Raising a stink doesn’t bring the traffic

by on January 29, 2007

If you think raising a stink, getting lots of conversations going, getting onto TechMeme and all that, will get you major traffic then you’d be wrong (those are my stats from a few minutes ago for the past month).

In other words, throwing your relationships with other people under the bus just ain’t worth it.

That spike? That was CES. Most of that came for the interviews with Bill Gates and John Chambers and the Retrevo gang.

Oh, add to those stats 55,720 RSS subscribers (WordPress.com shows those stats in a separate graph). That’s just astounding to me. I remember when I used to joke that I had 18 readers (and the truth was pretty darn close to that).

Scoble: screwing up his relationships with other bloggers so you don’t have to. :-)

  • To tell you the truth, I stopped visiting this blog after you left Microsoft... I just assumed you were done with the blogging world. Then I seen you laying under a bus over on TechCrunch and thought "wow, I'm missing the action"...

    So you have at least one new subscriber as a result...
  • I'm one!

    Rex
  • Maybe you saturated your niche.

    In any case, send some traffic my way if you feel so enclined ;)
  • I'd have honestly expected to see a big spike over the 'coverage' you've recently had...

    Any significant increase in RSS subscriber numbers?
  • Zigire: nope. Flat.
  • Sue
    For those not as seemingly brilliant as some, how does one determine a blog's RSS subscribers if it's not hosted on a major platform?
  • It appears you have over 3700 views on your Pissing off the blogoshere and do A-listers post. I would gues that posting about pissing off A-listers would send to another spike ;)

    Guy
  • Ah, wasn't aware of scoobietron.wordpress.com until looking over your stats. Looks like you're keeping that guy busy. :)
  • But Robert, if what you say is true, and raising a stink doesn't work... how's Bill O'Reilly still on the air?

    These things keep me up at night. :)
  • Robert,

    Was your intention of that post to drive major traffic? Or was it just to speak your mind?
  • Robert,
    Do you have insight into the distribution of RSS clients between the 55,720 RSS clients? Also I heard that Google reader proxies the subscription information and makes tracking the number of Google Reader RSS clients more difficult. Do you know if this is (still) true?
    Thanks,
    Edwin
  • One of the interesting things I've noticed is (i) TechMeme doesn't send you much traffic and (ii) the number of new subscribers you get from traffic due to online controversy is negligible.

    If you get lots of traffic from posting good content or a hot scoop, you'll likely get a lot of new readers that way. On the other hand, online flame wars may make entertaining reading but don't encourage people to subscribe.
  • Michael: my intention was to get a link from Engadget and other bloggers for my Intel video. And point out that bloggers are just linking to the New York Times and not looking for other things to link to.

    I knew that it wouldn't increase traffic that much so i didn't have much expectation of that.

    I saw a few people saying i did it for the traffic and just wanted to show that if that's your intent that you'll go wanting.
  • met
    I haven't seen the Intel video yet. Normally I go see the video that raises a scandal.
    Next time create some noise closely related to the video, etc. :)

    In any case, why aren't you upset that Techcrunch doesn't link to your Web2.0 company interviews?
  • Homeboy, what are you talking about? A cursory eyeballing shows your weekend traffic was at LEAST triple what it was on the weekend of the 20th/21st, and possibly quadruple what it was on the weekends of the 13th/14th and 6th/7th. Scandal = traffic.
  • Ryan; hmmm, but having lunch with you and BillG is worth a LOT more than scandal! :-)

    Met: I've gotten a lot more links from TechCrunch than I have from most other bloggers.

    The problem is that this story is being reduced down to Engadget. You're missing the bigger issue; that most bloggers don't link to other bloggers.
  • met
    Blogs are linking less to others now. Could we attribute that to them being part of bigger corporations and the bloggers are careful not to take "chances" anymore.
    We need Scobleizers at the evil Engadget and Gizmodo ;)
  • I read your post on the linking issue right away -- in an RSS reader. This is what drives me crazy about tracking stats -- the only way to really track it is to use Feedburner or some similar service, because RSS readers don't always click.

    I starred AND shared the post in Google Reader. But I didn't click it.
  • The one common feature of good bloggers that everyone should read into here is that there's humanity involved. It's not marketing, not PR, nor approved or edited scripts. Good bloggers make errors, screw up the language, mess up the grammar... but tend to point at themselves as being imperfect and apologizing for it later.

    Good bloggers start the conversation.

    I've been reading your blog for about a year now. It's not the content that brings me back all the time. I enjoy seeing you stomp around the blogosphere like a bull in a china shop.

    :)
  • Crash! Crash! Crash!
  • Thanks for taking the heat. I'll just point any of my 100 readers your way if they ever get really frustrated. ;)

    Either I'm not controversial enough or open minded enough... Regardless, it's still fun figuring it out with a small audience (for now).
  • Earlier try got et...

    Dude, in what reality did you think throwing a temper tantrum WOULD work?
  • Hah ... I wish I had your problem, with 10 - 20 * views! Relax Robert and enjoy the ride. See you in Geneva!

    Colin
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