In my opinion, there are a number of factors that make a blog successful, but I think the most important thing is the amount of discussion in the comment section of each post. Some might argue that this is a sign of the health of a blog (I agree), but I also believe it’s what keeps a blog successful and popular.
I primarily buy and sell domain names for a living, in addition to managing a few of my company’s websites. Even with that being said, there are a lot of things I don’t know and/or are not doing as best as I could be doing. My knowledge on many topics is limited. When I write a blog post, it’s the comments and dialog that often add more to the topic than the original blog post.
I appreciate the contributions of those who comment on my blog. Your insights and ideas enhance what I write, and those thoughts are beneficial to me and to others who read this blog.
When you start a blog – or you start a website that has a blog-like feel/concept, it’s important to keep this in mind. The more you encourage discussion and participate in the discussion, the more successful your website will be. It’s one reason why I don’t recommend building a website on a random domain name that covers a topic you have no personal interest in covering.
When a website owner is engaged with its readers, it will increase the “stickiness” and help make a blog successful. Keep this in mind when you are working on your next site. Encourage discussion and sharing, and be willing to participate. Sure, it’s not as easy as a one way communication stream, but it will pay dividends.
i love the comment
Elliot, I have to say your blog is getting less sticky for me. Not a whole lot was written about your last 2 projects. And was not that interesting. One was the clone of the other. I love the stuff u wrote about dogwalker.com. Those stuff kept made me coming back for more. Bahamas.co was very interesting too. If for the rest of this year you write nothing else other than dogwalker.com and your domain business would be fine by me. Maybe it’s time for a new project? 🙂
@ Poor uncle
My main biz is investing in domain names. Unfortunately, if you are looking for biz dev and web dev advice, I would be the first to tell you this isn’t the place to look.
I have too much on my plate to add another project, and if I do, it will be a clone of my sites that are doing well (like DogWalker.com). There are only so many hours in the day and more work isn’t something I want right now.
I am sorry if my blog isn’t as sticky for you as it once was.
Great post Elliot and I couldn’t agree more! This just happened to me with IDNs on my blog – a topic that I know next to nothing about. I’ve had a ton of comments and learned a lot from my readers.
Like I’ve said before you can do ten things pretty well or one or two things really well.
I’ve always really looked-up to you when it comes to buying and selling domains because that’s where you’ve put your focus. Like me you know that you can’t be an expert in everything and what I love about this industry is all the great people that love to share thoughts and ideas.
As you know I’ve been a MAJOR fan of your blog since I started and it’s still a must-read for me every single day. Keep it up – you’ve had me since the very first post I read 🙂
Hi Elliot,
I sent you a couple emails, could you reply them?
Anthony
I don’t think I received them… what’s up?
Is domainnames (at) gmail.com correct? If so I will try again…
I suppose there is a fine line between engaging with the community to drive traffic and learning about the subject at hand versus being consumed by the administrative aspect of filtering spam comments and responding to inquiries which ultimately don’t drive revenue. Thus far my websites are static websites without the sort of interaction you describe. I do have some domains on a WordPress theme oriented toward sourcing topic-related Youtube videos. However, I am getting bombarded by spam comments so unfortunately since it seems 95% are spam, I just delete them all without even reading them 🙁
@ Leonard
Install the Akismet plugin to reduce/catch your spam:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/akismet/
Words are only words and without engagement they are only words… or something like that..
a negative for most ‘businesses’ but they are starting to hit high serps for breaking news if the blog is using the right seo widgets and knows how to configure them and then how to USE them to target what they want, so for traffic, they can work, but for businesses leads or crap, zero IMO, but they do get traffic from what you target if it’s a minor term and has no cpc value, so they can get SE traffic and you do get people with too much time spewing crap on them, me, I’m part of a ‘project’ to see how they can manipulate google serp’s and so far we like what we see, we hit a ton of #1 serp’s for stuff we wanted on our blog, so, for seo work to hit a term that isn’t highly targeted with huge cpc terms, I’ll be the first to admit, yu can manipulate google with a blog IF you know what seo tools to use for WP and IF you know the basics of SEO in doing your posts and keyword choices and title creations, etc, so in the hands of a SEO guru, a blog can work to steer google traffic on anything they want that isn’t high valued cpc terms, if I start to see blogs hit high value cpc terms, I’m bowing at WP’s altar, so that’s the next step in our ‘project’ using WP with the seo combo we have to hit high value terms, if it works, ok, I’m wrong, at the start I said the SEO was crap on the widget, but google likes it, so I was wrong, on minor terms the seo tools are ‘good enough’, but let me see it hit a real cpc term, so far we haven’t tried, but that’s next up, keep you posted if that works, then I’ll be the first one bowing to WP for seo skills