I was asked this recently in a comment (ironic, maybe?) and as always where I think anything requires more than a few words to answer I prefer to post it instead, so here goes.
The Reasons I Don’t Get Many Comments
1. My traffic sources. Most of my traffic comes from the search engines, they are looking for specific information related to their search and they either get it or don’t and move on. That interaction doesn’t require a comment.
2. My lack of a community. To be fair I’ve never really tried much to build a community around this blog. I tend to be quite to the point about most of the things I write, each post it’s own little entity. Not so much a series as more a sequence.
3. My slipping page rank. Most people comment for their own gain. They want a link. There is still some sort of delusion that Page Rank is significant and so as my page rank has deceased (it should go up a bit next time) so has the number of comments.
4. I’m not a people person. There isn’t much on here that isn’t about the subject at hand. How could I when I’ve plonked it on a a domain called themakemoneyonline.net? Apart from the odd bit about my wife and daughter there isn’t much that will make people relate to me. You’ll not be finding out what I had for my dinner last night or what I think about the US elections. I do have a personal blog, this isn’t it. The highest commented blogs in every niche pamper to their audience, I just write about what I know.
5. I’m harsh with approvals. Most comments are shit. No, they really are! Utter crap that adds nothing at all, only written for the simple purpose of getting a link. I’ve tried being totally slack and letting everything through to the extreme of only letting comments over a certain length through. I’m in a sort of middle ground at the moment and have no plans of changing that to increase my comment count. If I approved every comment that has been left by somebody who has done a search including “top commentator” in the query then I’d be right up there!
There are probably a few other reasons as well like the fact I don’t post much these days (people need something to comment on) and there is also the small matter of I don’t actually have posts on the home page anymore. My comment profile is simple to work out, I get a few regulars who find something/anything to comment on early on in the month to get their followed link from the side and that’s about it.
2 Responses to “Why Don’t I Get Many Comments?”
Jeet
December 20, 2008
@Paul: I have subscribed to your RSS feed a couple of months ago and I have always read your blogposts but rarely commented. I do the same with dilbert blog, xkcd, basicinstructions and numerous other blogs that I read almost everyday
Your blog posting frequency has decreased and that might be one of the factors
I think the number of comments would be directly proportional to two things. 1. Traffic 2. How many times you prompt people to respond.
Many top bloggers involve their readers to write a response to what they think. The concluding lines in ‘this’ post could have been, Let me hear your thoughts about what can be done to get more comments on my blog.
Anyways, comment or no comment, I find your blog useful and would keep subscribed, btw, my site has changed from last time when I commented.
|Chris
April 3, 2009
I never leave my link – I win
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