I got an email from my blog today asking me to moderate a comment. Here are a few excerpts:

Author : chad darwin...

My name is John...

I was looking in the search engines and seen your site your Alexa traffic rank is ****** [no, I didn't redact the numbers -- the comment actually contained asterisks]

Regards

Ali...

john@en...es.com

Hmm. Was the comment posted by three collaborators -- Chad, John, and Ali -- or one person with a split personality?

Seriously though, the transparency of blog spam like this is a moderator's dream. It barely takes an instant to recognize (and reject) it.

The funny thing is that so much of the blog and email spam (like link exchange requests) I get has glaring problems like these -- placeholder text or tags that weren't replaced, etc. You know, I could probably make a fortune developing spamming tools that protected people from mistakes like these :-).

Another transparent mistake blog spammers make is entering keywords in the "name" field. My comment form clearly states "Real Name (keywords NOT allowed)". But some people just can't resist. If the comment is worth approving, I'll still approve it (it happens sometimes). But not only do I delete their keywords -- I delete their link too.

Thanks for being transparent, guys!

Then there's sales pages and the emails used to promote them. "The laziest way to get rich I've ever seen", they say, followed by a bunch of other text that's eerily identical to the email I got from 5 other affiliates. "The laziest way to promote I've ever seen" is the transparent message I see. Mind if I unsubscribe?

Once you get to the sales page, you'd swear you've seen the same product launched 3 or 4 times already this month, because the sales pitch is virtually identical. Hmm, is this the "problem, agitate, solution, social proof, guarantee, offer" formula, or the "your life stinks, it really stinks, mine is better, social proof, guarantee, offer" formula? Ah, the sales letter doesn't say anything about what the product is. Must be the "your life stinks, mine is better" formula.

Reader Comment:
Antone Roundy said:
Ah, nice tip Andy. I haven't run into the need to do that yet, but it has occurred to me that I might.
(join the conversation below)

Thanks for the transparent attempt to pass off a worn-out idea as a solution to people's recession pains. I'll pass.

Finally, there's the person who gives away a lot of free, high-quality content; who responds to comments on their blog; who only emails you when they've found a good product and actually used it; who doesn't have a new secret-to-wealth to sell you every three weeks.

It's not hard to see through the facade and realize that they're exactly who they pretend to be.

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