The First Month: Building Something From Nothing
Photography by Daniel Morris
These tips apply to any blog or website with modest traffic levels (0 — 200 per day) and under 100 subscribers. If this doesn’t apply to your site, you might consider familiarizing yourself with these growth tips so they can be utilized if you embark on a new project in future.
I certainly can’t guarantee how much your site will grow in terms of numbers, but I do want to suggest that, unless you rely on SEO alone, the growth actions I’ve outlined should create real results on any site.
This post outlines the growth actions I’d recommend to anyone hoping to build an established site from a modest starting point.
Some thoughts on starting growth
Cases like the rapid growth of Freelance Switch and Zen Habits can make new bloggers feel quite inadequate. The subscriber bases of these sites have grown by the thousands in a very short time.
I want to suggest that these sites (and others like it) are not good points of comparison for us. It’s much easier to grow a blog quickly when you can leverage an existing profile or audience. It’s also much easier when you have money or multiple people working on a site.
Both Freelance Switch and Zen Habits were blessed with a number of these advantages. This doesn’t take anything away from them, as many other sites begin with the same advantages and don’t do so well. However, I want to stress that these sites aren’t a useful benchmark, as their startup situation is not comparable with our own. In other words, it’s not a level playing field.
Most of us, as was the case with Skelliewag, will have to grow a readership from nothing. It’s a gradual process, but a very rewarding one.
Building something from nothing
If you don’t mind me embarking on a metaphor, it could be useful to think of your site, in this stage of growth, as a tourist attraction in the middle of a wild forest. It’s a beautiful attraction, but there’s simply no way for potential visitors to find it. There are no paths, no roads, no signs. At this point, you’re relying on visitors stumbling across the attraction by accident.
The actions that follow are about building paths, roads and signs to your site. In the beginning, this will be almost entirely up to you. In some ways, this can make the task even more satisfying.
Here are my suggested actions for this period of growth:
Write a week’s worth of posts before you open the doors
You wouldn’t open your tourist attraction for business if the ticket booth or guest-house was nothing more than a timbre frame, would you? New visitors need to be impressed by your blog, and there’s nothing less impressive than a sense of emptiness. As there are no time constraints, try to spend more time than usual making your first few articles outstanding. Use them to communicate what your site will offer.
Join a forum
If you can’t find a forum for your niche, you’re probably not looking hard enough. I built Skelliewag’s readership, in the early stages, almost entirely through my presence on the Authority Blogger Forums. By placing a prominent, yet not overbearing, link in my post signature, I was able to encourage a number of curious click-throughs from forum users who’d enjoyed my posts. If you can manage it, joining two (or more) forums can help you reach a new pool of potential readers.
I’ve discussed Finding New Readers in Forums before, but the crux of my advice is: post lots, make your posts valuable, connect with other forum members, and help others as much as possible.
Comment prolifically and thoughtfully on similar sites
Many potential readers are to be found reading other blogs and websites in your niche. The best way to draw them back to your blog is to leave a thought-provoking comment, or to answer the questions of other commenters.
I’ve written in detail on finding new readers through comments before, but the gist of my advice would be to: focus on both well-known and lesser known sites in your niche, post comments with value, engage with other commenters, demonstrate your skill in the niche, and most importantly, comment frequently (but only as long as you can continue to maintain the quality of your comments).
Start hunting out guest-posting opportunities
Guest-posts can bring dozens to hundreds of highly targeted visitors to your site (depending on where the post appears). In the early stages of Skelliewag’s growth I guest-posted prolifically. Most of the sites I targeted were not ‘out of my league’, so to speak — they were more established than Skelliewag but not so established that they wouldn’t take a chance on a new blogger.
One strategy I found very effective was to write a post on the Authority Blogger Forums offering to guest-post for anyone who asked. Even if I wasn’t well-versed in the topic, I found I could research enough for one post with relative ease. You could launch the same request on a forum dedicated to websites or blogs, or alternately, make the same offer on your niche forum (where at least some of the users will have blogs and websites).
If you want to be proactive I’d suggest pitching guest-posts to certain bloggers via email. My advice would be to stay away from the A-list for now, and be mindful of your inexperience. Write the blogger a short, polite email outlining your idea in a sentence or two and offer to send them along the finished article if it sounds like something they might be interested in.
If you stress that the blogger can still reject the article one you’ve had a look at it they’ll be much more likely to take a chance. I never had a blogger reject the article after showing it to them, but even if this does happen once, you can always use the article on your own (or another) blog. A tip: make sure you search the target site to make sure your article idea hasn’t been used before.
Forget Digg and del.icio.us!
Low-traffic sites rarely reach either place, as you need a certain mass of visitors to vote up your articles before a snowball effect gets rolling. Few of us have the raw materials required.
I want to explicitly stress one social bookmarking service that is often overlooked or misunderstood by bloggers and webmasters — though it is starting to get the recognition it deserves. That service is StumbleUpon, and I want to suggest that it should be your exclusive social media focus in the early growth stage of your site.
One vote for your article at Digg or del.icio.us will never bring more than a few visitors. One vote from a StumbleUpon user has the potential to bring hundreds. For this reason, I’d suggest pushing only StumbleUpon submission at the end of your posts (for now). Forget Digg, del.icio.us, Reddit and all the others. They’ll only serve as obstacles for your Stumble link or button. In doing this, you’ll be squeezing the maximum amount of social media juice out of a limited number of visitors.
Kick-start the process by getting involved on StumbleUpon yourself. I’ve written about how StumbleUpon can help grow your blog over at ProBlogger.
Focus on writing viral articles
If your site is new, get into the habit of focusing on potentially viral articles right from the outset. If your site has been around longer and hasn’t yet focused on going viral, your current position will allow you to gain more than you lose by making this transition. Not every article you write has to be written with virality in mind, but investing time in a few really carefully crafted posts might pay great dividends.
50 Tips to Unclutter Your Blog, which is still somewhat viral, was posted in the relatively early days of this blog and truly helped to get the ball rolling. Don’t save your best ideas for later: you need them right now.
Here are some good ideas for viral articles. I’m also happy to think of some for you.
Let others know about you
Start introducing yourself to other bloggers, offer to help them, or link them to an article their readership might enjoy (preferably by someone else, at first). If you’ve written something you think would truly by appreciated by the audience of another site in your niche, consider politely pitching the link to them. Don’t ask for a link explicitly, merely suggest it as something the blogger or their readership might enjoy.
Keep your eye open for every opportunity
If you see a group writing project, participate. If a blogger you read is sick, offer to write a post for them (that’s how I got my first guest-posting gig at ProBlogger). An instinctive sense of opportunity is one of the most important skills any blogger or webmaster can develop, and it will only grow stronger with practice.
Moving into Month 2
The next stage of growth applies to sites with approximately 200 — 300 visitors a day and 100 to 200 subscribers. If you don’t feel as if those statistics will apply to you due to the nature of your site, you can move into the next stage when you feel you’re ready.
Tomorrow I’ll be outlining strategies to move through the next stage of growth. If you have any questions so far, please ask via the comments on this post.
This is an awesome start to the series, Skellie. I think it identifies perfectly where my blog is at in particular, and also shows how I am failing right now. I’m getting between 50 and 100 organic search visitors each day, but my readership isn’t growing and my RSS number is just inching past 10 readers.
I’m good at pushing myself to create new content but I haven’t really done a lot with forums or commenting on other blogs. I think I need to shift my focus to link building and lay off the content creation for a bit. I don’t think my strategy of bringing in more and more search traffic is going to generate new links or stimulate a growing readership. Might be time for me to shift gears and focus on link building and guest blogging.
I think I’ll collapse at the end of the day if I were to follow each and every step above each and every day. It’s not too practical for a full time lawyer like me. LOL!
Really, blogging can be as simple as typing something and hitting the submit button or it can be as stressful as checking stats, tidying and beautifying the template, finding readers etc.
Nevertheless, I do agree with you that the steps above all contribute towards making the blog noticeable and I will be following your series in anticipation :D
Skellie,
As usual, a right-on & helpful post. I have a question, though —
Do you think this can be done over a longer stretch, or is a blitz approach part of the strategy that can’t be skipped? With my erratic energy, I get blitzed-out pretty fast. So I tend to appear, disappear, appear again.
Any ideas how to compensate for this?
Excellent tips and I have no doubt that they will help an new blogger get some new readers. I do however strongly disagree about ignoring Digg and Reddit, which in my opinion, are the most powerful and effective ways for any blogger to really grow their site rapidly.
Focusing exclusively on StumbleUpon is selling yourself short and really unnecessary.
Anyone who has launched a successful social media marketing campaign will know the power of these social news sites.
StumbleUpon can get you some traffic but it doesn’t get you links. Period. Even a super stumble which brings you 15K in a day and 2K minimum everyday for 3 weeks won’t get you a lot of links. Perhaps no more than 20. I know, because I’ve experienced it first hand on multiple sites.
According to marketers like Neil Patel, each story that gets on the Digg homepage will earn you 129 links.. although this will of course vary a lot. These links send VERY targeted secondary traffic on top of the usual massive traffic you’ll get from reaching the homepage. Will you have the time or energy to guest post on over 100+ blogs in a week? I doubt so.
You just need to put real effort into ONE piece. Learn how to market it on social sites and it’ll pay off.
For example, I’ve recently launched a new website and did up some linkbait which got on the Digg, del.icio.us and Reddit homepage. This resulted in 500+ links from completely relevant websites/blogs in one week and a huge surge in subscriber numbers.
More important, the quality links allowed my site to immediately rank for an enormous amount of longtail terms along with some big keywords.
And what does that give you? An big increase in search traffic.. and visitors you can turn into your regular readers.
Social media has a domino effect as well. Once you go viral on Digg, it automatically gets popular on sites like del.icio.us, Fark and StumbleUpon as well. Never vice versa, unless you are lucky enough to get a top digger stumble across your site and submit it.
Even if you don’t want to go after Digg, you can always work at 2nd-Tier social media sites for a domino effect.
And all that talk about not having the critical mass needed to pull off an effective social campaign is unfounded. There are three simple options that work.
1. Network with a powerful social media user and pitch him or her. Easiest method of all. If you can pitch a blogger, you can pitch a social media user.
2. Build an influencer account. Time consuming but great for all your other projects (this is what I personally do).
3. Develop a network of like-minded bloggers. Again.. incredibly simple. Blog Catalog and other webmaster forums are places to start.
Take a look at the meta-blogging posts from Performancing who have hit the Digg frontpage in the past 3 weeks and you’ll know what I mean. None of them are submitted by powerful users. It’s just a network of small-time bloggers.
If you want to focus on forum posting and guest posting, there’s really no excuse for not trying to learn linkbaiting and social media marketing through social news sites because the rewards will far out weigh all other blog launch/promotional methods by a long shot.
@ Patrick: I wouldn’t suggest neglecting content creation, as I do think writing great articles will grow your site perhaps more than the other strategies combined. But it is important to try and find a balance between the two. Every blogger or webmaster has different time commitments and the way you use your time will depend on that.
@ Pablo: It can seem like hard work (and, for me, it certainly was) but I opted to take the ‘blitz’ approach, whereas there’s no reason it couldn’t be carried over a long time period. I guess it depends on the kind of goal you orient yourself towards, and the whether you aspire to rapid growth a more sustained effort. Either strategy can work.
@ SB: It can definitely be done over a longer stretch. As I told Pablo above, my approach was more of a ‘blitz’ because I wanted to see if I could achieve rapid growth. A blogger with more reasonable goals could certainly work out a way to fit these strategies into their timetable.
@ Maki: Thanks for such a considered response. I absolutely agree that the Digg effect is wonderful, if you can get it, but it was never something that factored into the growth of this site. I’ve do doubt that if I were featured on the front page of Digg Skelliewag would have grown faster.
In my experience many of the bloggers I speak with who’re in the moderate stage of growth aren’t experienced at creating linkbait and viral articles. It’s a skill that they develop over time. I’d also argue that it takes time to do all of those three steps you’ve suggested, and by that time, the blogger will probably have developed the skills and experience necessary to move out of the initial moderate stage of growth.
The strategy of focusing exclusively on StumbleUpon is not a strategy I ever intended to advocate throughout the course of the series. I think it’s very wise to begin targeting other social media once your site has found its feet.
However, I still think that the chances of a site with a small audience becoming popular on Digg are slim, and that it’s wiser to focus on StumbleUpon, which frequently provides results for small sites (albeit lesser results), than gamble on Digg success that probably will not come.
Ultimately, it will depend on your personal style. I advocate StumbleUpon because I can only hope to speak from experience, and this post series is based around what I’ve learned from growing Skelliewag. Digg, Reddit and so on simply didn’t figure in to that. I don’t want to suggest there aren’t other alternate growth models that could be used. I’ve no doubt a blogger with a good grasp of linkbait could propel their blog into the stratosphere quite rapidly by leveraging Digg.
But if I haven’t had the ability to write an article that will reach the front page of Digg, how could I tell my readers to do the same? I wouldn’t want it to be a case of “Those who can’t do, teach.”
Great post as usual Skellie. With your writing skill, I wouldn’t turn you down as a guest poster either. I definitely second the guest post idea which I did on an A-list blog for my niche at the end of my 2nd month and it literally increased my visitors by 10 folds. Also, I wish I had found Stumble Upon sooner. I have one post that been sending my 200+ visitors each day for the past month. It’s a great feeling.
One thing clearly missed in this 1st month post is blog carnivals. For my blog, I managed to submit about 30% of my posts to a dozen blog carnivals in various filed — e.g., finance, environment, productivity, and education. Of course, I enjoy the advantage that almost anything can be spin to fit the finance theme.
Participating in (and hosting) blog carnivals are great ways to get links from more established blogs and get in front of a large audience. It’s terrific when a carnival is hosted by an A-list blogger and he chose your post as an editor’s pick. Once this happened, you can expect a few more links from various bloggers in your niche to follow.
Great article!
I can kind of agree with the social network and bookmarking about Digg, Stumble Upon and others. I have recently joined several of them and have yet to draw many site visitors from them to my site. It can be overwhelming, at least to me, to try and accomplish so much in such a short time. I guess I really need to learn some patience!
As for rapid growth, it can be good, and bad at the same time. Good from the point of achieving goals quickly, but bad if your site isn’t prepared for it. One consideration is are you prepared to still deliver the quality of content while your potential costs are going up for server overhead and bandwidth?
Thanks for the great writeup, and I can’t wait for the next one!
[...] you’ve read and digested the growth outline in The First Month: Building Something For Nothing, this article represents the next [...]
Skellie,
I sorta knew you were going to expand on the social media bit in the future posts in this series but just couldn’t resist commenting… I’m a social media marketer after all.
I would still argue that its not as difficult as one thinks to create linkbait that will go viral on Digg or other sites. My strategy is different I guess; I like to come out firing on all cylinders for any new site I create. I’m not that big on guest or forum posting.
If you really want to get anything from Skelliewag on Digg, hit me up on SU or email.. I’ll make it happen. :)
@ Pinyo: Thank you for contributing with some tips on using blog carnivals. I didn’t include them in the post because they didn’t factor into the growth strategy for this site. It would be irresponsible for me to advocate using them because I myself have never used them, but I have heard a lot of positive feedback on blog carnivals.
@ Elliott: I think the kind of growth we’re talking about here wouldn’t put a strain on your servers (if you have a half-way decent hosting plan), though the so-called Digg-effect is notorious for its capacity to temporarily sink sites. Most people do seem to think the sheer volume of new visitors is worth it, though. I guess you could think of it like a great party followed by the inevitable hangover? ;)
@ Maki: I think what you’re indicating is undoubtedly the most effective way to grow a new blog. On the other hand, I (and from what I’ve observed, many of my readers) haven’t really haven’t ‘cracked’ other forms of social media besides SU and I would probably seem foolish teaching on a subject I’m still well and truly a beginner in myself.
I think every blogger has written a post they’d dreamed of getting to the front page of Digg, and only a small percentage of those posts ever do make it.
There seems to be a strange kind of knowledge deficit. Everyone knows why they should become popular on Digg, but I still think there’s widespread puzzlement on how to do it.
Maybe this is because those who create content they hope will succeed on social media place almost all their emphasis on the content itself and hope that things will ‘happen’, without realizing that just as much work needs to be put into developing relationships with influencers, building a profile, and so on?
That’s certainly been my approach so far, and that’s probably why I haven’t had much luck ;).
(I appreciate the offer to ‘make it happen’. I have sort of forgotten about writing for social media lately and it’s something I’ll have to get back into. Your thoughts have helped me to reevaluate my stance.)
Skellie,
Great post as usual. One thing that continues to stand out to me as a reason for your growth is your incredible generosity. I think that should be mentioned as well as a means of gaining dedicated readers.
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Skellie,
One thing I realise is this:- most bloggers who blog about blogging and how to increase traffic and stuff like that advocate targetting social media sites like SU, Digg, Reddit etc.
Apart from SU, which seems to cover a wide ranging topic of interests, the others are catered more to selected topics such as programming, science, politics, sports and entertainment. It is quite obvious then that bloggers who blog about say, cars or stamps or other niche areas are unlikely to find social media as a vehicle for an increase in traffic.
What do you think?
Good stuff in the original post and in Maki’s comment.
I just kicked off OpTempo on 6th of October so this article has a lot of good tips. I’m really pushing the growth curve with it in several ways so it’s quite a challenge.
One thing I’m doing promotion-wise is offering a free, no obligation, blog review to anyone who isn’t a splog or bad neighborhood. They get a backlink and a Technorati authority and I get good karma.
SU gave me one big kick of traffic one day then things went back to normal. However, I did notice that I did get some RSS subscriptions and returning visitors out of it.
For bloggers doing programming articles, DZone is a great way to attract readers, and they’ll tend to be repeat ones too. My programming blog is at an average of 500 visitors a day and climbing mainly due to people who originally found it through DZone. Prior to using DZone I typically had 10-20 visitors a day.
@ Travis: Thank you. It’s something I mention in my next post. I do think the act of giving is undervalued by many, and one of my goals is to change that somewhat :)
@ Pablo: I’d say that StumbleUpon can still work for niche sites because you can submit to very specific categories. The other social bookmarking services are characterized by incredibly broad categories.
Why are they so broad? Because the emphasis is on moving around masses of traffic and creating a ‘Digg effect’, rather than on targeting. Unless you want to write on a more mainstream topic, I’d say that very specific niche sites are unlikely to do well on social media services besides StumbleUpon.
I feel better now that my original idea of not spending money and seeing if my site grows through self promotion is possible.
When I started about a month ago I had no clue about the promotion of a website (or much anything else about the Internet).
Following the strategies of yours and others has already shown significant growth of unique and returning visitors to my site (in my opinion) which gives me the boost needed to keep going.
I have never read so much in my life. Thanks to all for the information and comments that have made this adventure so interesting and fun.
Before I ever got started, I was one of those people who thought that you just create a website/blog and sat back while millions of visitors fight to get to your site. LOL.
[...] The First Month: Building Something from Nothing - Skellie @ Skelliewag [...]
[...] The First Month: Building Something From Nothing [...]
I’ve gotten a tremendous amount of traction and results from many of the same strategies that you have used. I think probably the biggest factor is what you do for others and the contacts and networking you do with others. When you help other people, doors will open up for you and traffic will flow naturally.
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@ Max: Don’t worry — I think a lot of us start out with the same ideas ;)
@ Michael: I agree. I’m definitely finding that the networking aspect becomes more and more important as you go along. It’s also amazing how many opportunities it can open up.
[...] There’s a lot of talk recently about StumbleUpon, among other social bookmarking sites, and how it’s a good way to discover new things that interest you as well as driving traffic to your site. [...]
That’s a great post, but why do you bash del.icio.us and Digg? I can see why Digg and Del.icio.us don’t drive traffic at first. But why only SU?
Not all people use StubleUpon and if you don’t have Digg buttons, that brings the already slim chance of having your post make it to the front page even slimmer!
Thomas
Find Great web tools at my blog: here.
Dear Skellie,
I came across this as a favorite post on Ning’s Building a Better Blog community of which I am a member. How appropriate! I am so glad to have found this series and your blog.
At present, my major problem seems to be that although I am creating high quality posts, I have few hits and not much stickability. My blog is in a tight niche market: Jewish philanthropy, plus, I am in Israel writing English language content for international, namely American, consumption– all of these factors are rare. I know that I have an audience, but I am trying to ascertain how to best access it. Studying other bloggers and following their suggestions is a big help stylistically.
Your comments about guest posts most interested me because I haven’t heard others speak on it. My focus up until now in that arena has been getting experts or interesting professionals with unusual perspectives to guest blog for me. I hadn’t yet contemplated writing for others. What do you think about this angle?
I truly appreciate the empathy you express in your writing and look forward to reading Month Two for more great advice.
Best regards,
Maya Norton
The New Jew: Blogging Jewish Philanthropy
http://www.TheNewJew.wordpress.com
[...] from the start. Ever wonder how you get 200+ subscribers in only a couple of months? Part 1, Part 2, Part [...]
Hi, I have what might come off as a silly question but… how does one know how many people subscribed to one’s rss feed?
Just wanted to say ‘congratulations’ on your regular-guesting ProBlogger gig, Skellie — it’s such a good fit, this can only be a good move for both you and Darren… not to mention, so very very good for the readers of both blogs!
Some good blogging suggestions here…many thanks.
This is fantastic, very helpful!
[...] blog niche. Techniques include linking to the blogger’s articles regularly and relevantly, participating in their forums, commenting on their blog, nominating them for awards, emailing them for advice, submitting their [...]
[...] blog niche. Techniques include linking to the blogger’s articles regularly and relevantly, participating in their forums, commenting on their blog, nominating them for awards, emailing them for advice, submitting their [...]
[...] blog niche. Techniques include linking to the blogger’s articles regularly and relevantly, participating in their forums, commenting on their blog, nominating them for awards, emailing them for advice, submitting their [...]
[...] blog niche. Techniques include linking to the blogger’s articles regularly and relevantly, participating in their forums, commenting on their blog, nominating them for awards, emailing them for advice, submitting their [...]
That’s a great pile of ideas.
I feel that it has been written for me!!!
Thanks Skellie.
[...] blog niche. Techniques include linking to the blogger’s articles regularly and relevantly, participating in their forums, commenting on their blog, nominating them for awards, emailing them for advice, submitting their [...]
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[...] The First Month: Building Something From Nothing [...]
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