I agree with you and most time I catch some responses as spam. The way I deal with this - is to see if they are selling anything, or if they are a pest company are they going to compete against me right in my backyard. I allow a few on my blogroll from Fl, Tucson and CA (I even promote them and allow their comments). I like to read blogs from all over just to see what kind of problems are happening across the U.S. Great articles and thanks.

You can certainly track me at my blog (link above). We are very active building deep-content websites that interlink and hopefully will provide passive worldwide income as well as local pest control referrals. You are also welcome to follow me as an author of Pest Management Professional (PMP) magazine and “web exclusive” articles that have been appearing most months since January 2009. You have direct access to these articles on my blog.

But I don’t claim to know it all. I’m just learning like the rest of us.

Regards,

Gerry

FYI, I have added Adam’s pest control and Arizona pest and termite to my heartspm.wordpress.com blogroll.

First, I want to thank you for including my discourse in your blog.

I applaud your sense of fair play and search for quality in your blog. It is easy to get frustrated by the spam and self-promotion on the web in general and blogs in particular. I’d say 50% of my blog mail is easily deletable spam. I haven’t really seen a lot of selfish self-promotion on my blog. I hope you do not go too far away from allowing some self-promotion and I’ll tell you why.

Let’s look at advertising in today’s world. Print advertising is dead or on ventilation support. Even being on the web is far from satisfactory. Too many people with little understanding of the web think that just having a page, or having a set of pages from some company that promotes itself with a set of webpage templates available for pest control companies is not very productive.

Good web development today takes into account several factor: vision, website look and feel,the need to advertise and purchase, informational matter and speed of delivery. But to reach your customers, they have to find you. Building page rank is critical to an organization today. Some people will pay a fortune for PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising. Others realize that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is absolutely necessary. This too involves development and maintenance cost. But whether you go PPC (also known as SEM), SEO or a combination, you are attempting to sway people to your page by word manipulation, link building, web social networking,blogging, etc. I think you need to expect this. Think of it this way. Instead of someone saying, I’ll give you a dime to check out my content if I check out yours, you have an exchange of intellect with a friendly link (yes, self-promotion)

Companies need to find appropriate ways to advertise in the new advertising world. For example, this blog encourages people to go to your website. But, if the blog becomes a monologue, you will not get very many contributors. I’ve been to one pest control blog, the name I won’t mention, that takes comments, but often deciphers comments line by line, rage after rage. Why? Because the guy is not interested in discussion, but rather political ranting.

I think you have something good here, but it is ok to expect some self-promotion. Many books have stated that we operate from our own self-interest. Hopefully, with maturity, we use “enlightened self-interest,” or helping yourself by helping others. Otherwise put, “Help me help you help me help you.”

So yes this is self-serving to a degree, but I think it is better framed aspresented as mutually beneficial.

I look forward to reading your posts and I look forward to the back and forth of ideas. Best of luck going forward. Don’t give up the blog!

Regards and best wishes for a successful 2010.
Gerry