Watch Out! Some Premium WP Plugin Companies On the Prowl

I have been tagging quite a few commenters for spam and noting at other WordPress related sites, that there have been a lot of people leaving comments for their premium plugins.

The message has nothing to do with the original post and in my case, it was on a post of a plugin that had nothing to do with the premium posts.

Rather than go about it this way, perhaps the plugin makes should consider releasing the plugin to notable people in the WordPress community to try out and write their feedback. Commenting and leaving a spammy link does nothing but go to the trash or get ignored.

There are better ways to get the word out including affiliate programs, effective advertising on various networks, and as I have said, through word of mouth through product testing. My concern is that these commenters are the type who were hired cheaply at some freelancer website and by someone with no grasp on how to use social media marketing effectively.

Of course, there are individuals that are merely affiliates and do not work for a particular company, but they can be just as much as a nuisance.

So, this is just a heads up to those in the WordPress community and even bloggers who do talk about WordPress from time to time. Yes, even if you talk about WordPress or WordPress plugins, you might be targeted for comment spam.

How can you prevent this?

Obviously blocking every IP address involved in spamming is not going to cut it as you could accidentally block one of your regular visitors.

You can install spam plugins, but you still get spam. What you can do it visit the site of the plugin and report it. Make sure that if it is an affiliate link, to include that. In the case that you get excessive comments, find out where the domain is hosted and report it on a host level. The host may do several or some of the following:

• Terminate the violator’s account
• Blacklist the user’s IP
• Email the user to warn them of their violation and inform them of what actions will be taken if further behavior continues.

Have you experienced this? How did you respond to it (or did you)?