Darren Rouse over at Problogger.net posed a readers question that started this post. I’ve been meaning to write on the topic for a while, so this was the prompt I needed to get on with it.

The question is “What do You Know About Blogging that You Wish You Knew When You Started”

For me, the answer is the importance of reader interation both with other readers and with the blog owner.

You see when I started, I was determined not to get overwhelmed with spam in the form of comments and with spammers using my email addresses.

I deliberatedly didn’t provide any method of on-site contact. It worked pretty well. I could blog away without interruption.

Over the last few months, after reading a few posts from seasoned bloggers, I realised that my only traffic souces were from search engines. They provide a growing traffic source but if that were to dry-up I’d be dead in the water.

That lead to a decision to put in place some “defensive” traffic sources.

At about the same time I got involved in my first meme, the Technorati favorites exchange sponsored by Doshdosh. To grow my technorati popularity as high as possible, I visited many blog owners and asked them to favourite my site. That experience was a real eye opener, as it drove home to me how frustrating it was to find blogs with no contact form.

It also occurred to me that if I could provide visitors with an incentive to leave a comment, they might be more inclined to revisit my blog.

So as a result of that experience, a contact form was implemented and no-follow removed from the comments. Since then the results have been encouraging

  • There have been over 225 new comments.
  • I’ve receive a number of requests for link exchanges and approaches to join programs which I would never have found under my own steam
  • Received requests for advertising with a few resultant sales.

The spam which I expected has not materialized. No spam has been recieved on the contact form. As for comments, Akismet has caught most of it. The comment spam which wasn’t intercepted required little effort to remove.

Unexpectedly blogging has been more fun. I look forward to new comments and the chance to interact with other bloggers. There are some very talented bloggers on the net and it has been my privilege to meet a few more than I would have without making the changes.

If you are reading this post and don’t have a contact form or haven’t removed no-follow from your contents, I hope this helps to encourage you to do so. My experience to date has been very positive.

Making both these changes may not work out for you, but then again there is very little to lose.

Heres the link to Darren’s post

Filed under: Fun Stuff

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