How to get stumbled upon
November 17th, 2007
Last week my post about designing for 1024 x 768 was added to stumbleupon.com. It had a huge effect on the traffic, on the best day, the blog had 4,384 readers - pretty incredible. Up to that point the number of people reading the blog a day was under 20.
I’m still working out how I want to use the blog. So I though I’d try publishing less often but meatier posts. The post about designing for 1024 x 768 was my first attempt at this tactic, needless to say I’m pretty pleased with the results.
But it’s not all roses, I think the visits from stumbledupon were pretty low value - there were few comments and few people clicked through to other pages.
In terms of clicks to other content, this could be partly my current WordPress template doesn’t list other links in the right column if a user views a specific article, or it could be because previous posts haven’t been interesting enough!
When I realised the traffic was going through the roof, I quickly set up a page I’d had in mind for a while with affiliate links to some of the best web design books on Amazon. Adrenaline pumping, I had visions of chalets in the Alps, holidays in the Caribbean… well maybe not quite, but I did think I might be able to pay for a few Christmas pressies with the Amazon commission. Sadly not, clicks: 20 sales: 0.
Although I thought I’d be crazy not to try and make some cash from the traffic, fortunately I didn’t write the post to make money from affiliate links, and this blog is very uncommercial.
It’s been a good reminder that I need to sort out my template asap. I’ve been meaning to do since I set up the blog, but always end up working on other things. For some reason I let this site slip down my priority list, when really it deserves more of my time.
It’s also been a good reminder of the power of social media for driving traffic to a site. Although I haven’t yet noticed a huge improvement in Bang Your Drum’s Google ranking.
Anyay, as far as I’m concerned the key to getting ’stumbled upon’ or to being ‘dug’ is simply to put effort into producing content that is useful and relevant. Content is king?