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5 First Year Posts that Led to Over 6 Million Views

Posted By Darren Rowse 10th of October 2013 Blog Promotion, Featured Posts 0 Comments

5 First Year Posts that Led to Over 6 Million Views

What sort of content should you publish on your blog to help you grow traffic in your first year?

There is no right or wrong answer to that question as each blog will be different depending upon the topic, your writing style and the purpose of your blog. However, I thought it might be fun to look back at some of the earliest posts that I wrote on Digital Photography School and talk a little about how each contributed to the growth of the site.

What follows is a selection of posts that I published in the first year of Digital Photography School (back in 2007) and some reflections on how I think they helped grow readership on the site.

5 Posts on dPS that Helped Me Grow Traffic

Note: what you’re seeing here is how the posts look today. We’ve been through 3 redesigns in that time.

1. 15 Stunning Images Using Blur to Portray Movement

Early posts on dps

This post was the most viewed post on dPS in the first year (in that 12 month period it had 183,269 visitors). It was published about 8 months after the site launched and was one of the first times I experimented with what I later started to call ‘image collections’.

This style of post was a move away from the normal ‘tutorial’ type of posts that I did. While the majority of the posts on dPS were ‘information’ heavy this post was almost completely images (a series of 15 of them) and it highlighted the importance for me of ‘inspiration’.

One thing I’m glad I did in this post was to link it back to a previously written ‘tutorial’ that I’d written on the same topic (which I did in the first paragraph). This led to some decent traffic to that ‘information’ heavy post.

This post was something of a slow burner in terms of traffic. It wasn’t until 4 weeks after I published it that it suddenly saw a rush of traffic from StumbleUpon and Reddit (peaking at 27,000 visitors in a day).

Two years after I published this post I gave it an update and reposted it to the front page of the site. This resulted in another great spike in traffic to the post as at that time it was featured on the front page of Digg (bringing in 24,000+ visitors in a day).

In 2010, the post again had a spike of 15,000+ visitors in a day after being linked to from another large site.

This post has continued to get traffic every day. It’s not spectacular daily traffic (it has averaged 100 or so visitors per day over the last month) but when you think about the long tail life of this post it adds up. The post has been viewed 786,547 times since being published.

2. 4 Easy Photoshop Techniques to Make Your Pictures Pop!

Early posts on dps 2

This very early post (published 20 days after the launch of the site) was the one that opened my eyes to the potential of the site on a couple of levels.

Firstly, it was the first time the site saw a post go viral from any kind of social media after it was featured on the front page of Digg (which brought in 45,000+ visitors in a day and crashed our servers).

Secondly, the post was the first time I’d ever published a guest post. In the first year I did only publish a handful of guest posts and wrote 99% of them myself but this did change my opinion of the featuring other people’s voices on my blog.

Thirdly, this was the first ever post that we’d done on the topic of ‘post production’. Up until this point I’d always just published posts that were how to ‘take’ photos rather than how to manipulate and process them in photoshop. Later I went on to add a post production section to the site.

What is interesting to me about this post is that while it is now dated (as there are new versions of Photoshop out and new tools available to photographers) it still continues to get decent traffic. The post still regularly gets 200 visitors a day and has had over 1.7 million page views now despite me never really promoting it since the early days of the site (it’s almost all Google traffic).

3. 11 Surefire Tips for Improving Your Landscape Photography

Early posts on dps 3

This post is written in a style that has always been popular on dPS – the ‘list post’.

As the title suggests there are 11 tips in the post listed. Each point is 2-3 paragraphs long and then most link deeper into the site to other articles that go deeper on those topics. As a result a reader can get a good introduction to the topic but are encouraged to read more of the archives.

Scattered through the post are also great illustrative images for the points mentioned.

In later years I’ve included larger images and more of them – but this was an early version of this style of post.

This post did particularly well on StumbleUpon in the first year after it was published and saw around 148,000 visitors come to the site in that 12 months (half of which came from StumbleUpon).

Interestingly I noticed that as a result of StumbleUpon traffic (and a day that it did well on Reddit) we then saw a number of other larger blogs link to up to the post.

Lastly – for years I have used this post as a piece of ‘cornerstone’ content on the blog and have often linked to it when I mention Landscape Photography in other posts. By linking back to it so many times I was always driving traffic to this post in those early years.

Since it was published the post has been viewed over 1.3 million times – approaching 10 times more traffic than it got in its first year after publication!

This to me highlights the importance of extending the life of posts in your archives by pushing traffic back to them over time.

4. How to Photograph Fireworks

Early posts on dps 4

There are no prizes for guessing what time of year this post went live – that’s right – in the lead up to 4 July 2007 (about 6 months after the site launched). I actually published the post on 26 June to allow it to have time to be indexed by Google.

My theory was that there would be a lot of people searching for tips on how to photograph fireworks at that time, and I was right.

This post saw only a bit of traffic in its first week but on 4th July it saw 32,000+ visitors – almost all of which came in from Google.

I’ve updated this post and republished it on the front page of the site every July since 2007. It is the post that just keeps on giving. Here’s a screen shot of traffic to the site – with spikes every 4th July and New Years Eve.

Fireworks seasonal traffic

To this date the post has been viewed just under 1.5 million times.

The key lesson to me from this post was to consider when you can write seasonal content. We’ve done this a variety of times with Christmas Photography Tips and Halloween Photography Tips posts doing pretty well too.

5. ISO Settings in Digital Photography

Early posts on dps 5

All of the posts linked to above have had spectacular days of traffic but this post was quite unmemorable in many ways.

It was on a very beginner topic. I even remember wondering whether I should publish information this basic in those early days. It was a relatively short post on a niche topic that was a part of a series where I looked at the topic of Exposure and covered ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture.

Traffic to the post in the first year never rose above 800 visitors in a day and averaged only 150 per day.

But here’s the thing… this post is one of the most viewed posts I’ve ever written and has been viewed just under 2.4 million times since I published it.

You might be wondering when it featured on the front page of Digg or was linked to by a major blog… but the reality is that it never had a day of traffic over 5000 visitors (and that was just once). Here’s the traffic graph since the early days:

ISO

Where did the traffic come from? The vast majority of it was from search engines. Facebook is the next highest referrer of traffic and it only sent 17,927 views.

This is another example of a ‘cornerstone’ piece of content that must have linked to hundreds of times from other articles on the site when I mention the term ISO. I did this the same with the Shutter Speed and Aperture posts in this series (incidentally this 4 post series has had close to 6 million page views – I’m glad I wrote it).

The key lesson here is that even the most simple concepts are worth writing about. You might think a concept is too basic but there’s no doubt that others will want that information (another example of this was my ‘How to Hold a Camera‘ post that I almost didn’t publish but which has been viewed almost 600,000 times).

The other key lesson is that growing traffic to your blog is not always about trying to write shareable content that might go viral. This post is just a simple article that attempts to serve my readers. It wasn’t written with growing traffic in mind – rather it was written to serve my current readers.

I do believe that it is wise to write some of your content with ‘finding new readers’ in mind – but the majority of your posts should focus upon serving the readers you already have.

What Posts Did You Write in Your First Year that Helped You Grow Your Blog?

I have really enjoyed creating this post and have actually gotten some great idea for future posts on dPS from doing this analysis of old posts on the site.

I’d encourage you to dig into your own stats and see what you notice about your old posts that have gone well – I’d also love to hear about them in comments below!

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. Great post! This year two of my blog post’s got 1 million views. Thanks for explaining how to use mind to get traffic ;)

  2. Great Article!! I think problogger.com is the secret which makes so much successful bloggers nowadays :)

  3. Great post. I learn something new from this post. Thank you for sharing this post.

  4. Recently I’ve bought a digital camera and the post mentioned here surely gonna help me with photography.

  5. I once wrote a post about GTA 5 and it actually gain a lot of traffic much later when the game was launched. This is the post http://www.moneytechchakra.com/2013/07/how-much-did-it-cost-to-develop-gta-5.html

  6. Over 180,000 views in your first year, sheesh thats awesome. There is a thing to be said about quality content, you must have been stoked.

  7. Darren Rowse is a living legend. In one of his posts, he discussed on how one guest post made millions in page views ( I think its about 9 nude photography tips). One thing that makes me keep coming is the series of inspirational and proven techniques that he freely shares to help newbies and professional bloggers grow their site traffic.

    Its important to check and analyze which post is getting most traffic and then produce more content around that particular niche.

  8. I like the article “Landscape photography tips”

  9. I heard many times about your new venture, but really never got some time to check out. You have done amazing work in photography world with your blog.

    You are just creating another example for everyone of us with implementing real life blogging techniques in DPS.

  10. Nice, you are always inspiration for new bloggers like me..

  11. First time visitor to your site. Appreciate thel blog and photography tips. Tips that resonate especially are to post several articles within a theme and that it’s worth writing about topics that seems simple (to us). Thank you!

  12. How I wish I could have just 1 percent of your success! Darren you are an inspiration to all of us struggling to make it in internet marketing. I just wanted to find out how you have fared with the recent google updates. They definitely hit my sites hard and I don’t know how to recover the traffic I had before all these google birds.

  13. Darren, the numbers you share look like faraway dreams. However, i agree with writing contents to serve the readers. I am not sure that that will draw more visitors but I really feel committed to do that. When I think of all the other technical tips and tricks to draw traffic and the money you have to pay, I get really demotivated in wanting to have a blog. I would rather enjoy myself writing as if I am talking to my readers.
    Even it is only a few people. You are a role model for success with blogging.

  14. Great Post :) Thank you for Sharing..
    Thanks again for wonderful post !!

  15. Great post Darren. hope i can reach my goals same as you did thanks for inspiration :)

  16. Years ago I decided to review a micro indie film called Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead on a lark … it was a chronicle of one man’s journey from sickness to life as a juicing devotee. Who knew so many people would be eager to read about the benefits of juicing? It proved to be one of my old movie site’s most consistent traffic getters.

  17. Great post!

    I think this is something any serious blogger would be interested in reading. I am a fairly new blogger still, and I have found my most popular post so far is also a ‘How To’ post, ‘how to make money with YouTube videos’. On that post I receive the most comments and questions. I guess it is also because this topic is on many peoples minds at the moment within my niche.

    Best Regards, Steve

  18. Great post, seems like the photography niche is a great one to get into considering the amount of free traffic available. Blogging is so much easier when you’re writing about something that you’re passionate about. Focusing on good quality posts with images and videos seems to be the most effective strategy these days. Creating or outsourcing infographics to use in your posts is a great way to get a lot of likes and shares.

  19. The pattern is very clear. Anything with great photos and infographics gets viewed many times compared to only text content posts. Wish I had a post that matches the kind of numbers mentioned :-)

  20. I hope some of my posts will reach same high points. But I think that it only can happens with viral content. And this depends from a niche. I think all visual content is viral and much more interested to visitors than articles, for example. Because you need a lot of time to read an article and you need only several seconds to see 10-20 photos.

  21. Your post is truly motivational. I’ve been reading your blog since the early days, and was motivated by your story of how you started by blogging just a few hours late at night. You came a long way over the years. Anyone would be thankful for a few million visitors!

  22. true, pictures say a thousands ways and are a very good method for visual representation of content that can spike your rankings. I have some pictures on the first page for my keyword, but wonder if these are of any use. if they lead to sales leads these awesome pictures i have

  23. WOW!
    Photographs can make a huge difference. Thanks for teaching this great thing!
    Have a nice day :)

  24. Hi Darren,

    Thanks for sharing this inspiring post , it helped me think how to use brain and how to get result. Your post made me learn different things and are really very inspiring to read the post.

  25. Great post. I will learn alot of Darren Rowse. This key lesson is that growing traffic to my blog, i try my best that have 0.01 of you. hihi..

  26. good tips, mr darren, i hope, i also can become best bogger as you

  27. Hi Darren, I am new to blogging and found your blog by chance. What an inspiration is for me your success. I cannot imagine the amount of hour you have devoted to your blog, but I am sure that the effort has paid back for sure.

    Congratulations :)

  28. Great work by you Darren. You and your photography blog are really awesome. I myself been working on my blog but i don’t know why my blog is not able to generate good traffic. I am working hard to make it user friendly as well as search engine friendly. Lets hope one day i will also get a million of page views on my posts.

  29. This is something worthy to read! It helps new photographers! And to those pros but still want to learn more. Thanks

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