Blogs by their very nature depend on comments, you write your posts with the view that your blogs visitors will leave their opinions and views in the small section under the post. Comments are also used as a metric by many to judge how popular your blog is, a large amount of comments can mean you are providing great content that people feel they should give their view on.

It is no surprise then that many bloggers are looking to increase comments on their blogs. I have managed to increase comments here on ProTycoon.com using many different methods. I am going to highlight the 5 most successful methods for increasing comments on your blog.

5 Ways To Increase Comments On Your Blog:

1. Ask For Comments: Sound to simple? It is very easy to end your post with “Please feel free to leave your comments below.” This reminds your readers at the end of your post that they can leave their opinions and views. I have found that by simply asking people to leave thier views I get slightly more comments than on a standard post.
2. Finish Your Post With A Question: Similar to point 1, but more specific. Asking a question at the end of your post means that in order to answer the question they must leave a comment. This can have great results at the end of a post such as this one, where I could ask: “What are your best tips for increasing comments on your blog?”.
3. Give Something Back: You may have noticed that I use the ‘Top Commentators’ widget on ProTycoon.com. I feel that it is a great way of rewarding the people that comment on my blog and also increases comments as people want to be on the top list.
4. Make It Easy: Keep the comments form simple and easy to use. Make it possible for comments to be left quickly and easily and you will see a rise in comments on your blog. Make sure your comments section is visible at the bottom of your posts, not hidden way down the page.
5. Make Your Self Approachable: Make yourself known in your comments area, reply to comments you recieve. I try to reply to all comments on my blog. People are more likely to comment if they think you will actually reply, or if you show you care about comments.

I have now revealed 5 ways to increase your RSS count.

Feel free to leave your comments below. How do you increase comments on your blog?

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Today I sealed the deal on ProTycoon.com’s first sponsored theme. I have opened a new section on the blog totally dedicated to themes that are sponsored by ProTycoon.com

To see the first theme, head over to: ‘ProTycoon.com Themes‘. I have always wanted to sponsor themes and be able to give them away on my blog, I have now reached that goal and hope to add many more themes in the coming weeks.

Why do I sponsor themes?

Sponsoring themes can have many benefits:

1. Branding Your Blog
2. Increase Links Back To Blog
3. Offers Something To Your Readers

I am still looking for other WordPress themes to sponsor so if you have one that you would like ProTycoon.com to sponsor feel free to contact me.

If you use the theme, feel free to let everyone know what you think about it.

Other News

The ProTycoon.com contest has had over 75 comments, if you have not entered you still have until the end of July.

I am also looking to open up a weekly spot on my blog for guest posts, if you would like to submit a post, contact me with your details I will then ask you to send me your guest post for review.

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This is a guest post by Larry from Clubblogger.com, if you want to know more about ClubBlogger.com read the ProTycoon.com review. To hear more from Larry subscribe to his RSS Feed.

Networking with other blog owners is a great way to introduce yourself to a new audeience. It works better if you find other blog authors that write about a subject similar to yours but are not in direct competition with your blog, although sometimes you can steal readers from competitors blogs.

Many bloggers network with each others by writing guest posts on each others blogs. If an exchange of guest posts does not work, you may want to offer to pay them to either write a review of your blog or write it yourself and then ask them to publish it, make sure you are careful when offering payment for your post, make sure it is worthwhile for your blog. You may want to avoid paying for exposure when you can still get free guest posts.

Networking with other bloggers can be extremely beneficial if the blog you are guest posting on already has an established audience. If your blog is properly maintained and attractive, you may be able to hold on to these new visitors and convert them into subscribers on your blog. This type of advertising is even better than Adwords or pay-per-click traffic because you have someone recommending your blog. If another blog author recommends your website, then their readers are likely to give your blog the benefit of the doubt.

There are several ways to find fellow blog authors that you can network with. Here are a few good methods:

1. Go to your favorite search engine and type in your blog’s keywords and then the word blog in quotation marks. For example, you might type “diet blogs,” or “diet blog.”
2. Another way to find related blogs is to visit the top blog directories and look for blogs in the same or complimentary niche as your blog.
3. Place an ad at the various Internet marketing forums and let everyone know that you are looking to work with other blog authors.

Working with other blog owners is a great way to get your blog in front of a new audience that is already interested in what your blog is about. How many times have you made a purchase or visited a store or website on the advice of one of your family members or friends? Why did you do it? Because you trusted them, you trusted their word. That is what you are trying to tap into by asking blog owners to allow you to address his audience.

Finding other blog owners in your niche is easy. Use the search engines and go to the blog directories and type in keywords related to your niche. Once you have found them, you can send them an email, be honest and explain why you would like to write on the blog and what you like about the blog. Don’t send the same message to many bloggers as they may just ignore it, make it personal to the blog owner.

How do you find new blog owners to team up with? Do you think teaming up with other blogs is beneficial?

If you are interested in a guest post on ProTycoon.com please feel free to Contact Me.

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I annouced last week that I am looking to hold some ‘bloggers surveys‘ to get a general overview of bloggers approaches to blogging. I have now compiled the first of my surveys for you to partake in.

The survey will only take a few minutes to complete with the aim of finding the answers to some of the most asked blogging quesions. I am looking to survey around 100 bloggers from many different niches.

The results of the surveys will be used create an ebook that will answer many of the top blogging quesions. I will be featuring bloggers in the ebook, so this is also a chance to get some free publicity. I will also do a roundup of each survey here on ProTycoon.com so subscribe to my feed so that you don’t miss out.

Click Here to take survey

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Logged into my dashboard this morning only to find that WordPress 2.6 is now available, I was not expecting it for another month at least.

There are many new features in WordPress 2.6, the video below whould give you all the information you need:

If you have not already done so, you can download WordPrss 2.6 here.

Just thought I would let you know about this release, I love it when a new version is released.
What are your thoughts on the update?

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If you are a blogger then there is no doubt that you have heard about Entrecard, I am now putting it to the test. I signed up to Entrecard yesterday, but when I clicked submit I was still very unsure as to what I had actually signed up to. I knew that it was some kind of advertsing platform where you used points to buy advertising on other blogs, but appart from that I was entering this blind.

I have made it my duty to learn all I can about the service, to see if you should all be using it on your blogs. If you are using Entrecard, you shoud think about ‘Dropping’ your card into the slot in my sidebar, I believe that is the correct phrase. If you are not using it then you can sign up and drop your card in my sidebar, for some advertising on ProTycoon.com.

I will be measuring what success can be gained through this service, as well as studying what tactics work well. I will report back with my findings in the coming weeks.

Do you use Entrecard? What works well?

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Yesterday I was browsing through my comments, as I do many times everyday to reply to them all and I came across the following comment from Jacob from Group Writing Project.

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I have posted previously about ‘Setting Blogging Goals‘ and have also outlined some of my goals for ProTycoon.com, such as ‘My Technorati Targets‘. This post is all about analyzing your progress in meeting those goals.

Setting your goals is the easy part, achieving them is where the hard work is. Many bloggers will set ambitious goals, this is not a bad thing as long as you are prepared to work hard and focus on achieving them. I promote ambitious goals, but not unrealistic goals, always make your goals achievable. What is the difference between an ambitious goals and an unrealistic goal?

An ambitious goal would be to increase your RSS subscriber count from 50 to 500, it is not impossible, but requires hard work and dedication to achieve.

An unrealistic goal would be to increase your RSS subscriber count from 50 to 1000 in one day, it simply will not happen, unless a miricle occurs.

Once you have set your goals, you then need to plan how and when you are going to achieve them. By planning out how you are going to achieve your goals you are making them easier to achieve. Lets look at an example from my Blogging Goals page where I stated that I wanted to take my RSS feed count to the 150 mark. I now need to plan my way to achieving this, so instead of saying that I am going to reach this goal by the end of July, I break it down into smaller goals. This could be by saying I will aim for 75 RSS subscribers by the end of July then for 150 by the end of August. This makes my goals more achievable and helps to keep me motivated.

In order to keep track of your goals you need to be analyzing them, this is not an easy process, but it has now become a whole lot easier thanks to Vandelay Website Design and ProTycoon.com. I came across a spreadsheet designed by Vandelay which helps to track your progress per month to help you achieve your blogging goals. I have adapted the spreadsheet slightly from the original to focus it more towards blogs.

The spreadsheet allows you to track your blogs Unique Visitors, Page Views, Subscriber Count, Technorati Rank, Technorati Authority, Blog Revenue and Post Count every month so that you can view your growth. This spreadsheet should cover many of your blogging goals that you have, you can also add any extra ones onto the end.

By using the spreadsheet you can see which areas of your blog are improving well and which need a little more work.

You can download the spreadsheet here: Blogging Goal Tracker.

I have used the spreadsheet to help me track ‘My Technorati Targets‘ over recent weeks and have achieved one of them, as I have dramatically improved my Technorati Rank, I still have two more left to achieve. In order to help me achieve another of my Technorati Targets, please add ProTycoon.com to your Technorati favourites. I will be writing a post dedicated to how I achieved my Technorati Goals, so if you want to learn how to increase your technorati stats, I suggest you subscribe to my feed, so you don’t miss my future posts.

I want to know, how do you analyze your blogging goals? Have you recently achieved a goal?

Help me reach 150 RSS subscribers by Subscribing to my Feed via a Reader, or Via Email!

RSS Group Writing Project

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I would today like to introduce you to my new project. It is called ‘The Bloggers Survey’, as the name suggests it will be a survey of bloggers, with the aim of obtaining valuable information to help us all improve our blogs.

How does ‘The Bloggers Survey’ work?

The first stage of the process is to build up a list of questions that we all have about blogging, these questions will then be turned into a survey that I hope will be completed by 1000s of bloggers, once the survey is over it will then be turned into a report that will be shared via ProTycoon.com and will hopefully answer all your questions.

What Happens Now?

We need your questions! I have already established a list of questions that people have sent me and that I have thought about. I now want to know what questions you have about blogging, so that I can help create a survey that answers all your questions.

It can be about anything related to blogging, no matter how big or small.

Post your questions in the comments section below and I will add them to the survey.

I would also like to know what you think of the survey, and also any other ideas that you think can be implemented into it?

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Yesterday I asked the question ‘Is Your Blog Ready?’, one of the benchmarks I used to judge whether or not a blog was ready was by whether it had an ‘About‘ page.

The ‘About’ page of your blog should give people an insight into:

• Who you are
• What you do
• What you aim to teach
• How people can contact you

You do not need to write an essay or your life story as most visitors will use your about page to have a quick glance at who you are and what you do. If you have a look at my ‘About‘ page, you will notice that it is very short and addresses the points I highlighted above.

By not having an ‘About’ page on your blog you are not allowing people to get a quick insight into who you are and what your blog has to offer, this can put a few readers off your blog as they want to know what the blog is all about at a quick glance.

You can also use your ‘About’ page to highlight some of your ‘Top Posts’ or any other blogs that you are currently working on. I have split the ‘About‘ page and ‘Top Posts‘ page on ProTycoon.com but will be merging them into one in the coming weeks. I have included a picture of myself in my ‘About’ page as it allows people to get a picture of the person who is writing the blog.

I want to know what you use the ‘About’ page for on your blog? And what you look for in an ‘About’ page on a blog that you are reading?

Further Reading:

• How To Write Your ‘About Me’ page?
• Adding An About Page To Your Blog

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