
Getting 60 thousand pageviews with 2 carefully constructed posts - azharcs
http://maxklein.posterous.com/getting-60-thousand-pageviews-with-2-carefull
======
johns
Max misappropriates value from follower count. He says that the new followers
that were valuable were "real business men with high follower to followee
counts" (um, spammers?) and that the second article got him followers that
were "unimportant people with low follower counts"

This is backwards. Get those first kind of people to follow you and they may
retweet your stuff once in a blue moon but it's just noise amongst the rest of
their noise. Get a lot of that second group to follow you and those people
will GO TO BAT for you. They're real, engaged followers. Your tweets are far
more likely to register with them (or even just be seen) and they can just as
easily start network effects that reach the big boys anyway. As a whole
they're far more valuable than 1000 of the 'real business men'.

~~~
marilyn
Excellent point. Twitter accounts with moderate followers represent real
people that are more likely to be engaged with your tweets. The "big boys" are
more likely to be using Twitter as a broadcasting marketing tool. The former
group are more likely to become your users/readers/customers.

~~~
maxklein
I think the most valuable twitter user is he who followers 100 people but is
followed by 10.000 people. Do you disagree?

~~~
jacquesm
That depends on the 10,000 people. If they're all outside the demographic that
I'm interested in or if the person that follows me never retweets stuff that
interests my demographic then it's useless.

In general though, assuming there is some bond between you and the person that
follows 100 people and the 10,000 people that follow him in turn contain some
real live bodies that are in the right demographic he/she will be a useful
follower.

Personally I have not seen much action on twitter from people with 10's of
thousands of followers, they are usually fairly reluctant to re-tweet unless
it suits them perfectly, exactly _because_ of their large following, and also
because people with that many followers usually have those for their own
glorification and not specifically as a tool to communicate with people with
who they have a strong (2 way) bond.

~~~
maxklein
That's quite interesting. I don't actually know how that works since I've
obviously never had more than 200 followers. I see the point though - I have
revised my opinion hereforth.

~~~
ErrantX
As a "reader" on Twitter I usually dont follow anyone over a few hundred
followers unless they are _really_ interesting. Because mostly it is just
noise.

I suspect the demographic of their followers isn't hugely useful for "sticky"
readers.

------
jacquesm
So, essentially we've been social engineered :)

Congratulations!

Knowing that I might be a bit more reluctant to visit maxklein.posterous.com
links in the future.

~~~
maxklein
You´ve not been social engineered - you´ve received a post that was
personalised for you. I don´t write to gain twitter followers - I really don´t
care - but in order to test my theory, I needed some type of metric, and that
seemed like a relevant one.

My further posts are no longer going to be manipulated in that manner -- well,
till I think of something interesting to try out again.

The only difference between what I did and what lifehacker or any such site
does is that I explained afterwards.

(Sorry about the weird apostrophe, I got a new macbook and it has a strange
keyboard).

~~~
jacquesm
> You´ve not been social engineered - you´ve received a post that was
> personalised for you.

That's your interpretation, mine is different. You've used your reputation to
get me to visit your site, specifically not the text of those links. You've
written interesting stuff in the past and I wondered what this was about.
(edit: reputation+title = click, reputation alone or title alone would
probably not have been a click, but that's after the fact).

> My further posts are no longer going to be manipulated in that manner

So you say.

> well, till I think of something interesting to try out again.

See, that's what I mean. You've abused your reputation in order to do your
experiment, and you've succeeded in your goal. Now I'm going to be more wary,
and will think twice before I click, no matter how enticing the title. In
fact, the more enticing the title the _less_ chance that I'll click because
that will make it more likely that you are pulling another stunt.

> The only difference between what I did and what lifehacker or any such site
> does is that I explained afterwards.

A good magician _never_ explains his tricks to the audience.

I know that that is a fine line here, but even though I'm sure you have good
intentions and you are in a way making up for tricking people by explaining it
I can't help the feelings that it creates.

Trust is a fragile thing, and in some sense you have broken that trust.

You've taken 'link bait' or 'title bait' one step further and created 'article
bait'. That's an achievement in its own right, and I find it quite impressive
that you managed to pull this off but at the same time you've shown yourself
more than willing and capable of doing this with intent.

> I don´t write to gain twitter followers

No, but you write "My aim in both cases was to increase my name recognition. I
wanted the right people to be aware of "Max Klein". "

If twitter followers are a measure of that then we can use that to gauge your
success and effectively you _were_ trying to gain a following.

That's what social engineering is all about. It's a hacker term for getting
people to do what they otherwise would not do by outsmarting them. That's not
limited to getting passwords over the phone by pretending to be the sysadmin.

~~~
maxklein
There are a lot of blogs there talking about tech and talking about money. I
could join their ranks and just write the same stuff I write here.

But I choose not to. What I want to write is a meta blog. A blog where the
things I write to pull people to my site are further explained and analysed.
Like getting traffic by writing an article about how to get traffic and in
that article analysing the traffic the article itself would get. That is the
experiment I want to do.

Yes, unfortunately, you are my test subject, and it is your choice if you
choose to participate or not, but I think it will be interesting.

So I am the magician explaining and analysing my tricks. Not everyone likes
that - some just want to see the magic.

~~~
jacquesm
The basic mistake you make is that as both the audience _and_ the test subject
you lose perspective, it's one thing to stand on the sidelines and see you do
great stuff with text in order to really achieve something.

If you had a specific goal other than 'increasing the name recognition of Max
Klein' then that would be cool with me.

Say you invent a gadget and you apply this technique and you sell a million of
them and document it. That's the exact same thing but with one major
difference, there is a concrete goal.

The audience itself is not the goal, and neither is simply increasing your
name visibility. It's like a branded box with nothing in it. Other than your
'cleverness'.

By closing the loop and making the whole thing about how to attract visitors
you are like a spammer that mails you a guide on how to get traffic, the guide
tells you to spam people and send them guides.

There is no _real_ goal here.

That's a harsh analogy, but that is the way it appears to me.

So, what do you really intend to do with the audience that you have got ?

Are you going to get to some kind of conversion goal or is it just a numbers
game ?

~~~
maxklein
Actually, I do have a plan. I was intending to phase it in, but it makes no
difference if I say it now:

Step 1: Write interesting articles where I deconstruct the art of gaining name
recognition, and in the process gain a lot of name recognition. At some point,
I will have a following of about 1000

Step 2: I am going to challenge one of the established software players that I
am going to make software that is better and more loved than theirs

Step 3: I will program and release something very promising. My followers will
spread the news. It will grow

That's my overall plan. There is software I am developing where I am going to
stake my reputation on. But what's a reputation to stake if you have none, ey?

~~~
alexro
Now that's interesting, a social engineer + software developer = new kind of
entrepreneur? The plan: outsmart people in the social space (creating a
momentum) and then start selling them software (creating long term effect).

The problem here is how actually you create good software

~~~
maxklein
Well, I work in research doing software mainly, so technically, I am
competent.

~~~
alexro
Now you should be well settled in for applying to YC

~~~
maxklein
I did in the past and was rejected. I don't need to anymore, this month I will
make 15k in revenue + still have my salary. I'm comfortable.

------
ErrantX
_I wrote the articles to test my theories on what captures attention on the
internet_

 _I don't have any analytics installed on this site_

That seems counter-intuitive?

To me this reads purely like deliberate controversy to get some notoriety. The
posts you mention I actually read (both I think) and found one of the 2 to be
of interest. To suggest they were some sort of trick just seems weird.

------
ThomPete
This article was as informative as someone who would write "Getting 60K
pageviews by a carefully constructed competition"

It's not hard to get page views.

I have approx 30K page views per post and great discussions around them and
re-tweets up the yazoo, but it's based on what I find interesting, what I want
to spend my time on. Not on writing content that isn't important to me.

The real metrics you should look for is average time spent on site, number of
page views per visit unique visitors, what kind of discussion you can generate
around it, if people start contacting you for your input.

That's worth something and it's solid.

------
devicenull
Did anyone else not want to click that, just based on the title?

~~~
jacquesm
Exactly, that was my feeling.

He _is_ clever though, you have to hand him that.

But by showing his hand and how 'clever' he's been the author has possibly
completely undone the effect.

There is an unwritten social contract between content creators and audiences,
they don't mind being duped (if it isn't blatantly obvious), but don't rub it
in.

~~~
alexro
Isn't it a hackers' website? Also, isn't there a question on the YC
application form asking how one hacked something non-computer?

------
wooster
I once had a blog post get 100,000 uniques in a day:
[http://www.nextthing.org/archives/2005/08/07/fun-with-
http-h...](http://www.nextthing.org/archives/2005/08/07/fun-with-http-headers)

That was back when Digg could still drive traffic. The Apple interns e-mail
list liked my post, and they all upvoted it on Digg (there were a lot of
interns).

~~~
alexro
The point here is to be able to reproduce it on will

------
ramchip
While we're on the topic, am I the only one who noticed that posts starting
like "Am I the only one to think that..." or "I'll probably get downvoted for
this but..." tend to get upvoted a lot?

I cringe whenever I see this. Usually, the poster's opinion is somewhat
obvious and would definitely not get downvoted if it were just stated. But
adding the "lone sane person" spin to it seems to get a lot more upvotes
anyway.

~~~
gjm11
I have a personal policy of always downvoting such comments when I see them,
(1) to reduce the distortion caused by the effect you mentioned and (2) in the
hope of slightly discouraging them.

------
pmorici
Shocker, the topic of your blog post determines reader interest and
demographic. Isn't most writing for public consumption carefully constructed?
One of the tenants of a good author is knowing your audience and writing for
them.

------
snitko
I'd like to know how would you get the world to know about your article unless
you post it on HN and have small number of twitter followers?

~~~
jacquesm
It depends on what you have to say and how well you go about saying it. A very
few people reading your stuff can get the ball rolling. If one of the major
aggregation sites picks up on you you could easily see a few thousand visitors
from one article. And possibly much more than that.

If a few of those put you in their reader the next post will get traction a
bit quicker, assuming you keep the quality constant.

It's a long process but the value of the kind of following you build up like
that is likely a lot higher than from 'stunts'.

If you build a solid reputation and you continue to treat your audience with
some respect, they're likely to be loyal for a long time.

edit: and if you're just writing to up your follower count in twitter then you
have to stop and ask yourself what the actual goal is that you are trying to
achieve. The number of people following you on social news sites does not
automatically translate in to clout. It's just an abstract, a number. If it
makes you happy to see a larger number then go for it, but other than that the
question is: "what are you going to do with those followers?"

Are you going to somehow harness the power of the people that receive your
tweets / posts or is it just a numbers game?

For some, it is apparently all about the numbers. Others, with _far_ smaller
'followings' meanwhile (but with a good plan and some respect and serious
intentions) will move mountains.

If you want to achieve some goal it is unlikely that a simple increase in your
follower count is going to help you to achieve that goal. It's just a (very
small) tool that may help you along the way when used wisely. And when used
badly it can cut you just as easily. Reputations are built up slowly and
destroyed in a heartbeat.

~~~
tnote
Writing for the simple task of getting followers is redundant.Write your
articles and landing pages first,and get everything ready for production, with
NO followers.Then simply go to <http://gdi.bz/twitterads> and follow the
simple instructions for getting 10,000 followers in 60 to 90 days.(I'm not
sellin' anything here,It is one hundred % free to do) These will be targeted
followers for whatever niche you are writing about.Then,after you have your
10,000 followers.look on my twitter profile
<http://twitter.com/tristanginnett> and look for the auto-post software in my
updates, that will auto-post YOUR blog,affiliate,website link out 24 hours a
day.

------
scorpion032
Nothing so special in here. Thats exactly the ways movies have worked, from
times immemorial.

