Hi all, I started blogging 3 months ago, and have taken my blog (Say No to Crack) from nothing to at least 3K visitors daily (but often near 10K) during this time. While this is far below the level I want to attain (50-100K visitors per day), apparently it's a pretty decent achievement, as many folks here at DP have asked how I achieved these #s in this time frame. Today I decided to respond in detail to one of these requests, and thought others might find my "formula" helpful. The full e-mail is included below. I'd be happy to answer other questions you may have as well, and hope some of you find this at least a tiny bit useful. Best, Anita ----------------------- Hi, There were a few things that helped me get to this level, here's what has been "my formula": 1. I posted a few very original and well received posts early (one even got shown on VH1). Here are examples of these super-popular posts (each got well over 20,000 visitors): http://www.saynotocrack.com/index.php/2006/10/19/top-10-worst-halloween-costumes-of-2006/ http://www.saynotocrack.com/index.php/2006/12/10/amazing-slow-motion-video-of-golf-ball-explosions/ http://www.saynotocrack.com/index.php/2006/10/23/celebrity-look-a-likes-part-i/ 2. I get stumbled A LOT. My original humor pieces seem to get a lot of traction on SU, and often accounts for 1/3 of my traffic (particularly on days when I have over 5,000 visitors) 3. I comment on other blogs A LOT. In the past 3 months, according to Yahoo I left over 3,000 comments on other people's blogs. This may sound like a lot, but I can often whip out 30 comments a day in 30-60 minutes 4. I originally signed up for http://www.blogmad.net (a traffic exchange service). This was useful to find new blogs and comment on them quickly (and also find good material). I don't use it much now, but originally I received ~100 visits per day (same # as I visited per day) 5. If I post something that I think will get a lot of traction (my recent Paris Hilton/Smurfette post for instance), I try to "advertise" it a little. Let others know, ask a friend to stumble it if they like it, post on a couple sites like reddit/del.icio.us, etc. I don't do this as much now that I have a stable base of readers, but this helped some at the beginning 6. I always try to keep my posts readable, unoffensive, and enjoyable by the "lowest common denominator". While many techies and "scholarly" folk have felt my site is somewhat common/simplistic, the vast majority of readers (from students, to nurses, to a couple preachers) have given fairly positive feedback. 7. I listed myself in a bunch (~10) directory/ranking sites. Across the 10, I now get ~100 visits per day, but that may be partially due to my site being listed at or near the top of each of these now (and also being a silly name) 8. I post regularly on forums and sites like slashdot. I probably spend too much doing so, but seems to help in the search engine rankings (I get ~200 visits per day from Google now) That's about it. I spend FAR too much time on my site, but it's a labor of love for the moment. With any blog, I think the secret to success is either by building a community (by visiting/commenting on lots of other sites), or by being VERY original. Each blog has it's own formula, and best of luck finding yours. Anita =)
I think I actually came across your blog outside of DP. Nice work ! How's it do earning wise ? I totally agree with your tip to leave comments on other blogs. It can deliver nice traffic and it can start a snowball effect where other blogs will link to yours without begging for links.
Mrspeed: Depends on how you look at it. Right now, it gets $0/day because I took the ads down. Before it was making up to $10/day but that was just with a tiny adsense link on the sidebar. I took down the ads because some of my readers said they'd be less inclined to submit my posts to Digg and similar sites if I was displaying ads. I'm more concerned with building a firm base, and taking down the ads certainly seemed to help. Anita
i find your site enjoyable -- good posts, funny, and it takes away from the real world -- in the end that is what entertainment is for -- good luck!
Humor sites will often get huge traffic because they're interesting, easy on the eyes and fun to read.. look at Boing Boing and Neatorama! Thanks for the tips, Anita. And good idea on not monetizing your website too early. How's the feed readership going? Did a lot of people subscribe to your blog?
I actually didn't realize Neatorama was in the same size class as Boing Boing (I'm an author/contributor on Neatorama, but that doesn't mean I know a thing about traffic/readership). Feed readership is coming along slowly (at ~250 I think). Whenever I get lots of hits from tech sites, it seems like I add subscribers, but other than that it doesn't seem like most people use/understand feeds.
I didn't mean that they were in the same class .. just that both blogs generally get a quite a lot of traffic.. It's great that you're contributing to Neatorama .. there seems to be a lot of active authors on their blog
You should make a post telling your readers to pull their head out of their asses and realize b/w costs money. Take ads down for readers, lol.
Hey 30K. I will definitely put ads up later, but right now it's far easier to gain readers without them. I doubled my new subscribership without the ads, so I'm going to leave them down for a while. Bandwidth right now is only costing a few bucks a month, so no big deal.
I think another big thing about your site is the domain name. That is a VERY common phrase and I'm sure lots of people type in "say no to crack" more often then you think in google or other SE's.
Thanks for the tips. Very informative. Follow up question: How does the blog pay for itself? Or are you pursuing a "build traffic first, monetize it much later" strategy?
My costs are pretty minimal ($8/month for 2TB of traffic), so I'm focusing on traffic first. Once I hit 100,000 visits per day or so I'll start serving ads. At least, that's my thought right now.
2TB? 2 terabytes? or 2GB? Anyway, good strategy. Build credibility and branding first and monetize later.
Yeah 2TB. I use bluehost.com. As long as I cache my mysql generated pages (I use wp-cache in wordpress), they're fantastic. Even when I got dugg (and was receiving 3-10 requests per second), they just kept serving pages like nothing was wrong. Too many mysql requests and you apparently hit CPU limits.
Nope - I do management for a financial services company. Why, do I seem to write well? I am a SLOW writer, probably because I am not very good but at the same time a perfectionist. I think I'd be a rather poor writer, it would take me months to finish an article. Anita