Hey Bluedragon
How much value do you think comments offer? (That's not a rhetorical question - I would really like to know!) I don't have any comments on my sites and wonder if they are worth it. In my mind, they are another drain on your time because you have to moderate them for spam and for inappropriate content. Personally I visit a blog to read the article, not the comments. I trust the author but I don't know these other commentators from Adam. I don't consider them to be like a forum, where you can interact with other posters. And from an SEO perspective, if every commenter adds a link to their own site, I'll have lots of outgoing links which, unless they are linked back, damages my ranking with Google and co.
Is there a tight blogging community? Are you more likely to be found by other bloggers than me, with my website? Again, this interests me. I've never had a blog before and can't talk from experience. I do know that bloggers have written to me via my website, so I am still being found. Likewise, I am always hunting down lucid dreaming blogs to exchange links with. Some of them are quite elusive; I am still finding new blogs now despite working in this area for nearly a year. Do you have access to a hub of all blogs on a particular topic because you own a blog yourself?
Forums are great. Especially this one. It has high volume traffic and all the users are (hopefully) working from Steve's philosophy -- so we are all on the same page (or at least, we're reading the same book
) But I've seen forums with no traffic, 1 guest user online, hardly any comments. I've worked hard to support lucid dreaming forums but some are lost causes simply because the site/blog doesn't attract enough traffic in the first place. So while forums can add amazing value - they're not for everyone. Steve is an exceptional case with millions of viewers each month. Of course he's got a buzzing forum!
I chose not to install WordPress because I wanted to start an online business, not just build a website. I've seen some lovely looking WordPress sites. But there's no point creating a work of art when no-one can see it. I simply didn't know how to build good traffic (without a mammoth advertising budget!) so I chose SBI over WordPress.
Also, I do think you can get "tons of links every day"! Regardless of whether you have a site or a blog. If your website is lively and publishes great content - why not?