The Secret To A 1,000 Comments A Month

I decided to publish this tutorial free of charge, no need for your email address, nothing. Why on earth am I doing this, if my plan is to start earning money online? Well, good question. I am in the process of monetizing my efforts online, but the readers of this site are so important to me, in fact it’s the readers of this site that have enabled me to write this simple tutorial.

Without you and the rest of the people reading this, I wouldn’t be anywhere close to this postion, readers are everything to a site and I will never forget that. So go ahead and read it, feel free to bookmark it, re-tweet etc. I have included a handy little link so you can download it as a PDF too.

Secret to Thousands of Comments – Click the link to download.

The Secret to a Thousand Comments a Month

From the 1^st of January to the 31^st of January this site had 1,153 comments left. Those comments don’t include mine either. In 3 Months from starting the site from nothing, 3,369 comments have been left on a 187 posts.

Proof

Before I dive into how you are going to create a site that attracts over a thousand comments, I want to talk briefly about posting frequency.

Yeah I have published 187 posts to my site and yes that is a lot. Does that mean you are going to have to start publishing a lot more content? No, not really, the techniques I talk about here can be applied to any sort of frequency within reason.

Reason

You have to give your readers a reason to leave a comment, if I didn’t give the readers of my site a reason to comment I wouldn’t be writing this tutorial. Having a need to get involved is the catalyst which will propel your site to the next level. Comments bring traffic and traffic brings more comments, but only if you actually give your visitors the reason to become a contributor.

When I visit a site I do so with the intent of leaving a comment that will add value to that post in order to build my online presence. The majority of people who will comment on your content will be doing exactly the same thing That’s not a bad thing though, but they will only leave a comment (in most cases) if they can actually add value so you need to give them a reason to get involved.

Pulling at heartstrings with a post about family or struggle is a classic way of getting people to engage.

Quick note; Be careful about how you approach the above examples though, it need to be true other wise you destroy your credibility before it’s had chance to establish it’s self.

Asking for the readers thoughts is such a simple way of increasing your comments, at the end of every post on my site I leave the following;

Please Comment

Please Re-Tweet, Digg and StumbleUpon

You’re readers won’t need any encouragement to comment if they already have that in their head, but if they have stumbled onto you via a link in another site or liked the look of your latest tweet then you need to let them know; ‘it’s OK we’re friends here, come and join us’

Debate

A debate will always bring in comments. Especially is there are a few people disagreeing or offering their own view on it. One of my most popular posts is Problogger v Gary Vaynerchuk in which I talk about the different approaches to business and how each have done it, in another post My Promise To You I lay it out honestly about what I will and won’t do in the future of the site and it’s readers.

By creating arguments for and against you are building the fuel for a huge fire and it’s that fire that will burn in the comments section.

There have been instances of people taking exception to a debate if they are the subject of it. If you don’t agree with the marketing of some companies or individuals then sure write about it, you are bound to get people who will agree and people who disagree, but that’s the point you want people to disagree.

I’m not saying go out there and slate everyone and everything, but if you feel passionate about something write about it. Allyn at BloggerIllustrated is a really good example of voicing his opinions but guess what, some disagree but some agree and agree in their droves.

Creating a debate doesn’t have to be controversial though, some of my most popular posts have created a debate but have been lists or question bases.

Lists

A list of best products in a price range or websites to visit or people to watch, are fantastic ways to create a massive amount of comments. I keep saying ‘create’ because that’s what you are doing ‘creating’ content that makes people want to get involved.

Creating lists isn’t a ‘cop-out’ post if done properly it’s a bookmark post in which your readers will get a lot of value out of it.

Questions

My Free or Fee post got a lot of attention from a question that has been asked a hundred times before, but I did it in my own style and it worked. You have to ask questions you want answering or think your readers want answering but try it;

‘Do Twitter Followers Count?’

‘Is Barrack Obama a Let Down?’

‘Have You Ever Been Scammed? Name and Shame Here’

Do you get my point? Those three titles will draw a crowd and you can guarantee comments.

I haven’t written these posts by the way so feel free to use them.

Community

It’s no secret that I reply to everything, well probably 98% of everything that isn’t spam. Some comments don’t need replying too, the majority do. I believe in replying to everything and the reason I believe in it so much is because of the results the site is having because of it. This site is 3 months old and already ranking extremely well and by the end of this year I estimate, will have received over 12,000 comments.

You should aim to create a mini forum within your site, in which people come together at the end of each post and discuss it, help each other, ask and answer questions, contributing and adding value in their own way.

As I said I reply to everything and encourage my guest posters to do the same, this is visible for every reader to see, which breaks down that ’should I’ mindset. If they can see a community at the end of every piece of content they are more likely to contribute.

A really good way to create a community is to ask questions yourself while replying and to be interested in their sites. Which leads me onto my next point

Commenting

To receive a lot of comments you have to give a lot, I comment on around 20+ sites a day, sometimes less, sometimes a lot more it depends on the quality of content on that day. I visit the sites of readers who comment on mine and then visit their readers too.

If people can see you being so active and commenting everywhere they end up, they will be more inclined to comment on yours, because you become memorable.

Traffic

Now you don’t have to be a genius to realise that the amount of traffic I am getting is a factor in the amount of comments the site gets on a daily basis. For tips on how to generate more traffic you can download my free tutorial 7 days to better traffic, but while you are here, let me take you through a crash course and I’ll stay on topic for it.

I have already mentioned about the need for commenting a lot more, but this works. There are a lot of factors in why I’m still climbing the ranks, but I firmly believe that the amount I comment on other sites is a big factor.

Only comment when you can add value to the post but comment as much as you can as often as you can. I like to do all my commenting at the end of my day, after all my posts and replying to al the comments on my site has been done.

Commenting brings you traffic, I won’t go into the other ways here, that’s what the other tutorial is for but it was on topic to talk about commenting bringing in traffic.

CommentLuv

If you are not using it on your own site, you need to. If commentluv was a plugin that you had to buy, I would because I know how much value it adds to a site. A few weeks ago Commentluv went down for about 12hrs and I noticed a definite dip in the traffic of this site.

Commentluv is a simple plugin that you can see on this site, if you look at the bottom of every comment box you will see a simple commentluv tick box, once ticked it will go to the domain you entered in your comment and display as a text link the latest post.

Now if you and I know the true value of this plugin, so do others. Remember what I was saying about giving your readers a reason to comment, well this gives them encouragement to leave a comment, a gentle nudge in the right direction.

Threaded

For those of you who remember the site when it first start all those months ago, you may remember the comments weren’t threaded. This means no one could reply easily to each other, they had to make reference to someone’s name if they wanted to reply which is a bit rubbish.

By making the comments threaded, it’s easy to reply to a comment and to reply to each other. Your readers will be able to focus on the job in hand easily thanks to your prior planning they can leave a comment or three easily without thinking.

So there you have it, now get out there and get some comments.