Wealth and Wisdom

Ok, maybe the title was a bit over the top. That doesn’t detract from the truth, it doesn’t make it less valid, and it doesn’t lessen the importance of this basic personal development truth:

You need to take responsibility for your life.

Everything that happens to you, good and bad, can be traced back to your choices.

Sometimes this is obvious. My boss says something I don’t like so I punch him in the face. The result…I get fired (and maybe spend some quality time in the county lockup).

Other times it is more subtle. For example, you have a coworker that is usually late in turning in their part of a project. Do you confront them? Do you (professionally) say anything to them at the beginning of the project? Most people just let it slide to avoid the conflict. Guess what, your inaction is a choice that affects the outcome.

At Wealth and Wisdom we are always on the lookout for topics that interest our readers. This week we review the book Bailout Riches by Bill Bartmann.

Bailout Riches is a how to guide for making money with the new government bailouts such as the Tarp or RTC. Two decades ago (during the last bailout) he went from being deeply in debt to becoming a billionaire by buying bad loans for pennies on the dollar. He would buy the bad debt for say 2 cents on the dollar and work to recover 6 cents on the dollar. In the book he lays out the entire plan from obtaining the bad debt to the collection process. This is not a get rich quick book! The process he explains will take a good deal of time and effort but it made him a billionaire.

Mr. Bartmann’s business system will not suit everyone but he is living proof it can be done. He points out this opportunity will only be around for a few years while the banks and government work through all this bad debt. If you are looking to make some money off all these government bailouts time is of the essence - you need to act now! Bailout Riches will give you a blueprint for one route to take to make some money from the current economic situation.

I’m sure there will be other opportunities that come up from the government bailouts. We will cover them as they arise.

Bailout Riches!: How Everyday Investors Can Make a Fortune Buying Bad Loans for Pennies on the Dollar

Bear with my. My title will make sense as you read the post!

Lately I’ve been working on Wealth and Wisdom a lot. Some of it was to improve our interface. A lot of it is to grow our subscriber base.

One area we have been working on is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). As I’ve implemented several things one thing jumps out at me…

Most blogs use nofollow tags on their comments

Of the 15 or 20 blogs I checked, only one had comments that didn’t use nofollow tags (thanks Pat, we appreciate it).

Nofollow tags prevent the search engines from following the link. The link owner gets no credit for it and it doesn’t contribute to their search engine ranking. While this effectively eliminates the spam issue it punishes legitimate commenters. One big reason people comment is for the link juice.

The spam problem

I understand why the search engines and the blogging platforms make this their default setting. Comment spam is a major issue. While spam filters like Akismet do a great job with obvious spam, the subtle spam comments get through.

What do I mean by subtle? It’s the comment that is generic and complementary. “Great blog. I just came across you and will be adding you to my reading list.”

These comments are harder to find. I had a bunch sprinkled through my blog and had to go back and delete them. How do you know when it’s spam and not just a complement? Copy the comment and paste it into google search. If you come up with hundreds (or hundreds of thousands) of results, the comment is spam. Report it!

Take a stand

We bloggers need to take a stand. Take back your blog. The answer to comment spam is vigilance by bloggers, not  by indiscriminant nofollow tag use.

At Wealth and Wisdom we proudly use follow tags on all our comments. If your comment contributes to our community you will get full search engine credit.

I’m calling on all bloggers to do the same. It’s easy to do. If you use wordpress there are several plugins to allow follow tags. I personally use Nofollow Case by Case, but there are several others that are highly rated.