Comments on: 100%+ Traffic Increase

By: Esa

Esa — Mon, 13 Jun 2005 21:03:28 +0000

I’ve been reading your… Insights for a while now, since 2003 or so, starting from Dexterity.com. While I’ve had partial success applying them at best, I’ve always found them to be rather inspiring. However, your article on getting up early has worked wonders. I’m just starting to get up at 7 am consistently, and it’s working… I guess the trick is, that you don’t psychologically _feel_ you’re getting less sleep, since you go to bed when you’re tired — This is kinda weird, since if I sleep ‘naturally’, I’ll sleep between 10 and 12 hours a night, but now I feel well-rested with less than eight. I’ve also started doing sit-ups for five minutes a day ( hey, if three minutes using a gimmick-machine is enough, five minutes of honest sit-ups should work also )
ANYway, the point is, that despite the fact I’m having some financial troubles now, I’m very optimistic about the future, and in big part due to your articles and writings.

By: Jethro

Jethro — Mon, 06 Jun 2005 21:33:36 +0000

This may have already been said above, but I think one of the reasons your early riser and coffee blog topics were so popular is because these topics are so widely accessible and also not too controversial. The topics are easy for other people to recommend on their own blog sites, without worrying about getting too much pushback from their own readers.

For example, if I really like the music of a particular band and I really want to try get my friends into the band’s music as well, I’m going to recommend they listen to one of the band’s more “poppy” top-40 type songs that generally more widely accessible. As opposed to recommending they listen to some of the band’s more advanced or more experimental songs. So my hope is that if my friends like the “poppy” song that I originally recommended, maybe they will eventually come to appreciate the rest of the album. Or maybe they won’t.

By: Elaine

Elaine — Mon, 06 Jun 2005 21:04:33 +0000

Congratulations on your Web success!

It’s probably a health thing that makes the coffee and early rising posts so popular. We’re a very health-conscious nation right now, and people are starting to get it that they need better rest, and that they need to cut their addictions.

No matter why or why not, though, it’s nice to have a focused Web site to go to while I’m wasting away at work, to help reprioritize. Though there have been a lot of ancilliary things going on in my life right now, a few of your articles have certainly helped me focus more. I unfortunately can’t credit you or any particular article of yours for this, but you might want to know that since I’ve started reading your Web site and thinking about the general topics you’ve introduced (which I’ve never really thought about before), I’ve negotiated myself a significant raise and successfully held to my new workout routine.

Knowing what you want and being able to visualize success has an amazing impact.

By: Leah Guildenstern

Leah Guildenstern — Sun, 05 Jun 2005 14:23:56 +0000

Congrats on the traffic. The coffee one I’m not entirely sure why that took off, althought it may have been triggered in part by the early morning rising one. (I don’t know which came first but I know I scrolled down for earlier entries. The coffee ideas seemed familar to me but some of the arguments of why to quit and how it affects your thinking really made me think.

The waking up post was actually somewhat revolutionary to me. I know a lot of people want to “fix their sleeping patterns” but they know the “Just have to get to bed early” and then flog themselves for failing and give up. Turning the deadline around (wake at alarm - no matter what) and making “awareness of sleepyness the evening factor is brilliant. All those “I’ll take meletonin and I’m still not sleeping” nights are not necessary and waking up at 5 is possible.

By: Dwayne Melancon

Dwayne Melancon — Sun, 05 Jun 2005 05:11:02 +0000

That is so cool, Steve. Congratulations! I noticed that some topics are certainly hotter than others - my two biggest traffic magnets have been a post on the Moleskine notebook, and another on how I lost 60 pounds in the last year.

Keep up the great work!

By: klondike.kate

klondike.kate — Sun, 05 Jun 2005 04:01:12 +0000

Reasons? Clear writing, realistic plan, timely topic. Thanks!

By: John Richardson

John Richardson — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 20:19:59 +0000

Hey Steve, congratulations on the traffic and the incredible ride to the top. I’ve posted a theory why your sleep post was so popular and another on how I think it happened over on my blog. Both are a little long for a comment. You have definitely stumbled on something here. Keep up the great work.

John

By: Steve Pavlina

Steve Pavlina — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 17:28:25 +0000

@Coturnix: I’ve been submitting posts to a number of blog carnivals, but I haven’t seen any of them produce a major surge in traffic — most of them generate a few dozen new visitors. It’s all relative though. As traffic increases you need a lot more visitors to create a spike. 1000 extra visitors in a day wouldn’t be much of a spike for this blog and wouldn’t even be noticed by A-list blogs, but it would surely be a major surge for a smaller blog.

@Dustin: Patience certainly, but beyond that I think it helps to create a balance between sharing part of your own life and sharing ideas that could help other people. If you err on the side of talking too much about yourself, the blog becomes merely a narcissistic outlet. But on the other hand, if you never share any personal information, then it’s hard to build rapport and trust because the posts sound too preachy. I’m still working out the right balance between the two, but I think it helps to make blended posts that include personal details while also focusing on how to benefit the reader. Both the coffee and early riser posts fit that pattern.

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 15:51:31 +0000

Steve,

I think the popularity of your coffee and early rising entries stems from:

1) Two very popular self-improvement topics
2) Your very readable, no nonsense writing style
3) Sound advice with ‘new news’ content

Reasons 2) and 3) are generally true of all your writing, which is why I like your blog so much. Keep up the great work, and thanks!

By: Harish Verma

Harish Verma — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 15:49:35 +0000

Congratulations. I think each us of in some way are looking to change ie replace habits. Encouragement in the way of sharing your experience is invaluable.
Thanks

By: coturnix

coturnix — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 14:30:08 +0000

People are fascinated by sleep. The same thing happened to me. When I started Circadiana (http://circadiana.blogspot.com/), I got 17000 hits in the FIRST WEEK of its existence! How? I wrote a post “Everything you always wanted to know about sleep but were too afraid to ask”, which was immediately linked by BoingBoing and Andrew Sullivan, followed by a looooong tail of blogs, livejournals and forums, and high listing on Delicious and other news-aggregators. To this day, several months later, that post is still the most popular. I get 85 hits/day even when I take a break in posting for several days in a row, and it is mostly to this post. Of course, having a whole blog devoted to sleep makes my blog very popular with Google, too. Circadiana gets far more hits from Google than my “home” blog, Science And Politics.

Also, being in the Carnival of Education may have helped this post of yours, as it has helped me with some posts that I placed on carnivals.

By: Ozir

Ozir — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 11:31:43 +0000

I found your site on the “popular” del.icio.us rss feed. Nathan above is right on.

“Becoming an early riser” is what got me. I’ve been wanting to become an early riser for a long time, but never really started trying… I’m notorious for going to sleep late at night. So when you described yourself as being like that in the past, it really struck me. Hopefully 30 days from now, I can claim I’m an early riser.

If this works out for me and stick with it for a year I’m definitely buying your book.

By: Dustin coffey

Dustin coffey — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 09:14:20 +0000

I hope to have interesting enough material on my site to one day achieve high traffic flow such as yourself. This will take time of course, any advise?

By: Insomniac

Insomniac — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 08:55:42 +0000

Steve, the “How to Become an Early Riser” article is very popular because it’s a problem everybody has, and this problem is pretty disturbing from them. Almost ALL of my friends have this problem.

So, if you can manage to find out which problems 90% of the people have, and blog about them, then you can get a hell of a lot of traffic, and in the mean time help a hell of a lot of people.

By: Ken

Ken — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 08:39:21 +0000

Hey Steve, I am one of those bloggers… however…I posted the one about procrastination…. one of your biggest forums that seems to get a lot of discussion about you in the past 2 weeks is http://www.newstoday.com which is basically made up of the creative community.

Our discussion was about sleep habits and how waking up in the morning tired was a real problem. I had originally posted that I was feeling sick in the morning when I was going to bed early but if I went to bed at a later time and woke up early I wasnt feeling sick. The discussion then went on that I had trained my body to work on less sleep and that more sleep was affecting me adversely.

I started reading all of your articles in the past couple of days and I actually have done no work because of it and I am feeling better already. I am taking the day off tomorrow as part of an experiment. Your blog is a well of Tony Robbins type stuff for free.

I have been blogging for 3 years but I am getting more involved in it now. I look forward to reading more of your articles and posts.