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Get Inspiration from Blog Comments When Writing your Next Post

Posted: 28 Dec 2008 06:37 AM PST

Today Marko shares a quick tip on how to generate post ideas from the comments left on previous posts.

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.

PS from Darren: for those interested in the above two topics there are a few posts in the ProBlogger archives that cover them. Check out: