For the last week, I have been following a new tradition – whenever I subscribe to a site, I send off an email to the sites author letting him/her know that I have subscribed. The main benefit of doing this is networking. Also, you can send the link to your blog in that mail.

Last week, I subscribed to a few new blogs – and I send them an email notifying them that I subscribed – along with my link. Here is a list of those blogs…

• WFTL Bytes!
• Amit Agarwal
• Anant Shrivastava
• Komodomedia
• Albertux Blog

This is the basic template of the email I send – feel free to modify it and use it if you want to do this as well…

Hi [Name],

I am Binny V A(http://blog.binnyva.com). I wrote this to let you know that I just subscribed to your site. I really enjoyed the [name of an article you really enjoyed] article.

Also, I have a blog in this field – http://lindesk.com/ – check it out.

Thanks – and keep up the good work.

–
Binny V A
http://binnyva.com/

Sometimes, I also ask them to consider switching to full feeds(if they are using partial feeds). Or if I find a bug in their site(like a broken link or something), I let them know in this mail.

In some cases I could not send these – because I can’t find the email of the admin. In such cases, I am thinking about leaving a comment to let them know – but I am not sure about it.

Advantages of Subscription Notification

Networking

You can contact someone else in the same field as you – this relation can later lead to backlinks, guest blogging opportunities, etc.

A Possible New Reader

You are sending your link to another blogger in the same field as you – chances are, he will subscribe to your blog as well.

World Peace

When someone sends you an email telling you how much they loved your blog and so on, you get a warm fuzzy feeling. The sender also gets a bit of this ‘WFF‘ by sending it.

And More

I have only started doing this for a week – I’ll find out its hidden advantages later on.

What do you think?

This is the part I want your help in – what do you think of the idea? Some points I would like your feedback on…

• Will these emails be considered spammy?
• How will you respond if you get an email like this? Will you think someone is pushing you their site – or will you be glad to put a face on one of your feedburner stats?
• Will you consider doing this?

Image Credit: oooh.oooh

I am looking at some spam I received at LinDesk. These are not your average spam – they are real good. I even let one through before I understood they were spam.

• spartan300 | tcssey@aol.com | dolcemp3.com | IP: 64.12.116.138
  Hhmmm,, this sounds good. but I not yet into upgrading my Fedora7 to 8. i’m not that afraid of changes, but I might incur another error with my linux. I still have lot of work to do, maybe i’ll try this later next week. Thanks though for this blog.
  In article Sound Issue in Fedora 8
• 2cool2sexy | tcssey@aol.com | dolcemp3.com | IP: 64.12.116.138
  Have you checked on its system requirements? You should try checking of their site. http://banshee-project.org/
  I believe there are helpdesk there that can support you.
  In article Banshee – Music Management and Playback for GNOME
• audio-fanatic | tcssey@aol.com | dolcemp3.com | IP: 64.12.116.138
  another nice review here Lin. You really adore using Linux-based software? I think this mp3 software is the one fit for my notebook.
  In article Audacious Media Player

First of all, do you agree with me? Are these spam?

The reason why I think they are spam are the following…

• Same URL and Email – but different names.
• Zero content comments – they add no value to the post.
• My previous experience has taught me that comments with @aol.com email addresses are often spam.
• This guy has only commented on MP3 related posts – his URL leads to an MP3 site.

The reason why they may not be spam are just as valid.

• These comments are written by humans – not bots.
• The writer of the second comment(about banshee) has obviously read the post.
• The commenter has at least a passing knowledge of Linux and Linux softwares.

So, have you received any spam like this – comments that you are unsure about? These three comments are still in my moderation queue. I need advice on how to deal with them.

I could let them through – if no one looks closely, they will think these are actual comments. That will give the articles an appearance of popularity. It is a good thing for me. But I have a zero tolerance policy towards spam. If the comment is a spam, I will not allow it on my site. Its a matter of principle.

Welcome, one and all, to my new ..er.. old blog. Well, new location of the old blog. Liked the theme? All the WordPress themes were kinda beautiful. So I took the default wordpress theme(Kuberic, I think it was called) and, for the lack of a better term, desecrated it. You are viewing the results.

The Past

For those who are new to this blog, a bit of history – I have a blog at http://binnyva.blogspot.com/. I recently decided that I should move the blog to one of my own servers. I did not import the old posts to this site due to the issue of duplicate content.

The Future

From the next post onwards, the post will be duplicated here and in my Blogger site. At the end of this month, I will abandon the old blog and focus on this one.

Abandon does not mean that I will delete the blog or its contents – that will stay. I will stop posting there. I will still carry out some maintenance tasks like weeding out the spam, repling to comments etc. However, from next month, no more new content will appear there.

The Present

In short, Welcome All!