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This is the 15th post in a series of seventeen posts I’m doing following Kim Roach’s list post of “17 Copy-And-Paste Blog Post Templates“. You can see all the posts from this series on my blogging challenges page.
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First let me clarify, I’m talking about paying for someone to comment on your blog, and not paying someone to comment on other blogs to create backlinks.
The reason I clarify this is that usually people think about paying for comments with the goal of getting more backlinks, and it ends up being automated software doing the work of spamming hundreds, even thousands of blogs. Pretty much everyone agrees that this is not ethically correct, even the people that offer these services.
What I want your opinion on is paying for real comments on your own blog (or guest posts).
I’ve spoken recently about a new blog comment related service, and it’s about ready to be unveiled, however if you’re a bit of a detective you can already figure out what the service is called and what it will consist of.
S.K.
I prefer 1 truly engaged readers over 10 superficially engaged visitors. This one reader will bring me a lot more value in visits, comments, and (indirectly) money than 10 paid comments.
Blogs are growing slower at a slower pace than they used to back in the early days. You gotta earn your following.
Jamie Northrup
I agree 100% about preferring 1 truly engaged reader than 10 superficially engaged visitor, but the idea isn’t to buy engagement, but to buy comments to create engagement. Your hopes wouldn’t lie in trying to transform the paid blog commenter into an engaged one, but you would be trying to get him to spark engagement from your “real” visitors/readers.
Andrew Rondeau
Jamie
If I was starting out from new, then yes but with a couple of assumptions.
1. The comment has to be ‘value add’ – i.e adding something valuable to the conversation. Either their experience or thoughts.
2. After commenting, the commenter social bookmarked the post.
What do you think?
Andrew
Jamie Northrup
I like the way you think Andrew, I launched my new commenting service (http://www.problogcommenter.com) earlier this week and included social bookmarking. So far pretty much all the orders are from people starting out as expected, if you’re already getting plenty of engaging comments then there’s no need for something like this.
Raaj Trambadia
I would never pay to get comments on my site. Instead, I would start making blogger friends and then I wouldn’t have to pay for some comments which are more valuable than those whom I paid for.
Nice question, by the way!
Jamie Northrup
If you can get engaging comments on your own, then you’re right, I rather have those, but what if you have been blogging and networking and it’s not going anywhere?
Raaj Trambadia
Still Jamie! We can practice different things to get it done. But paying for comments on your own blog is nothing! I mean, all those comments are actually with the brain! The commentator wouldn’t have actually loved the post!
Jamie Northrup
Of course they wouldn’t love the post, we aren’t paying them to love the post, the point is to encourage other comments by paying for engaging comments, sometimes even controversial comments, a lot of big companies used to pay for controversy or have their staff create it.
Wade
I don’t really understand why you would want to pay someone to write comments. Is this for when other people read your blog and see that someone has commented?
Jamie Northrup
Some people do it for that reason, but usually comments are bought to be engaging.
websites24seven.com
Typically when one opts to purchase comments, it is usually of that initial investment of creating a sense of user engagement in hope that new visitors will be inspired to partake since others have already invested in the contribution. Not sure why, but many choose to avoid being the first poster. However, I believe being first is the best…you’re at the top of the list. Therefore, the first opinion everyone reads and for the most part, the most read comment!!! Thanks for initiating this post! Great topic.
Arun
I would surely pay for blog comments if I had a high quality blog with a lot of traffic and the person commenting adds real good content relavent to the post. I have noticed that blog post with frequent comments tends to rank better on Google however old they are.
Jamie Northrup
You’re right about ranking better, thanks for the input Arun