Once again, I removed the CONTACT page from my site. I’ve done this several times over the past 5 years. When I first started blogging, it was for business purposes, so I encouraged people to comment on posts and to contact me. I was also sending out a weekly newsletter with my latest posts to hundreds of people who knew me, so I would occasionally hear from them.
As for generating business, the newsletter helped generate business from people I had worked with before. I had absolutely zero business generated from strangers who had read my blog.
When I shut the business down after my wife was diagnosed with lung cancer, I shifted the focus of my blog to personal posts and have kept that same focus ever since.
After finding that 99% of comments and contact requests were spam, turned of comments and eliminated my contact page.
Since then, I’ve turned the contact page on and off several times. I had this thought that maybe someone who knew me might google me and want to reach me someday. I used aggressive anti-spam tools to minimize the crap.
It worked.
Until the spammers got better.
Then I got better – using different tools.
But it is silly. In the past 4 years, I’ve had 3 people (other than spammers) contact me via the blog. 1 was a pleasant surprise. 1 was a complaint. 1 became an online acquaintence who I occasionally communicate with via comments on his blog.
So I took the contact page down again.
Anyone who really wants to contact me can figure out how to reach me with a little sleuthing. More likely, the only people who do want to contact me already see me and/or talk to me regularly.
As for strangers and occasional readers, I welcome them to read anything I post. I hope it helps them. If they have something to add, I’d encourage them to write their own blog (or a journal, a diary, or whatever). I have found writing to be incredibly helpful in processing my thoughts, clarifying what I believe and providing me with entertainment.
I’ll save my interactive communication efforts for off-line in the real world.