Basically, a blog farm is a group of blogs that are interlinked and form a network, which is nothing like a real farm with pigs and chickens, but maybe I’m not quite seeing the bigger picture here. Blog farms, like any other source of advertising, can be used in a positive or negative way, which is why many people are hesitant about bothering with them at all. Mass blog farms can be a profitable or a destructive way to drive a large amount of traffic to the site that you want to get noticed. There are ways in which you can produce an array of blogs that are legitimate and produce worthy content that are all related, well written and generally interesting. But there are many more blog farms that are just another excuse for spamming and succeed at shoving a mess of links in your face. This spamming can result in penalties or ultimately your blog being shut down, which means fewer dollar signs in your eyes.
Blog farming can be seen as quite an aggressive attempt at advertising, as people blatantly use farms for nothing more than embedding links. Spammers ignorantly believe the common myth that many blogs are “hidden” and will not be picked up by search engines because of the length of content. When search engines detect spam, they do not give preference to blogs just because of their content. Farms that encourage comment spamming in their blogs are in danger of being shut down and many blogs now have blocked their comment boxes because of this spamming annoyance.
One of the hurdles when it comes to blog farming is the amount of time and effort spent in keeping the numerous blogs above water, blog juggling, if you will. Many farmers suggest that you start off with a few blogs then grow them at a steady pace. This is kind of like nurturing a garden, as you can’t expect a garden to grow all on its own. (I guess that’s where the farming analogy comes in, who knows.) There are ways in which blog farms can be beneficial and not result in excessive spamming. Yes, a number of blogs will be shut down. But as we move into the future, blog farms will become more common and may even evolve into white hat practice.
But do not despair, there are ways in which you can share advertising and still stay above the belt, as they say. Run by Google, Adsense an ad serving application that lets you advertise and receive revenue from your blog, so it’s a win-win situation. There are ways in which you can make Adsense work for you, and many professional bloggers use this tool to generate extra income.
So, after looking at both sides of the story, it seems that blog farms do not come out on top. The truth is that there are mass spammers out there in cyber land who go off on a linking rampage and cheat the system, with no intention of stopping. Blog farms seem like the easy way out, and when we take the easy way out, we never win.