Blog Scarcity
If you don't have a blog, you need to get one. If you do it right, it's just 10 minutes out of the month writing/scheduling that month's blog posts and maybe 30 minutes a month moderating and responding to comments.
But here's where my blogging style gets controversial... blog scacity. Limiting the number of comments.
Why on Earth would you limit the number of comments people can leave under your post? Here's why...
- Social Proof: Without comments, your blog looks empty. Many people are on the brink of commenting. Give them a reason to comment right now.
- Time Limit: Even if people want to comment, they take too long to think of an idea. This forces them to write what they're thinking right now.
- Interactivity: It makes your blog a fun and interactive place.
- Up-to-Date: Have you ever had someone comment on a post of yours that was a year or two old? Me too. It's annoying. I want people to comment on what's hot right now.
- Simplicity: When all the other blog posts are closed, there are fewer calls-to-action on the page.
- Perfect Fit: You can adjust the limit depending on the size of your blog. On a big blog, go for 100. On a smaller one, set it to 10 and then personally reply to everyone's comments.
- Exclusivity: It makes the early commenters special, they're the only ones with a comment on there.
- Schadenfreude: Everyone likes to watch ice skaters because they're secretly hoping they'll see someone fail... what if you don't fill up your number of comments?
- Differentiation: Most blogs haven't thought of this, or they're too chicken to try it, so you'll stand out just by doing this.
- Marketing: To fill up the number of comments, you might have to mail your list or more or stick the link in your autoresponder sequence (a good habit to have).
- Launch: To make sure everyone gets their comment in on time, you might have to announce the post a couple days ahead of time (another great habit).
- Results: It just plain works! You know you want more blog comments so implement this strategy of closing comments down after a certain number, and see what happens.
Which reason do you like the best? Do you think blog scarcity is a good or bad idea? Leave your quick opinion in the comment form below and click Submit Comment.
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I was in total awe several years ago when you first required ten comments before you would post the next blog entry. And I continue to admire you blog scarcity approach. It totally works! As soon as I see you have a new post up, I run right over to post. When you send out advanced notices I put it on my calendar to be sure I have the opportunity to add my two cents. So I’m totally sold on how well it works. (and no, I haven’t tried it on my blog but I’m asking myself why not? as I write. Look for changes…)
Thanks for yet another great idea, Robert!
I like #11 Launch best. Get that anticipation going… yeah boy
I like #3 Interactivity best – we all get a brief burst of community, but without the long time periods where nobody seems to be commenting.
This way we know exactly when to come hang out at your blog – as opposed to turning up and hoping that someone has seen and replied to our comments.
I have watched you limit the time and the amount of posts but I never really got the big picture until I read this post. Very cool and yes we all should start doing this. It really sets you apart from the pack, Robert!
It is time to start with 10.
Glenn,
Where are you going to use it first?
I had some great plans for my life story but for reasons I will not explain here I canceled it. I believe that I could develop an interesting blog that would produce a stable income. However, my brain is on low key and not very productive these days.
JHD
I think it’s a great idea, yet one I hadn’t even thought of attempting! I like #2 and #7. In fact, I often think I’m going to think about things and then get back to them, and then I forget to think about it or get back to it. And, who doesn’t want to feel special : – ) Thanks Robert!
Schadenfreude: Everyone likes to watch ice skaters because they’re secretly hoping they’ll see someone fail… Really!? everybody!? how horrible we all are… don’t think so Robert.
Other than that, blog scarcity seems to be a good idea, and I’ll take your word for it as you are the expert.
What I don’t like is auto-generated mass emails personally addressed to me (but I know it’s the auto responder coz I’m not totally stupid) but then I take the trouble to respond and don’t get a reply (surprise surprise) as the communication is only meant to be one way of course.
I like #9 because I personally had never thought of doing something like this. I’ve kind of let my personal blog slide and using blog scarcity might be an effective way to get it going again.
Thanks for a great idea!
I’m glad you explained your strategy. It makes more sense to me now. And it surely works for you.
However, I can also see reasons not to (at least not always) do it your way. I have a blog post on my dreamvisions.info blog that is still getting a slow, steady stream of comments after two years. People search the topic (phantom doorbells and telephone rings) on Google, show up, and are so happy to find others with the same weird dream.
Now they talk to each other, so I bought the keyword domain, and I’m going to start a forum site where they can discuss that and other dreams if they want to.
If I had limited comments, I would never have known there was so much interest or that the topic would build and build as it has. Apparently no one had written about it before.
It’s a tiny niche topic, but it does avidly interest a certain group of people—those who have experienced it. It will probably never make money, but it interests me, too.
Seems to me that the same thing could also happen with an unexpected niche that could make money….
I also suspect that some of what works for you, Robert is because of your unique personality. Your fans are bemused by your whimsy and interested to see what you do next. If someone else did some of the things you do, it might not go over so well.
Hey Robert,
I think it’s a good idea in the sense that it has been proven that scarcity DOES work.
On the other hand, you have to be willing to spend that extra time to babysit that blog and monitor to make sure you keep true to your promise of only allowing a certain # of post.
I like # 1 & 3 best because it not only helps your blog with respect to Google’s algorithm changes, but also increasing these “two” actions on your blog.
That’s my 2 cents… 😮
Cheers,
Paul Facey
Robert, you used to threaten to never blog again if you didn’t get the number of comments you were looking for. Or was it “no more posts till the comments fill up”?
Hi Dave,
I never saw it (or worded it) as a threat… it was just, if I don’t get 10 comments I’ll stop blogging. There’s no point in blogging unless there’s an audience, right? And at some point I started capping it where, if I received X number of comments, the blog post would close… and it worked even better.
I think it’s a totally crackpot idea and I wouldn’t even give the author the benefit of my comment.
I’m one of those schadenfreude cynics who would just love to see him fail.
Oh wait a second. Oops. Here I am anyway, commenting on his blog. Hey! I guess it really does work!
Where’s my Cliche Report?
What’s the cute widget you use to show the number of comments made and the number of remaining comments you will allow?
Every once in a while you read something online and you go…wow I never looked at it like that. Sometimes it is all just a matter of perspective. “When you think of yourself as a hammer, you look at everything like a nail.”
Sometimes what is really needed is a screwdriver or a chisel…this strategy is just like that. It is realizing that things are not always as we think they are and a new spin on it makes all the difference in the world.
Elektra,
It’s the call to action plugin: http://www.calltoactionplugin.com
You can set how many comments you want to allow in your blog posts, how many blog posts should have comments (i.e. the topmost one or the 5 most recent) and it automatically closes the blog post once all comments are filled… however many that is for you.
I started only allowing 10, then I made it 100 but I didn’t like that I had to mail 3-4 times to fill it up, so I’ve had a 50 comment limit for a while.
I like #3 and #4 and I know I need to get my own blog going. You know I set up the blog at PLRexplained.com and no one ever showed up even after I promoted it so I just quit. Not real smart I know.
You know, sometimes it is hard for an old geyser to to say he is learning so much from someone young enough to be his grandson but, it is true.
Keep up the good work,
Clyde
Very impressed Robert,
The detail you supply is outstanding thank you, will spend more time on your training idea’s myself. The more i learn the less i know if that makes sense!even for an old guy.
Thanks again keep up the great work.
Chris
And, of course, only making one post each month is a real example of scarcity in its own right.
I do like the style of this post. An excellent example of how you can produce a post which is interesting, useful and ready to engage conversation – and it’s immediately clear to everyone reading it how it can be written in 10 minutes.
Thom
While I understand your rationale I don’t know that I agree with all your points. Having said that I expect that you’ve tested all this so I’ll have to rethink my issues.
What an original concept taking what works on sales pages and using it on blog posts.
Having no comments on a blog post is not cool so I don’t mind having a comment on an 6 month old post.
Robert,
I love many of your strategies, but this one is not a good one, in my opinion.
Sometimes, your blog comments are really relevant and helpful, and sometimes they are relatively light on opinion, just because they want to get in before they are cut off.
And if your blog is set up well, you will be getting google juice, and people will find you much later on – and then they are denied the ability to join the conversation/discussion on a topic that is relevant to them in that moment.
I can see how you get more interaction with your ‘tribe’ in the short term because of this, but I also think that it is mostly generated/fake interaction.
My most commented blog post has 943 comments to date, and several more are added each week. (http://www.addadhdblog.com/category/vyvanse/page/2/ see post: Does Vyvanse work) Most of these people end up on my email list (thanks to your great plugins), and they are getting their issues addressed by the blog community. And, most importantly, google loves the user generated content which helps to keep this post high in google’s eyes for many relevant search terms.
I have many blog posts with 50, or even 200 comments, and I have other blog posts with hardly any comments. That’s OK in my eyes. It also lets me know which topics are relevant to my niche.
For a quick buzz – use your strategies.
For longevity, with a blog that is truly serving your readers – leave the comments open, and generate real interaction with your readers.
That’s my 2 cents 🙂
Kenny
p.s. I will say that your comment about Schadenfreude is pretty darn smart and insightful…
Hey Dr. Kenny,
I have brought a few old blog entries back to life and allowed more comments (i.e. iPhone post with 100+ comments and 200+ tweets) and I bet you didn’t even notice they were old (but updated) posts.
Also, I wonder if that blog post would be more helpful if you closed comments, used them in the original post in some way or even turned them into a report? Or had a link at the bottom of the post to a Vyvanse alternative?
Is it possible to have too many comments?
Psychologically I think that the comment scarcity suggests to people that they will lose out an opportunity to add a comment if they don’t do it right away. It’s sort of like the sales where the price keeps going up every few sales and people will buy so that they can get it at the cheapest price possible. So of course, I’m typing this in while I still can…
I think it’s a brilliant strategy, although I do wonder why you don’t increase the number of available comments to something like 100 or 200. I am really curious though – have you done split testing and found 50 comments to be the optimum number?
An interesting concept….
Cheers!
It’s time for me to start asking for comments on my blog again. The last three posts didn’t get anything. Need to build back up that social proof again.
Thanks for the great tips! I’ll have to go try it on my own post. 🙂
I liked #11 best and the one with schadenfreude the least, but that’s because I don’t like schadenfreude.
I like the idea of limiting comments. For me, it’s the time limit factor that gets me. I’m forever reading and thinking I’ll come back later to comment, and rarely make it back. So knowing that if I don’t get it done right now that it won’t get done is a huge incentive to comment as soon as I’m done reading.
I haven’t used this idea on any of my blogs yet, but am seriously thinking about it on one or two.
Thanks,
Lena
Robert,
Well, after reading all the post and the comments, I fall in the middle. I read at least 80% of the post but rarely comment. The limited amount of allowed post, or limited time, does nothing to influence me in any way. I post on a blog for one of the following reasons.
1. The topic particularly interest me. I either have knowledge/opinion to share or questions to ask.
2. The topic offends me and requires a viewpoint that is not shared in other posts.
This post is a opinion of tactics and one that works for Robert. I agree with the list of reasons except 7 and 8. Commenting on a blog post does NOT make me feel special regardless if I am first or last. And while the attraction of watching others fail works well for car racing and motorcycle jumps, I don’t believe that this plays into blog posting.
Good post Robert and some info to consider.
Carl
I think marketing and results are super important to develop blog scarcity.
At the moment, I have a list of less than 100 subscribers and I am wondering if it is best to wait to have a blog until we have a minimum amount of subscribers?
Sylvie,
My question for you is out of those 100 people are there even a couple that you have personally spoken with via email?
If you want 10 comments then all you need is 5 people to comment, then reply to each of those 5 blog comments.
If it takes you a month to get those 5 comments, who cares? Even 2-3 comments for now is better than those blogs with 0 comments… 0 comments… 0 comments.
Was just looking at my autoresponder and noticed that I had unintentionally used #11 last week. And you know what? I had a HUGE spike in sign-ups from that ‘anticipatory’ post.
Blog scarcity tactics do work – and not just for blogs. They work for anything. It’s a human nature thing. Initially (when I first started following you and Lance) I was skeptical too. Then I saw it working for you and working on me… and all this while I thought I was immune to these sort of tactics.
I’m amused at the naysayer comments by those who haven’t tried it or observed how it works.
Good job Robert.
Now I’m off to do some scarcity blogging 8o)
Hi Robert,
Social Proof is the clear winner for me – I have tested showing my recent comments and not showing my recent comments on my blog.
By showing the recent comments, I have added more subscribers to my list. Also, allowing people to comment on my blog posts provides me great feedback as to what I am doing well and what I can do better.
Warmest regards.
Libby
I post on a blog for one of the following reasons.
The topic particularly interest me. I either have knowledge/opinion to share or questions to ask.
The topic offends me and require my viewpoint.
however Commenting on a blog post does NOT make me feel special, but something I should do if I like or don’t like it.
I took time to read and article, why not post a comment.
Interesting stuff.
I really enjoyed reading this blog post and will definitely take a few of these thoughts into consideration 🙂
Keep it up!
Hi Robert and All
I can definitely see that limiting the comments is a good idea. If your blog has good content, it should get lots of comments. I’m just wondering, how would you limit comments other than moderating them manually. Is there a plugin that you could suggest?
Michael Blaes
Robert,
Dave, your bald elder law attorney from MN, here.
To all the “I am not sure about this”folks here park the critiques until after you have tried it.
Robert speaks what he does to help others not to misguide them. If you have a better idea, that “works” reliably the make a post about a better idea. Until then do what Robert suggeests and you will be happy at the results.
Dave
Brilliant!!! I am going to implement this strategy right now… thanks!!
Robert, you rock!
Did that thing show “Only 12 More Comments Will Be Allowed in This Blog Post…” right from the beginning? If yes, I think it works like magic, ’cause I was thinking, “Gee, I better post my comment so I can be one of the posters…”
So, yes, great idea… (and I’m green of gelousy, as my blogs get posts only once in a blue moon – I started getting better at asking for the comments, but I steel need to improve tremendously).
Cool stuff!
Doesn’t matter what the reason is .. it just works! I followed your example on one of my blogs and it turned from a ghost-town to getting my first comments posted. And it felt good to know people were actually reading and valuing my blog. Here’s what I learned:
1. You need a list whose interests tie into your blog so you can actively prompt them to comment
2. You need a post with quality content to get people motivated to comment
3. You need to pop back in and reply to keep the feel if two-way communication
4. You need to post then notify your list consistently – it’s easy to return to the ghost town scenario
Thanks for another really useful lesson.
Cheers
Ok… it seems it’s a real count-down… not a gimmick… So how can I get one of these countdown gadgets? — ok, just checked above, you already answered this question. Super! Thanks a million!
Jase,
That is a really good summary of what it takes.
You would still be surprised at how many people haven’t even thought to send a broadcast email to their subscribers when they make a blog post, or even put some of the blog posts in their automatic followup sequence for new subscribers.
Hey Robert…
This is a completely new idea for me, but very interesting angle.
Thanks for sharing 🙂
Kind regards
Uffe Kirkegaard
Interesting ideas! Never thought of limiting the number of comments on my blog before. Thanks for the idea. I may have to give it a try and see how it works!
Brad
Robert:
The smart thing you have going here is you have encouraged a dialogue. More comments translated into more activity, more links and improved rankings as well has brought you directly in front of your market constantly. I believe this not only increases your visibility but also helps others find the stuff you offer and sell. You are not a faceless dude hiding in the internet shadows but a sharp promoter which my friend Dr Cates recognizes. You are one of the few that challenges your readers regularily to engage.
Hi Robert,
I like the interactivity reason best to make it fun and interactive. Next best is the time limit to sort of force folks into action instead of procrastination.
Robert,
I find your methods refreshing and inspiring! This is my first comment but not my last….
Hi Robert,
While I have not worked with my blog comment area as much as I could, nor tried everything on your list, I do know that you are masterful at designing what kind of outcomes and results you want — and getting them.
I also know that this takes a LOT of forethought, as well as trial and error.
Most people are too impatient. They don’t want to put in that much work. So they only get a pittance of the results they want.
Thanks for demonstrating some of the input it takes to get those kinds of results 🙂
Nancy
Limiting comments has connotations of usefulness , reader appraisals, social acceptance etc..just what Google panda update is about..social interaction is king or queen depending on bloggers gender. I had 225 comments in 14 days the rss directories sent all the best spammers they could find. Silly me no captcha but geez these spammers had taken good lessons about leaving quality comments when spamming. This was before Panda and even it was after, Google would not give all the interactivity a ounce of worth so yeah limit them I say …with a captcha plugin.