Proof That Blog Commenting Still Works To Build Traffic

This has to be the most common traffic tip professional bloggers give to newbies: Leave comments on other blogs.

You know what I did when I was newbie blogger? – I left comments on other blogs, like crazy.

I did a lot of other things too, all of which I go through in some detail in Blog Mastermind, but commenting was definitely an integral part of my early marketing activities for this blog.

You might wonder though, does commenting actually work to drive traffic today in the more crowded blogosphere?

I actually argue that most people go about a blog commenting strategy the wrong way and there is a higher leverage technique that most bloggers don’t do, but even if you follow the basic advice and just get out there and be a prolific commenter it will build traffic, and here’s proof.

Caroline Middlebrook has quit her job and dedicated herself to full time Internet money making. She hasn’t made a dime at it yet, but she hasn’t actually attempted monetization yet either. What she is doing is totally dedicating herself to growing her blog and so far she’s on the right track.

She’s posted a fantastic report covering her traffic building activities for October, including breakdowns on where her traffic is coming from, what she is spending her time on and a short podcast to explain what she plans to change this month based on what she learned analyzing last month’s data.

As you can see in her report she received 673 visits from other blogs in October and as Caroline notes, that’s likely some very targeted traffic based on the blogs she selected to leave comments on (she provides a full list for any blog that sent her more than 10 visitors during the month).

If you have been reading the comments to my blog recently you have probably seen this picture pop up a lot:

As a result of Caroline’s consistent presence here at Entrepreneurs-Journey she’s grabbed 101 of my readers last month – that’s without me blogging about her, until now of course. Hopefully this post will send her some more visitors.

What I love about Caroline efforts so far is that she’s actually doing what I teach in Blog Mastermind and the Blog Profits Blueprint – she’s a poster child for my methodology.

Her traffic report is awesome, a fantastic pillar article and she’s written quite a few other pillars that you can find by looking at her popular post list. She went beyond the average by doing a podcast, adding multi-media to her blog and creating a new way to communicate (podcasting was a BIG part of my success in the early days of this blog). She’s providing authentic content based on real experience and is showing us the real numbers – for example did you know that StumbleUpon provided her with a whopping 63% of her overall traffic, over 8,000 visitors in October? This is interesting stuff for any blogger, professional or just getting started.

Caroline is proof that commenting still works to generate traffic if you are persistent. She’s also proof that commenting gets the attention of the bloggers that you focus on, which as demonstrated by this post I’m making now, can drive even more traffic than just direct clicks from the comments (if you read into this you will know what the higher leverage commenting technique is that I mentioned earlier – or you can just join Blog Mastermind, where I go over it in detail ).

Hopefully this month will be the first month that Caroline generates some financial return for her efforts and her future reports will include income too. I wish her best of luck.

Yaro Starak
Blog Commenter

PS. Now let’s see if Caroline is first to leave a comment on this post .