How I got 1,768 visits to my site in one day... and 3,220 the next :)

Warning: selling NOTHING here!

Those of you who read my earlier post How my site traffic went from 37 monthly visits to 14,657 monthly unique visits, should know what to wait from this post. Basically I'm not selling anything here - just wanted to share what happened (and is happening) on my site in the last couple of days, and today. Perhaps something in this post will help you get some ideas, and eventually new visitors to your website.

WHAT HAPPENED:
Anyway, the point is this: my site visits have been around 900 visits per day, after writing one post I got 1,768 visits in just one day. The nice part was though... the next day (which is today) my site has got 3,220 visits today - and it's just evening right now. I wrote a story, it got picked by one major gaming site - and rest is history.

WHAT I DID:
To make a short story long, I received an email from one guy asking me to help him. He said he loves playing games, but never tried to make them - and wanted guidance. I decided to visit some basic things, and wrote a post named: How to Create Your First Game. For anyone who has been making games for some time, all this information would seem pretty trivial.

But trivial doesn't mean it wouldn't be valuable. In fact, some of the simple concepts can be extremely valuable for beginners. For example: it doesn't help much people to give them expert advice on ranking higher in search engines unless they know little bit about SEO (like for instance: "Whadda heck SEO means?"). That was the basic idea in that article: telling about something simple (for you) in a practical manner.

Anybody who goes through my post, can see that it provides some practical & instant guidance where people can go to start making their own game. Even though I wrote it really quickly, and thought it was simple - it was valuable.

There's the second catch: give first, and get will follow. When I first wrote that article I didn't know it would bring me thousands of additional visitors. I simply saw that this guy needed help, and the issue was something that many others were after - so I thought to write a blog post. I decided to give, and one thing lead to another - and I got plenty of rewards in back. I'm not saying it will work every time, but I've noticed that the more I give... the more I simply get. It's some kind of law of life, you know

And this brings me to the third point: persistence. Okay, I have written lots of other articles that have not brought this much traffic - and basically I'm not expecting that I would "win" all the "matches". What counts in trafficboxing, is not how many times you hit the opponent... it matters how many times you get up - and keep going.

If you feel like things are going nowhere, feel totally unmotivated, feel everything is going badly, and quit. Then you've "lost". If you quit - that's the end. But, if you decide to keep going and NEVER quit, then I see no other option than winning. It might take 1 month or 10 years, but if you never quit - you will eventually win. It might not be so that the first tactic works, but if you keep openly trying different things, focus on providing value to others, then eventually you'll win.

When I combined all these things, I managed to write that post that's already got me thousands of new visitors (as it got featured on a major gaming website) and important backlinks.

Bottom line
My post was not a "linkbait" in a sense that it wasn't meant to hook visitors. On the other hand, what it was I'd summarize in the following points:
- solve a problem: It was providing practical value to a certain problem
- trivial or simple can be valuable: making things complex or targeting only professional people doesn't necessarily mean value. Sometimes simplest things work.
- story got picked by major website: I didn't send the story, but somebody picked it and wrote about it to a major gaming website, and I got traffic. Being lucky is good, asking those major websites even better.

Now I'll wait and see how high the visitor amounts go. Perhaps tomorrow there be even more as the story is getting dugg by people, and other sites might catch it as well.

 

nice post.....
I can't stress enough how important it is to give, in order to receive. It's all about who you know

 

Or who knows you

 

Congrats for finding some success online but you basically stumbled upon the most basic concept for online success: creating valuable content. If you create good content, success will follow.

Cheers!

 

Thanks, I'll keep doing this.

Yep, I've noticed that for a long time (like for example, in the earlier traffic post), but I would also like to point out that you never know what will bring success - I didn't realize this was THAT valuable

 

I believe that too good contain bring repeat visitors.

 

Great story. Genuinely useful content will attract visitors and get picked up by other sites.

 

well done , and thanks for the post

 

Nice post... I suppose you have to give before you can get is the moral?

 

Moral is that: give, and you'll get.

Now the day is over (and morning here), and the final number count for yesterday ended up being 4,466 and at least 10-20 backlinks.

 

This is definitely why article marketing is my prime form of advertising. Most targeted customers in my niche are looking for information, which is exactly what I give them. Most of my traffic does come from article directories, high search engine rankings and traffic can be seen as a by-product.

 

That was a very informative post. Thank you.

 

Very informative! Thanks for reminding us. I'd always see the major blogs sometimes publish a very simple (in my eyes) post. I guess it is for attracting new traffic.

 

Good and unique content can surely get you traffic and users! Congratulations on your success

 

As they say, "Content is king"

 

Thanks people.

Yeh, that's bit amazing. I remember problogger mentioning this same phenomenon in some of his posts. He said that sometimes some simply funny stuff might get him lots of links and traffic - something simple, easy, not-time consuming. On the other hand, sometimes he spent hours and hours doing research and writing a certain article, that did not get so much attention.

It's not what's valuable content for you... it's what valuable content for the readers. Ultimately, it's they who decide what's valuable and what's not.

 

great post, thank u!

i have a couple of questions
1. which CMS did u use?
2. when did u start the website?
3. how many articles do u write per day?
4. i noticed you have whopping number of backlinks, how did u manage to do that?

that'll be all for now

thanks in advance!

 

People surf the net for Information,we call it niche in IM,what seems to be trivial for us is a gold mine for Tom,Dick and Harry.
Notice the "How to " effect in grabbing attention.

 

Super Post! Thanks for sharing.

Now, if only I could think of something interesting ...