And if you're blogging to grow your business, you might be asking yourself this… does allowing blog comments on your blog add more zeros to your bank account?

I don't think it does and I outline my reasons why below.

As a thinking-out-of-the-box internet markete, I THRIVE on getting feedback about what I say or write. My inbox gets a steady parade of new marketing ideas, critiques and suggestions on how to help with my broadcast. And I love it. Life without feedback would be a very lonely life.

But after analyzing the pros and cons of blog commenting, I've decided to block comments on my blog… here's why:

Spam
Most comments come from spammers… either flat out spam, or spam thinly disguised as a legitimate comment. Either way, the vast majority of blog comments are worthless to my visitor.

With the prevelance of blog comment spam, you're going to need to install spam prevention software. And that's great. Programs like Aksimet are great at stopping blog comment spam. But some spam falls through the cracks and you're going to invest time determining if the comment is legit or not.
 
Even worse, you run the risk of having Google ban your AdSense account if you don't weed out spam comments! So that leads into:

Time
Keep in mind that every 10 minutes you spend playing cop with your blog comments is 10 precious minutes you lose writing for your blog. And writing content for your blog is going to attract a heck of a lot more visitors to your website than moderating your blog comments.

Dilution of SEO
While it's true that blog comments give your post an added chance of getting featured in the search engines, I find most people who comment instead dilute the search engine optimization of my blog posts.

False Accusation
This is a tough one for me. Because I HATE censorship and love to comment on other blogs to warn others of a scam. However, competitors have been known to make up falsehoods out of thin air. And the last thing I need is a jealous competitor posting false accusations on my blog (and dealing with replying to it).

Legal Issues
Yes, there are laws to protect website owners of malicious and slanderous comments on a blog, but who wants to be hassled with a lawsuit? I don't. That's another HUGE and massive waste of precious time… time I'd rather use to grow my business.

Setup to Fail
Now I love to help people. It's my achilles heel at times.  And when someone asks me a question, I'm thrilled to reply with an answer. I've never once backed down from the toughest questions.

With that said, allowing blog comments is a surefire way to suck a ton of time away from you — giving you less time to work on your marketing.

In most cases, answers to questions require large blocks of time (no matter how hard you try to keep it brief).

But here's the biggest issue for me… the followup comment. More often than not, answering one question opens the floodgates to multiple followup questions. On one hand, you don't want to be perceived as a jerk and ignore the followup question, but it's unfair to your business to reply over and over again.

It's for these reasons I'm confident that I'm making the right choice in closing blog commenting. I'd ask you to weigh in and give me your thoughts on the pros and cons of blog comments, but obviously my comments are closed. How ironic is that?

With that said, I do offer a direct way for people to contact me (via email and support ticket). I find this significantly slashes the time I choose to invest helping readers of my blog.