It’s been roughly 7 days since I turned commenting off on Cash Quests and during that time I’ve been keeping track of the results on the site. Now they will be revealed!

Turning commenting off was done with a deep consideration of the reasons and consequences. I’ve recently been analyzing every single pixel of Cash Quests and contemplating how that pixel is used and whether it works towards the ultimate goal of Cash Quests…to make money!

Consequently, I formulated a few theories and thoughts about comments and decided to test whether they were accurate or not. A lot of the theories are based on the assumption that only 3% of readers leave comments (although it may be a different 3% each time) but the results indicate that the percentage doesn’t really matter at all.

A lot of these theories could (and may) constitute an entire post devoted them. They are discussed briefly here:

Pageviews will decrease: A 6% decrease in pageviews occurred as visitors are not clicking the comments link to write or view comments. Those who view the site through a reader are also not be coming “on site” for the comments. This would be bad if the site displayed pay-per-impression advertising, but as Cash Quests doesn’t have any advertising at all this was not a concern. The readers are still there!

RSS subscribers will increase: A 5% increase in the past 7 days. Without comments, there are only two click choices at the end of a post now - read another post or subscribe to the feed. There are no links leading to commentator’s sites and no avatar distractions which keeps the focus tight on the content. The increase is slightly above the weekly average increase for Cash Quests.

There will be more incoming links: With most visitors having their own sites, I predicted that there would be some readers who would choose to respond to Cash Quests on their own site if they were unable to leave comments here. The results were difficult to judge as it depends a lot on the nature of the posts on Cash Quests but the links coming in have definitely been of a higher quality than usual. Instead of just a “check this out” link, there have been more posts focused entirely on Cash Quests than usual.

The sense of community will decrease: This one made the decision quite hard! Without comments, there is definitely a decrease in the community feeling of the site. However, I believe that a blog isn’t a community in the first place. If Cash Quests were a community everybody would have an equal chance of having their voices heard and there wouldn’t be just one person writing 90% of the content for the site - and taking 100% of the revenue! A blog is part of a community of bloggers but it isn’t a community itself.

Better relationships will be built: Without having to spend time reading, moderating and replying to comments I predicted that I would have more time to spend e-mailing and building relationships with other bloggers. This has definitely occurred with some fantastic relationships being built that have resulted in some very high PR links being both given and received.

Every page will convert better: You can spend hours creating great looking copy that works perfectly with the overall design of your site, but as soon as the first comment hits you’ve lost the control over how your page flows and looks. I never know how traffic will arrive at Cash Quests so I like every page have the same effect as a purpose-built landing page. With comments, that ability is lost. Without them, conversions have definitely increased!

Abusive emails will be sent: My theory was correct and they ranged from “you’re an arrogant b*tch” to “no comments is really p*ssing me off” but the fact that readers were still able to send these via the contact form shows that they were more concerned about having their voices heard publicly than actually responding to what I had to say. In the end, if you want to tell me what you think, the contact form is always open. If you can’t be bothered to use it - was it really worth saying?

Search engine traffic will increase: Some argue that comments are great as it means your site is constantly updated which results in more crawling by search engines and that comments provide a great source of long-tail keywords. However, as this site is always continually updated and any posts older than a week rarely receive comments, that argument falls a little flat. Similarly, the only long-tail keywords that most commentators help to rank for is “great post” and “I agree“. It’s too early to judge if search engine traffic has increased, but without comments I’ve been able to control the keyword density and semantics of the site which I predict will result in more search engine traffic eventually.

Posts will be more viral: You can spend hours writing viral content but if the first commentator says “nice bit of linkbait!“, it has lost all it’s appeal and nobody will be inclined to link to it as they feel they are being baited. However, there is the opposite effect in that when people see a lot of positive comments they are more inclined to believe that it’s great content and subsequently spread it. This theory will be tested further at a later date.

Review orders will increase: Some reviews written on other sites have immediately received comments such as “oh great, another paid review” and “how much did you get paid for this one?” which doesn’t help anybody. I aim to keep my reviews unbiased as an overly positive review doesn’t help anyone but with comments the overall feeling of the page can become very biased quickly. Removing comments has allowed the reviews to remain unbiased. Review orders are currently coming in quite fast and I recommend ordering one right away!

Less time will be spent deleting spam: If you spend just one minute per day deleting spam, it’s 6 hours per year of your time wasted. No comments = no comment spam. A no-brainer!

Productivity will increase: When a question is asked in the comments, I feel it is polite to reply. Furthermore, when someone disagrees with me, I feel obliged to correct them on why they are wrong. Without having to spend time doing this, my productivity has increased and I’ve been able to spend more time researching content. As a result, I feel that Cash Quests has never been better!

It may be true that I’m an arrogant b*tch, but the results seem to indicate that at this point in time Cash Quests is a better site with comments turned off. I have always loved the instant feedback and gratification from a highly-commented post but in the end I’m a statistics freak and if the stats say they have to go - they’re gone!

Will they be off forever? Hmm…no comment!

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