I woke up this morning wondering if the Slashdot frenzy last night had all just been a big dream – but no it was not.
The morning after a Slashdotting (it always happens to me late at night or in the early hours of the morning) is like waking up after a massive party at your house. You come out of your bedroom and there are empty bottles, broken pictures hanging crookedly on the wall, stains on the carpet and sleeping bodies on the couch. The memories of the previous night are mixed – the exhilaration of seeing all your mates having a great time, meeting new friends, the worry of gatecrashers….
Being Slashdotted is similar. I spent an hour or so this morning wading through an inbox full of emails and comments (ranging from the incredibly encouraging and affirming through to the downright offensive, slanderous and threatening). The clean up after the party has taken a while. The memories are mixed – the gatecrashers came (but didn’t get too out of hand) and some great new friendships have started with over 100 new subscribers to the newsletter and new subscribers to the RSS feed.
It was also a financially rewarding evening. I woke up this morning with 8 hours still to go in the ‘Adsense day’ to find I’d already broken my previous earning record for a day on Adsense. There were also a few affiliate program sales that resulted from the influx of visitors.
All in all it was a strange night – definitely an experience. I’ve been slashdotted on other blogs numerous times but it never got quite as personal as last night, I guess the topic of money does that to people.
I’m actually going to be laying low over the next couple of days – not because I’ve got a Slashdot hangover but because I’m speaking at a camp. I’ll check in (via dial up – arrgh) daily and might even do a few posts. Otherwise have a good few days – happy blogging!
Darren,
Congrats, man! We were indirectly Slashdotted about two months ago when the boss switched from PC’s to Mac. It was an all week party.
Enjoy.
That’s weird, after my two Slashdottings in the past I hardly got any new subscribers out of the experience. To use your analogy, they came to my place, drank all my beer, left a mess and went to the next party. I never saw any of them again. I get many more subscribers from a Dave-dotting (Scripting News), but maybe that’s the nature of my blog (RSS/Web 2.0 focused).
But for you – seems some of the /.ers came round for the party at your house and some of them slept over, left some tips in the jar (already bulging!) and promised to come round again. You’ll drink to that, no doubt ;-)
Got to see you’ve converted them, I was the same as Richard, both from the Slashdot experience and Boing Boing as well: perhaps because their readers are more ambivelent to advertising whilst I got some great traffic it didn’t translate into extra money for me, just a record low CTR. Some nasty comments directed at you on Slashdot as well, that cant be easy, but let them be struck by lightning as we bask is the glory of the Slashdotted Problogger.net :-)
Hello Darren,
Congratulation for the good work. However, do not bother with that revenue thing… it is typical to occidental people to think that revenue is as sacred (even more than sex) and private thing. In other countries, like India, people think that revenue is of the public domain. Everything changes depending on the point of view you adopt.
Salutations,
Fred
Congrats Darren,
I read the article in SMH too and I’ve been here almost everyday since. Nice to see an Aussie blogger doing well. Inspirational stuff.
Its amazing how the folk on many webdev forums are always so cynical about monetizing a website!
Andrew
yeah, congratulations Darren…
shame about some of the abuse – it really makes you wonder if the fuss is worth it!
mark
I guess being /.’d is a bit like a hurricane – it comes along, causes a load of fuss, leaves a trail of destruction, 2 months later you;ve forgotten it ever happened.
The fact that you;ve got some new subscribers must mean that you are doing something right :)
Problogger
Mixed feelings – not that I’m likely to get /.ed! The closest I got was on a collaborative blog where I wrote an article that got picked up by one of the medium-sized Mac news sites – it’s weird seeing a peak in visitors on the graph. At least there they were overall better targetted.
Glad you had some positive experience from it all. There’s always the likelihood that some people won’t like what you do, how you say things, what money you make, etc. – and it just gets magnified on the Net. Then again, so does the good stuff.
Can I also say thanks for being open with your stats (if some of the more moronic ./ers had actually bothered to follow some of your links, looked at the independently-produced stats you graciously make public, they would surely have less grounds for disputing your traffic and income) – it’s encouraging to see some of your blogs and their development. Sitemeter’s pretty cool for the overall picture of things.
Keep it up, and I hope your hectic first month back doesn’t cause burn out. Ride the waves!
I’ve never been /.ed, but from the descriptions it seems like bumping into a gang of toughs while walking down a dark street late at night. When they’ve roughed you up, threatened you with knives, stolen your loose change, and filmed the whole thing on their camera phones, you’re then free to stagger back into normal life again. The site is atrocious and should be visited by the RSPCA.
I have been slashdotted once. Just 1800 visitors came with a bang. Poorest CTR ever.
The few times I’ve been Slashdotted (or blogosphere-dotted – ie: when hundreds or thousands of blogs link to you in a short period) it’s generally been a positive experience.
Because it’s happening because of stuff I do or say, it tends to get personal, but most folk are nice enough to click on a few ads, drop a few comments and emails and generally don’t leave the place too badly done up.
My first blogosphere-dotting, though, was a mess. Hundreds of comments about the same subject across a range of posts (think: graffiti), loads of swearing (first time I ever edited a comment… and the only time) and I even received a death-threat phone call.
Good times ;-)
Death threats – that is serious :(
OT /
Jeremy, somehow knew your site name when I saw your name, but before I clicked the link, but I can’t think why…..
Were you an were-here.com guy about 5 years ago? Other than that, I can’t think why I’d know who you are??
/Normal Service On/
Slashdot hasn’t, imho, done itself any favours with some of the comments being made on there. And boy is it a confusing site to navigate round.
Fortunately episode this will slip into the night and be forgotten.
Death threats – that is serious :(
Slashdot hasn’t, imho, done itself any favours with some of the comments being made on there. And boy is it a confusing site to navigate round.
Fortunately episode this will slip into the night and be forgotten.
OT /
Jeremy, I’d not seen your site, at least not recently. Did you used to be a were-here.com guy about 5 or 6 years ago? I’ve got vague recollections of a flashed based site, might not have been you though
Being /. is a good thing in general. There are always going to be idiots on a board that big that think they are smarter than they really are.
Let’s be real about this, if those guys that gave Darren abuse are so smart and savvy, how come we don’t see their work on /.
Just too funny how these guys hide behind the internet.
Darren,
Congrats on the /. experience, hopefully it was good overal.
I had to make comment about it on my small community site linked to from my name. By the way the stats for your site are pretty interesting to see.
Darren, I have bookmarked your site, and will be adding your xml feed to my news section of my own site. I really have learned a lot in the short time from visiting your site, and will be a regular “surfer” from now on. Thanks again for your e-mail response to me. It is nice to see that you have not gotten so big that you are unable to take the time and respond with a very kind and open e-mail. Thanks again, and keep up the great content!
Just wanted to say that /. is usually an ok place. There really are some brilliant people there. You just have to watch the non-flamebait articles. Sure, there are tons of morons, but that’s bound to happen when you’re pushing 500,000 visits a day. The note you made about /. being a for-profit blog was spot on. When you get a chance, go look at what they charge for advertising. You might feel like throwing up the next time you hear a /.’r bitch about people making money on the internet.
In the meantime, I hope you have fun at your camp… and pray you don’t get hit by a crowd from http://www.somethingawful.com!
Dave perfectly sums up what Slashdot is. Some brilliance mixed with a lot of morons.
I never understood why /. complained about making money, how the heck else do they support themselves? Just blows my mind.
Ditto most of the comments above … signal-noise ratio leaves a bit to be desired on Slashdot and there are always some trolls that will say negative things just to be a jerk, so don’t let any of those knucklelheads get you down. I’ve had a few experiences with it – see http://www.komar.org/faq/slashdot-effect/ and all the power to ‘ya – keep up the nice work.