At the time of writing this, there has been 34 comments to my Create A Media Kit To Attract Advertisers To Your Blog guest post at ProBlogger.net. One of the good things about getting a guest post spot at a bigger blog is that the number of comments is larger as well.
Getting higher number of comments from your targeted audience allows you to learn more about them, what they think about your writing, what questions did you raise in their minds and what answers they are looking for. This can give you inspiration on what you can write about in your future blog posts.
Some of the comments on my guest post at ProBlogger give an idea on what readers are interested to learn about. I can see ideas for two new blog posts after reading the following comments:
When is my blog ready to start attracting advertisers?
1. 100% agree with you Darren, but the point when shall i create one? my blog is couple of days old yet, i think i need to raise it and then create a Media Kit & a Rate Card for it, right? what do you think?
2. I’m wondering what level of traffic should you have on a monthly visit before you attempt to sell advertising space?
How do I know how much I should charge for my advertising space?
1. It would be good to have some discussion about ad rates vs. traffic to help us neophytes figure out how much we can reasonably charge and yet not undercharge. For example, if you’re getting about 3,000 page visits a month, what is the market rate range for particular size ads?
2. Is there any place that one might find some practical amounts to charge per traffic rate? I know that is hard to answer with specifics, but ball park numbers are what I had in mind.
3. One thing that I’m quite confused is how to start the initial ad rates so that I can get more advertisers interested to put their ad in my blog?
So the question is, do you have any knowledge on when it is a right time for a new blog to start contacting potential blog advertisers? Or how much should a blogger charge for the advertising space, how should the calculation be made so it doesn’t undersell nor oversell the blog?
Good thing about getting inspired for post topics with this method, is that you know that your audience is interested in learning more about it and you know that there is a demand for it. This will help you as there is a potential of your blog post to spread virally as readers will recommend you to others if you answer their questions and help them out.
Find questions that you target audience asks in your blog or in the similar blogs and start writing posts on topics inspired by reader comments. Do them as best as you can, publish them on your blog or try to get a guest post spot at a bigger blog in your field and see your blog traffic and RSS subscribers grow.
Image by: Muha
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
STUMBLED!
This is definitely a great idea for not only those days when you have writter’s block but when writing in general.
Good tip.
Awesome post. Answering a question in a post is good because people will likely be looking for it.
This is a great idea. Often, the tendency is to answer questions in comments. But by creating a new post, it is more likely that people will read it. And then it can spawn more discussion. (Btw, nice header.)
This is a great point, quite often some of the most spirited and varied conversations on a blog come in the comments section. Taking those conversations and expanding on them is a great way to bring interesting content to your readers.
Great post,
Matt
Great point. Often what we think is the most important thing we can write about (because we care about it most or we think everyone needs to know about it) isn’t very popular. Then something that we almost didn’t post or weren’t that excited about ourselves turns out to really strike a cord with people.
In addition to checking comments, check your traffic stats. You’ll probably find that a few of your articles account for a lot of your traffic. It makes sense to mine that popularity and expand on those topics.
Thanks for your comments!
@Lindsay: I agree with traffic stats comment. If something works very well for you, expand on it and try to build a whole series of articles on that theme.
I am definitely going to bookmark this page and and come back to it as a reference. Just reading the post has given me all sorts of ideas for my blog. I often tell people, once you start to brand yourself, product or service and start building a community around that brand; listening to what your customers say is very key, not to mention how much you can learn from them.
Thanks for the post!
Good stuff!
Thanks
Great Post!
I write most of my posts based on my readers comments and ask them to leave questions they have about HTML, CSS and anything else design/blog based in the comments section for Tutorial Tuesday Posts.
I also get great ideas from Twitter.
Ah yes.Another tool to add to my prolific arsenal!
Stumbled upon you this evening – glad I did so.
Heading over to subscribe…
George
Great ideas here. You can also use comments from other people’s blogs, ones on which you are leaving your own comment, to get inspiration for topics. I get ideas for blog posts from reading anything and everything I can get my hands on in the blogisphere, feedback from my own blog and, as I just mentioned, from comments other people leave on blogs I’m commenting on. In fact, I got an idea or two from this one. Thanks.