Working from home

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Making Money From Home Doing Blog Commenting

This page is to show people how to make money from blog commenting. If you're a blogger looking for more comments, this page won't be of any use. Try Wordpress Magnet and Blog Comment Demon. If you're a site owner looking to add blog comment type functionality to a non-blog site, try Insta Comments.

I'll take it you know what a blog is. In short, it's a website like this one but a site where there is a little "comment" box at the end of each page/article. Any visitor can leave a comment in this box and it ends up being posted just under the article. Blog owners love people commenting on their blogs, the more comments one has, the more popular the blog is perceived to be. Blog comments are the lifeblood of a blog.

Here's an example of a blog post. If you scroll down you'll see several responses (comments) left by visitors. Scroll further and you'll see the comments box. Use it as a sandbox and try posting a comment if you wish. (Note that it won't appear straightaway as it needs to be approved first.)

You can include links within your comment to relevant or useful websites.
 

Where's The Money In That?

The money is in the link.

For various reasons, owners of websites want other sites to link to them. And they're willing to pay for it. Even I do. But you don't have a website or blog on which you can sell links. That's what's so cool about commenting: You can place a link on somebody else's blog and still get paid for it!

Don't expect thousands of dollars per day. You may get anywhere from a few cents to a few dollars per comment - negotiate this in advance before you start - but once you get the hang of it you can reasonably make $5 - $10 ph to start with and can quickly move up to $10-$30 per hour. One experienced hand who's been doing it for a few months has a slick operation going and makes $1,600 a week. That's pretty much the outside limit.

Remember that you're working to your own hours and can start and stop work whenever you feel like it.

You didn't think it was that easy, did you?
 

What's The Snag?

It's boring. You'll have to find blogs on your client's topic of interest (I'll show you how later), read the blog post and then write a comment that passes muster. You may need to wait a day or two to see if your comment has been approved for publication. If it looks spammy and it appears that you've made a comment just to get a link, the blog owner may just delete it and it won't count for payment. There are links below that describe how to do it properly.

Your blog commenting efforts will go slowly at first but it soon picks up.
 

FAQs - Things Worth Knowing

When you type text into a comment box, how do you convert part of that into a link? You don't need to know any HTML to leave a comment! A typical comments section provides you with three fields to fill in before you start commenting: Your name, email address and website. Because the name often automatically links to the website address you've provided, comment leavers sometimes use keywords in the name field, thus getting a link with the right "anchor" text. Caution: Some blog owners consider that spammy.

But if you wish to create a link within the comment itself you need to know a bit of HTML. A very, very little bit. Promise. Go read how to create links. Read just the bits on BBCode and HTML. That pretty much covers it.

What is an anchor? Anchor, or anchor text, is the clickable word or phrase. The words make money comprise the anchor text in this sentence. Your clients generally specify the anchor text they want used.

What do dofollow and nofollow mean? Dofollow | Nofollow. In short, dofollow links are "normal" links and nofollow links use robots="nofollow" in the HTML of the link to prevent search engines from "recognising" that link. Clients generally prefer links from blog posts that use dofollow.

Normal dofollow link code:
<a href="http://www.google.com">A well known search engine</a> . It shows up as A well known search engine

Nofollow link code:
<a href="http://www.google.com" rel="nofollow">A well known search engine</a> . In the browser it appears the same to visitors: A well known search engine

What is Page Rank (PR). How to find the PR of a page? Your clients would prefer links from blogs with higher PR pages.

That's it. That's all you need to learn! And you don't even need to know all of it to start.

So What's The Proper Way To Create Comments?

There are three steps:

1. Finding the right blogs in the right niche
2. Getting familiar with each blog
3. Reading posts before providing a useful / insightful / thoughtful comment

Finding blogs: Let's say your client is interested in the term work from home. A simple start would be to use a search engine and try work from home blog. Most of the sites you get in the results are focused on this niche. Click some of them and you may get to a site like this. Note that there are no comment boxes on that page. Front pages tend to have just an introduction to each post (article). You need to click on each heading to visit the post itself.

Other tools to find blogs: Google Blog Finder | Technorati | BlogCatalog yeah, I know, the Yanks can't spell catalogue :-) | Blogapedia | more.

Getting familiar with each blog: Basic familiarity with the blog will show in your comments (particularly if you refer to other posts on the blog). Regularly commenting at a particular blog marks you out as a good community member and your comments are more likely to get approved. You'll also take less time to make posts and create links at blogs you know well.

Commenting: Comments consisting of just "great post" or "I agree with you" will be immediately recognised as SPAM. Your comment should leave no doubt that you've read the post. Here are some articles that'll teach you how to write quality comments that get accepted: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5.

Tips:

1. Some blogs require you to login with a particular account, like a Blogger or Wordpress account. You'll have to create these free accounts if you wish to comment on those blogs. Remember, however, that if you've created a Blogger account, your name and linkback will be the same in every blogger blog you comment in. If you have multiple clients, you'll have to create a different account and profile to promote each client.

2. Look at the date of the blog post before you start reading it. The newer the post the more likely your comment is to get published. If the post was made a year or two ago, it's highly likely that the blog owner is not adding any more comments and you could be wasting your time.

Where Do I Get Clients?

This is the easy part. If you're good at blog commenting, the word will get around and webmasters will beat a path to your door.

To start off you can sign up at one or two webmaster forums such as DigitalPoint, Sitepoint etc., for free, make a few posts/enter the discussion in a few threads and then post a thread of your own offering blog commenting services.

In fact, I'll make it even easier - if you've read every single word on this page, followed every single link here and read those pages in full too, then you're serious about this: I'll hire you!  Contact me, give me your full name and include a 200-300 word para on why I should try you out. Tell me also what your main interests are so I can attempt to match you with commenting work on subjects you are most familiar with. To ensure a reply, check and double check your grammar and spelling.
 

Pro Techniques

Once you've mastered the basics, have made a few blog comments and seen the profits coming in, you may want to up your game, improve your productivity and move to $30 an hour or more. If you haven't got some blog commenting experience behind you, stop now, go back and get that first.

There are tools that make your job easier. But they don't all come free. I'm going to mention some here but don't treat these as recommendations. Check each one out yourself and judge if it'll work for you and if it meets all the requirements for a quality, non-spammy comment campaign. Not all of them do. Read what they say on their sites and then Google them to see what others say about them. Bear in mind also that there's a natural attrition and some tools die away to be replaced by new ones. Find the latest blog commenting tools.

Comment Kahuna | Comment Sniper | Comment Hut |

Further Help

Have a question about blog commenting not explained above? For a limited time I'm offering individual help for free. Contact me (please ensure you've read the article first).

If you're a blogger looking for more comments, try Wordpress Magnet and Blog Comment Demon. If you're a site owner looking to add blog comment type functionality to a non-blog site, try Insta Comments.