In reply to Rick.

Hi Rick,

That's a great question, and one I've discussed with my readers, commenters and subscribers when talking about Postmatic. For me, you don't need to discourage people coming to your site (as Tom mentions, there's an excerpt feature that still drives subscribers over to the full post - it's only comments after this that would be handled by email).

But I've discovered something interesting in the three months I've been using PM.

1. My traffic hasn't actually been impacted, because the content is still being found via search, social shares, direct referral, etc. Commenting is a small part of driving traffic - it's more about answering questions about your product or service, and that's where the new traffic comes from. So it doesn't really matter where the comment is hosted - it's the answer(s) given through comments that brings in the traffic that matters.

2. Because of the options to include widgets with your email template, you can use up to three different CTAs on every single email that goes out. Not just your standard post email; not just your standard newsletter email - but every single one that goes out as a new comment or comment reply. AB testing with this has shown I've had commenters visit my site because I've targeted the CTA to the content being discussed. Because it's widget based, you could essentially change the CTA on the fly, to attract extra page views, visitors, eyeballs, etc. And because it;s going out with comments, it's a far more effective option that hoping one single post email with a CTA widget will be seen, especially if you have 50-60 unique commenters.

These are just my own personal experiences. The CTA part can take a little work, especially if you want to target based on specific posts (maybe that's something that Jason and his team can take up for a future update, category-based templates) - but then doesn't the most effective and profitable marketing take work anyway?

Hope that offers a little insight into why traffic hit and concerns doesn't necessarily need to be there. :)