Using blog comments to generate back links to your site is becoming more and more prevalent.

There are a lot of people out there that will tell you don’t bother to use blog comments because all the blogs have no follow tags now and the search engines don’t record the links.

This is both true and not true at the same time. Yes, a vast majority of the blogs you find will have the no follow tag on the comments. But there are some that don’t have no follow tags.

The default installation of WordPress automatically adds the no follow tags to the comments but if you know what you are doing you can find blogs that don’t have the no follow tag or will remove the no follow tag in return for you making a certain number of posts.

Before I get into what to look for to find blogs without the no follow tag I want to cover comment etiquette.

If you are going to leave a comment on the blog MAKE SURE the comment is relevant to the post.

For example if the post is on blog comments your comment should be related to that post and have something to do with the content of the post. Don’t leave a comment talking about how to conquer the newest MLM offering.

Don’t put links in the body of your comment. This is very bad etiquette unless the link is to a resource that expands on your comment. This doesn’t mean if you have a site on sports fishing you can put a link to your site in the comment body but if the post is on a new way to string a leader you can put a link to a page (on your site or another) that shows how to do this.

I personally have my comments set up so that if you put links in the body of the comment it will go to moderation and not be posted until I get around to reviewing the links. This might be done quickly or it might take me a week to get to it. Remember, some people never check the comment moderation.

Now your name or I should say the form field where you enter your name. This should be your name or your moniker. For example I will use Randy The Hermit because more people know me that way than by my normal last name. Your moniker can have keywords in it (only helps if there are not any no follow tags) but it should be related to you or what you do. For example if you teach people how to blog you could use the moniker Blog Boy or Blogging Teacher but your moniker should stay the same no matter what you use for a link.

That pretty much covers the etiquette but I can hear a lot of you out there screaming, “Why should I bother if it is going to have the no follow tag on the back link?”

There are a number of reasons why you should do this:

1. It is still a link to your site that people will see and possibly follow. If you leave 5 blog comments per day that is 1,500 links in a year that might catch the eye of the reader and could get you traffic.
2. If you are posting relevant comments people will remember your name and you will start to build a reputation for yourself, especially if you only used one name.
3. If you post an interesting comment people will click on your link to see what else you have to offer.
4. Some of the ad services and search engines, like Ask (the last time I checked) don’t read the no follow tag. With the ad services this means that you site will look more relevant and it could lead to higher pay outs on your ads.

Now how to tell if the comments have the no follow tag applied to them.

One way is to go to the blog and find a post with comments and look at the page source, find the comment and see if it has no follow tag on the link. This is a pain but it works.

An easier way is to use FireFox or Flock browser (If you are not using one these you should be) and get the SEO for FireFox addon (It works in FireFox and Flock) you can find it as SEOTools.com or just search for it in Google.

Once this is installed all no follow links will be highlighted in red so they are easy to notice. If the link (the name) in the blog comment isn’t highlighted that mean the no follow is shut off for the comments on that blog.

Then there is another plugin that some people add to their WordPress blogs that will reward the frequent commenter. It is called Lucia’s Linky Love.

How it works it the owner of the blog can set the plugin so that after so many posts the no follow tag is removed from the comments of that person.

It does require that you use the same name and the same email address for every comment (I believe I mentioned using the same name above).

The owner of the site can set the limit from 3 to whatever they feel like but most of the time if they are using the plugin it is set from 3 to 5. This means you will have to leave a relevant comment 3 to 5 times before the no follow tag is removed but when it is removed it is removed from any comments you make from there on.

You might now be wondering how you find blogs that are using Lucia’s Linky Love, the easiest way to do this is to go to Google’s Blogsearch and search for your keywords in quotes plus Lucia’s Linky in quotes (it should look like this “keyword phrase”+”Lucia’s Linky” ) and you should find some posts for your keywords that this will apply to.

I use this on my blogs and I have it set at three. Because I read the comments and if they are spammy I delete them manual link spammers never get the three links they need for the no follow tags to be removed. This encourages better comments and more comments.

I have been playing with the newly released WordPress 2.7 trying to decide if I like it or not. The functions that they have added are nice once you get them working.

What did I say? Did I say once you get them to work?

Yes, I did. I personally had a problem using the new feature which automatically installs plugins from the WordPress Plugin Directory. It took a lot of testing on different blogs to see if it was the host or my site or the script running WordPress 2.7.

Here is what was happening, I would find the plugin I wanted and click on the install link. The plugin would download to my site but when it started to unpack it would freeze and the plugin wouldn’t be installed.

It didn’t matter if my site was running suPHP or not, if I lost you with that, suPHP is a protection program that runs on your site. This makes running WordPress much easier because you don’t have to set permission for every folder or file it is changing and you don’t have to add your FTP information to the script to complete the process.

It didn’t matter if I used the automatic install or if I was using the upload and install feature it would freeze when it was unpacking.

I tried it on three different hosting services so I was getting to the point where I thought it was a scripting error in WordPress 2.7 and I hit the WordPress Support Forum. There were tons of comments and problems about 2.7 but I didn’t see anything about the automatic plugin install.

I posted my problem and then did a search of the support forum to find there was a similar problem with the automatic plugin upgrade that was part of the WordPress 2.5 and to my surprise it was related to the WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugin.

So, logged back into the admin area and deactivated the plugin and boom everything worked fine for the automatic plugin installer.

If you have the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin installed deactivate it when you install WP 2.7.

Besides this plugin is officially retired and WordPress 2.7 has the feature built in.

Like I said there were a bunch of other problems at the support forum but most of them were like mine personal to the person.

One that seemed to affect a lot of people with different plugins was losing all the links in the admin section. This happens with some of the admin navigation plugins that work like WP Admin Bar (although this one seems to work fine) the problem is you need to deactivate the plugin to get the links to show and you need the links to deactivate the plugin.

There are a couple of ways around this:

One is to FTP to the plugins folder on your site and rename or delete the plugin so that it won’t be activated.

The other is to go directly to the plugin page in your admin area after you login and deactivate it there.

To go directly to the page you will go to the admin section and log in.

Once you are logged in go to the address bar in your browser and where it says index.php change that to plugins.php and hit enter or go.

This should bring you to the plugin page and you should be able to deactivate the plugin. Once it is deactivated you should be able to see your admin links again. Just in a different spot.

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous blogging or to take arms against a sea of niche bloggers, and by opposing conquer them?

OK, that is enough of my poor paraphrasing of William Shakespeare.

This is as you might have guessed about blogging for profits or just blogging for attention or to get the word out about something special to you or just blogging to vent.

The real question is should you use a free blogging service or spend a little money and set up your own blog on your own domain?

The answer to this question, as with almost all internet marketing questions, is “It Depends”.

If all you are doing is providing your personal opinion about celebrities, politics, your personal life, what your group or organization is doing and not actively seeking to make money with your blog. You will do find with the free blogging services like Blogger.com or WordPress.com

If you are planning on doing blog marketing to create a profitable blog you should really look at this as running your own business and this means you will have to spend a little money.

How many of you actually believe you can run your own business without spending any money?

Seriously, if you try to start a business offline you better have thousands of dollars and a good line of credit.

To start a business online, especially with a blog, is a fraction of the cost of starting an offline business.

For under $50 per month (a high estimate here) you can get your own business up and running online. What offline business can you run for $50 per month?

I told you that $50 per month was a high estimate and what does that include?

• Domain Name= $0.83 per month (based on $10.00 per year)
• Hosting = $10.00 per month. Yes, you can get it cheaper but this is for a reliable hosting account with room to expand and no additional cost.
• Autoresponder = $20.00 per month. This is the best way to stay in contact with you customers and potential customers, without getting your site shut down for spamming.

As you can see that comes up to $30.83 per month and the autoresponder is optional (though highly recommended) when you are first starting out. The $20 that is left over from the $50 estimate can be used for other things like education and advertising.

There are other expenses that you will have but I am guessing you already have those expenses, such as; a computer, internet access and an email account.

Why do you want to set up your blog on its own domain?

The answer to that is because it will make it much easier for you to turn up high in the search engines and get traffic to your site.

With blogs, particularly WordPress blogs, you have these things called plugins that you can easily install that will optimize your blog for the search engines, set up RSS feeds, allow others to bookmark it and many, many other things.

These options are available with most of the free services.

I won’t tell you that you can’t make money with a free blogging service but I will tell you that it will take a lot more work and a lot more time to get where you want to go.

What does this boil down too? Basically, if you are planning to make money blogging you should plan it like a business and budget some money to get your business started.