UPDATE: This product is now outdated, and I do not recommend it any longer. I am leaving it here for informational purposes only. Additionally, I have removed the links from this article. To get the most up-to-date information and recommendations, please join my free newsletter.
Edition #99 – 12/3/2006
I wasn’t planning on doing another product review this week, but I sort of ran into this one and wanted to give you my opinion about it.
Last week, a new software program called Comment Hut was brought to my attention by one of our Eric’s Tips readers.
At first glance it appeared to be another blog comment spamming machine (and the name of the program doesn’t help).
Fortunately one of the owners of the program got in touch with me and convinced me to try it out for myself to see if there was anything spammy about it.
What I discovered is that it is NOT an automated comment poster, and it doesn’t even have the capability of posting comments. Instead, what is does is finds pages that allow comments, which are related to your keyword…and shows you the PR (page rank) of those pages.
So it still has some potential for abuse, but I’d say it is minimal because most spammers would not be willing to take the time to post each comment manually (you’ll see what I mean when you watch the video).
I realized how valuable Comment Hut could be when I suddenly remembered an eBay auction that I purchased exactly one year ago. I bought a LIST of commentable pages (with PR) for $200 from someone on eBay.
Those pages were not even targeted for a keyword, or focused around any particular niche. They were just random pages. The reason I bought the list is because I had some sites that needed to be indexed, and posting your link on a page with decent PR is a good way to get your site crawled and indexed.
The problem is that those pages were so random, that it was a major pain to use them. You see, I certainly wasn’t going to post spammy comments and mess up someone’s blog. So I took the time to read each page, and tried to understand it so I could add something intelligent to the conversation.
That took a LONG time.
I also remembered some other eBay auctions that I won. I had bought several text links on various PR pages, which cost me a hefty fee for just one or two months at a time.
That was expensive.
Those two memories are what really made me realize that Comment Hut could be used in a positive way to save you time and money.
Instead of buying a list of random pages, you can instantly find TARGETED pages for your keywords. This will allow you to post relevant comments on authoritative pages for your topic.
And it sure beats buying text links.
Watch my 18 minute video if you’d like to see the full review…
(Video no longer available)
In the video I do mention one possible shortfall of this strategy, which is the fact that many blogs use “nofollow” tags on the links. That means that Google would not spider the link. However, it is widely believed that other search engines (including Yahoo and MSN) ignore the “nofollow” tags. Also, some of the blogs do not use them so Google could still spider your link on those ones.
Also, I would recommend not going “crazy” with it. Use it to post a few comments at a time. I say that because I believe Google may get suspicious if they see too many blog comments suddenly pointing at your site (even though you posted them manually). I wouldn’t get too paranoid about it; after all it’s a natural web occurrence for links to appear on blogs… even in large numbers. But just use it in moderation.
If you ‘re actively trying to get more links to your site, this is a very affordable solution. Considering the price of text links these days, Comment Hut is a bargain for only $97.
Just to let you know, the Traffic Geyser test is still underway, and I’ll have an update on that program in a few days.
We’ll also get back to our previous topic of VISION soon and we’ll talk about what to do once you’ve got a vision for your life and business.
As always, you can leave your comments here in the blog.
Have a great day!
Eric,
very good article and will look into to it.
Also, two cold here in southern Illinois so I know I woun’t be going to Denver for any thing Free or not, hay but thanks any way.
ken
Hi Eric…
I have had Comment Hut for about 3 weeks now, and I can really assure everyone that it isn’t a “spamming tool”…it FINDS all the blogs related to your topic for you, along with their PR, but you still have to read and post to each one individually. It is a great piece of software, and Paul Forcey, the owner answers his emails personally (Unlike other people I know! 🙂 )
Regards,
Michael Rytter
Chilliwack BC Canada
Hi Eric
I have used a product called Blog Search which sounds the same as Comment Hut. Have you ever tried the product I mention? It would be interesting to have a comparison. When using Blog Search I found the results were not closely matched to my keyword search term. In the end I found it to be a waste of time. I only tried it once so I must give it a bit more of a workout before making a final decision about its usefulness.
regards
Robert
Robert- I have not heard of Blog Search, but I can tell you that in my test I would say about 70% of the found pages were related to my keyword which I’d say is a good result. You can see in the video that a lot of the found pages even had my keyword “prayer request” as a part of the page’s URL.
I downloaded the free version to give it a trial run. Although I have not given it a massive work out I was disappointed with the number of page ranked wordpress blogs for the search term “Internet Marketing.” This has probably nothing to do with the software which seems to function perfectly, but I had assumed (wrongly as it turns out if the software is to be believed.) that there would be many many more.
As a quick test could somebody who has the full version do a search for wordpress blogs using the above term and let me know how many it comes up with?
Many thanks,
Phill.
isi@uk-co.com
Hey Eric.
I do appreciate your mailings. I have just done a mass unsubscribe from lists. No, you were not one of them.
I have not as yet got into the blogging aspect, and to be truthful, still working at the adsense and niche sites. I have become overloaded with a few purchases recently of Joel Comms Adsense2, and a couple other big purchases adding to my larger hard drive.
It is the “Do it now” that I need to do.
I would like to claim the tickets to Imogen Heap in Denver. I personally will not be able to attend, but would like to pass them on to my brother in law whom lives in the suburbs. He is a musician, and I am sure he would appreciate the gift. However, if you wish to have the tickets go to an actual subscriber of yours to make use of, I will understand.
Hi Eric,
Posting your link on someone’s blog doesn’t really give you a good back link as far as seo concern, since blog is designed to avoid spamming backlink anyway. Right?
~Shawn
Phill- I just ran it for internet marketing and it found 39 ranked WP blogs… most of those are PR5 and PR6, only one PR2 and no PR1’s.
ya my 2 sis live in denver and i would like to pass on the tickets to them. if no ones claimed them yet . i realy liked the music and think my sisters would too. please let me know if there avalible yet.
Eric,
You should do some head banging in
metal gig. Forget about whether you’re a heavy metal
fan or not, once you’re there in the crowd , you will
know what to do.
Do this at least once a year!
Metal Fan – Singapore
Thanks Eric,
I’ve decided to make it a point of not purchasing any new products online until I’ve seen a review on your blog, and this month alone it has saved me at least a few hundred dollars.
I appreciate all your efforts Eric.
Roger Auge
ProfitMessaging.com
Bet you have more fun at the children’s musical than at the concert.
This looks like a really interesting piece of software. Thank you for bringing our attention to it.
Hi Eric-
Interesting… But is this tool as effective as posting your own articles with software like “Article Submitter” to article directories? You still have to register the first time with most directory sites but after that, isn’t it clear sailing except for the login part when you want to submit an article?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but with an article the visitor can take something away and use your information on their website. Your BIO BOX doesn’t change and should generate traffic… right? Example: About the Author:
You can get more quality information in this 5 part mini-course called “Break Free From Alcohol Addiction – Your 5 Day Solution” http://DontDrinkToday.com
With Comment Hut… What do you do, modify your comments to fit the individual blog posts? And if so, wouldn’t you only spend your time on PR6 and PR5 blogs? I’m confused.
I can tell you this- I’m a “technokluz” with very limited experience. Heck I’m still trying to figure out Instant AdSense Templates – with no success buy the way!
Where am I to find the time to individually post comments on these blogs? Wouldn’t you need to post daily to be effective?
Shawn- It really depends… If it has the “nofollow” tag, then it likely won’t count much for SEO on Google, but still could for other SE’s. And some blogs don’t use nofollow.
Kevin- In my opinion there is no single magic bullet for web traffic… so I think there is value in both techniques. Article marketing is probably a better all around long term strategy because those articles have the potential to spread throughout the internet as they are disbursed by the article directories and republished by webmasters. On the other hand, article directories have become so abused that I think most SE’s including Google do not put a lot of weight on them in terms of SEO. And since your bio box is the same every time it’s republished, your back link is also the same… and Google may see that as a negative aspect if too many back links have the exact same anchor text. But I wouldn’t let that hinder you from submitting articles… just keep in mind that it’s only one tool in your toolbox.
With Comment Hut, yes you would modify your comments to fit each person’s blog (IMO that’s the biggest thing that sets us apart from the spammers). If there are adequate PR5 and PR6 blogs available for your particular keyword then yes by all means I would spend my time on those first.
But there are also reasons why lower PR pages could be effective. PR does not necessarily have any bearing on how much traffic the page is receiving, so a lower PR page could end up bringing you more direct traffic if it happens to be a well-read page. And some people are using Comment Hut to try to build back links for SEO (in which higher PR pages are better), but some people just use it to get new pages/sites indexed quickly.
The tickets are still available if anyone want them. A few people had to check if they were able to attend, but they weren’t able…
Well, Hello Eric 🙂
I bought the thing from your link.
I tried few times, but, I haven’t had chance to benefit from it because it freezes every time.
I wonder why?
Jonathan- thanks for buying thru my link 🙂
I have not experienced it freezing so I do not know, but I do know that Paul and Stewart are available for live support on Skype which is very nice. At the bottom of the sales page there are chat links for them. If you reach any conclusions, feel free to let us know.
The tickets have now been claimed. But you can keep posting your comments about Comment Hut 😉
Jonathan, Hi it’s Stewart Alexander here from “Comment Hut”. If you are still experiencing any problems at all, then please do use the Skype buttons as Eric suggests, or send Paul or myself an email, details can be found on our contact page at Comment Hut:
http://www.commenthut.com/contact.html
We’ve discovered that in most cases when CH freezes, it’s due to something missing on the user’s PC… possibly an update from Microsoft, but it’s difficult to say without further feedback from you.
Unfortunately, Eric won’t be able to help you with any support issues, but that’s what we’re here for, so keep us busy and fire away with any question.
We really appreciate your purchase of Comment Hut and we’ll do eveything humanly possible to get you back on track.
Is that ok with you Johnathan?
Stewart Alexander
Affiliate Relationship Manager
Comment Hut.Com
A couple of tips when using CH = Comment Hut:
1. CH will only find blogs that actually exist. As logical as this may sound, sometimes one can get frustrated when CH returns little or no results for your keyword term. If your niche is for example “dogs” then you’re most likely to find plenty of people spending the time to create blogs about dogs.
If however, you enter “dogs with 8 legs” (as a really extreme example), there’s hardly going to be any blogs out there on that topic. Best thing, is a to start with a pretty broad search term for your niche, the obvious words will bring back more results. Then once that list is exhausted, extend your search into two word phrases and so on…
How about dog kennels, dog collars, dog food etc.
The more links you get from related blogs of different keywords, the better. You can get really creative with CH over time and build yourself a really great back linking strategy pointing to the internal pages of your sites.
2. Sometimes, it appears that the results are totally off topic. This is only to our human eyes and our sense of logic, but not in the eyes of the search engine Google.
CH uses Google for its searches. The results are based on what Google term to be “relevant”… which can sometimes question our logic, but hey! Who wants to think like a search engine anyway 🙂
Point is, the next time you see what seems to be obscure results that are not on topic, check again.
If you feel totally uncomfortable posting to what seems to be off topic blogs, than leave it and just use the sure-fire results. But still, having said that, don’t overlook these little nuggets that appear to be crazy results.
That’s it for now. I hope Eric approves this post ;-). If you’re still sitting on the fence and have decided to go for it, please use Eric’s links.
Thanks
Stewart Alexander
Affiliate Relationship Manager
Comment Hut.Com
Hi Guys since last three day I am facing a Huge Problem on my blog, The comments form is
not working. I tried to revert all the possible changes.
Whenever someone tries to send a comment, it takes them to a blank wp-comments-post.php
Any help will be appreciated and rewarded through Paypal…
Finally took the plunge. Very impressive software. Thanks again for the heads up.
I have been using Comment Hut for a few days now and so far I like it I got a few links pointing back to my site from blogs hosted at the harvard blog network and those are edu links which are supposed to be sweet links in seo. THe no follow is kind of annoying but it is worth it to add this tool to your link building arsenal.
Comment Hut is awesome software. I first got Comment Hut Lite. I saw that I was able to get a whole bunch of backlinks pretty fast. SO then I got serious about it and got the full version. I run a lot of websites so what I do is do a keyword for one of my sites each day and do like 20-30 comments. I end up with tons of backlinks because probably 90% of those comments “stick”. Great software.
You have some real good information on Content Hut. The suggestion not to over use it and just stay constant with posting comments at random is the best way. It does require some work as you described,
but is well worth it. I advise everyone who wants to increase their PR
to buy the full version of Comment Hut.
Dear Eric.
Your tips are always appreciated.
I am writing to you here because there is no where else to contact you.
I received “http://ericstips.com/instantjv/” and immediately purchased same. Before going to the PDF we had the option of opening the Bonuses and Affiliate site. Preferring to do it later I went ahead to the PDF document however, there was no way of getting back to the Bonuses and Affiliate site.
Your help would be appreciated.
Regards Mary 11.02.2008 12.55p.m
okay must say this software does what it says. i got thelite version and fel in love with it. it was extremely useful for getting good backlinks to my site. I had stopped using it a while back. Now after reading all of these comments. i want to get it again and i will today.
wow what a nice post. But how can I have the evalution copy of comment hut…
Hmmm…I wonder because I am using Comment Kahuna since it is free. It is very easy to use and I use the auto fill feature but I fill in the comments my self after reading the blog post.
I don’t know if I should switch to comment hut. I do realize as you said that it brings up a lot of unrelated websites.
Does comment hut have the autofill option yet? As I said before i only use this feature to autofill email, website and name areas and not the comment area.
I will download the lite version and check it out.
I am definitely going to try comment hut. I guess I’ll start with the lite version and if I like it will upgrade to the full version.
Comment Kahuna has a nice interface compared to what I saw in your video of comment hut.
I downloaded the free version to give it a trial run. Although I have not given it a massive work out I was disappointed with the number of page ranked wordpress blogs for the search term “furniture” This has probably nothing to do with the software which seems to function perfectly, but I had assumed (wrongly as it turns out if the software is to be believed.) that there would be many many more.
As a quick test could somebody who has the full version do a search for wordpress blogs using the above term and let me know how many it comes up with?
Many thanks,
duo