Comments on: Should Low Traffic Blogs Disable Comments?

By: Should Blogs Have Comments?

Should Blogs Have Comments? — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 14:24:53 +0000

[...] Should Low Traffic Blogs Disable Comments [...]

By: free naked hunks

free naked hunks — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 23:01:13 +0000

I’ve just been staying at home waiting for something to happen. I just don’t have anything to say right now. My life’s been basically unremarkable , but eh. I can’t be bothered with anything recently.

By: LintCollector

LintCollector — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 09:58:10 +0000

I’m the guy whose question Darren has addressed in this post, and I want to thank Darren and everyone who has added their valuable comments on this subject.

The concensus seems to be overwhelmingly in support of having commenting activated, and I can now see the merit in this, even for a low traffic blog. I’ve chewed over what’s been written and have decided to allow comments from now on. While the traffic is still low, I imagine the spam and admin overhead should also be low or non-existant.

My other concern, apart from spam, was not responding to comments in a timely manner (I can be offline for many days at a time). The obvious solution is to simply be more diligent and check each day – it shouldn’t take long if there are few visitors or comments. And if I disappear into the bush for a week I could do what Darren has recently written about – get someone else to handle the blog admin while I’m gone. I’ll give it a go.

By: Zach Everson

Zach Everson — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 15:01:06 +0000

I get a fair amount of traffic, but because of my subject (grammatical pointers) I don’t get a lot of comments. I wouldn’t think of disabling them though. I’ve had book publishers and authors comment; obviously if I hadn’t had comments enabled, I never would have engaged in some great conversation with them.

Also, you never know when a popular blog will link to yours and its readers will want to comment on your site. Lifehacker linked to one of my posts a while back and I got a slew of comments from its readers.

By: Brett

Brett — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 18:20:56 +0000

Great article. I have been reading your blog off and on for the last two weeks. I must say your blog is my favorite – really. Not only is the content relevant and useful, but I have learned a lot about what to add and not to add to a blog. One thing about your blog that I like is that it is uncluttered. It has the perfect balance of content in my opinion, and I have scoured at least 50 blogs before creating my own. I just started a blog, and I don’t understand why anyone would even think of disabling comments. My blog is “small” but have to start somewhere – right?

By: Elaine Vigneault

Elaine Vigneault — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 17:29:02 +0000

I just recently turned off comments on my personal blog, http://www.elainevigneault.com because the comments I get tend to be mean spirited and I have thin skin. I spend a great deal of time moderating comments that could be spent writing better posts or working on other projects.

However, i just recently installed the top commentors plugin for the communal blog I manage, http://www.2kbloggers.com and I hope it will encourage more discussion.

The funny thing is, my personal blog currently gets more traffic. But you wouldn’t know it if you looked at the comments.

By: Ari

Ari — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 14:28:37 +0000

In my opinion, not that any one cares about my opinion, it depends. I read and commented repeatedly on a post a couple months back on JohnTP’s blog regarding this issue.

I always felt that comments should be turned off if you are a low traffic blog. Then one day I was checking my shortstat results and saw a lot of people were hitting my blog because of a post I had written on a scamming website. As a result, I decided to turn on comments for my blog. Literally the next day I had two comments on that post. Now after 2 and a half months I have over 50.

That may not seem like a lot for the big bloggers but I have only been online since December and my traffic is in the tens a day not thousands.

One good tip that I I got from John Chow’s blog, as many bloggers suggest, is to consider enabling the Top Commentators plugin. This way if you only have a few posts with some comments people will know that your blog gets comments.

By: GoingLikeSixty

GoingLikeSixty — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 14:11:00 +0000

On a related note – if you get comments, respond!
Seth Godin responds. Howard Lindzon (Wallstrip.com and hedge fund manager) responds.
But I’ve been the only commenter on a topic and nary a burp from the blogger.
So I made a pledge – I’ll always respond to commenters.

http://goinglikesixty.wordpress.com/2007/03/23/thanks-for-your-comment/

By: MJ Ray

MJ Ray — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 11:53:18 +0000

@Martin: I use a CGI-to-email script to send comments to me in a form that I can cut-and-paste into the blog quite easily. This means that most comments get the same status as new posts, which seems to attract more comments. There are drawbacks (requires editor intervention, but that’s the same as any blog with pre-moderation; have to make sure the CGI-to-email script can’t be used for spamming) but it works fairly well.

One thing I’ve noticed is that I get the same spammers trying to submit through multiple comment forms. If you’re running a low-traffic site, you might like to find some way (links, iframes, whatever) to have only one comment form for the whole blog and then you shouldn’t get enough spam to worry about tweaking the anti-spam settings all the time like I do.

By: Jen

Jen — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 09:34:54 +0000

Then again, Seth Godin doesn’t have comments on his blog. He’s come under a lot of flak for that, of course, but makes some good arguments for his decision – the time commitment comes immediately to mind, but he also says that anticipating what commenters might say has the effect of changing how he writes. Interesting POV… but I’d vote for comments enabled, no matter the size of the readership. It’s a big part of what makes a blog a blog, and not just a frequently updated website.

By: Jaya Schillinger

Jaya Schillinger — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 05:18:51 +0000

The people that read my blog aren’t all that tech savvy, so I almost never get comments online. Instead they all email me.

After blogging for a year now, sometimes I find the lack of comments discouraging. And I sure as heck wish some of nice emails were public!

I leave comments open, but know that until my target market learns about feedreaders & blog communities, my blog’s popularity looks quiet even though it’s not.

By: Mitchell Harper

Mitchell Harper — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 05:06:23 +0000

I posted the exact same comments, but about FeedBurner widgets:
http://www.harpzon.com/articles/72/1/Dont-Publish-Your-FeedBurner-Widget-If/Page1.html

By: Ken Y-N

Ken Y-N — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 23:54:01 +0000

I barely manage one or two comments per day (excluding spam of course!) but I have one story that’s gained over 100 comments in a year, been quite heavily linked, and has produced a keyword-rich page that nets lots and lots of search traffic. On another story on password security, a friend posted a joking comment on how he was going to go hack some pr0n sites with the info, so now I get a trickle of traffic of people looking on how to hack said web sites!

Therefore, as long as you have decent spam protection, I cannot really see any reason to turn comments off. Set to always moderate if you want to control the conversation completely, of course.

By: jhay

jhay — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 22:38:19 +0000

Open comment threads would help low traffic blogs gain more traffic.

By: Peter Andersen

Peter Andersen — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 22:32:28 +0000

I agree with many of the above commenters. No reason to turn your comments off if it is a low-traffic blog.

Personally, I cannot see the idea in doing so. Allow me to put it like this :

1. You have a low-traffic blog. You have comments turned on. Maybe, just maybe, you will eventually start getting comments, as your content gets picked up by more people, ultimately generating more traffic, and allowing you to start building a community around your site.

2. You have a low-traffic blog. You have comments turned off. By doing this, you of course take care of getting rid of the spam that would ultimately hit your site. But… you also disallow people the option of commenting on your posts IF they actually wanted to, thus removing the chance of getting a community running.

I personally cannot see anything sincerely positive outcome from turning off comments.

Regards :)

By: engtech

engtech — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 22:12:58 +0000

If you have older posts without comments (and are unlikely to generate comments because they get no traffic) you might as well turn commenting off for the reduced spam.

By: JennDZ

JennDZ — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 21:23:00 +0000

I have fairly good traffic to my blog, but I wrote an article about something I was really passionate about that probably not many people knew about…that spurred my comments from 2-3 a week average to 9 comments just on that one piece, and now comments are coming a lot more…I guess because I spurred some interest. So I guess if you make people think or teach them something they SHOULD know about, people comment.

By: Chris Lodge

Chris Lodge — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 21:15:26 +0000

Simple answer: No.

I think a low traffic blog with no comments enabled will remain just that: A low traffic blog.

Where’s the incentive to return and engage with the blogger?. Write good stuff, ask questions, involve your readers and the comments will flow.

By: ilker

ilker — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 21:13:21 +0000

Yes to comments all the way… if you really have to, try putting a couple of “fake” comments under different names made up yourself and see how that affects reactions.

Sometimes though, no comments is a good thing.. the person who gets to leave one becomes the first! I always enjoy doing that on other blogs =)

By: Evorgleb

Evorgleb — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 21:08:00 +0000

Over at Highbrid Nation when we first started out we dealt with this issue. I agree with the advice you gave though. Nurture the readers who do comment and let it build from there. I remember being so happy when I'd get just one comment. Its all part of the grind that goes with being a blogger.