Traffic, Who Needs More Traffic?

Posted by Pixelhead

Wow, I just read Steven of VandelayDesign.com’s post How to Set Up a Domino Effect of Traffic were Stephen shares his method of generating a huge amount of traffic using a combination of Social Media sites.

In short, after Steven writes a post that is written for his Web Design niche, he then submits the post to several web design niche social media sites, which he calls second tier social media sites. He then receives a couple hundred visitors from the second tier sites. The visitors from the second tier sites then submit the post to the big three Digg, Stumbleupon, and Del.icio.us.

Of course there is quite a bit more to it than what I have written here, and Steven goes into pretty good detail about this method which he has used on three separate occasions. The most being 34,000 visitors to his post 77 Resources to Simplify Your Life as a Web Designer. 34,000 visitors…wow.

Three key ideas I got from his post:

Write a sweet piece of Linkbait for your niche.
Submit the linkbait post to some social sites in your niche.
Optimize your posts for the three large Social networks, by making it easy for your visitors to submit to them.

Stop by and read Steven’s post, and let me know what you think. Hmm, I think I need to come up with some some SEO link bait to submit to Sphinn.

Written by Pixelhead on September 19th, 2007 with 25 comments.
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25 comments

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Steven Snell
#1. September 19th, 2007, at 2:54 AM.

Adam,
Thanks for the link! I’m glad you summarized the article here because it lets me know that you got the main points. There was a lot of info that I wanted to include so I was concerned with overkill. Thanks for the promotion!

Pixelhead
#2. September 19th, 2007, at 3:00 AM.

Your post makes it seem so easy. I think the hard part is going to be coming up with a sweet linkbait post.

Steven Snell
#3. September 19th, 2007, at 3:09 AM.

Yeah, the idea is obviously important. List posts have worked the best for me. It’s hard to think of an idea that hasn’t been done already, although my list of free icons was certainly not the first of it’s kind and it got pretty big traffic. Shoot me an email when you’ve got something, I’ll give you a vote, bookmark, link, whatever.

Pixelhead
#4. September 19th, 2007, at 3:12 AM.

Thanks for the offer, once I get my creative juices flowing, I may very well take you up on it.

XIII
#5. September 19th, 2007, at 9:47 AM.

34000 sounds very impressive indeed. It should be interesting to see how many of these actually ever return. Most of the hits from networking sites seem to be one time affairs.

Pixelhead
#6. September 19th, 2007, at 12:45 PM.

XIII, The temp traffic would be groovy, but just think of all those inbound links that he has gained.
Quite a large number of the hits are one time visitors, but a percentage will return again.

Slevi
#7. September 19th, 2007, at 2:51 PM.

And think of your poor old site probably dying under the pressure, hehe . On one of the sites we maintain we once managed to get nearly 8000 unique but it pretty much killed the site off since it just couldn’t handle it.

The links afterwards definitely is a good thing though and probably the best you get out of it all since as mentioned the actual returning visitors is quite low.

Before going for it though you’ll be doing yourself a big favor to at least optimize your blog as much as possible for this sort of traffic, having it unreachable isn’t the best advertisement either .

Pixelhead
#8. September 19th, 2007, at 3:24 PM.

Yes, I am not sure exactly what that type of traffic would do to the server…I think that is one problem I would like to have to deal with.

Steven Snell
#9. September 19th, 2007, at 10:59 PM.

XIII,
You’re right. I’m sure most of them will never return. But Adam’s point is true, it brought a lot of links. The subscriber count went up about 220. It’s not huge considering the amount of traffic, but it basically doubled my subscriber base.

i2k2-design
#10. September 20th, 2007, at 7:45 AM.

Nice post. One thing which I figured out is that to make an article popular you need to title it like answer to any question. i.e
“10 Keys to Effective Writing for the Web” is the title of the article and it answers question how to write effectively for the web?

Pixelhead
#11. September 20th, 2007, at 12:48 PM.

I2k2, thanks for tip, I never thought about making sure the title answered a question.

Real Estate Editorial
#12. September 20th, 2007, at 3:27 PM.

You guys are right, the link afterwards is the important part, and even if you can convert 5% of those visitors, that is still quite good.

Ernie
#13. September 21st, 2007, at 1:44 AM.

Is the name of the game, 1 off visitors on a day, or long term visitors that regularly return?
Great if a piece of linkbait works, but only really useful if you have something else to keep them there after the quick laugh.

Alex D.
#14. September 22nd, 2007, at 5:19 PM.

Thank you for that post, the link has some great tips!

Slevi
#15. September 22nd, 2007, at 10:14 PM.

Good tip i2k2, it’s something I never really think about. Sometimes I actually just do the reverse and place the title in the form of a question, suppose I should keep this tip in mind.

Rebecca
#16. September 22nd, 2007, at 10:42 PM.

Hi,
Thanks for the information. I was lead to your blog from the DF list. I will have to take some time to do some of these things. It sounds like a lot of work. I will be back!
Rebecca

Pixelhead
#17. September 23rd, 2007, at 12:51 AM.

Rebecca, anyone who ever said marketing your blog was easy, lied. It takes time and patience as well as creativity to name a few.

Dangerous Dave
#18. September 23rd, 2007, at 1:42 AM.

That is definitely good info. I am looking to use these on my sites. i will keep you updated if I see an increase of traffic. Thanks for the info!!

Pixelhead
#19. September 23rd, 2007, at 2:06 AM.

Dave let us know if you have any luck…a well written post such as those Steven has written do seem to work wonders.

Sutocu
#20. September 23rd, 2007, at 9:30 AM.

I think number 1 is the most difficult part, actually. If you manage to write a really good piece of link bait, the rest of it will be quite easy.

Barry Cox
#21. September 25th, 2007, at 12:49 AM.

Interesting read. I have read about link bait before, but probably like many people just can’t come up with a good idea. Your post has helped me with a couple of the pieces though.

Thanks

subconscious mind
#22. September 25th, 2007, at 1:07 AM.

The domino effect was a great article, made me realize the importance of smaller social networking sites, before i had just been concentrating on digg.

Pixelhead
#23. September 25th, 2007, at 1:16 AM.

Thankfully there is not a shortage of second tier social networking sites. Just have to concentrate on one or two in order to develop a solid network.
Just don’t forget to help out those that are in your network as they help you.

Second Life Virtual World
#24. September 25th, 2007, at 8:54 PM.

This is wicked cool my friend. I will be giving this method a try as I have not had much love so far from the social networks.

Instant Fundas
#25. May 1st, 2008, at 2:32 PM.

Nice article. Will checkout sphinn.

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