Blog Traffic and Comments?
OK, I’m going to give you a cool way to bring life back into your blog. This site has been around a while because I’ve been using it for at least six months or more, but it’s a site where you can get people to do anything you want them to do, anything that requires a human set of eyes and action.
The site is called “Mechanical Turk,” and it’s an Amazon.com site. You can get there by going to http://requester.mturk.com and you can use it to get readers for your blog, and here’s how:
You set up what’s called a “HIT,” which stands for something like human interactive task. To create the HIT, you simply fill out some very specific instructions. “Go to http://OVBLogger.com and read a post or two. If you find something of interest that you enjoyed, please leave a comment. The comments can be positive or negative. Just write what you feel.” But you can make up your own, and then, pay people to do this.
The great part is that you don’t pay very much. Different tasks go for different amounts of change. For example, you can get someone to vote for your posts on social bookmarking sites for 1 – 3 cents. I pay ten times that for a good comment, but you can see how it’s still inexpensive. I just put about $10 a month into my account at Mechanical Turk and it lasts, though comments have been coming by the boatload lately. Still, I can double that and… please. It’s el cheapo.
One of the by-products of this, of course, is that you’re getting traffic. Usually when people read the blog but it makes no sense to them, they just return the HIT and go on their way. So, I’m getting qualified, targeted readers, too, which is cool.
There are two caveats. One is that you have to explicitly put in your HIT that you won’t pay for drive-by commenting, such as “nice post.” That’s just unacceptable. You want your commenter to have at least read the post and agree or disagree with what you’ve said. Also be sure that the commenter is able to comment in the language of the blog. I made that a spec of my HIT, as well.
The second warning is that I’m not sure Google likes this, but they don’t like my paid links, either. The dropped me back to a PR2 because of one or the other. But do I care?
No.
I want readers, and it would also be nice for Google to see things my way, but that may not happen. I figure that paying for readers is something that is working extremely well for me. It’s no different than paying for traffic, right? That’s basically what I’m doing. I’m getting people to come and see my blog that would probably have never found it in a bazillion years. And I’m getting new fans, too.
That totally works for me!
Also, you can put other HITs up, if you’re really creative. Get people to evaluate your copy, or to compare one page against another. Ask if they like an image you want to use. Ask them to complete a survey. You can get answers to many of your marketing questions this way and it’s dirt cheap.
My advice is to start slowly. I wouldn’t recommend getting posts Dugg or Stumbled Upon. It’s just not that effective. But, getting people to read your blog surely is. Try it.
Oh, and if you need a way to make a little extra cash… try Mechanical Turk from the other side of the coin. Because it’s an Amazon.com site, it’s totally on the up and up and there’s no need to worry whether you’ll be paid or not. You won’t earn much, but you will make some cash over time.
