March 2, 2015

How Leaving Comments Grows a Blog & Freelance Business

How 30 Minutes a Day Could Make You $1,835/Mo.

How Leaving Comments Grows a Blog and Freelance Business

Freelance sites and marketing coaches tell you all the time! A freelance creative must start a blog. It's supposed to be great for personal branding and generating enquiries. It's likely true, but what if no one ever sees your carefully crafted blog posts..?

A popular online marketing myth is “write great content and they will come.” Unfortunately, blogging doesn't work like that for most of us.

You must promote your blog posts.

Leaving comments on other websites can be a powerful way to drive traffic to your blog.

Leaving just one comment per day could eventually mean thousands of monthly visitors

Intrigued? Continue to read!

A Good Comment Linking Back to You Is Like Money In the Bank – Its Value Grows with Time

As an experiment, I decided to submit three comments every weekday for three weeks this January. In total, I left 55 comments on sites like Graphic Design Blender, Creative Bloq, 99designs and 99u. Out of the submitted comments, 26 were finally approved and published by the websites. Each comment linked back to a specific blog post on Flaunt My Design. I tracked the number of visits I was generating with Google Analytics.

What happened?

It turned out to be a powerful experiment!

My comments did indeed drive some visits. 625 to be exact. Some visits happened immediately, but 73% of the visits actually took place after I stopped commenting. See below chart!

Chart. How Leaving Comments Grows a Blog and Freelance Business - Resized

I was surprised. I expected a temporary boost in traffic, but the visits just keep rolling in. In average, the 26 approved comments has continued to generate almost 20 daily visits. Day in, day out. They still do.

Why is this important?

With the above results, leaving just 5 good comments per week will grow your blog to 2,500 visitors/month within a year!

The Bottom Line of Leaving Comments

Chances are you haven't a blog yet, or that your blog only has a few hundred visitors a month? What if your blog instead could attract 2,500 monthly visits? What would it mean for your freelance business, at the bottom line?

Eventually, 2,500 blog visits could mean an extra $1,835 in monthly sales.

That's the bottom line of leaving comments.

How is that possible?

How Commenting Translates into Sales

In the below charts and table, you can see how comments convert into paying clients! The basic assumption is that you get the same results as in my experiment:

  • 47% of the submitted comments are approved.
  • Each approved comment will continuously drive 0,67 visits per day.

In addition to the figures derived from my experiment, the forecast is based on these 5 key figures.

  1. 1 comment/weekday (submitted)
  2. 1 out of 200 blog visitors makes an inquiry
  3. 1 out of 4 inquiries leads to a proposal
  4. You close 50% of the proposals
  5. Your average order is $1,200 (2 days of work á $75/hr)

Result will improve with time, as your “body of comments” accumulates. The below charts and tables shows a first year of commenting.

The below charts and tables are interactive. You can adjust the 5 key figures in the light grey input fields:

The Added Benefits of Commenting

Leaving comments on other people's blogs and websites is a powerful way to promote your blog.

Of course, there is a limit to how many high-quality comments you can leave per day, For me, three comments a day was a stretch. Also, at some point, it's likely diminishing returns will kick in.

However, high-quality commenting will also build your personal brand. It's also a way to connect with other bloggers. In the long run, the bonus effects may become what's really grows your freelance business.

Need more convincing about the benefits of leaving comments? Check out Neil Patel's similar commenting experiment: How I Generated $25,000 with 249 Comments.

Do you need advice on how best to leave comments on other people's blogs? Read Problogger's Ultimate Guide to Leaving Comments and Blog Tyrant's Killer Comments.

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