Benefitting From Comment Spam

You hate comment spam, I hate comment spam, we all hate comment spam… right?  But did you know you can benefit from it?  Most comment spammers are morons, point blank.  Just a quick glance at the comment spam that comes through is evidence enough of this.  But there is such a thing as beneficial comment spam.  When I have some free time late at night, when my brain is fried from the long day and I can no longer do any work, I check out some of the comment spam my sites get.  Not every night, but maybe one night a week.  I can easily skip by the garbage and bullshit ones and find ones that intrigue me.  Almost always they have a link to a site and so I see what they are doing on their site to make money.

Are they doing something new that I have not seen before?  Are they innovating a method at all that I can learn from?  Is their site laid out a particularly nice way that I think would increase conversions?

I’ve actually learned some stuff from comment spam.  I’ve actually made money as a result of people submitting comment spam to my sites.  I’ve taken what most blog owners consider a negative nuisance that pisses them off, and I’ve turned it into a positive.  The next time you get some free time and your brain is done working for the day check out some of the comment spam you got.  You may just find a method, layout, etc… that you haven’t used before that might actually work out pretty well for you.  I did a post about something similar to this with Craigslist which you can read here.   If someone wants to hand you the keys to their method you should oblige them and open that door and see if you like what’s inside.