I’m preparing a presentation on ‘Finding Readers for your Blog’ which I’ll be giving at the Melbourne Blog Training Day next Tuesday.
It’s got me thinking back to some of the bigger days of traffic that I’ve had on my own blogs over the years and I thought I’d open up some discussion on the topic to see if we can identify any trends.
What was your biggest day of Traffic (or ‘days’ if you can think of more than one) and what happened to make them occur?
I asked this on Twitter yesterday and it was interesting to see the responses. Some of the reasons giving included:
- controversial posts
- creative posts
- random links from bigger sites
- social bookmarking events (getting popular on Digg or Delicious)
- ranking high for terms in Google around big news events
- breaking a scoop news story
I’m sure we’ll see some of these themes in your experiences but know that there will be other themes too.
For me there have been many bigger than normal days over the last 8 years. Two that spring to mind include:
- My Six Figure Blogging Moment – I had been blogging for a while and suddenly realised that I was on track for over $100,000 in a year earnings from my blogs. The first time I mentioned it was in an interview that I did. I didn’t really think about the implications of talking about it at the time but that interview went viral – as did my followup post. What kicked it all off was a mention on Slashdot (which at the time was equivalent to getting on the front page of Digg).
- Front page of Yahoo (sort of) – then there was the day that a post on my photography blog was featured by one of Yahoo’s tech blogs. That in itself didn’t sent much traffic but when that particular Yahoo blog’s post was featured on the front page of Yahoo for 4-5 hours one day I saw traffic hit my blog like I’ve never seen traffic before or since. I don’t remember the exact numbers but I saw more traffic from that 4-5 hours than I’d normally see in a week of traffic.
So now it’s over to you. What Was Your Biggest Traffic Day and Why did it Happen?
I’ve recently seen traffic spiking on my blog. I attribute it to 3 reasons. I used to mix 100% original posts with recycled news, I mean, I would piggyback on interesting news, recycle the information, give it a personal twist and publish it. Since I stopped doing that and switched to %100 original content I’ve gotten more traffic and a significant increase in comments.
The second reason is that I’ve been posting orginial content more regularly and the feedback I’ve been getting is that my writing has improved.
The third reason is social media. I’ve been promoting my posts on twitter and facebook since I started the blog last year. I’ve never gotten too much traffic from Digg (maybe because I’m not into the pop/tech niche, I mostly write about career development). Since I started using Stumbleupon a few days ago, monthly referrals have overtaken facebook in just 3 days.
My blog is not too big yet since I moved from a wp.com to wp.org and lost readers in the transition.
I’ve been getting between 10 visits and 20 PV per day.
Since I changed my strategy 2 weeks ago, I’m seeing 40 visits and around 200 PV a day. Bounce rate went down from 80% to 20% and the vist-to-PV ratio has gone from 1:2 to 1:4
I hope the trend continues
Hi Darren,
Another great post.
My biggest spikes always tend to come when an article I’ve written is posted to Reddit or gets a few Diggs and it tends to be restricted to that one article.
I suppose this traffic does give exposure to the rest of the site and hopefully encourages a few RSS subscribers or social bookmarks in the process.
Cheers
Rosco
I hope to one day reach your level. The biggest problem I have right now is generating traffic to my site. Hopefully as time progresses and I learn more about SEO and other factors that help drive traffic, I’ll be able to reach your level! Great post once again!
39.988 unique visitors on Tuesday May 4th 2010.
I wrote a post called “Ten Things You Should Already Know By Now” which was picked up by StumbleUpon …
Tweeted 292 times, and 128 comments …
(My previous biggest day had been in February, with 906 uniques after I was featured in Lifehacker …)
My biggest traffic day was the day Eunice Kennedy died. I blogged about her work and connection to people with disabilities, and why she was committed to it: Rosemary Kennedy, her sister, had spent her life in an institution after being lobotomized. Most people don’t know about that story, but I learned and read about it many years ago. The visits continued for a few days. The post also inspired many comments and much discussion. And I hadn’t even planned it, or known it would be so popular.
My largest traffic day was actually a few weeks ago when one of my weblog posts when hot on StumbleUpon.
It was definitely a post about Controversy titled “8 Greyhat Tactics SEOs Are Using, Use at Your Own Discretion!”.
The post covered plenty of topics there were of great discussion, so I actually got plenty of negative comments because of the fact that I talked about plenty of greyhat tactics that SEO were using. Either way, it made plenty of buzz.
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Mine always seems to be the weekends!
My biggest traffic day is when my blogs are listed on the homepage of Digg :)
My biggest traffic day actually happen two years ago just before Xmas, It was an article I wrote about Nintendo Balance Board for one of my product review blog. I ranked #1 on Google for a special keyword. Traffic was huge that day and I was a happy affiliate ;)
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I am trying a lot to increase my traffic, But I fail to do so, my best traffic is 150.
Is their any best way or any tips or guidance to increase the traffic.
My biggest traffic day brought in about 4,000 visitors, and they converted nicely to earnings with a slightly higher CTR than usual. It was from a single link of a larger site that stayed up all day.
Other times, I tend to get fairly high traffic when I write a stock analysis for one of the top blue-chip type companies that everyone knows about.
just two weeks to make a new blog. I’m still hoping to get a lot of traffic. only hope
Well, my technology blog is only 3 months old, at the time of writing this. To date my highest amount of content in one day is 57 views. Although, since I am new to blogging, I am happy with my results so far. In the 3 months I have been maintaining and posting to my blog, I have had over 800 views in total. It will hit a spike and travel up rapidly soon I am hoping.