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Written By: Scott Jangro
October 15, 2006
October 15, 2006
Hug a Blogger
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Do you know what bloggers love more than anything (besides getting a link)?
That’s right, comments.
People are reading, but when the bottom of the page is as enthusiastic as a CJ Appreciation Day on ABW, it can get pretty darned depressing.
What’s your daily blogs-read-to-comment ratio? I bet it’s close to zero.
Make someone’s day today. Give a comment.
Jangro - comments and links are nice, but don’t forget about RSS subscriptions. I think in the near future subs will be worth more than links.
BTW - You’re on my short list of daily reads… so stop blogging about that damn TV
>>RSS
true true.
Speaking of comments, my TV post has nearly 100 of ‘em. By that measure, it’s my best effort to date. Pretty pathetic, really.
But don’t knock it. A hundred happy TV fix-it-yourselfers can’t all be wrong!
OK, the pool one was silly. Truth is, they’re SEO experiments (and now revenue generators). As for why they’re here? Just thank google and their over-emphasis on domain age. jangro.com is over 8 years old.
lol! I second the TV comment, and lets not forget the pool blog.
At least you are read Scott.
I have you in bloglines and read your blog everyday. The truth is that I rarely click away from bloglines unless the post really gets my attention.
Good point Freddy. Have newsreaders killed interactivity in blogs?
I think so, at least partially. There is so much information with which to keep up. Sometimes it takes somebody to ask (like this post) to remind us of the interactivity part.
I’ve been a dedicated comment spammer.
Err … I mean … uhhhh ….
I have had to turn off comments on several sites after being attacked by comment spammers.
There is a line between adding comments and comment spam. Anything, even insightful posts, that lead to subprime lending sites, or porn sites is spam in my book.
IMHO: A comment has to contribute something. Of course, my comments usually have the form “You idiot!!! Do you know what you just said????”
Few people appreciate criticism. So do.
The comments that get appreciated are those acknowledge the insightfulness of the blogger. Such posts are easy on this site.
hey kevin.
Yeah, I agree with that. A comment (however on-topic) from a random poker site is a bit spammy. But if that person was a frequent reader, not so much. Poker site owners are people too.
What’s nice is when you start to recognize them. “Hey cool, yintercept is here.” A subscriber list can grow to hundreds of nameless people. It’s fun to get reminded that they have a pulse. Even better when they start to interact with each other as a result of something you posted.
It’s funny. Some blogs get tons of comments, even people just saying stupid stuff. Other very well read blogs (even those without roadblocks like logins) get nothing.
“Poker site owners are people too.”
Unfortunately, a large number of the things that leave comments aren’t human. There are scripts that crawl blogs, forums, guestbooks and anything with textarea tags. These scripts then bombard the site with their crapola list of web sites.
I have had well over 100,000 instances of scripts trying to stuff textarea tags with preformatted “comments” filled with spam links. The spam lists routinely include subprime lending links, gambling links and porn links.
I got in a flame war with a link spammer. The spammer told me that one method they use is to leave a comment with a link to a porn site. If the link is removed within a set period of time, they leave the site alone. If not, they figure the site has been abandonned and start loading it with “comments” that link to icky sites. This happened to several clients of mine. The clients ended up with well over 30,000 posts to porn sites in their feedback section.
The moral here is that webmasters who routinely rid their sites of questionable links end up saving themselves a lot of trouble in the long run.
Although there are real people who have legit poker sites in their tag line, I now automatically filter them out.
I feel bad about it. It is unfair, but it is necessary to take such actions to survive.
Let’s say I had a y-intercept poker site, and I regularly contributed to Jangro.com with my poker site in my tagline. My competitors would see that I am getting a large number of links from Jango.com (they would find jangro.com with Google link: searches). They would then inundate Jangro.com with bad posts.
I know this because I listed two sites for subprime lenders in a directory a few years ago. I am now inundated with subprime lenders slamming my directories with submissions for payday lender and other such scams. Again, I am talking of thousands of script generated submissions.
Basically, if you have a blog and you get a comment with a questionable link, you are wise to delete it; otherwise, you risk being targetted … even if the comment was from a legitimate well meaning person.
I wish it was different.
PET-B, shmuly? sounds like a virus strain.
Of course you’re right Kevin. Fortunately the bots don’t have the smarts to leave useful comments (yet — when that happens, all hell will break loose.)
And I said all that knowing that the chances of a human poker site owner actually (a) writing something useful here, and (b) having the gall to put a poker link in an SEO blog are pretty slim.
In practice, if it came down to it, it would have to be a good friend for me to allow a poker link to stay, and a good friend wouldn’t do that.
As for spam, I get my fair share here. I used SpamKarma 2 for a while until I started losing real comments in the spam filters. I’m now using askimet with pretty good results.
Scott, I could not agree with you more! In fact, I have started a coalition for bloggers:
http://www.oneparkavenuereality.com/people-for-...
ST
I feel the love through analytics - thats my main success gauge, but I agree comments take it a step furthur showing you when people care, not just read. Personally I must read hundreds of items per month but only comment on a few.
PS - I gave you that link you so deserve
thank you sir!
Better late then never
… come on … group hug 
Cheers,
Carsten
The internet is meant to be fully bi-directional.
Blogs are meant to let the readers add upon any available article, usually written by the almighty blogger
As such, if the blogger does a darn good job at summing up an issue, perhaps there’s very little left to add… and that’s why some absolutely dazzling articles get little or no comments, even though they’ve been read and greatly appreciated.
Perhaps blogs need another “system” for readers to manifest their appreciation of any given article (over and above the ubiquitous comments).
Just a tought ; )
Comment blog hug so Scott will feel loved and blog something new soon. It’s been awhile now and I’m starting to get the first signs of Jangro withdrawl.
aww, thanks Kellie.
It’s been one of those dry spells, compounded by a ton of “real work”.
thanks for the inspiration, or kick in the ass, whichever you prefer.
Kick in the ass….I have a reputation to uphold.
Real work?? You act like it’s Q4 or something. 
A Todos Los Usuarios de Correo Electrónico:
Lo Que Necesita Saber Acerca de las Cadenas de Correos Electrónicos y Cartas
Que la chingada, Mackin?
I was fortunate enough to have a lengthy conversation with Dave Taylor discussing blogging. He said his number one tip to bloggers was to comment on other people’s blogs. He encouraged bloggers to spend more time commenting, and by that he meant participating, than blogging. While that may not be possible or practical the intent of being an active participant in the blogosphere of your target audience is without a doubt an important factor in the growth of “your” own work.
And with the knockout list of quality people commenting on this blog you can see that success is following successful people. Thanks to Adam Viener for pointing me to you.
Why you’ve even got Shmuly!
Case in point Durk. I’ve never seen your blog before and will now check it out. Be sure to comment in the “have you got an aff blog” blog post here. Thanks for reading, and especially commenting. (And thanks to Adam as well.)
edited: oh, I see you did
Since we are speaking spanish:
Este Blog esta muy bien, Scott!
Todos nosotros queremos mas!
I thank you for your comment.
Very interesting info. I couldn’t agree more!
I agreed that comments received from my reader do encourage me to continue to provide information free to visitor.
Squidoo do have a module allow your reader to leave a comment for you…
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Tried to give you a bump and couldn’t get it to work, nor could I find you in BumpZee. What gives?
Post is too old to be in BUMPzee.
But you couldn’t find me?
http://www.bumpzee.com/users/view/jangro/
Blogging can be a lonely existence. I don’t get that many posts on my blog yet people are saving my posts in social bookmarking sites on a regular basis. Very strange. If they liked the post that much why not say so? Has anyone else experienced this?
Graham, I think your experience is more the norm.
Blogs seem to develop a commenting culture, or not, where the readers start to treat it like a forum.
I’m lucky that this blog does seem to have crossed that threshold. I don’t know how or when that happened though.
Hugs, then.
On my blog I see that only returning visitors are the one's that does give comments from time to time. And this group of people are only representing 30% of the total visitors..not sure what the rest is doing there
Dave