Earlier today, I was watching Stephen Pierce’s Multi-Dimensional Marketing (great product, btw) and he had just started talking about marketing via email and blogs.
While listening to him, I thought to myself, “Self, you have a blog that currently averages 20-30 comments per entry. That’s a lot of e-mail addresses that are going to waste because they aren’t on your mailing list. Hmmm…how can you get out an offer to them?”
Then something clicked. Comment spammers think it’s okay to exploit your comments for their own gain (rather annoyingly), so why can’t you?
Think about it — if you’re using the WordPress Subscribe to Comments plugin (which you should be), and the reader has opted to receive follow up comments after theirs, they are basically inviting you to email them via the comments.
Now, I’m not saying harvest all those e-mail addresses and add them to your mailing list — that’s just wrong on so many levels. What I am saying is, leave a comment after theirs.
If you’re really covert, you can probably promote your product, affiliate link, or another website without their noticing, as long as your comment remains on topic.
Of course, this means you’d have to promote commenting on your blog and create content worthy of comment.
