I agree with what you have mentioned! I personally hate blog hoppers and those comments that are “come and visit me… blah, blah, blah”. It’s so common these days on blogs, on youtube, the list just goes on. I just find it really rude and disrespectful for the blog owner who owns the website. I mean, we all worked hard to get to where we are now.. yet these people just want to reach to the top without spending effort.. sigh. I personally use an adblocker addon and I don’t deal with ads at all. (:

I completely agree with this post. I mean those paid blogs are completely stupid. If that is all you are going to do while blogging then you need to NOT blog, please. Waste of people’s time to read paid blogs. No one ends up commenting either.

I can say I ask like that for links sometimes. Guilty as charged. But I
learned so I definitely don’t do that anymore.

I’ve always returned comments though. Maybe not in a timely manner but I’ve always returned them with more than a “Thanks!” On my blog. I can’t stand people who don’t return comments. I end up forgetting on who’s blogs I have commented on so I end up forgetting to read replies. Lol

The worst for me is when people don’t even bother to read my blog while commenting and post a random ass comment that should have either been tweeted or e-mailed to me instead. OR when people reply to my comment on their blog and never post a comment on my blog. I feel like they couldn’t care less about what I have to say and are just selfish. Ticks me off.

Oh man, been there, done that. Well, except for the ads part. Guilty as charged…when I was younger. I was one of those naive little ones who went around asked if they wanted to link up without even making the effort to comment and earn my way. I learned my lessons the hard way from folks simply ignoring my request or kindly declining. That was me long time ago.

Then I decided to do the right thing and actually read, digest what others post, and actually engage in a conversation via comments. Needless to say, things actually developed better that way. Bloglovin’ helped a lot too. 🙂 Now I feel better on the inside and about my blog because everything’s flowing more naturally.

You’re definitely right about the blog hops and linkups! And it can be so hard to keep up with comments, but I try to do it when I can. Sometimes I find myself spending an hour on it, because I’d rather read and comment something meaningful than comment just to say I did.

In this economy, you’re going to see people doing everything for money, and blogging is going to be included in that. But yeah, still annoying.

I expertly avoid blog hopping and linkups for that particular reason. Sure, every time I receive a comment on my own little blog I feel honoured because someone was interested enough in whatever I wrote to leave a comment on it, but I really don’t see the point in joining these blog hops just to UP your visitors amount and receive/give out these meaningless three-word comments that usually have jackshit to do with whatever the blog topic was about and really only serve to get your own name out there.

As far as sidebars are concerned, I’m pretty much on the same page as you are. Links towards recent posts (not a list of a dozen “popular posts”) can be useful because some people who visit a blog might be interested in blog post 2 and 3, but not necessarily in blog post 1.
At the same time, scrolling down a little ways, or clicking “older entries” at the bottom of a page isn’t exactly much of an effort either.
I’ve been considering getting rid of my sidebar too because aside from the “follow” links and the blogroll I have in there, there’s not a whole lot that I need visible rightaway. That, and I like the idea of my layout focusing solely on the blog element.

P.S. I don’t think I mentioned that I think that Georgie did an exceptional job on your theme, did I? It’s gorgeous!

I agree with you about how new bloggers these days are in it for the money… Whatever the money is. I don’t think people these days would click an ad for the site owner to get what…? 10 cents?

These types of “bloggers” are annoying. Especially the ones who think they can get away with commenting “just visiting” or any of that useless stuff on people’s tagbox. As for actual comments, it looks as if they don’t even give effort.

Cluttered sidebars are mostly popular in the high school level. Even I can vouch for that, aha.

For sure, you hit the spot!

I think blog hop now is visiting blogs, reading the first sentence of the latest post, and leaving a three-word comment just to get your own link out there. I think it’s only acceptable to do that for blog buddies as a joke.

Right now I’m pro-nosidebar, no intro. If people were that interested I’d think they would stop by your About page. But imagine a long sidebar with an intro, lists, Twitter feeds, ads, and then one short post on the front page. Harhaahaha.

…well you provoked thought that is for sure!

What the hell are blog hops?! I mean, I’ve done the old-school style where you literally went to individual blogs, commented, and then followed the link trail to other interesting blogs. Just did a quick Google and apparently it’s now a thing to add your blog to lists so people can go and leave meaningless comments…?

Reminds me of comment clubs from Poupeegirl – you get in-game money for each comment you make on people’s closet items, so there would literally be Livejournal clubs where people left their closet links and everyone else in the group would comment things like “Wow, so pretty!” “So cool!” “I love it!” just for the sake of getting more in-game money. Ruins the purpose of the game, and I feel like these new “blog hops” are the same.

I miss the “old days” of blogging (2005-era or so) when most of us probably made our starts. Blogging was a lot more personal back then, and I think the friendships made there were also a lot stronger :/

I’ve stumbled across a couple of link-ups that actually had good writing topics, and the links were nice for seeing what other bloggers had written for said topic. But now, most of them are shallow : “These are the shoes I want to buy!!!”

Blog hops lead to those quick self-promo comments “Found you from the __ Hop! Love your blog!”. In other words, they did not read a word of your post. They are going to everyone’s blog and pasting the same copied comment, hoping you will click their name and visit their blog.

It makes me so sad when a sidebar is so much longer than someone’s content, and it’s riddled with ads and so many unnecessary links to old posts, popular posts, categories, etc. 🙁

The blog-hopping thing is getting old, as are the comments. While it was seen as common courtesy to respond by visiting someone’s blog, there is always a problem that you may not even like the content on that person’s blog, or there is nothing to write in a comment. I think you get the most out of commenting on posts where you feel like you can get something out of it, like sharing a story or maybe interacting with the person through further discussion. It’s a bit sad that people still see it as some fair trade crap – but then again, I believe that is how most of us started out. ;P

I totally agree about the blog hops!! They are quite useless these days, since nobody visits the other blogs on the list anyway. Well, maybe they do, but what’s the point if they only visit because they “have to” according to the rules of the blog hop, and then never come back again?
One trend you didn’t mention (but it may fall under the “easy money” category) but that I’ve noticed during 2013, is the extreme amount of fashion and beauty blogs that just pop up everywhere, it’s like everyone who starts a blog now do it to just post some photos of their clothes and their nail polish and nothing else. I’m so bored with that…
And the ads… gaah. I also block all of them.