Approving comments on my blog - also Adsense

[Parent2work]

I have a fairly new WordPress blog - have just applied to join the Bloggers Network.

How do I know which comments to approve or not? I am obviously deleting any that are pure gibberish or have the word 'porn' in the address, but there are some that seem quite reasonable comments but the email address is something weird like 'Buy Instagram Followers' or 'Top 10 lawnmowers' .

Any tips would be great. Also, how do I get AdSense please?
Thanks.

1. Trust your instincts. With address like 'Buy Instagram Followers' - it's a spam. If it's something "Such a nice post" (with no specific) - it's a spam, they just want to have a link from your site. Normal readers either will ask the question, or answer the one, if you had one in the post or will tell their own short story related to what you were writing about.
2. If your'e with selfhosted wordpress, and you see spam coming from the same IP address, you could blacklist that IP
3. Did you activate Acismet (on selfhosted)? Or some similar anti-spam defence on wordpress.com?
4. Adsense is no allowed on wordpress.com (at least it was sometime ago), you could et their own adverts with some restrictions and get something like 40% of revenue. I think it changes when you stert paying them but if you decide to pay it's better to self-host. If you'r selhosted, register with Adsense, they will have to approve your site, it take's about 2 weeks. Then you go to account, choose the appropriate adverts, then put it on your site.

Thanks.
Those are good tips - in the end I did just go through and delete any comments with Instagram or lawnmower in the title. The non-specific ones, likewise.

I will look into Acisment.

I am self-hosted so that is good news re AdSense. How much traffic do you need to have?

It's not the traffic but the quality of the site. I set up account for a friend of mine. Site was "alternative medicine" (which is bad niche) but it was service offering site. No spam comment, new content was added more o less regularly, all unique -she's writing herself, and posts were quite long. Comments were answered. Site was relatively new, like a little less then a year. And traffic was 30 visits per MONTH. It was approved straight away.

So, I don't know exactly the criteria but it should be something like that. Site is not a spam-site, regularly supported, with content that give readers info of some value (even if it is a small group who might be interested in this info).

BTW did you get AKISMET? It's not only installing plugin You have to activate it, register and get API key. Only then it will work properly. But it's great. It kind of keep datebase of all reported spammers, so if somebody was reported as spam-comment on several blogs, he is blocked by plugin from commenting all other blogs.