments.
I would appreciate the same in return.
The last 2+ weeks the majority of my comments have gone something like this:
"Thanks for such an amazing and insightful post - I have learned so much about *Insert My Blog Title Here*. I am so happy to learn so much from your website. You have taken so much effort to share this valuable information about *Insert Topic Here*"
And in addition to this many of the people that left comments have made a half attempt at adding value by leaving a bit more but that bit more each time has clearly shown that the commenter has not even looked at my website?
I have seen many WA'ers saying the following:
1) Complaining that their comments have not been approved.
2) Posting that they are getting shoddy comments but feel too bad to reject the comments
3) Many WA'ers recommending that anyone unhappy with a comment should edit it and then publish it.
Here's my take. Reject all comments that are thin content and in the description tell the commenter exactly why the comment was rejected.
I refuse to spend more time in my day editing the comments of people that have not taken 2 minutes to read my post.
I refuse to spend money on WA comments that are not of any quality, never mind the quality I should be getting.
I refuse to spend time in my day leaving awesome comments on other websites and getting shoddy ones in return.
If you don't know how to leave a quality comment you can follow this training I published in January 2016:
Quality Commenting - The Do's and Don'ts
If I reject a comment through WA it is because if it came in naturally from organic search I would have deleted it there too...., so why should I work hard for it here or pay for it?
Here are some of the comments I have recently rejected and why:
"Thanks for sharing this article on 5 tips for small business owners to acquire home loan. Your time and effort to put this together is really appreciated. This article is really an informative article and it has the right steps for me to take in obtaining home loan. Start up capital has been an issue but knowing about this 5 tips then I can obtain the loan. Thanks for sharing this article"
The comment above was rejected for being thin content and for talking about something that has nothing to do with the article. The article was how small online business owners can get a home loan - it has nothing to do with start up capital for their business! My post was not read.
"Getting a business loan is a major hurdle facing small businesses, mainly due to tight lending standards by banks. But obtaining outside financing is often necessary to start or grow a business or cover day-to-day expenses, including payroll and inventory.Although finding, applying for and getting approved for small business loans can be difficult, the more prepared you are, the better."
The comment above is completely unrelated to my post which is about getting a HOME LOAN not getting a business loan. Once again the person commenting has not even read my post and run off on a tangent.
"This is a very interesting concept and you have explained how it works extremely well. These are lovely tips in order to get small loan. I have tried Tax and Financial Records before now and it worked for me perfectly. This is an eye opener for those that doesnt know how this thing works. This is a must for everyone to read. Thanks for sharing"
The comment above talks about getting a "small loan" - I'm not sure about you but a loan for a home would be a large loan in my eyes. And how do you "try tax and financial records".... I'm not sure how to respond to that other than click reject...
These are just a few examples from my latest blog post that I published yesterday.
In comparison here are the 3 latest comments that I have left for other members on their blog posts:
"Thank you for all these brilliant ideas. We don’t have our own garden since we rent and the owners have a water-wise garden that we are not allowed to touch. If I want to grow anything I have to grow it in pots. I love vines and vertical plants – I just never considered doing them in pots. The vertical planters are also a wonderful idea, thank you. It has a lovely look to it and the bonus is that it will make any wall that is looking the worse for wear beautiful and appealing.
I can’t wait until we own our own property – one of the things I am looking forward to the most is being free to do what I want with the garden!"
That comment above was on a blog post titled "Patio Vegetable Garden Containers - How To Build Big Gardens In Small Spaces" - as you can see my comment is not short or thin, it relates directly to the content and refers to specific parts of the post.
"I agree with you in a lot of ways that people have unrealistic expectations of social media marketing. I have had someone ask me to make their post go viral by sharing it on my quite popular Facebook page and she couldn’t understand when I told her I am sorry but I can’t make her product post go viral – it’s not what I do and anyone that makes a promise like that is not being honest with her.
I do agree with you that in most cases it can be very hard to build your following and to create engagement and traffic to your website and offers… but there are certain things that you can do to draw your customers to your business through social media other than just sharing product specials and competitions.
Writing and publishing blog posts on your website that are useful and captivating and then sharing those on social media is a great way to build your following, create authority and get some traffic to your website. I find that the hard sell is not always the way.
Thanks for getting real and honest in this post!"
The above comment I left on a blog post titled "Social Media Marketing for SEO" and as you can see it is also not a thin comment leaving no value for the reader.
I've responded directly to the post topic and given my own personal experience and feelings which will be useful for the website owner's readers.
"Building a list is absolutely essential and one of my biggest regrets is not building my email list right from the beginning! Email marketing is amazing since once you have someone in your list you can bring them back to your website and your offers over and over again. The fact is that an email goes straight to your reader’s inbox – they simply can’t miss it… and they have to do something with it even if it is to delete it and unsubscribe.
On social media and with online search it is so easy for your website to be missed when your potential reader just scrolls on by. Also if you are marketing on Facebook the life of a post is very short, these days very often your reader has to be online at the time you create your Facebook post otherwise it will slip by them… unless of course your posts goes viral but that’s another topic entirely."
And this last comment was left on a blog post titled "Create Your Own Newsletter" and as you can see I have added more value to the post giving my personal experience with newsletters.
Now if you compare my last 3 comments with the last 3 comments I have received you can see that not only are we not comparing apples with apples we are not even comparing apples with another type of fruit....
It looks to me that I spend more time and care writing the reason for rejecting the comment than the member took to write the comment I am rejecting. What a waste of time and effort!
Yes I do get that some people have had their comments unfairly rejected but please peeps lets get the quality up in a VERY big way.
Recent Comments
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Same here Lynne, I was able to get a steady supply of comments a while ago which helped in getting new posts serped. Now all I get is dross not worth the time to read.
It's a pity as it was a good bit of extra content for my site every month. Now I have to rely on organic comments which are few and far between.
I think if they took off the crediting feature we could get it back to something we can use again.
I think all we need is for members to stop approving comments that are not deserving. There is a system in place whereby anyone wanting to earn from site comments needs an 80% or higher approval rate.
If members start rejecting comments that are low quality and useless the members that are giving those comments will quickly learn... or they won't be able to earn. It is simple.
Great to see the guys are active in fixing the problem. After Kyles comment, I decided to give it a go again.
I asked for 4 comments on 4 different posts. Received 13 in total, 4 I binned for not being quality the rest were decent with 3 absolute beauties.
I just replied to 5 of those comments and posted them (10) to the website. I did a quick count and find I have now 1100 new words posted. So that's just over 100 per comment including mine of course. That is decent for probably 30 mins work.
Do that several times a week and the content will grow nicely along with the 3 (2000 word) posts per week I try to squeeze in.
If it continues like that I will be happy.
That is brilliant Mark and so glad to hear you are rejecting comments that are not up to scratch - if we all do that it will solve the problem very quickly and WA won't have to put the manpower to manually reviewing members since we do that job!
I asked myself sometimes that if outside of WA every organic comment would be from someone that master writing skills like all of the great novelist here or do we want a comment from someone that in the end will clicks a link and purchase something and we get our affiliated procent. In the end your website is there to provide information on the subject and generate income.
Have a great day
Tommy
Hey Tommy. I don't expect every member that comments on my posts to be an excellent writer. I do however expect them to:
1) Read my blog post before commenting
2) Leave a comment that is related to the blog post content
3) Leave an engaging comment that adds value
This is what the site comments feature is supposed to be used for. Not for members trying to make a quick buck by leaving vague, unrelated and thin comments.
Hi. Maybe I just learned something here.. 😝 I’m a new member that became Premium a week ago. I received lots and lots of posts from
members welcoming me. I thought at first it was great, but as I carried on reading I kept wondering why everyone was sooo nice here, and it felt a little bit fake.. Now if I understand correctly, you get credits for welcoming people or posting on their page ?
I you don’t get credits for welcoming people. In Site comments you get credit for commenting on other people’s articles then you can use those credits to get comments on your articles
Felt the same way when I joined. On one hand, it's nice to get immediate welcomes from people and makes the place seem friendly... though it did "feel odd" to me and I'd imagine there's quite a few people that have felt that way.
Having been a member for a few weeks, it's noticeable that some people see ranking as pretty important here and are "interacting" heavily to improve their ranking. Commenting, liking posts, welcoming every new member, congratulating members that upgraded, etc. Additionally some members go following thousands or tens of thousands of users figuring they'll get followed in return by enough of them. Those are ways to manipulate ranking quickly.
The question is, just how much weight is given to the three metrics "Helper Rank", "Creator Rank" and "Activity Rank". Equal thirds?
It seems easier to achieve lower Helper / Creator ranks, so that almost removes those as obstacles to get through to getting a lower overall rank. The Activity Rank becomes the focus. And people commenting with canned responses and clicking like and thanking members who follow and following thousands of members so they can be followed back, are going to achieve the lower score. If that's the case, I could care less about RANK.
At some point, some different metrics could be used, or Activity Rank could be weighted less important than Helper / Creator ranking to remove the manipulation factor.
Personally, I plan to ignore RANK and just post quality comments, quality blog posts, and follow people who I think I can learn from. Eventually, just like the search engines, the metrics and weights of these things will change and the old tricks won't work any more.
You just can't go wrong with quality and substance.
True, the credits are just for SiteFeedback / SiteComments. But I think she meant there was some type of incentive for welcoming new members. Which, there is AFAIK. But I'm new here so don't know exactly how much profile comments / welcome messages count toward Activity Ranking.
Nope actually those comments were genuine welcomes! I know it feels a bit crazy when you first go Premium with all the welcoming. It can feel a bit overwhelming....
What I am referring to is something completely different. This is the site comment feature where members can leave comments on each others' external websites!
You can find that here: https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/websites/comments
This is a really useful feature that creates engagement on your website and helps to rank your website higher.
Members can either comment on other member's websites to gain credits which can be used to get comments on your own websites, and members can also earn money through cashing in credits rather than using them for comments.
Yes profile comments and welcoming members does count towards activity and that counts towards your rank in the end... but of course rank does not earn you an income.
I do actually believe that your WA rank can benefit you, but that is another topic entirely.
I've done a tutorial on that too: WA Rank and how it benefits YOU! And in case you want to rank here, here is some training for that too: How to Rank in Top 20 at Wealthy Affiliate However I don't focus on ranking here, I focus only on creating quality content every now and then and helping others when I have a spare moment which is not that often lately :)
True. Until you're in the TOP200 and start looking like an authority. That gets you followers, since most people figure anyone in those lists has some idea of what they're doing and is someone to watch. Staying there for a length of time may in fact cause your new referrals to see you there, figure you've got the answers they need and sign-up for Premium.
In essence, ranking high to be part of those top lists builds trusts, which is going to equal money. I have no doubt, just like on Facebook or anywhere else, there's going to be a certain amount of people going the way of "fake it till you make it." If you can quickly manipulate your way to a TOP200 list, that can be part of the overall strategy.
Success is just having enough people trust you and want to buy your product or buy through you. There's quicker paths some people will take advantage of in order to achieve that. Will they stay there long-term, without quality content or honestly wanting to help people? Hard to say.. but there's plenty of people to draw-in in the meantime.
Yeah I've seen people in the top few that have done it through just commenting all over the place and being involved in everything.... one word answers dotted all over WA :)
But in the end the true ambassadors always shine through.
This is a great post and gave me value because I had not considered the effect I might have with a short comment. You make good points, I am just not sure how you can improve the quality of comments from the mix of people who look at our websites. Not everyone at WA will see this (your post above), and some readers will be non WA. This is no excuse just saying. This also relates to comments I make here at WA blogs where my comments can be short by I do try to be supportive to the writer. Not sure if this helps. It certainly has made me stop and think which is a good thing, but it can also have the opposite effect of making people nervous (me included) about what I say. We learn all the time that’s for sure.
Being supportive here is great and it is amazing to get support from other members.
The problem is not a short comment, it is the actual content :) I would rather have a 10 word comment that offers great value than a 100 word comment of waffle that adds no value.
Lol, "thin useless blog comments" I had to laugh when I saw your title, that's par the course, i have had one line comments a few times which are worse than the examples you gave and I rejected those. I think people are generally in a hurry to build their sites etc and feel the speed at which they leave comments helps.....its a false economy of course but am sure it will continue as this is human nature, ann
I believe the biggest problem is people trying to make money here through commenting and then they leave short, useless comments rather than take the time to do it properly.
The only way to get past it is to reject those useless comments.
I can understand your frustration with this.
It really seems some of those commenters are not native English speakers and also have a limited understanding of English.
This can be a real problem because 1) they really don't understand the article very well in the first place and 2) they can't convey a coherent comment.
Even if they really made a genuine attempt to read your stuff!
I feel qualified to comment on this because I teach English online to students all over the world and I recognize this phenomena quite readily.
Not sure there is a solution to that problem because speaking English and conveying ideas well is not a requirement to use the commenting system.
Agree with you on that one. It's a struggle if English is not your native tongue, or you speak it (write it) to a native level.
That said, it is about the quality of the comment for whatever reason I guess...
Marc I can see your point but if someone cannot add value they should not be there. I have no problem with someone that is clearly not English making a typo in a comment, this happens in real life.
Anyone that wants to take part in site comments must put the effort in. I can see no attempt to add value to my blog. All I see are selfish attempts at gaining credits while wasting my time.
I know what you mean. The problem is, they think they are! If my supposition is correct, they think they are doing what they need to do. I agree the results are useless for you.
Unfortunately there is no English test to participate in the comments area.
I totally agree with you Lynne, They should not be there if they can't give value.
My impression is that some members are just here for the 50 cents and nothing else. They probably don't even work on their websites (or even have one). They are there all day and all night and grabbing every article that is available. I have seen many comments on my website from the same individual on different articles.
And to try to give a comment now is like winning the lottery, I've given up. I was able to comment on three articles in the last month!
Nice blog Lynne. I have become much more specific in what I expect with a comment. I am tired of adjusting them so now, if its clear to me they have not read what I have taken time and effort to create, I do not approve. They are not getting the benefit of their 2 minutes. Hope fully if more of us does this, we will get back to the good old days of decent comments.
Exactly! If I need to edit the comments why not just go onto my blog and write my own comments and put a fake name down?
It is just not good enough for me.
Yup, I'm rejecting a lot more comments now. It's obvious that some people are just not delivering value and are crashing through as many comments as they can as quickly as they can to earn cash or credits.
I also don't want to edit too much as I feel that's cheating to a certain extent.
I had a comment just the other day that said (paraphrased) "Everyone is writing the same stuff, it's not credible. However, just change this comment to what you want and publish it on your blog."
Obviously, I rejected it.
Glad to say I've never had a comment rejected :)
ROFL Les that one takes the cake - I got to give that person something - at least it was original and not pretending to try. There is some honesty in that one hahaha.
For me personally I won't edit a comment. The effort must be put in and that's that for me.
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I agree with your points completely. Why waste time and money when you receive thin comments. I have received similar comments to the examples you show.
Honestly, it really is a problem, so much so that I've stopped using site comments. This is sad because I have used it in the past to gain comments and improve my rankings for posts.
All of these issues only started happening when site comments was changed and the whole 'payment' system was introduced. I wish the guys would change it back to how it was about a year ago, it seemed to work OK then.
Yes it has gotten a lot worse since the payment system has been introduced, however remember that anyone that is trying to gain income through commenting needs to have a certain comment approval rate to be paid.
I am not about to reward bad commenters by approving their comments. The only way to get rid of this problem is by rejecting all comments that are clearly thin comment and inappropriate.