Spam (or rather more spam)

Spam (or rather more spam)

June 18, 2010  |  Everything else

So this is what happens when your site gets popular. About 2,000 people hit PeopleByRyan every week but some of them ain’t people, they are spambots. The level of spam is getting ridiculous – at one point I was getting comment spam every 2 – 3 minutes. That lasted a week or so…
Anyway here are 3 things I’m doing to reduce the time I and my clients spend dealing with spam.

  1. The quote request form now has a “prove you’re human” check.  Just type the 4 or 5 characters in the box and I’ll know you’re not trying to sell me dodgy pharmaceuticals.
  2. Some of my emails were getting incorrectly flagged as spam.  So I now ask for your address when you ask for prices.  It’s not compulsory but if you fill it in I can also send your quote by post.
  3. I’m now using Mailchimp to manage my mailing lists.  If you fill out the “keep in touch” box on the right you’ll be added to a Mailchimp list and get weekly updates on the site.  I’ll also use Mailchimp to follow up if you ask for a quote and I don’t hear back from you.  Mailchimp has excellent anti spam abilities and of course you can unsubscribe from the list at any time.

And if that’s all too much then just pick up the phone.  I may get half a dozen cold calls a day but you can always reach me by phone.

[BTW thanks to Freezelight for the Spam picture.  I just couldn't face the irony of spending time to illustrate an article about spam...]

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  • http://www.iamstaggered.com Andrew Shanahan

    Just on the email point, if you’re happy with MailChimp then all well and good but I’ve found Vertical Response to be cheap and incredibly quick at solving any issues that arise. Plus I can’t bear that fecking smug monkey.

    Also I’ve got an offer on pharmaceuticals at the moment – low cost! All shipped to home BIG $$$$ SAVING.

  • admin

    The smug monkey’s the reason I signed up :) Who can’t love a cheeky monkey that delivers mail?

    But when the joke wears thin I’ll give Vertical Response a try – thanks.

  • http://www.iamstaggered.com Andrew Shanahan

    Corporate chumminess, generally, is vomit-inducing. I blame Innocent Smoothies. I get violent every time I have to use Google’s image editor Picnic, which scolls through a load of twee loading options (e.g. “setting out cups, fluffing pillows, etc). Grrr.

  • http://www.boundlessphotos.co.uk Nick Everitt

    http://akismet.com/ is great at preventing spam and would definitely be worth a look if you dont already have it installed. Its free and its filtered out 6,000 spam comments on my blog since I installed it.