

How I got 50,000 page views by simply being me  - jgrahamc
http://www.jgc.org/blog/2010/01/how-i-got-50000-page-views-by-simply.html

======
patio11
I think the tribal aversion of engineers to marketing is coming out in force
here.

Being authentic is wonderful. Of course, we know authenticity is prized by
this community (and many others). So if we get up on a soapbox and say "Be
authentic!", are we being authentic or are we marketing?

I think the answer is "both".

The prior post rubbed me wrong not because it was "Give people what they
want!" and not because it was introspective, but because it seemed to glorify
pageviews for the sake of pageviews, as opposed to there being some strategy
to actually create value. If folks had perceived value creation, they probably
wouldn't have cared if titles were optimized for their interests.

I'm not particularly enthusiastic about personal promotion via scaring people
into thinking Facebook exists to out gay people, but at the bottom of that
post, there was a brief aside about how you should take the hint if people
retitle your post when tweeting it. That is a SOLID piece of concrete,
actionable advice about writing good titles, which is a core competency for
marketing It also provides value to all parties. There is a reason I don't
title my blog posts "Something I thought today."

I think if people perceived the posts as "creating more value than they
captured", they would have no problem whatsoever with optimizing the execution
of them.

~~~
maxklein
Read the first article - I think there is more actionable and useful stuff in
there that people just starting out can use.

But I think I overshot my targets and my attempt at exposure is leading to a
backlash. I'll just stop talking now and go off and write my next article,
which will be more 'me'.

~~~
physcab
I think arguing about what you did is right or wrong misses the point. You're
free to say whatever you want on your own blog. For the record though, I had
no idea who you were before reading your previous two posts, but after reading
your third, I'm left with a negative impression of your writing and probably
will not be coming back and will probably associate that with your HN username
as well.

~~~
Murkin
How is a blog post different than websites in this respect.

90% of the posts here speak about improving conversion (A/B testing and such)
instead of adding features.

How much value that adds ? _ZERO_. But you accept that.

Now explain to me how that is different than iterating/engineering your blog
posts ?

~~~
steveklabnik
Improving conversion rates may very well add value. 'Value' != 'features',
it's entirely possible that a site has a bad conversion rate because it's
confusing or hard to use. A/B testing helps to improve this, which is
certainly 'more value' in my mind.

~~~
Murkin
So does a well written and targeted blog post.

Website owners do it for money. Bloggers and Twitterers do it for fame.

I would personally love to see more posts on Good writing, Audience targeting
and Engagement.

------
daeken
Thank you. If I'm reading your blog, it's because I want to hear what you have
to say, not because I want to be pandered to. Write what you want to write,
and I'll take it or leave it. Attention-whoring gets you looks, but it builds
no real value; writing about what interests you -- while it can be hit or miss
-- does.

~~~
axod
>> "Attention-whoring gets you looks, but it builds no real value;"

Huh? 37signals and similar do pretty well out of it.

~~~
pavs
I think you mean techcrunch, right?

~~~
jrockway
Wait, you're both right!

------
dbz
Well- I'm not impressed. This post provided no insight to me besides the
message "Interesting posts get lots of views" and "I can get as many posts as
some guy who spams on my website by being me"

Those two messages seem very irrelevant to my life. The post didn't even have
an interesting story =/

If anyone got something better than that out of the post, please tell me
because this is at the top of HN and I don't know why. No rudeness intended.

~~~
Retric
I read the whole thing as sarcasm. Where content is more important than self
promotion.

------
josefresco
Ironic that his follow up post about just being 'you' also just happened to
pander to the HN crowd which as a result will probably bring him another 25K
plus in traffic?

Simply writing and waiting for the traffic to roll in is unrealistic. You can
still author great content _and_ promote it via social/news/blog platforms.
Just because you market yourself well doesn't make your content crap.

------
jacquesm
That's the funny thing, Johns 'Ikea' post, in spite of not being of much
practical use to me, as opposed to Max' post, will actually get me to visit
his site more often rather than less, simply because it was genuine.

I read for all kinds of reasons, sometimes to further my business goals,
sometimes to learn. The simple fact that you'd go out of your way to get the
answer to a question that bugs you really impresses me. That's _exactly_ why I
am a programmer to begin with, the kid in my just simply never stops wondering
about questions like that and every now and then I have time enough to find
the answer to a few of those.

So, likely your next post will be inspirational in some other sense.

Keep them coming, and I'll definitely be reading.

------
DanielBMarkham
I've written several blog entries where I say, basically, that the blog is for
me. If the rest of you like it, fine, but that's not the point.

I find the truth is a little more complex, however. Analytical guys being what
they are, I look at my blog stats from time to time. (Look! Shiny numbers and
graphs!) When I start doing this too much, then I end up trying to "game" the
system, and my writing goes downhill.

So I had a very visceral response to John's post: if you really are just
writing "you", then you aren't looking at your stats (and not caring whether
other people do or not) If, however, you're looking to the community for
validation (and don't we all do that to some degree)? That's when you start
writing posts that are basically "Look at me! I'm much more
honest/trustworthy/humble than that other guy"

Write for you, yes. But if you tell us too many times "I write for me" then
you're really not writing for you anymore, are you?

Sorry if that sounded like Mr. Asshole Guy. Like I said, the criticism comes
from my doing the same thing.

~~~
alexro
Looks like you're overreacting here. All John said that he didn't go out of
his way to get more pageviews. I think it's different to writing for yourself.

------
chipsy
My attitude to blogging has shifted over time.

At first I took it all at face value. Gradually I started hating the apparent
dominance of snake-oil-selling bloggers. Then I decided that there was more to
it than I first thought and am preparing a strategy that fits in blogging with
my other goals.

Consider: what is the art of promotion, but another form of power? It can be
abused, just like programming skills can be abused for malicious purposes, but
it can also be applied to contribute to other efforts.

Blogging is a worthy cross-promotional tool, and it could give you the star
power necessary to start a community or a collaborative project from scratch.
And in the meantime, ad monetization gives a little bit of reward for building
a strong site.

And you don't have to work within the "make regular posts on vapid topics"
cycle to succeed: Good posts on niche subjects can go a long way, especially
if you stick to making them search-friendly "evergreen" articles and not pure
news/rumor/opinion. While you can't compete with the likes of Demand Media on
quantity, you can exploit specialty subjects far better.

------
alexro
I think Max Klein's posts are more about "learn the tricks how to get 50000
page views on will", as opposed to "write good posts and they'll come"

Edit: studying at school also doesn't create value by itself, and many people
never get much value from their studies, but these who know for what they
learn get the most

------
Confusion
Well, Max Klein was also being himself and was posting things he considered
interesting. Even though he himself thinks he was manipulating people, I don't
actually think he was manipulating anyone but himself.

------
galactus
never change. <3

------
yes_its_giles
I just wanted to say, because I did a bunch of blogging recently about how you
can drive traffic deliberately by picking fights, and did it while driving
traffic deliberately by picking some fights: in the past I was getting these
occasionally 10K+ pageview days just by being me (which is small compared to
the 50K+ these guys are talking about), and then sort of either graduated or
devolved (depending on your frame of reference) to getting similar numbers
deliberately. Basically I figured out what was happening, out of curiousity,
and once I had figured it out, that meant I then had the ability to do it
deliberately. So now, sometimes, I do.

I think the "tribal aversion of engineers to marketing" thing is very valid -
being able to drive traffic is useful, and engineers seem to think that
building systems that reward driving traffic (such as Google) makes you a
better person than using such a system successfully (if you want to make money
with Google, you're going to need to drive some traffic). It's such an
arbitrary thing. If the system is worth building then it must be worth using
too.

------
sailormoon
Moral of these recent stories: Write something good and you'll get a lot of
uniques.

Monetary value of those uniques: $0.00

Self esteem/social confirmation/confidence boosting value of those uniques:
very high.

~~~
goatforce5
My 'hobby' site gets around 4.5m page views a month. It makes a bit of money,
but not enough to live off.

It has, however, been the main reason i've got my past few jobs. Having
something that you can point to that has some sort of impact can open a lot of
doors.

~~~
sailormoon
4.5m pageviews a month? 150k/day? That's not bad at all. What's the site? : D

~~~
jacquesm
With 'goat' in the gps username I'm really not sure I want to know.

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numbchuckskills
why is this at the top? Great you had a post that everyone liked. Do we really
need to re-validate that it was a good post?

~~~
judofyr
I think it's a response to <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1038779>

