How Important is the Number of Comments on your Posts to Gauge the Success of Your Blog Commercially?

The commercial viability of a blog is determined by a combination of numerous factors such as the number of RSS readers, quality inward & outward links, Depth of linking, Google Page Rank, Technorati Rankings, DIGG Score, Alexa Traffic Rank etc & etc.

Good comments do play a role in inspiring the blogger to come up with good content. The problem is most of the comments these days are seeded( provided by friends and family) or by some outsourced folks.

Most bloggers go negative in the first 12 months of starting blogging. The number one reason behind this is lack of motivation to write. This lack of motivation is a direct cause of lack of acceptance in the marketplace. Comments are a good medium through which a blogger can validate his acceptance, provided they are pure.

If you carefully see, off late I had not been getting a lot of comments on this blog either. This is partly becuase I have stopped soliciting comments or incentivising my readers to make any.

In addition to that most of my readers are seasoned RSS readers who read many blogs. “Make Money Online” is a market that inherently consists of people with a short attention span, in other words people in this market are targeted with all kinds of marketing messages on how to make money and they themselves are in a hurry to make money.

No matter which way I justify it..it could very well be that my posts are not inspiring or controversial enough!

Also I have turned off comments on some of my posts( for SEO purposes)

On a side note: Marketing expert Seth Godin turned his blog into a viral site by disabling comments on his blog. This is a class act. By turning off comments, he pushed his readers to vent, chat & comment about his posts on other sites resulting in more PR and Traffic for him.

In my opinion it takes about 2 years for any anonymous good blog to gather correct momentum. A following cannot be created overnight.

Eventually its the “good content” that determines the commercial success of any blog.