Thanks to Readers

Each month I thank all my commenters for the previous month. On my latest thank-you post, I had a comment from a regular saying the list was a nice tribute to readers, but he wasn’t listed.

This is part of my reply:

Actually this is a tribute to commenters. I would like to recognize all readers, but I don’t know who they are. I only know you’ve been here is if you leave a comment. … If you come and read posts and don’t comment, I appreciate it very much. But I have way of knowing that, so I can’t thank you.

I started thinking about this, though, and realized I need to let readers who don’t comment that I appreciate them also. I have a lot more readers than commenters, usually 12,000 to 15,000 visitors but only 100 to 200 comments each month. I want the thousands of readers who don’t comment to know that I am glad they take the time to visit and read my blog.

I certainly understand why people don’t comment. I subscribe to a couple hundred blogs and review them in my feed reader. Sometimes I read the headline and first couple of sentences and mark the post as read because the topic doesn’t interest. Usually I read the entire post in the reader and never go to the blog site. Rarely a post is so compelling that I click over to the blog and leave a comment.

If the feed is only a partial post, it’s very unlikely that I will bother to click over to the blog to read the entire post. There are about three blogs I like so much, I will read them in spite of having only partial feeds. But those are special blogs, indeed. I suspect a large percentage of blog readers have similar reading habits.

If you read but don’t comment, thank you. I appreciate your taking the time to visit and read my words. I know how much competition there is for your reading time, and I’m delighted that you spend some of that time here. I hope one day you’ll find a post so compelling that you feel that you have to comment. But even if that never happens, I appreciate you!

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