If you use blog commenting as a part of your backlinking strategies, then you've probably considered purchasing Blog Comment Demon. Read this first! We recently started using Article Demon, Social Bookmarking Demon, and Blog Comment Demon in my office. And while the first two work well enough that I'd recommend them to pretty much anyone, Blog Comment Demon has serious issues that you should consider before you buy. I'll go over the positives first:

1.) The ability to scan for approved comments is awesome

2.) The ability to export URLs and reports is great

3.) Software is well organized and interface is user-friendly

But that's where the high points of BCD stopped for us, and even those were flawed. For instance, we're not 100% certain that the Scan for Comments feature works 100% of the time, you can only export in one format, and just because the software is organized and presented well doesn't mean much if it doesn't function. In any case, there are much more major concerns about BCD.

1.) The Drill feature (to find related posts on the same blog/site) does not work. Period. Not once has it ever worked.

2.) It takes a VERY long time to return the blog results- usually about 15 minutes just to return 100 blogs.

3.) The blogs returned are a poor mix at best, with a great deal of blogs being returned that have NOTHING to do with your search phrase. For instance, yesterday afternoon during tests we used the keywords: "How to get help for drug addiction." Blogs returned included travel sites, religious sites, and a bunch of garbage that had nothing to do with the keyword.

4.) Of every 100 blogs returned for the multitude of keywords we have used over the past week, significantly less than 5% are Do Follow, Allow Comments, aren't already spammed, and have at least one comment already. Of those that are viable, most are PR 0.

5.) The auto-fill form has serious flaws. If it works at all, it usually does not auto fill at least one line, typically the email address, website URL, or some other single-field. A great deal of the time the auto fill does not work at all, and you must cut and paste from it and manually put it in the blog comment section. This is VERY ineffective.

6.) So many of the blogs returned are with either NoFollow or Unknown tags that it makes it almost impossible to use the software effectively.

There's more, but I don't want to bash the software completely, as I think Article Demon and Social Bookmarking Demon are AWESOME. However, Blog Comment Demon just doesn't do what it's supposed to do: get Do Follow backlinks effectively and quickly using automated procedures. We spent more time babysitting and trouble-shooting this software than getting links. We should have just outsourced our blog commenting: we would have saved serious money considering the amount of time it took us to do this ourselves using BCD.

Because BCD was so terrible, I assumed it must be because I "didn't know how to use it." However, I read the ENTIRE guide. Twice. So did three of my staff. Not to mention that like I said earlier, the software is well-presented and is pretty easy to figure out, so it's not hard. But assuming that I was lacking something, I did extensive research online and found that most people are having the same problems and more.

Some reviews we found were glowing and highly recommended the software. However, upon further examination most good reviews were actually just IMs trying to get you to their affiliate link. No problem there, I paid for all three of my products through an affiliate link. And while I don't discount those reviews (meaning maybe BCD works for some people and not others) I really put this software through the ringer and it simply did not perform. And while no one wants to gamble, you can do just that if you want to try it for yourself, because you can easily get a full refund if you request it within 28 days of purchase.

Summary? Article Demon Good. Social Bookmarking Demon Good. Blog Comment Demon Bad.

I hope this helps. I'm not trying to be a naysayer; I'm just giving my honest review of this product in the hopes of helping other people make more informed buying decisions. And in actuality, this review will help the software maker because they won't be issuing so many refunds. (BCD has a very high incidence of refund requests. However, most reports state that when a refund is requested, the money is usually returned almost immediately.)

My honest opinion is that this software is great in theory and has AMAZING potential, but it needs some serious work by the developers before it could be a viable product for people like me who "play" in a great variety of niche markets. From here on out, we're doing our own article submissions, our own social media commenting, and we'll continue to do our own high quality, manual blog-commenting.