Two days ago, thanks to someone submitting this post to YCombinator News nathanbowers.com went from ~65 unique visitors a day to 558. Of course you usually need several spikes like that before the traffic sticks. Pageviews are good, but subscribers and commenters are what really matter.
Each blogger has their own theory about building traffic. Some swear by submitting stories to “blog carnivals”, or getting listed in blog directories (I’m unconvinced so far). Most of my traffic spikes have been sparked by commenting on other blogs:
1) In 2005 I did a Getting Things Done style mod of TiddlyWiki called GTDTW and mentioned it in the 43Folders Google Group. After that it made the del.icio.us homepage and got tons of traffic. It even appeared in Make magazine (the print version).
Lessons learned: A) Submitting worthwhile comments on sites in your niche works. B) It’s good to have a blog before your pet project gets discovered so people can follow your work.
2) In July 2006 Doug and I launched an RSS reader called Newshutch (now defunct). A few days after launch I commented – without mentioning Newshutch – on a 37signals post using Newshutch.com as my link. Shortly after that comment 37signals cited Newshutch as an example of beautiful design. SCORE!… Too bad the load crushed our server and we weren’t able to keep all the new signups.
Lesson learned: If you’re building a resource intensive web service go “invite only” in the beginning so you can manage your growth. Invites are like velvet rope that lets in influential (buzz generating) early adopters. Gmail used this strategy and they were able to keep their servers afloat and generate huge demand.
3) I’m not sure who submitted my post to YCombinator News. Maybe it’s just that Mac vs. PC stories are irresistible 
. Anyway, during the spike this blog slowed waaayyyyy down which probably cost me some new readers.
Lesson learned: You need to make your site Digg resistant before you get a traffic spike so all those new readers aren’t greeted by a melted server.
To recap:
- Well placed, meaningful comments really do drive traffic.
- If you don’t have a blog, start one so you have a place to send people when you contribute to online communities.
- If your web application would likely be crushed by a huge influx of users, start out with an invite only rollout.
- After a traffic spike is not when you want to tune your traffic handling. If you’re hosting your own Wordpress installation use the WP-Cache plugin, set long expire headers on images, css, and js files, and make sure your text content is gzipped. If all that sounds like intimidating geek speak, stay tuned. I’ll be posting about how to make Wordpress meltdown-resistant soon (special thanks to Micah who taught me all I know about it).
Got questions? Have advice, or better yet, meltdown horror stories? Please share with the class.
