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Blog Marketing: Monetize The Comments On Your Blog

February 8th, 2008 by Vishen Lakhiani Read more about Creating Trust Online, Online Community

I stum­bled upon Ramit Sethi’s blog IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com. Ramit is the the co-founder & VP of Mar­ket­ing for PBwiki, a wiki startup in Sil­i­con Val­ley and he blogs about per­sonal finance.

Ramit runs a great blog with some excel­lent con­tent and a wicked sense of humor. But I was most impressed with a lit­tle con­ver­sion trick he’s run­ning on his blog.

When some­one com­ments on a post they are taken to a page that invites them to signup to Ramit’s mail­ing list and to visit his dis­cus­sion forum. The copy and look of this page all make it seem like Ramit is reward­ing the vis­i­tor for the com­ment and grant­ing access to pri­vate, top-secret info. Check out the screen shot below.

Picture 2-4

Why do like this idea?

The vis­i­tors who com­ment on a post are usu­ally ones that are most inter­ested in your con­tent. They are, in other words, “hot leads”. But with most blogs, these vis­i­tors will often move on and never revisit unless they’re hooked up to your RSS feed. But RSS feeds are not enough.

To keep your vis­i­tors com­ing back, why not offer them a newslet­ter sub­scrip­tion or an invi­ta­tion to join a forum.

Ramit does this and improves upon the idea by using the sense of ‘exclu­siv­ity’ to make the vis­i­tor feel that they earned the right to access the forum and sub­scribe to Ramit’s newslet­ter due to the time they spent com­ment­ing. I bet this aura of exclu­siv­ity boosts the value of his forum and newslet­ter in the visitor’s mind and should lead to more return­ing visitors.

Ramit’s Blog is here. (make a com­ment!)

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About the Author

Vishen Lakhiani Vishen is a co-founder of MindValley. Before MindValley, he was an exec in Silicon Valley and New York for several internet and technology firms. He turned bedroom entrepreneur at 27 and by the time he was 31 had founded 6 web businesses and never had to work a conventional job again.

Check out other posts by Vishen Lakhiani

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14 Responses to “Blog Marketing: Monetize The Comments On Your Blog”

  1. Friday Roundup 2/8/2008 | semvironment

    […] Blog Mar­ket­ing: Mon­e­tize The Com­ments On Your Blog — Awe­some tech­nique and a great find from Vishen over at Mind­Val­ley­Labs! Share It: These icons link to social book­mark­ing sites where read­ers can share and dis­cover new web pages. […]

  2. troy

    What an inter­est­ing idea. I think that may incor­po­rate well into what I am try­ing to build. thanks

  3. Cool way to build your mailing list - use comments - ComTech News

    […] Cool way to build your mail­ing list — use com­ments Posted in Blog­ging by jspirko on Feb­ru­ary 10th, 2008 I just came across this post by Mind Val­ley Labs.  In a nut shell here is the way to go about build­ing your mail­ing list with your blog com­ments.  When a user com­ments on your blog cus­tomize the results page to prompt them to opt in to your mail list. […]

  4. Using comments to build your email list

    […] I picked this up from a blog I read about mak­ing money online called, Mind­Val­ley Labs. The tech­nique is pretty strait for­ward and should be really effec­tive. All you do is cre­ate a “thank you” mes­sage so that any­one that com­ments on your blog is then imme­di­ately asked to join your email list. That is a nice pas­sive add on form of email mar­ket­ing isn’t it? Now to me this is sort of the type of thing we should have all been doing a long time now. I mean when you get a com­ment that per­son is engaged with you there is no bet­ter time to ask them to take action then while they are in action. […]

  5. Building Wealth

    So any ideas on how to do this on a word press blog. Not the free one but the one you host yourself?

    I think it is a pretty damn cool idea. I could have a plug in writ­ten to do it on Word Press but if you know a way or of an exist­ing plug in I would like to know about it.

  6. Presupuestos de Mudanzas

    I think is a great idea. But a lit­tle obtrusive.

  7. Chris

    This is a great con­cept. We do get vis­i­tors but only a few take time to com­ment. Even if they com­ment, only some of them come back to see the feed­back. Get­ting the vis­i­tors to sub­scribe is a great way to keep them informed about the updates of the blog and gain traffic.

  8. sudirman

    Great idea. :)

  9. Ryan from Internet Marketing Blog

    Great idea!

    This is some­thing I’ve never thought of.

  10. Hipotecada

    great idea, should be great to add adsense on that step.


    luz feliz
    Foro Mundo Presta­mos

  11. iip

    cool!

  12. MindValley’s Social Media Marketing Unveiled | MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

    […] 5. Blog Mar­ket­ing: Mon­e­tize The Com­ments On Your Blog […]

  13. Steve Metcalfe

    Wow, that’s so powerful.

    You know, just by chance I stum­bled upon this page and now I’m glad I did because we all want to know these lit­tle tweaks that bring in more peo­ple over time.

    The sug­ges­tion in this post will have to go down as one of those “small” tweaks that we can all make that will make a mas­sive effect over time.

    Thanks again Vis­han. I’ll keep my eyes out for your next mailing.

    Cheers,
    Steve
    http://click-here-for.the7greatliesofnetworkmarketing.com/

  14. Andy

    Hey,

    I’m actu­ally work­ing with Ramit from iwillteachyoutoberich.com, and he pointed me to this post.

    We wanted to hook you up with some­thing cool as a thanks for link­ing to his site– six free chap­ters from his new book. Email me at andrewlynch88@gmail.com and I’ll send you the link where you can sign up for it in a few seconds.

    Thanks,

    Andy

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