This one might get me in trouble!

A lot of people — especially when they first get on the scene — want to know how to build up their reader base. How do you get people to come to your website and check you out? How to you bump up your feedburner stats? How do you get more comments?

Well the traditional ways — commenting on other sites, taking part in discussions, offering good content — are all good and valid, but I’ve found a great way to almost guarantee that people will come check you out again and again:

Hustle the newbies and lame, boring punk bloggers.

Oh yeah, I said it! It sounds harsh, but it’s true, and for different reasons. Taking the newbies first, they are getting their feet wet and know nothing about blogging, except what they read online about making money and seeing ShoeMoney’s infamous check. You really have to have your own reasons for blogging these days, because everyone and their momma wants to make money online, but about 95% of that group doesn’t want to put in the work required to rise to the level of an A-List blogger. Da Hustler started out on that track, truth be told, but quickly found his niche and is definitely giving the blogging world something different than strictly learning how to make money online.

Ok, back to the newbies. Because they are indeed new, they often want someone to hold their hand and lead them through the cold, murky waters of the unknown. They want to learn from your successes, mistakes and failures so they can be the best little blogger they can be. Who can blame them? And when they start out, they really want attention, so if you comment a few times on their site, they will see you as someone who cares; you took the time to reply to their post, give them advice, and point out a flaw on their site, and for that they will be eternally grateful.

Oh, and they really love when you send e-mails to them. Whether it’s personal advice or a nice comment, they will eat it up like fried chicken at a family picnic.

So what’s the deal with the punk bloggers? When you come across these people, you’ll know it because they have erratic posting schedules, they are begging for attention and have only one or two comments among 75 of their posts. Also, they’ve been on the scene for a good while now, and they love to make excuses for why they are doing something. You’ll notice they apologize a lot, but judging from the lack of comments, I often wonder who exactly are they apologizing to? I love these bloggers because when you leave a comment, they treat you like the rescue helicopter after Hurricane Katrina. They’ll absorb your attention like a sponge, and if you drop in consistently and leave a brief:

I like what you said, you’ve got some good insight!

or even:

That is okay, but you should think about the person who may not feel that way

prepare to add another dependent to your tax forms next year.

Some may think this is slightly unethical, and if you really have no other motive than to boost your blogroll or visitor counts, then yeah you’re just plain wrong. Da Hustler likes to help people big and small, young and old, and although you can’t make people have better habits which would truly boost their brand (posting more often, going out and telling the world you’re out there, etc.), you can encourage them along the way, and since you are one of the few who took the time to do that, they will love you for it.