Everyone likes comments.

There are bloggers who put comments above visits when judging their own success. I’m always pleased to see in the morning several comments stretched over my blogs. In fact nothing makes the process more enjoyable for me than reading a new commenter and seeing them come back.

Over at Jakob Nielsen they determined that reader participation often more or less follows a 90-9-1 rule:

• 90% of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don’t contribute).
• 9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time.
• 1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions: it can seem as if they don’t have lives because they often post just minutes after whatever event they’re commenting on occurs. (source)

Now it’s true that this ratio is something that you’re just going to have to accept, there will always be a much higher percentage of lurkers. It doesn’t matter who you are. There are some ways to improve upon them though. I’ve sifted through a lot of them and here are what I consider the best ten ways to squeeze those comments out of your readers and of course in doing so make you smile (go on it’s ok – at least a grin).

1. Ask for the comment. Invite your readers to leave a comment or participate. For new readers to your site they may feel a little out of your community. This is your chance to say ‘hey I want to hear what you’ve got!’.
2. End your post with a question. This gives a springboard for your readers to know what they can say if they want to comment but not sure what to say.
3. Make it easy to post a comment. If it is too hard to leave a comment who is going to bother? You’re already batting against the 90:9:1 ratio. Don’t make it so your readers have to a particular account to leave a comment. I’m not against the verification text myself to stop spam either.
4. Make friends with other bloggers, by leaving comments and striking up conversations you will often get loyal readers in return. It’s never a good idea to go out of your way to be negative on someone else’s blog because you’ll only hurt your own reputation in the long run.
5. Interact positively with your comments.ÂIf someone takes the time to leave a comment you should respond! Even if you don’t agree with what’s said you can always discuss it like an adult without turning it into a negative conversation. Others will see you responding and be encouraged themselves.

As with anything some of these will work for you and others may not. Why not pick one and force yourself to do it for at least 2 weeks to see what difference it makes to the comments.

We’d love to hear how you go so leave a comment! Or if you have your own suggestions please feel free to add them here too.

The majority of the bloggers I read are all on mylot and earn a little extra money from it. On January 13 I received 21.34 and I am scheduled to make another 10.66 when they pay next. That number of course should increase a few dollars by then.

This is essentially just from my referrals, I barely post on there at all. On a good day my referrals can earn me almost 1.00$ per day. Thats 1$ a day without even having to post or visit the website!

When I first joined MyLot in late November their member total was about 40,000 people, since then they have 73,538 members!

Not only can you earn money through Mylot, you can also receive some traffic income. Mike reports he receives about an extra 12 visitors a day.

If you haven’t joined get in now, and start earning some money and get visitors to your site!

To get more traffic, you have to understand where your current traffic is coming from. To do that, I like to use statcounter. Basically by using statcounter, you can get MORE traffic. Never heard of getting more traffic with a counter before? Well…

By using the ‘Came From’ feature you can see what page referred the visitors to your site. From there you can see which methods you are getting the most traffic from.

You may be spending a lot of time promoting your website somewhere that just isn’t sending you traffic. You can conclude that it isn’t worth your time. It’s just the opposite when something is working. Spend more time with that!

There are other counters available, but statcounter is a must have on any blog. Its free and easy to learn, and only really takes a few seconds to install. After that you can even use it to track with an invisible code.

There are other features you can control as well, like setting up another user to see the stats, or you can simply make the stats public.

Lately I’ve seen many bloggers and webmasters ask which counter is the best. I give my recommendation to statcounter.

I know at lot of people are reading this after seeing the word valuable and are hoping I’m going to show you how to make some money from your posts. Well I am but I’m not.  Value is not just monetary value although often one follows the other. If you write content that has value to readers then eventually you can leverage that into some income producing enterprise I’m sure.

So how can we make our posts a little more valuable to the reader?

Hyperlinks.  One of the foundations of the internet is being able to include links within text that take a reader directly to further information or definitions.  I’m not talking about that intellitext stuff (that really bothers me I may add).  I’m talking old fashion links that provide further depth to what you are writing about.

Readers have the option to click or not to click.  If they are interested in learning more about something you’ve mentioned they only need to follow the breadcrumbs you’ve laid out for them.

It’s like talking about a book and within the context of the conversation you are able to provide reference material to deepen the experience.  Say for example I’m reading The Invisible Man by HG Wells.  I really enjoyed this book and I love the movie from Universal.   Of course my favourite HG Wells novel is actually The Time Machine and I particularly loved the sequel novel written by Stephen Baxter.

Within that last paragraph I’ve gone a little overboard with the linking but you hopefully see my point.  The technology is there so use it!

Lee

Quit Your Day Job
Crypt Hunter
Pop Culture Heroines

I’ve noticed a lot of other bloggers basically just giving out links. Links to blogs they like, links to blogs on their blogrolls, links to their top commentors, or links to where they link to!

That’s a lot of link love.

So I just wanted to share some recent posts I’ve enjoyed from other blogs around the net.

From our author list:

Making Money from Your Videos by Mike
Links I Like by Chris
Lies, damn lies and Google Analytics by Ed
It’s a total bla.st by John Chow
Here We Go Again! by Blonde Chick
The Market is Open by DolphinFan

I encourage our other authors to share some links. I was also thinking about doing a monthly or bi-monthly blog carnival. Bloggers would be able to submit one article and have it basically listed on our blog.

Would anyone be interested in this? The category could be anything, I think we could do better with no category though. I would be looking for your best or favorite post of the month.

Leave us a comment about whatever you want. Hopefully we can get a little discussion going in our comment box. I will personally visit each commentors blog, and I hope others will too! I will select a random blog to add to our BlogRoll for the week.

Our authors should join in, should get you a few extra visitors just by leaving a comment 🙂

Start commenting!

[Update]

This week I’ve chosen Blue Panther 

You never know when the blog muses of the universe will hit you with a life lesson.

Today, while I was enjoying my Italian BMT from Subway, I developed this little tale. Take a look and let me know your thoughts.

Remember When Bologna Didn’t Matter?