Before, one of the most effective ways to get your new blog noticed is to comment on as many number of big blogs as possible. Back then it’s not just effective, it’s almost considered as a standard. You are basically going to be considered fool if you’re not utilizing this free traffic technique.
But like anything, as time rolls out quickly, things change so drastically. The once so popular blog commenting on big blogs has somehow declined. Not that people aren’t commenting anymore but these days, you’d rather see bloggers do a guest post, run a contest, focus on writing a series post or do more productive stuffs than by being active in their favorite top blogs.
It’s Not as Effective as What It Used To Be
There are really a ton of other things that aren’t as effective as they used to before. One good example is link exchanges. 5-10 years back, it was like the only method that webmasters use both to drive traffic and increase their rankings in the search engines. That’s why people always say that the pace of an online business is much quicker than the real world ones. This day what you’re using may be still effective, the next day you’re not guaranteed it is still gonna work.
As for being active on top blogs, here are some of the reasons that I see why it has somehow declined as not as good as what it used to be.
- Poor Quality of Traffic – It doesn’t take a lot to see that most bloggers who comment on those sites do it for the lone sake of commenting. I don’t know but I’m really puzzled why bloggers like Chow allow comments such as “thanks for this interesting post” as it doesn’t really add anything. Most of these bloggers were inferred that they need to comment on 200 blogs a day so they do it as fast as they could.
- Happy-go trigger audience – This one relates to the first factor. The good reason why no one will notice your comment is because 98% of bloggers don’t really read comments of other people. They just comment and then leave, comment and then leave. Oftentimes they don’t even recognize who have written the posts. For instance everytime I do a guest post, most commenters would comment and not even think the post was a guest writeup by another blogger and not the author.
- Saturation – its plain common sense. Why does one thing work so well before than today? Because before, the method isn’t abused, its used by a reasonable no.of bloggers. But now that everyone uses it, its really hard to see a return.
</end of rant> Anyways as I was writing this post, I just thought it would be interesting to share with you a little case study on what interacting with big blogs bring to the table for me.
For the past month i have been really trying to become active lurker reader on some of the big blogs in our niche. I had observed what ZK has been doing and basically I gave myself a go. And here’s what I found out (in last months period):
From John Chow’s blog
From Shoemoney’s blog
From Carl Ocab’s blog
And from DailyBlogTips
It wasn’t ever massive but it’s a good proof that by being active on other people’s blogs you can still reap some traffic. It would also be interesting to see how different blogs have different visitors and behaviors. For instance Shoemoney’s blog, returned a bounce rate of 39% which is pretty good considering that all audience came from just reading my comment and then clicking my link.
John Chow has sent me the most no.but its hard to determine it since I’ve done a couple of guest post on that site as well. As expected it returned a higher bounce rate since most of the blog’s readers are trigger go-lucky ones.
Carl Ocab’s blog sent me a pretty nice stat to play with. His blog was like in hiatus for three months and to receive that no.of traffic and bounce rate is pretty amazing. DBT on the other hand, had the least new visits % . This means that most of the readers of that site also read my blog as well.
Importance of this
Why am I telling you all of this? You may probably have been scratching your head on whats the importance of this. Two things, first is I love playing with stats. I spend a lot of my free time with Analytics and analyzing my logs and second is that stats can help you a lot in terms of improving the usability of your blog and eventually driving more traffic. As an old adage says,”the number will always speak for itself”. I’m a huge advocate of that.
So to conclude, yes we can still get good traffic from being an active commentator on those big blogs. But it just does not gonna happen right away, you have to be creative and make sure you’re adding good value to the community and not just being spammy. After all, we’re not just concerned about the quantity, we’re all after the quality as well.
Interesting experiment Melvin. On my experience, the traffic from commenting is not as same as the old days. However, It is still worthy to try if the traffic is quality traffic as shoemoney gave you.
.-= Dana @ Blogging Tips Blog´s last blog ..Theme Junkie Great Discount: 50% Off =-.
Melvin Reply:
May 27th, 2010 at 9:52 pm
yep your right. Kinda surprising as well since most of shoe’s readers arent the traditional newbie ones so to have them stay on my blog for that long is pretty good. whether they converted or not, well i havent tested it yet.
wow, you made an amazing amount of traffic from commenting on these blogs, usually traffic doesn’t come like this. Thanks for this, i never bothered commenting on big blogs simply because my comments won’t get noticed. You’ve given this a new light Melvin, thanks.
.-= Peter J´s last blog ..5 things people don’t want to know about blogging =-.
Melvin Reply:
May 27th, 2010 at 9:53 pm
Again this were not really massive. Im not a fan of commenting either that much but for me its just about adding value coupled with a bit controversy or baiting.
actually melvin you should be more active in blogs like ShoutMeloud…i am a regular reader and commentator there and getting around 80 visits per month from there
.-= Tushar´s last blog ..Find a “Blog Buddy” for Yourself and Your Blog =-.
Melvin Reply:
May 27th, 2010 at 9:55 pm
thanks for the tip tushar, its just been recently that I noticed that blog shoutmeloud and its surprising because its getting massive traffic.. I’ll try there as well
Well, it depends on what you want to do with that traffic. Basically what you get from being active on other blogs is some regular readers. This regular readers population is like a moving train – some gets in and some get out. In the long run, some might remain patrons.
If you want to make money and/or converts your traffic, it has to be organic / search traffic and to some extend the social media traffic.
.-= Ajith Edassery´s last blog ..How to use Google Alerts effectively to improve your blogging and Online business? =-.
Melvin Reply:
May 28th, 2010 at 10:50 am
right, good insights. also direct and loyal traffic is also as important.
I like the way you put “moving train” as an example for this.
i agree with you…it does work.it is a way of getting yourself out there .and depends on the content of your commentss
Peter J Reply:
May 26th, 2010 at 5:05 pm
i think the best element of getting youself out there is if you pull in people who are top bloggers to your blog and get them interested. Once you do that, you can never fail.
.-= Peter J´s last blog ..One step further in the blogosphere: Find your blogging Buddy =-.
I personally don’t love to be active on big blog because they sometime frustrate me and put things in negative bucket. So, I comment on rather small blog who produce thoughtful content.
.-= Arafat Hossain Piyada´s last blog ..PlayStation Move coming this July? =-.
Commenting still works Melv but you need to choose where you want to comment. I’m not recommend commenting on big blog with hundreds commentators because they won’t notice your presence and the blog owner maybe to busy to reply your comment. On big blog, don’t be too active commenting because too crowded in there, lol! 😀
.-= Latief@AnotherBlogger´s last blog ..Why We Should Linking Our Articles =-.
I gave up on getting traffic from comments a long time ago. I’ve noticed that there really just isn’t that much traffic to be had from it. If i have a comment, I’ll leave it, but taking time to come up with a comment about a topic I don’t care about isn’t really worth the effort.
Guest posts or paid traffic (PPC, PPV) are really the only two ways to get serious traffic quickly. John Chow mentioned in his $40,000/month video that he used PPC to get traffic to start with (and probably still does).
If I could start back over, I’d start guest posting ASAP and setup some paid traffic as soon as I had a solid landing page with something free to give to encourage subscription sign-up.
.-= Blake @ Props Blog´s last blog ..Clear 4g Wireless Internet Dallas/Fort Worth Coverage Review =-.
Melvin Reply:
June 5th, 2010 at 10:03 pm
Great point Blake. Guest posting is really the killer way to get it done. But Im wondering if there’s a chance it can get saturated, what do you think?
Blake @ Props Blog Reply:
June 5th, 2010 at 10:28 pm
Guest posting can be overdone a little bit too, but it’s still way better than commenting. If I had taken all the time I used for commenting and used it for guest posting, I’d have gotten double or triple the traffic.
.-= Blake @ Props Blog´s last blog ..Clear 4g Wireless Internet Dallas/Fort Worth Coverage Review =-.
Melvin Reply:
June 5th, 2010 at 11:35 pm
True. I agree a lot. But then even up to now, most people are contented with just commenting.
My concern is more of like, blogs receive lesser traffic if the post is made by a guest blogger.