I think that in the end there is nothing that makes more impact like comments!

More the comments, more the interest!

We spoke when you first started this blog. I’m glad to see you’re still at it! After reading your post, I’ve decided to experiment a bit and see what happens when I comment.

-Beverly

New readers will find you during the commenting sessions and may subscribe or comment. Those who enjoy your site will stick around even while you’re not commenting much because they’ve already found you.

However, when you stop commenting you get less new readers from that process but a smaller amount from the new readers who may be plugging you anyway.

I also find that traffic brings traffic. The more you get, the more will come.

(This all made sense in my head but seems less logical written down.)

Perhaps many of the comments that you left in June brought people here initially and then your great content during July (which was WAY up in the post # to previous months since you’ve been on the road) kept them coming back for more.

Just a thought…
-Suz

As I’m still starting out with my blog the number of hits are still low, but in one experiment I did, I used the Google Blog search to see other blogger’s posts specifically about the same thing I had just written about and left them a comment that I felt contributed to the discussion. I haven’t much frame of reference since I’ve barely tried to get my blog out there (still not 100% happy with the layout), but that brought me a burst of traffic; mostly because one person wrote a post specifically about my blog and another one put a link to my blog on their site (I didn’t ask them to). Obviously commenting on old posts won’t get any visitors from their regular subscribers, so directly contacting the blogger would probably achieve the same thing. I’ve tried the “great post” comments too, and that DOES get visitors, but only for a couple of seconds, which barely counts; so it’s yet another reason to actually try and contribute to the discussion.

I think your own experiment has the “noise” of so many other sources of traffic (I myself found you through Google Reader’s recommendation), so I agree with François above. I think two similar blogs running in parallel, with good content but too new to be known, one with a lot of comments linking back to it and the other without would really give more conclusive results!

At least one thing we see is that you had less comments in July; that would be logical since a lot of people feel like giving back a comment when you leave them one. But it’s not down too far… face it, you just have too good content to need to rely on comment traffic like the rest of us

It also depends on where you post your comments. I managed to get a basic “great post” comment in first on a post that made it to the digg page and I got some great flow-over from it (alas, all less than 10 second stays though).

I’m trying out a few new experiments myself this month so do write about any other ideas you may have

Do you have any suggestions for books or something I could purchase to learn about website building?

I suppose if your blog is good (i.e. contains information that are interesting to at least a group of Internet savvy people), then it just needs that initial hurdle to be crossed. After that much of your reader growth comes through your initial readers? Almost like word of mouth?

I can’t remember how I came across your blog, but I do know it was NOT because I followed the link from a comment left by you. I think I was searching for something about free living… can’t remember.

Anyways, good post.