With the increase in seemingly inane and unrelated comments that I have been getting on my blogs, I started to wonder if some of these people are getting paid. So I thought I’d look into it and what better place to start your research than Google right? I tell my kids to Google stuff all the time when I I don’t have a ready answer. lol!

Anyway, so I googled “get paid to comment on blogs” and guess what? YES! Yes, people now can earn money by leaving comments on blogs. That explains a lot. It also makes me feel better about deleting comments and blocking IPs.

When I get relevant comments, especially from other bloggers, I try to return the visit and comment on their blogs. To me, that has just been good blogging manners. Lately though, with all these spam comments and scraper blogs popping up all over the place, it’s getting harder to tell the legitimate sites from the bad ones. What’s worse is, they can negatively impact innocuous bloggers like me who are not looking to make a quick buck but have been at this blogging thing just for the sake of getting our thoughts out there in the vast, vacuum of the internet.

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This is not a huge blog and I don’t get thousands of visitors daily, so I do appreciate your visits and getting comments. The do-follow links and comment luv are my way of showing my appreciation to fellow bloggers who take the time to drop by and leave a comment.

If you found your way here via the do-follow links or the comment luv directory, you are most welcome to leave your comments.

All I ask is, please make sense. Here a few tips/advice on how to leave a comment that won’t get deleted or marked as spam …

1. Do not copy a sentence from my content and paste it as a comment
2. Do not copy an unrelated phrase from elsewhere and leave it as a comment
3. Try to at least read through my post and leave a relevant comment. I.e. if I’m talking about food, say something about it, not something about an iPad.
4. Sometimes I will leave a prompt to help you out at the end of my post. Something like, ‘what do you think?’ or ‘what would you do?’ kind of question. Go with it.
5. While I enjoy a compliment as much as everyone else, “Good post!” is not a comment worth publishing.
6. Finally, if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all or take it up with me privately. My email address is on the ABOUT page.
7. Same thing with advertisment offers or link exchange proposals. Please send to my email address

Thanks again for visiting my blog, and I hope to hear from you soon!

To my fellow bloggers, how do you feel about some of the comments you get on your site?

Image Source: Comments on Comments from Postcards from Hell’s Kitchen

When you’ve been in a battle, be it personal, professional or otherwise, you can win the battle but the battle will take its toll on you. Maybe that’s why I avoid confrontations at all costs. I have very low energy and too much negativity and conflict drains me. That’s what happened to me the last couple of weeks.

I must admit, there is a part of doing battle that can be exhilirating. When your adrenalin is pumping and you’re all psyched to fight, your energy seems boundless. And when you’re still standing at the end of the siege, there is nothing like that triumphant high!

It’s the day after that sucks. You wake up from your victory celebration with a hangover for one, your muscles ache in places you didn’t even know you had muscles, and your body is bruised where you didn’t even realize you’ve been hit.

You look around you and that’s when it hits you. The battle has left on heap of a mess! And guess who’s left standing to clean it up?

That’s right, no other than…

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You have to buy a ticket to win the lotto. And since I don’t buy lotto tickets, you won’t ever see my name attached to a number with lots of zeros.

I do like freebies though, and the easiest way to get that is through online giveaways. I like hosting giveaways and I also like entering them. Most of the online giveaways pick their winners at random so even if there are thousands of entries, your chances of winning are still very good. I’ve won some awesome prizes from giveaways but I have also entered giveaways where I never saw the prize even after repeated emails to the host. But, that doesn’t happen often; only once or twice since I started signing up for these things.

I ran two giveaways on my food blog in the past month and the thing about hosting giveaways is that you end up running into other blogs who are doing the same thing! So as the old cliche’ goes, one thing leads to another and before you know it, you’ve entered a ton of giveaways! Well maybe not a ton, but quite a few.

I just learned this week that I won two of the Halloween Trick r Treat giveaways that I entered! The first win was from Blessed Elements, where I won a leaf making kit. The second win which I was just notified of this morning is from Maryland Momma’s Rambles and Reviews where I won a Mommy and Me gift pack. Now I’m crossing my fingers that more luck is coming my way

I will have another cool giveaway next week, so stay tuned. In the meantime, check out the two blogs I won prizes from this past week. They host giveaways way more than I do and some of them have pretty awesome prizes.

Do you like entering giveaways? Which sites are your favorite? Let me know!

OH, by the way… the new trend among giveaway hosts, I’ve noticed is Rafflecopter! I makes doing all the additional entries so much easier. I’ll start using it on my next giveaway, so stay tuned!