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Joshua Clinard · Joined: 02 Dec 2002 Posts: 76

I started bloging regularly on my website recently. I used to use blogger, and then Newspro. I have had a site for a few years. I went almost a year without blogging, because Newspro stopped working when I changed servers. I installed b2 several weeks ago, and love it. I now try to update 2 or 3 times a week. My site has always gotten a decent amount of visitors. Usually it's between 15 and 20 daily. But I have noticed that none of my visitors have used the comments, other then the people that I asked to comment through IM. I don't get many hits from weblogs.com and the other weblog indexes, except for blogdex, which has been giving me hits since I first started blogging several years ago, and still used a weblog.html page instead of my main index page like I do now. Also, I still cannot locate my site on blogdex, so I can see the description, and possibly change it.

Back to my main question. How do I get people to comment? Do I just need more visitors? I would like to compare my site to some other blogs. How many of your visitors use comments? Is it less than 1% of your total visitors? If so, then I guess my site is doing okay, and I just need to figure out how to attract more visitors, or more people who read weblogs regularly. In other words, I need to attract more loyal visitors, rather than just one time visits.

Any thoughts? Joshua's Place

jadeddaisy · Joined: 24 Nov 2002 Posts: 116

Most of my comments come from the same people...and those are people whos blogs I comment on myself.

As for comments, I post about once or twice a day and get 5-6 comments on average for each. I get 60-70 unique visitors a day which translates to about 200 page hits. About a 30% of those visitors come from search engines, primarily google. Sixty percent of the visitors come from other blogs who have me linked, and the other ten is from assorted places such as weblogs.com and blogsnob or wanderlust ads.

The best way I've found to get more comments is to comment more on other people's sites. Pretty much everyone looks at the webpages of the people who leave them comments, and if they're interested in your post, odds are that they'll leave one on yours as well.

Looking at your site, Joshua, the only advice I have is to possibly make a columned layout so your blog posts are located at the top of your page, with your links and such to the side. People who read blogs hate having to scroll in order to get to the 'meat' of the page.

I hope this helps! Smile

_________________
~^Rickie Beth^~
jadeDblog

Joshua Clinard · Joined: 02 Dec 2002 Posts: 76

Thanks for the info. I will have to look for some interesting blogs to leave comments on. Also, take a look at the new layout I'm working on.

Faded Angel · Joined: 05 Jan 2003 Posts: 4

leaving comments on people's site are a good idea. they normally comments back. i comment back whenever someone comments. i sometimes get about 100 hits a day, but my average is 30. on the 100 hits day i got 15 comments. so true not all the visitors comments.