10 Ways to Increase Comment Numbers on Your Blog
Inspired by the fact that Failpix gets no comments posted on individual the HILARIOUS pictures it contains, I found a good list of 10 Ways to Increase Comment Numbers on Your Blog.
1. Invite Comments - I notice that when I specifically invite comments that people leave them in higher numbers than when I don’t. To some degree this confuses me as most of my readers know that they can leave comments on any post - but I guess inviting a comment triggers a response to some extent. Also keep in mind that new readers that are unfamiliar with blogging don’t always know about comments or how to use them - invitations to participate in well laid out and easy to use comments systems are good for helping them participate.
2. Ask Questions - Including specific questions in posts definitely helps get higher numbers of comments. I find that when I include questions in my headings that it is a particularly effective way of getting a response from readers as you set a question in their mind from the first moments of your post.
3. Be Open Ended - If you say everything there is to say on a topic you’re less likely to get others adding their opinions because you’ll have covered what they might have added. While you don’t want to purposely leave too many things unsaid there is an art to writing open ended posts that leaves room for your readers to be experts also.
4. Interact with comments left - If you’re not willing to use your own comments section why would your readers? If someone leaves a comment interact with them. This gets harder as your blog grows but it’s particularly important in the early days of your blog as it shows your readers that their comments are valued, it creates a culture of interactivity and gives the impression to other readers that your comments section is an active place that you as the blogger value. As the activity in your comments section grows you may find you need to be slightly less active in it as readers will start to take over on answering questions and creating community - however don’t completely ignore your comment threads.
5. Set Boundaries - I noticed that shortly after I set the rules for my comments section (with a comments policy) that my comment numbers jumped up a little. I’m not sure if it was just a coincidence or whether readers responded to knowing what was and wasn’t acceptable. It’s just a theory but I think a well managed and moderated comments section that is free of spam and that deals with well with people stepping out of line is an attractive thing to readers. I personally don’t mind people expressing different opinions to one another in comments but when I sense things are getting a little out of hand and too personal I often step in to attempt to bring some order to the situation (I rarely delete non spam comments). I find that people have responded to this and that comment threads generally stay constructive as a result.
6. Be humble- I find that readers respond very well to posts that show your own weaknesses, failings and the gaps in your own knowledge rather than those posts where you come across as knowing everything there is to know on a topic. People are attracted to humility and are more likely to respond to it than a post written in a tone of someone who might harshly respond to their comments.
7. Be gracious - Related to humility is grace. There are times where you as the blogger will get something wrong in your posts. It might be spelling or grammar, it could be the crux of your argument or some other aspect of your blogging. When a someone leaves a comment that shows your failing it’s very easy to respond harshly in a defensive manner. We’ve all seen the flaming that can ensue. While it’s not easy - a graceful approach to comments where you admit where you are wrong and others is right can bring out the lurkers and make them feel a little safer in leaving comments.
8. Be controversial? - I put a question mark after this one because it doesn’t always work (and I personally avoid it as much as I can these days) - but there’s nothing like controversy to get people commenting on your blog. Of course with controversy comes other consequences - one of which is the risk of putting off less vocal members of your readership.
9. ‘Reward’ Comments - There are many ways of acknowledging and ‘rewarding’ good comments that range from simply including a ‘good comment’ remark through to highlighting them in other posts that you write. Drawing attention to your readers who use comments well affirms them but also draws attention of other readers to good use of your comments section.
10. Make it Easy to Comment - I leave a lot of comments on a lot of blogs each week - but there is one situation where I rarely leave a comment - even if the post deserves it - blogs that require me to login before making a comment. Maybe I’m lazy (actually there’s no maybe about it) or maybe there’s something inside me that worries about giving out my personal details - but when I see a comments section that requires registration I almost always (95% or more of the time) leave the blog without leaving the comment that I want to make. While I totally understand the temptation to require registration for comments (combatting spam in most cases) something inside me resists participating in such comments sections. Registration is a hurdle you put in front of your readers that some will be willing to leap but that others will balk at (the same is often said about other comments section requirements that go beyond the basics). Keep your comments section as simple and as easy to use as possible.
Original post: ProBlogger
Site Income Report for November 2008
Revenue was down in November. First, here’s the Paid Internships (my autoblogging site) update:
Paid Internships: November 2008
- 5,456 page impressions
- 315 clicks
- $10.21 eCPM (amount each page impression is worth)
- $55.68 revenue
AdSense for October: Down to $582.70 from $700.21
After hitting an all-time high in October, the economy finally caught up with AdSense, at least on my sites. My revenue dropped quite a bit. Granted, the traffic on Internweb dipped too; not as many students searching for internships in the late fall. It will pick up in late winter.
ValueClick for October: Down to $9.83 from $15.02
Again, down a lot from October. ValueClick’s most successful ads for me are interstitials, full-page ads that appear after a link is clicked. Interstitial have a “click to continue” link to get to the content the user originally clicked on. In November 1,596 of them were displayed, and were clicked on 117 times for a nice CTR of 7.33%. By comparison, the standard 468×60 banner was displayed 13,552 times and only got 16 clicks — .22% CTR — which is horrible. I guess that means interstitial, while annoying, do work…
Site Income Report for October 2008
This post is way overdue, but the good news is that I set an all time high for revenue in October.
First up, a quick update on Paid Internships, the autoblogging site I set up a few months back that is populated by an RSS feed from Internweb.com. This site is on an upward trend as you can see from the numbers below:
Paid Internships: October 2008
- 4,229 page impressions
- 255 clicks
- $11.98 eCPM (amount each page impression is worth)
- $50.66 revenue
Now onto the individual advertising networks I am using across my blogs and sites:
Read the rest of this entry »
New Blog: FAILpix.net
In mid-November, I started a new blog, failpix.net. I wanted a “funny pictures” blog; something that would bring in a lot of repeat visitors, earn a few bucks, and be fun to maintain. Images and videos featuring cats, dogs, drunk people and idiots doing stupid things — that is the essence of what failpix is.
I launched the site using Wordpress, put on some AdSense, and was off an running. A site like this is perfect for social networking bookmark sites, so I promoted some of the funnier pictures on digg, stumbleupon, reddit and technorati. One video I put up of a cat jumping was my first success, gaining 33 diggs, the most diggs I have ever gotten on a story I submitted. It’s not much, but it’s better than the usual 1-5 diggs I get. As a result, my traffic went up and hovered around 100 views a day.
DotCom Tales: Vantagenet and Freepolls.com
My first successful venture was co-founding Vantagenet in 1997. I had JAWSmovie.com up and running and I wanted to add a forum to the site. My business partner and I wrote some forum software and decided to offer it to any webmaster that wanted it for free. We hosted the forums on our servers, and were supported by small banner ads on our pages. Vantagenet exploded after I had the idea to start offering free web polls in 1998, as Freepolls.com. We were listed in the Media Metrix top 500 sites (in terms of unique visitors) and had over 100,000 user accounts when we attracted the attention of About.com (then called The Mining Company) in the spring of 1999. We had huge traffic, but since we were a small company (two people) without any sales staff, we were not getting the best CPM rates for our traffic. About.com had 600+ niche websites and wanted to add our tools to those sites, and monetize our traffic at the much higher CPM rates they were getting at the time. Their first offer to acquire us was a typical lowball offer so we flat out rejected it.