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?
My biggest traffic day was when I wrote a post about eating the snails from my garden as a form of pest control, titled “Backyard Escargot”:
http://green-change.com/2009/01/12/backyard-escargot/
It got picked up by foodies and greenies, and shot up in StumbleUpon.
Yeah, that’s what I want to be remembered for :-).
I think it happened around May of this year, due to a controversial post. Another big traffic day happened when we ranked well in Google.
My largest traffic day came a few weeks ago when I posted “Lady Gaga’s 8-Point Guide to Larger than Life Blogging”. The post was mentioned via twitter by some of the larger blogs like Copyblogger and others.
In about 24 hours, I received around 1,000 visits to the Pushing Social blog. The post is still getting a fair amount of traffic – by far the most popular
Oops! I’m sorry my earlier comment showed up. Please disregard and the last comment I left. How embarrasing!
My biggest traffic day so far was when thebloggingrobot had quite a few hits due to a post that ended up on reddit about google.
My biggest traffic when there’s a controversial news related to my blog
It is today. My blog was penalized but now everything is going fine. Today is the biggest traffic day. If I consider for a single post it was 31st December of 2009 for my post free SMS sending sites in India.
My biggest day (to date) has been offering a free ebook. Followed closely by sending our broadcasts to my mailing list.
the biggest traffic to my blog is from other blogs, its mean that its the fruit that i got from blog walking, and also the second stage is the hottest scandal on my country become my second source of traffic, i write about it, and i haven’t do some seo stuff but the result is really great, http://dewirya-putra.co.cc has visitor from facebook also but its still low, i wondering if i can drive more traffic from social engine like facebook, does anyone have a clue
My biggest blogging day resulted in 1100 visitors on October 31. I had written a post on Halloween events around town. To this day, it is the most visited post and the highest number in a day.
Once in a month I score a big day and this is mainly when I’m brainstorming what the normal google users are searching that day.
This weekend we had a big dancefestival in Belgium (tomorrowland), so I created a blogpost with some livesets from the dj’s from this weekend. All festival-visitors started their workweek by looking for livesets from the festival…. Big visitorspike was the result.
“ranking high for terms in Google around big news events”
This is the usual reason I have high traffic days. At my blog, I do reviews of UFC events, so I try to get them out as quickly as possible to make sure that people are still excited about reading stuff about them.
I was getting 5000 per day when i was on blogger, but after migrating my blog to WordPress. My blog traffic is now only 2000.
This is quite interesting, but it happened with me.
My biggest traffic day was 30k+ uniques.
I casually logged into my analytics account to have a look at stats and saw a huge jump in traffic.
My post was a collection of HD Nature Wallpapers and someone had stumbled it and things took off from there. Had a good return with AdSense too.
I thank you mysterious StumbleUponer……
Mine was definitely the day there was a feature about me on TV, back in February.
I’ve had two, one was the first time I was in a Carnival and the second was when I started contributing to a new blog with a different audience. This second one has been sustained, with a spike on my first post, which was slightly controversial, and maintained high numbers since. In neither case was it a particular post, it was getting my name in front of a new audience.
It is normally when a more popular bloger either mentioned one of my posts on their blog or retweets it on Twitter. :)
I got the biggest traffic in one of joke site, due to joke being submitted by someone on Stumble Upon . It was crazy 48k uniques in a single day .
Hi Darren,
My blog is still small but is growing steadily, best day by far was when I placed the first comment on Zane Lowe’s BBC blog to coincide with the release of the first video from the last Pendulum album. I added a link to a Pendulum Top 10 that I had just done and I think just about every visitor to his blog hit me over the next couple of days!
I guess what I learnt from that was it’s all about spotting the trends and then getting the timing right, not always the easiest thing to do.
Thanks
Tony
My biggest traffic day on http://QueenofYourOwnLife.com was following an appearance on The Craig Ferguson Show. His fans are amazing and that connection spiked traffic 4,000%…I kid you not.
when I’ve had an article, feature or an interview on another site with high traffic. I was invited to do an interview for the ‘Get Inspired Project’ which was both written and a podcast. I would definitely say when you are written about or mentioned elsewhere with high traffic on that particular site – it brings people over to look at you.
Amelia.x
My biggest and best day ever was after a guest post on Zen Habits:) But list posts are really popular. I kept reading that and thought they were a bit naff so I wrote 101 Ways to Feel Happier (http://www.getinthehotspot.com/101-ways-to-feel-happy/) as a joke really. The joke was on me because it was super popular:) Still is! So there you go, the problogging tips were right – list posts are a popular read and easy to write too.
My biggest traffic day was when I got featured on the front page of CNN. Beyond that, big traffic days are when good-for-you dessert recipes go viral.
My biggest traffic comes whenever i post product reviews or some controversial stuff on my blog, things spike even more when i send it to social sites.
No doubt – my highest numbers come on the days leading up to the Kentucky Derby. I always make a point of posting “when and where to watch” the race. I also load up the post with SEO goodies. My traffic quadruples.
But, then again, I know that people who want to find out when and where to watch the Derby don’t necessarily want to read about my blog’s topic, horses and culture – let alone read about other equestrian activities besides horse racing. I do pick up a few RSS subscribers in the rush, though, so it’s worth it to me.
Darren, I love how you’re always encouraging us to examine our blog from a completely different vantage point. It’s so helpful – thank you!
Our biggest hit day happened because two other blogs that have been blogging for nearly a decade discovered us and shared our site with their readers. It seems they liked what they saw because our subscription list has grown, as have our daily hits. This month will be our biggest ever – nearly doubling our previous high volume month.
I love the blog community in that they encourage newbies like us instead of seeing us as competition.
Debi Walter
My biggest traffic day was another list post but mixed with a strong emotional statement:
8 Things to Hate About Kumon
It was only 231 page views (my blog is 5 weeks old) but better than the 30 or so daily page views I was previously getting!
My biggest traffic day was (in part) your “fault”. After reading your 31DBBB, I decided to convert one of my upcoming posts about reasons for re-inventing the wheel as a programmer into a list post, which turned into 8 reasons for re-inventing the wheel as a programmer (link here: http://www.mostlymaths.net/2010/03/8-reasons-for-re-inventing-wheel-as.html ). A friend of mine posted it to reddit, and from there it went into dzone and HackerNews, and it was a “little” hit there. Luckily, I had rewritten my template and was now in my own domain, too and all those readers (I got in 3 days almost as many as I had in my previous YEAR) got a glimpse of my new and revamped blog, and a few decided to even subscribe to it or to my twitter account.
Thanks for making me remember that good day :)
Ruben
I had the good fortune of being Freshly Pressed over Memorial Day weekend on WordPress after only 29 days of blogging for a post I did on The Internet Experience and Blogging Behind The Great Firewall it helped generate 979 hits on 05/24/2010. Please note I do not have a monetized blog. I’m still a novice, and in no way am I a successful blogger.
Our biggest day was when we launched our service…we’d been blogging and building our community for several months then we surprised them with a solution (an online platform for artists and crafters to build their own blogs integrated with eCommerce/a personal store/and a way to sell their tutorials online). That was such an exciting day.
Hi Darren,
My biggest day came from a story I had about the world’s loneliest animal on my In The Know Traveler site, which came from a featured story placement on Alexa — totally random. I have an odd keyword for a festival in the Ukraine that get tons of traffic every day. Odd how it works.
devin
One of my biggest traffic jumps on my blog came from using Google Insights. I noticed that a particular sweepstakes was getting a lot of attention on the web (It was something to do with Hannah Montana). I wrote a few posts with tips and information, and cross-linked them well. They ranked quickly in search for the terms that people were using to find the information. There was a big influx of traffic from putting Google Insights to good use.
My biggest day came on a weekend that featured the U.S. Open Challenge… My blog is all about women’s golf and the featured amateur at that event was woman golfer, Peggy Ferrence. Got a lot of hits, most of them because I actually misspelled her name!!! Taught me to include alternative spellings in my keywords. :-)
My biggest day was the day my first guest post went up on a major site. Wow – my hits went way up as a result of that post, and I still get occasional hits from the same article. I tried to extend the love by having a related article that was more closely tied to my blog’s theme ready on my site at the same time. Need to do another guest post . . .
for me
the biggest traffic spike is when the feedback happen after i do the blogwalking
if i don’t, then no positive spike :-)
As it happens, yesterday was my biggest traffic day.
The previous highest day was two weeks before (also on a Monday).
Two major sources of traffic – Stumble Upon – viral post and timely content.
As I usually don’t post every day, I find the biggest times of traffics when I post a couple of times a days or consistently over a few days. Other than that, I also find review posts bring in a lot of traffic as people are always searching for opinions.
over 30,000 in a day mostly from StumbleUpon. and about 50,000 over 3 days total from that source. and i was on vacation the whole time, good thing my site didn’t go down.
personally i thought many many other posts i wrote were way more stumbleworthy so i’m not sure what drove this particular one.
About 300 so few but I study on it how to me more traffic. Thank you for sharing.
Addenda:
My best traffic day in history was today, when I published a previous comment in ProBlogger. It reached 50% more of my previous top!!
I hope that there are not only time visitors…
Saludos,
Gonzalo.
We had our largest number of hits in one day last week. Was nice to see that people are actually searches for the events that we list on our site. It was a popular event that got us the hits. Still early days for us though, so we are taking it slow. We only 9 months old now.
My biggest traffic days came from some tweets from popular Twitter users.
My automotive site got 2500 in a day that was my biggest traffic day.
The day that I added a plug-in on my site that sent note of my daily posts to google, ask, etc. I got a big jump in traffic on my jazz blog. It helped my posts to get indexed much more quickly. I highly recommend it!
my biggest traffic day came from a social site even i dont know who submitted my url to the site, what a surprise!
My biggest traffic day was when the US women’s sabre team swept the medals for the individual event. I was fortunate enough to be reporting live from Beijing and put up a series of posts during the day which culminated in this piece: http://www.fencing.net/813/zagunis-wins-gold-us-women-sweep/
Since I run a fencing forum, my traffic spike was from a combination of my community all hanging onto the site to discuss the event as well as the rapid fire blog updates.
my biggest traffic day was april 20, 2010 (coincidentally also my birthday but i doubt that had anything to do with it being my biggest traffic day). i got 90% of my traffic from stumbleupon that day to this post about the wii fit http://www.carrieactually.com/wii-fit-routine-addiction/
My blog has only be around for two weeks or so and my highest traffic day included 45 unique visitors. It was when I posted a racy, celeb/entertainment-related headline. From what I’ve seen thus far, it’s the headlines that bring new eyes and the content that keeps them coming back.
Nicole Williams
twentysomethingmoms.wordpress.com
I have experienced with my biggest day traffic when I shared a tip on how to create facebook username, my hosting was overloaded that time too
I started getting more traffic to my jazz blog right after I added a plug-in to my wordpress that immediately sent my information to google, ask, etc. I didn’t have to wait to be indexed anymore!