So, I’ve kind of orphaned a whole slew of side projects (including this blog) lately while I worked on spinning up another blog to test some SEO, content strategy and audience building approaches I’ve had rattling around in my head for a while.
It’s something I’ve been working on in my spare time for a bit over a year, and I just wanted to do a quick retro and reflection on where I’m at. It’s not a huge deal, but I’ve passed a couple of personal milestones that are worth noting:
A Week of Site Traffic of ~250 Visits a Day
Seems like nothing, right? Well, what makes this special to me is that I built this from scratch. In my spare time. The world is a lot different when you have no existing brand, no guaranteed traffic, and no time to invest in generating either. Nothing.
Transparent red line indicates relatively sustained traffic at or above 250 visitors a day.
Broke Through the Google Webmaster Tools 50,000 Impressions Ceiling
I was stuck at 50,000 impressions (exactly) for so long that I’m convinced Google has a throttling mechanism in place. I suspect site age has something to do with it.
In April, I finally broke through the 50,000 impressions ceiling.
Identified the Reddit Effect in My Analytics
Reddit is notorious for driving mad traffic to unsuspecting websites. After careful scrutiny of my analytics for the last year, I was able to tease out correlation between visitors and having a post make it to the front page of a smallish (50K subscribers) SubReddit. Can you see it? 😛
If you look closely and use your imagination, you may discern the Reddit Effect.
And of course, there’s more…
Some Things I Have Learned
Some of what I’ve learned over the past year kind may seem obvious in retrospect, but kind of surprised me as things were progressing…
Starting from 0 is a different game than taking over something that already has momentum.
Branded search terms have very little value. People searching for my site name are always going to find my site name. What has value is driving traffic for keywords related to the subject domain of my site.
My highest performing posts are longer pieces that dispense with the advice about brevity, bullet points, etc. Readers don’t appear to be afraid of a lengthy post so long as it helps them answer a question, provides them with something of value.
The project will consume all my time if I let it. I need to do a better job balancing my after-work time between my projects and my friends and famly.
This is the most fun I’ve had in a long, long time.
The Valve Employee Handbook, a must read for anyone sick of the traditional workplace and dreaming of a better way. It looks like at Valve, they have the courage of their convictions to put the ideal of the Enterprise 2.0 movement into actual practice, to not constrain themselves by the fetters of doing things the way they have always been done. Interestingly, the first step in pulling this off is hiring the right people, then getting out of the way and letting them do their jobs.
Why do so many organizations get this last part wrong? (more…)
Mediacom, this is why you suck. In fact, it might be at the very heart of why you are evil. First you introduce this non-standard “Website Redirect Service” that redirects me to your stupid page, but then you don’t let me opt out of it.
In the past, at least you respected my selection and let me opt out…but only for a while. Eventually, you always come back.
You are a blight on internet standards and really, you need to stop doing this to your customers.
This is awesome. It’s Netflix’ Guide on Freedom, Responsibility and Culture.
Parts of it seem frightening and unfair and draconian, other parts seem absolutely spot on or even, amazing. It’s kind of a chiral reflection of how things work at Valve: very careful hiring, very specific cullings, very little of most of the garbage that comes from Taylor…
OK, so we’re going to be with the default theme for awhile. I’ve just migrated a few properties over to WordPress from Drupal, and this one comes from a Drupal site _and_ an old Blogger site. So, I’m going to stick with the stock 2013 theme for a bit until I get everything else going on in my life sorted out.
Gabe Newell is one seriously awesome dude. It’s not so much that he runs, Valve, one of the most significant video game companies in the world; but that he runs it as a flat organization without traditional “management” roles.
It’s a fascinating organization because their practices fly in the face of many other practices you find in the software industry today. Amongst some of the more interesting facts about life at Valve include,
Management is for n00bs
Everyone in the organization is expected to talk with customers. It’s not the roll of a special department…
Projects are expected to recruit interest internally. There’s not someone telling you what to work on…
Tell someone what to do, and you’re a tech writer or trainer.
Tell someone why they should do it, and you’re a consultant.
Seems like a false dichotomy to me. Talking about What to do without the Why is insipid. Regardless of your title, the job is to make sure your client experiences the most value from the product, the most value per word.
Let’s be clear. Your job as a designer is to improve the customer experience in some measurable way, right? If you do a complete redesign, and every designer you know loves it, and it wins awards from experts, but every single one of your users hates it and leaves and stops giving you money, then that’s a failure for the company.
