Enable Blog Comments Or Disable Blog Comments

Blog comments and if you should enable or disable comments on your blog is one of those questions that triggers a lot of answers for both sides in the forums

Looking at blogs on the internet, it's interesting to see that the blogs that seem to have the most success all have comments enabled. They encourage you the reader to post comments on their blog

Yes we all know the major problem with enabling blog comments. Spam

Just too many people trying to get quick and easy backlinks to their sites by posting comments on every blog they come across. It would not be so bad if the comments had any relevance to what the post is discussing or if the user names were not so...spammy

And as bloggers we could implement comment moderation to keep the spam out

But if you are like me, you probably have a bunch of blogs in different niches and moderating them all could fast become a full time job.

So yes, it's understandable why some of you are reluctant to enable comments on your blogs

BUT

All my blogs have comments enabled. I'll give you a few reasons why I have comments on my blogs

• Good source of content. Some comments do truly ad to the conversation and give some valuable information to your readers. Even if the comment does not agree with what the stance I am taking in the post, it gives another view on the subject. And there is the search engine value of the added content
• Good source of ideas. I wrote a blog post recently and someone asked how does he achieve some other thing with his blog. Hmmm, hang on a minute, he just gave me an idea for my next blog post
• Reader participation. I like visiting blogs that are interested in my point of view. Call me egoistic or whatever but I like to voice my opinion. I also tend to go back to blogs where the author has responded to my comment. If it works on me, I am certain it will work on other blog readers. it's about being made to feel like you are a valued part of the blogs audience.

So to answer the question 'should you enable comments on your blog?' I would say definitely yes