

Tell YC: More traffic on Digg, TechCrunch, or ... Kim Kommando? - thorax

One of our sites, bug.gd, has made it to the front page of all sorts of popular sites (e.g. Digg, TechCrunch, LifeHacker, and PCWorld).<p>I just wanted to share with you guys some of our anecdotal numbers after looking at our traffic and the effects of that kind of coverage.<p>Summary: The net result is that TechCrunch and Mashable are good for getting wider blog coverage, not so much on sheer traffic numbers. Digg was awesome in terms of sheer traffic, but didn't do much "spreading" to other sites and sources. PCWorld didn't result in much traffic, but users were "stickier" and there were a few trickle blog coverages. Kim Kommando's newsletter netted a much larger influx of new users and a surprising amount of traffic (More than all non-Digg sources combined, but less than Digg.)<p>Some rough details:<p>* Front page of Digg resulted in ~35,000 new visitors first day, and 5k or more over the following few days.<p>* We had coverage on Mashable and Webware about the same time. This resulted in, by my best estimate, about 2k or 3k more that day. These two sites converted into dozens of personal and lesser-known blog references as the blogosphere spread the word.<p>* When we appeared on TechCrunch, we saw roughly ~4,000 new visitors that day. It evened out into a weak addition to our user base. The blog echo of TechCrunch was solid, with Lifehacker and other sites adding mentions in reaction to TC. I should mention that our coverage on TC resulted in a lot of the initial interest we've received from partnerships and VC analysts. None of the other coverage directly led to as much of that kind of inquiry.<p>* Our light PCWorld magazine coverage resulted in ~3,000 new visitors over a period of a couple days. It was very weak overall, but we weren't in a full article, and it feels like a nice amount of traffic for such a small mention. There were a lot of blog echoes of PCWorld (both from spam blogs and interested individuals).<p>* Kim Kommando's Cool Site of the Day newsletter resulted in a surprisingly influx of ~17,000 new visitors with a surprising amount of stickiness. I had never heard of Kim Kommando before (maybe I'm just oblivious). From what I can tell, Kim has a show on talk radio in some areas of the US and has very high circulation email newsletters.<p>I noticed today that rescuetime was just mentioned in Kim Kommando's newsletter. I'd be interested in hearing if you guys notice a surprisingly high influx of new users as well.<p>Share your anecdotes, too, please, if you have time.
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rms
A recent Reddit frontpaging (150 points in the science category) gave us 11k
uniques the first day.

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thomasswift
My site was on mashable and I recieved about 2k visitors, roughly. But the
amount of reblogging of the post brought me more visitors steadily over the
following weeks after the post.

How did you get in her newsletter?

Thanks for sharing!

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thorax
It wasn't on purpose, actually-- they randomly chose to cover the site.

But there may be a way to submit suggestions to their newsletters. The only
feedback spot I see is here: <http://www.komando.com/feedback.aspx>

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thomasswift
Thanks. The only reason I asked is because she is syndicated in my home town
and people who don't read techcrunch read her column. Like my father.

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xenoterracide
Kim Kommando get's published in the Lansing State Journal (MI, USA and I
forget where she is that they pull it from) But from what I have read of
her... she gives, poor, or ignorant advice more often than good advice.

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xenoterracide
actually I though once of posting articles on my blog disputing her.

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mattdennewitz
fwiw...

when i launched tsacomplaints.com, i had ~30,000 from hitting the front page
of fark.com, 2500 from stumbleupon, and 150 from boing boing comments
(comments alone -- not a real post from them). of this traffic, about
(literally) 1% was worthwhile to the site. since then, i get about 100
hits/day from stumbleupon and more from travel forums. in terms of
submissions, the signal to noise ratio with lower traffic has jumped from 1%
signal to ~60%. i'll take that over massive traffic for now ;)

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thorax
Yeah, I forgot to mention, we've received about ~4,000 hits through
StumbleUpon overall. These have been spread across time, but are very welcome.

