Yes, for some more popular blogs 3,750 hits would be an average day and nothing to brag about. But for The Red Stapler Chronicles, a blog that had its previous high at a little less than 400 hits, this was a banner day.
So what did I do to get all that traffic? Well, I decided to try something a little different and write a post unrelated to any of my chosen niches. I decided to write a post about politics–the perfect topic during an election year. In addition, I chose to take a controversial stance that I knew would create debate. How Keith Olbermann Could Cost Obama the Election also turned out to be the perfect title to really get readers’ attention.
Of course, the above steps were not enough to produce my traffic results. The real key for my success story was submitting my post to several social bookmarking sites. More specifically, adding my post to Propeller was the key to my hit counter explosion. After I noticed that I was getting some decent traffic from propeller, I became curious and decided to investigate the site a little more extensively. While on propeller, I noticed that you could join groups and then add posts to those groups. I quickly joined every group about politics and added my posts. Within about 3 hours, I was on the front page of propeller and ended my 24 hour run as the #2 ranked story.
Luckily for me, I was home when the traffic really started coming in and was able to alter my post to include links to some other posts that I thought the propeller readers might find interesting. In addition, I quickly added some some Amazon ads about politics (Don’t you want to be Obama or McCain for Halloween? Check out my sidebar ads to see what I mean.) These actions helped keep some of my visitors around a little longer and I was able to sell a couple of Obama masks and a book or two. On the negative side, because my post was really not related to my niches, very few of these readers are returning today. Perhaps if my post was more applicable to the theme of The Red Stapler Chronicles, I would be seeing a better percentage of those visitors returning today. Oh well, hopefully I will get a chance to prove that I learned that lesson. In addition, I only got one other blog to link my post, but I think that was due that most of my traffic was coming from non-bloggers. Because of this fact, I probably should have explained why and how these visitors could have subscribed. Live and learn.
I want to know about your best traffic day. How did you do it and how many hits did you get?
Congratulations, that is a nice spike. I have found that these soical networking sites can provide nice boosts but the revenue conversion of this traffic is pretty low. Most of the folks who come from these sites are quite web savvy so tend to click on ads less. Did you find a meaningful conversion rate with the spike in traffic? I am going to write more on this in my weekly blogging roundup (I’ll link to this article), but I feel that quantity of traffic and the effort to get that traffic may not be worth it when it c omes to revenue conversion.
Great blog here and on my Reader!
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@Andy–Yes my bounce rate was very high and I do think that most of my ads were ignored. In addition, I really doubt that most of the visitors even read the entire post. However, by adding a welcome message to my post and including some related posts, I was able to divert some decent traffic to other posts.
As far as revenue, I would have NOT made an extra dime from this extra traffic if I didn’t quickly ad some new ads. So I do agree that spending hours and hours trying to get traffic through these sites is probably not worth your time. What I mean by this is adding hundreds of friends on digg and stumbleupon and paricipating in digg/stumble exchanges will probably prove to be worthless.
Still, if you JUST submit your posts to these social bookmarking sites, you are only investing a couple of minutes. I do think that those couple of minutes are time well spent.
I have a PR4 but not as many hits as I would like. I’m going to try your approach, thanks.
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Talking politics will bring you a good bit of traffic. Problem is that there isn’t much money in it. Your Amazon idea was probably a good one though.
One thing that you’ll probably find is that you’ll get some residual search traffic from it. For example, I have a political post on OpTempo where I mentioned something about Hillary vs. Obama back during the primaries. Yesterday I got about 200 hits on that old post just from people searching on that term.
Yeah, chasing social traffic is a never ending process. Some people do it quite well and are masters at viral marketing but I know that’s not me. I’m much more comfortable with doing SEO and search engine traffic. That’s not to say that this isn’t hard work as well, but more in my mind set.
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i think its very interesting that you can gain so many readers by blogging about politics. this is a phenomenon in the US that bloggers in Germany can only dream of.
I should try to write some kind of a link bait to my blog and submit it to some social bookmarking sites.. I have heard really good results showing from those.
hahahaha…… that is an excellent marketing tactic. I find that when people keep up with large events and include great marketing tactics, traffic will just pour right onto their site. It may not all be targeted, but it can still be utilized. Great job!
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Congrats that a good achievement. I don’t comment often but swing by every day mostly you have a good blog.
Never tried propeller, I must give it a go..
Nice spike, congrats! Thanks for the tip on propeller. Up until now, I’d never heard of it.
re: the bounce rates. Yeah, that always kinda stinks when you get a massive traffic spike, only to look at stats and see that they were there for 5 secs or less, but I always look at it like this: Your URL is now in their browsing history. Personally, I might ‘stumble’ on something, think it’s not really what I’m looking for at the time, but often come back to something of interest. In other words, eyeballs, if even temporary, on your site are better than no eyeballs on your site.
Again, congrats, and I’m off to Propeller right now! Thanks.
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Propeller usually does not bring me a lot of traffic, but I didn’t join propeller groups either, thanks for the tip.
I am having good results with reddit and stumble, have you try to bookmark post URL on these sites?
i started reading your blog b’coz i found some interesting so i started reading old post also n this one also i like to experiment on mine. but i would say about your traffic that for some of the blog this is an avg traffic but for your i would say it’s good kick for blog, and yes when you written unique, interesting or post on hot topic , than there would be a great chance to increase traffic.