Written on January 24th, 2009 at 05:01 am by Darren Rowse

The Day 250,000 People Showed Up At My Blog: Case Study

Blog Promotion, Featured Posts, Social Media 130 comments

Picture 1.pngWednesday was the biggest day of traffic that I’ve seen to any of my blogs for a very long time (perhaps ever). I mentioned this on twitter yesterday and had a few followers request that I write up how it happened – so here’s a quick recap/timeline on the 24 hours that saw around a quarter of a million visitors to Digital Photography School.

  • It all started with the publishing of this post – Long Exposure Photography: 15 Stunning Examples. The post is simply a collection of 15 amazing images all illustrating the same technique (long exposure photography). The images are all creative commons images from Flickr (meaning they are all available for republishing).
  • The post went live on DPS and was quickly submitted to Digg and StumbleUpon. I added a ‘Digg this’ button to the top of the post (now removed).
  • I had a feeling that the post would do well on StumbleUpon so was on the lookout for traffic from there so when I noticed the traffic coming in from StumbleUpon I tweeted about the post – noting that it was doing well on SU. This was the only ‘help’ I gave the post – a viral like thing began to happen.
  • Momentum from SU began to build as more and more people began to organically come from the StumbleUpon toolbar. As they did I noticed that Digg numbers began to rise also. People saw the Digg button and were clicking it naturally.
  • 4 hours after it was submitted to Digg it hit the front page of Digg. It did so with around 110 Diggs. I was quite surprised by the relatively low number of Diggs that it took and the speed that it went to the front page.
  • The first hour after the post hit the front page of Digg the traffic was around 28,000 unique visitors. This surprised me a little as it was midnight on the West Coast of the US and the early hours of the morning on the East Coast (not usually the best time to hit the front page).
  • The diggs continued to come in. StumbleUpon traffic also continued to gain momentum. The post hit the ‘popular page’ on Delicious (where it remained for at least 15 hours… again an unusually long time – you can see the page for it here).
  • Traffic from Digg tapered off after the first hour on the front page. From memory it was around 8000 visitors the 2nd hour and tapered further to around 4000 the next few hours.
  • I went to bed around this time and expected things to continue to taper down and return to ‘normal’ sorts of levels while I slept.
  • I woke up the next morning to find that DPS had had another big spike of traffic just after I went to bed. Most of the traffic came from Digg. Getting a 2nd big spike of traffic from Digg wasn’t something I’d experienced before but it had definitely happened. It came around 7 hours after hitting the front page of Digg and send around 25,000 visitors in an hour (and quite a few more in the hours that followed). It turns out that the post had gained so many Diggs that it hit the ‘Top in All Topics’ list which sent it a second wave of traffic.
  • traffic-sources.pngOver the next 6-7 hours Digg traffic again tapered off (but was still significant). StumbleUpon continued to send good traffic and I began to see a lot of secondary social media sites sending traffic (sites like popurls (it was the #1 story there for quite a while), Wykop, Jimmyr and plime) and also quite a few other blogs and websites (big and small) like The Agitator, Monitor and Naver. Interestingly many of the links were from non english sites. I have included a screen shot (right) of the top 15 sources of traffic to the post over the last 36 hours.
  • Today things are somewhat quieter in terms of traffic – but they are still around double a normal days traffic. Most of the traffic now is coming from StumbleUpon and secondary links from blogs and websites. From past experience this will continue for a while. StumbleUpon has the potential to send decent traffic to a post for weeks (and months). In the long run I expect StumbleUpon will probably send more traffic to the post than Digg (although Digg has currently sent triple what SU has).
  • What will generally happen next is that a little search traffic will come in because the post has been linked to from quite a few sources (Yahoo currently sees a couple of hundred incoming links – Google sees quite a few more).

So what impact does a rush of traffic have on a site?

Beyond getting a rush of adrenaline and perhaps a bit of an ego boost – what impact does a day like yesterday have on a blog?

  • Ad Revenue – traffic to the site yesterday was around 5-6 times normal levels. Conversion in terms of ad revenue was not that high – but did see a good bump. For example AdSense earnings were almost three times higher than normal.
  • New Loyal Readers – it is too early to tell how many of the 250k readers subscribed to my RSS feed yesterday (it is at least over 1000 new subscribers) but I can see that newsletter subscriber numbers were considerably up on normal levels. On an average day we get around 450 confirmed new newsletter subscribers to DPS – yesterday it was around 1000 (and there will be more as some take a while to verify). Today it’s over 800 (and will probably hit 1000 again). While a 1-2% conversion rate doesn’t sound like much it can actually be quite significant. 2000 new daily readers over a year or more really adds up to a lot of new page views on a site.
  • SEO – one of the best parts about a day like yesterday is the extra links that point at your blog once everything dies down. As mentioned above – there are around 200 links pointing at the post mentioned – some of which also point to the front page of DPS. There’s no real way to tell what impact this has on a blog but it is a significant number of links and will add to the authority of the page and site in the eyes of Google and other search engines.
  • Buzz – another benefit that is difficult to measure is that of ‘buzz’. There’s something very uplifting to an online community when they get noticed by other parts of the web. I’ll highlight what happened in the weekly newsletter that I send our regular members tonight and I find that doing so helps lift the morale around the community. It’ll also send a fresh wave of traffic to the post as people go to see what caused all the traffic.

All in all it was a good day. I’m most happy about the conversion to new readers than happened and about the SEO boost (I’m also happy that the servers didn’t skip a beat) – however I’m very aware that the extra traffic is relatively fleeting and today it is back to work.

Social Media Traffic Tsunamis are exciting events but the real challenge is to keep growing your loyal reader base by providing quality content day in day out. Speaking of which…. it’s time to get back to work.

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130 Responses to “The Day 250,000 People Showed Up At My Blog: Case Study” - Add Yours

  • Colorburned

    January 24th, 2009 5:18 am

    Very interesting post. I’ve managed to hit the Digg front page once and it was very exciting to see all those visits and page views come in and then to see that momentum infect other sites such as Stumble Upon and Delicious.

    http://twitter.com/Colorburned

  • Jensen | CS-Weekly

    January 24th, 2009 5:19 am

    Congratulations! Thanks for sharing the nice dissection of a phenomenal traffic event! So Digg & SU are still the best sources.

  • Keith

    January 24th, 2009 5:40 am

    Darren

    Thanks for the great in depth report, very interesting.

    You may have mentioned this before, but what kind of hosting/server do you have running the three blogs? How did the server handle the bump in traffic?

    I had a day last week on one of my blogs where it saw about 6k uniques, 6 times the normal amount, and MT folded under the pressure of one site.

  • pavs

    January 24th, 2009 5:50 am

    Would be interesting to know how much money you made with adsense. I have couple of blog which uses Adify adserver – they are like adsense (CPM based mostly) but very high rate of CPM if you have a high traffic site. With 250,000 hits in one day, which is a little less than what I get in one month, I would have made $600-$700 dollars easily.

    As a matter of fact, last month I made $950 on 350,000 traffic.

    I know you use B5media – since you are a co-owner. But I didn’t see any CPM based ads other than adsense (and shopzilla is not CPM).

  • Dantanner

    January 24th, 2009 5:51 am

    Congratulations for hitting big time. But did you check your bounce rate on Google Analytics?

    Here is my take on these social media sites. They boost your site numbers and ego but they fail to boost your bank accounts. We get 27% traffic from twitter alone, yet it has not made a dent our my revenue intake. Why? Because these people are not ORGANIC searchers who are looking to find solutions to their problems and clicking on ads and links. They are all looky looks, their bounce rates are 70% and higher.

    Have any ideas how to capitalze of social media traffic into bank account flip?

  • Sohail

    January 24th, 2009 5:52 am

    Now this gonna help a lot of people Thanx darren :)

  • Lipton of Starfeeder

    January 24th, 2009 5:54 am

    wow 250k in one day, many sites strive to get that in a month… great going Darren :)

    thx for making all feel so small, jk…. lol

  • ZK@WebTrafficROI.com

    January 24th, 2009 5:54 am

    This is amazing , great stuff on the blog post ..This shows content is king and will always be king

  • Artful Dodger

    January 24th, 2009 5:56 am

    Wow cool, I wonder if I’m ever going to get traffic like this on my blog lol. How on earth do you do it?!

  • tech mogo

    January 24th, 2009 5:57 am

    I remember digging that post; those were some awesome photos!

    Now if only I could replicate the process…

  • Shane Eubanks

    January 24th, 2009 5:57 am

    Thanks for giving us a a “behind the scenes” look at how that unfolded, Darren. It’s impressive that your server/hosting company held up through the spikes…definitely a testament to them and the way your site is coded. Excellent work!

  • Kathy @ Virtual Impax

    January 24th, 2009 5:58 am

    Darren,

    Thanks again for sharing such intimate details about your blog. I adore the fact that you’re sharing how many RSS subscribers you gained as well as the effect of the social media “blitz” on your adsense revenue.

    It appears from what you’ve shared that “social media” driven traffic is not “worthless” as some would proclaim in other places on the web. :)

  • SumOfPrimes

    January 24th, 2009 6:01 am

    Wow, impressive indeed…and informative — thank you very much for taking the time to present this case study, many lessons can be learned!

  • jamie

    January 24th, 2009 6:02 am

    I might have to go ahead and die of happiness if my site got 250k visits in a month, let alone a day. If it didn’t break my site that is. Or get me shut down by my host for overuse of my shared server.

    Good on you!

  • Israel

    January 24th, 2009 6:02 am

    That’s cool. thanks for breaking it down like that.

  • Lipton of Starfeeder

    January 24th, 2009 6:03 am

    I love social media traffic, however the last time I had an article on Digg was last summer :( I get plenty of stumbles & reddits, but I’ve actually got Lack of Digg depression lol!

    Seriously nothing makes a blogger more happier then seeing that stream of Digg visits on mint.

  • Sophie Marston

    January 24th, 2009 6:06 am

    Those are some pretty stunning numbers! I would love to get that many in half a year!

    Sophie
    http://findcollege.info – helping you navigate the social jungle that is college
    http://streetartnews.net – Street art. What else can I say?

  • David Atkinson

    January 24th, 2009 6:06 am

    Thanks for sharing this Darren. As per usual you are always over delivering to your readers.

    A great post

    David Atkinson

  • Mark @ Polemics

    January 24th, 2009 6:12 am

    Darren – great story about how something as simple as a great concept can spread like fire!

    How did the server itself handle the traffic? Are you running any caching tools to handle the spikes? I notice it is just a WP powered blog platform, so I assume you are using a cache plugin.

    Thanks in advance.

    Mark

  • Grasping Life

    January 24th, 2009 6:18 am

    Wow, thanks for the informative, step by step rundown of your traffic spike. The details you gave really give a clear picture of how a traffic rush unfolds. Thanks for the post. I hope this also clues people into some tips on how to generate that kind of buzz to their own blog.

  • Arohan

    January 24th, 2009 6:19 am

    Darren, Thanks for sharing! That was some story! I am glad to know that social media traffic does convert. Hope to get 1/10th as much traffic some day soon :-)

  • Dan Blank

    January 24th, 2009 6:21 am

    Darren,
    Thanks for the play-by-play on this. It is so instructive to see how closely you tracked the movements. So many treat social media like a black hole. While it is difficult to influence on a mass scale, there is plenty to learn if you just sit back and listen. Thanks Darren!
    -Dan

  • Robb Sutton

    January 24th, 2009 6:24 am

    And writing about it on your site about blogging further fuels the fire! Thanks for sharing the stats. I will be really interested to hear the final estimated results of the spike on traffic. Even coverting a low percentage is a huge success.

    That is a lot of people…

  • WOMWON

    January 24th, 2009 6:33 am

    250,000 thousand visitors, is that it?

    We almost get twice as that in our dreams!

    Darren, those images on DPS look amazing. Thanks for the elaboration of the how it all went down.

  • Tom Gray

    January 24th, 2009 6:41 am

    Darren,

    Fascinating stuff, thanks for the detailed analysis. 2 questions:

    1. With this kind of traffic explosion, what lessons did you learn that you will use in the future about the role this type of content can play in generating traffic? For example, do you see yourself creating more “spectacular example type posts” as a traffic boosting strategy.
    2. If you’d had an idea in advance that the post would go nova would you have done anything different to further monetize the traffic. Your ad revenue was up but would you have maybe added links to long exposure specific product or info offerings?

    By the way, I looked at the images and they are absolutely stunning.

    LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasjgray
    Tweeting away at http://www.tweeter.com/tomjgray

  • Jaz'min, The Soci GIrl

    January 24th, 2009 6:49 am

    This is amazing. I am taking notes. I cannot wait until my readership gets to that level.

  • LEADSExplorer

    January 24th, 2009 6:53 am

    Congratulation with such a rush of traffic.
    We had a smaller success and reported the effect of getting StumbledUpon – the viral results http://bit.ly/4hSgJ3

  • Mike Nichols

    January 24th, 2009 6:57 am

    Great pictures and a great post about them!

    I would have like to see an analysis of why you thought this particular post garnered 250k views: was it the subject matter, the format, the few words? I’m sure you’re thinking about this subject; it would be great if you were to write a post about your conclusions.

  • Rowell Dionicio

    January 24th, 2009 6:59 am

    A huge achievement! I like the analysis and the results of where traffic ultimately comes from and reaches. Great stuff.

  • Brian

    January 24th, 2009 7:19 am

    Great post… It’s awesome to peer into the action going on behind the scenes at one of Darren’s blogs.

    Seems like Stumble and Digg are the most valuable players when it comes to social bookmarking sites. The rest are second tier. Am I correct?

  • Linda

    January 24th, 2009 7:28 am

    The power of the web never ceases to amaze me. Something can flash around the world in just seconds.

    Great boost for you.

  • Luca

    January 24th, 2009 7:36 am

    wow, fantastic result!

  • Phyllis Neill

    January 24th, 2009 7:40 am

    Question for you: you mentioned that people clicked Digg and Stumble but I didn’t see the place to click on those in your article (I think you mentioned you disabled them). Where were they placed?

  • Brad

    January 24th, 2009 8:05 am

    Congratulations on hitting the blog traffic jackpot!

    I have seen what StumbleUpon can do to traffic first hand (although not even close to the same level that you saw). I’ve had a few posts get stumbled and it really kicks my stats up for a day or two.

    As they say: “When it rains, it pours”.

  • Gera @ SweetsFoods

    January 24th, 2009 8:39 am

    Hi Darren!

    Congrats for you! and I’m glad that I’ve put a little grain of sand because I stumbled and facebooked this awesome photos.
    The result confirm how important is today all the aspects of social media in blog traffic and seo.

    Cheers!
    Gera

  • Your Friendly Neighborhood Computer Guy

    January 24th, 2009 8:44 am

    …and it was probably one of your easier post to put together, right?

    Gotta love these social bookmarking gems!

  • Hair On The Brain

    January 24th, 2009 9:42 am

    A great post and a great accomplishment. I think you will reap the benefits from this “tsunami” for weeks to come. Congrats!

  • Ray Fowler

    January 24th, 2009 10:26 am

    Darren — neat post and very interesting information. I was curious as to why you removed the Digg button.

  • mike

    January 24th, 2009 12:01 pm

    That is amazing. It is like getting mentioned in a newspaper or on TV and you get a load of traffic. Everyone needs a day like that to jumpstart their blogs.

  • Bridgett

    January 24th, 2009 12:05 pm

    How in the world did you manage to go to sleep with those numbers rolling in? I would have been glued to the screen all night! Congrats!

  • Eric Hamm

    January 24th, 2009 12:23 pm

    It’s good to hear that you had a decent conversion. There’s nothing worse than an exciting day that turns out to be a bunch of hot air.

    Thanks for sharing the details with us. Eric

  • Limits Undefined

    January 24th, 2009 12:26 pm

    Darren, can you please let us know the bounce rate and the average time spent by the visitors on that particular date

  • David King

    January 24th, 2009 2:35 pm

    woaahhoooooo.

    I want to dream that blog post in a dream.

    THAT WOULD BE AWESOME!

    but then waking up would suck.

    Will do that someday! can’t wait for it!!!!!!

    Booyahkasha!

    thanks for the stats and informative detailed post darren!

    DBK

  • LisaNewton

    January 24th, 2009 2:52 pm

    I’m always surprised at the power of social media, but this demonstrates it beautifully.

    I had a couple of stumbles on my 8th blog post, which wasn’t long ago because my blog is new, but it hasn’t amounted to too much traffic. I have hopes for the future, though.

    Thanks for the insight into the world of social media, and congratulations on a great post. I loved it the first time I saw it and it looks better each time I see it. Plus, I learned from the shots taken, looking at the exposure times was enlightening for a beginning photographer.

  • Travelwriter

    January 24th, 2009 3:34 pm

    Interesting numbers, especially the ranking with the sources. How did your server manage the load?

  • Gennaro

    January 24th, 2009 3:36 pm

    Social networking is king. It also doesn’t hurt to create excellent content and a loyal following :)

  • Craig

    January 24th, 2009 4:24 pm

    Well done Darren!

    Im very jelous……

  • Shaan

    January 24th, 2009 8:26 pm

    Congrats. . . Not every blog can get this type of achievement. . . . Bookmarking sites works for me too, but not that much.
    Regards,

    Shaan Haider

  • Simona Rich

    January 24th, 2009 9:07 pm

    That makes me think I should start submitting my site to social networking sites:)

  • Developers

    January 24th, 2009 9:53 pm

    So is there any specific advise you could give regarding posting to Digg. Since Digg traffic matters the most.

  • Roman

    January 25th, 2009 12:38 am

    I guess 250,000 is OK. But it is only 6,250 times more visitors then I got.

  • Make Money Online Tips

    January 25th, 2009 12:47 am

    This goes to show how important social media is. Also if you notice, social media traffic is not all that good for conversions, which is a long time proven fact.

  • Anne Wayman

    January 25th, 2009 1:13 am

    Outstanding! Congratulations and thanks so much for telling us how it happened. Helpful.

    Anne Wayman, now blogging at http://www.aboutfreelancewriting.com

  • John

    January 25th, 2009 1:44 am

    What kind of hosting do you have for that site? To handle that kind of traffic – dedicated server(s) with a separate server for your DB? Interested on finding out since even with a dedicated server and super cache I will have issues with big traffic spikes.

  • Laurence Flynn

    January 25th, 2009 1:48 am

    82 thousand newsletter subscribers! You truly are a machine, Darren. The mark of a truly successful blogger is not a blogger that blogs about how to succeed at blogging but the blogger that puts all those tips to work and runs a successful niche blog.

  • Millionairemumma

    January 25th, 2009 2:14 am

    As usual Darren superb information. I guess we all aspire to your success. Thank you for sharing as much as you do to help.
    The amount of new signups is outstanding.
    Keep it coming !

    Millionairemumma

  • tom

    January 25th, 2009 2:23 am

    This is great Darren. I have been seeking examples of how I can do something similar to spike up traffic to my blog. Thanks for the post again.

  • Christopher Ross

    January 25th, 2009 2:26 am

    Darren, I’m sure you’ve been asked this a million times before but what type of hosting do you have to have to manage that type of traffic spike?

  • Bruce Simmons (brusimm)

    January 25th, 2009 2:57 am

    Earlier Keith asked a great question about how your hosting services managed through all this? I suspect you’ve purchased sufficient services to hold up, but a lot of folk can only afford what sustains them and this kind of traffic spurt tends to hurt their bandwidth and they go dark until they have at least a one time resolution with their provider.

    On the 1-2% conversion to regular readers, that makes perfect sense and matches up well with real world statistics.

    I spent some years in sales and this will support how cold calling and email spamming works. In the day, about every 100 contacts, whether it be via phone or email converted usually into at least 1 interested buyer. Usually, after about 50 interested buyers chatted me up, 1 to 2 of them converted into a transaction.

    So yea. I see that.

    As far as the rush of traffic, it’s also like an emotional rush with a subtle let down after it quiets down!!

  • Ben Moreno

    January 25th, 2009 4:00 am

    I never even heard of long exposure photography before but I am glad I just found out. Those images are totally awesomeness!

    I would like to large print some of them out as posters.

    Congratulations on your gigantic traffic surge, I imagine you must be feeling pretty good right about now. I know I would. It is very inspiring and shows the power of quality content.

  • Ryan Miller

    January 25th, 2009 5:05 am

    Thanks for the play by play and congrats on the large traffic spike!

    I had one quick question for you though. You had mentioned that the photos you used were all CC licensed via Flickr. Have you had any feedback from the creators of those photos to see if they had experienced a significant boost in traffic as a result of yours? If so, have they quantified it?

    Thanks.

    @ryancmiller

  • WPCult

    January 25th, 2009 7:50 am

    WOW!!

  • geno

    January 25th, 2009 10:35 am

    Congratulations Darren! Your blog was the “foundation” for when I started my poker blog/website…www.virtualfelt.com…..it has since been tweeked many of times but this was my first attempt at a blog/website and it was greatly influenced by you! Thanks and keep up the good work!

    ~geno

  • Spencer

    January 25th, 2009 11:43 am

    That very exciting! Thanks for sharing.

  • Millionairemumma

    January 25th, 2009 12:58 pm

    Darren

    Would be extremely interested to hear what you have to say in answering Ryan Miller’s question about feedback from the creators of the Flickr photo. Would love to see if this goes viral. Would be interesting to pursue.

    Thanks
    Millionairemumma

  • Ari Lestariono

    January 25th, 2009 2:33 pm

    Great articles on massive traffic, this should be fantastic case study getting from social bookmarking, but how about the CTR, any impact on that, I too have experience jumping traffic came from SU, but only temporary, and the CTR is almost nothing, so my point is whats the good high traffic if your CTR is low.Better off changing strategy to SEO traditional getting quality links by making blog comments or blog guest.I am not trying to discourage the readers here, just think of it if you get visitors from search engine, that means the person apply the keywords or niche is interested to know about your blog and interested also to have sales conversions to your blog.

  • Grace @ Sandier Pastures

    January 25th, 2009 4:17 pm

    Hi Darren, I was one of the few first readers of that post and I thought it was amazing and a potential hit. Great work, I love DPS and read every single bit of info there.

    Congratulations on the big spike!

  • Blogger Chelle

    January 25th, 2009 5:28 pm

    Wow, that is amazing! Way to go Darren. I’ll get there someday!

  • Shane Hudson

    January 25th, 2009 9:08 pm

    That is really amazing Darren! Congratulations!!

  • Debra Askanase

    January 26th, 2009 3:45 am

    Darren,
    Thank you for sharing. This is, as has been said, a great case study. I also want to point out that this is an outcome of a collaborative effort. In the social media sphere, it is collaborations that drive reputation, traffic and also ideas. Congrats, and I hope to one day collaborate with you!
    Debra

  • Bill

    January 26th, 2009 7:12 am

    Thanks for your great info and resources – it seems some of the best blogs on the net are about blogging. Do you think the obsessions w/ SEO and quality blogging lead naturally to a desire to blog about blogging, or did you start out that way?

  • Adam Singer

    January 26th, 2009 7:41 am

    Congrats, that was a great thread – I saw it from Digg as well

  • Niche Digger

    January 26th, 2009 9:06 am

    Glad I found this site – I’m finding the content very useful – thanks!

  • erik burkhardt

    January 26th, 2009 1:17 pm

    Your blog is without a doubt one of the most informative and helpful blogs out there. I truly appreciate your content. I am always trying to look to improve my knowledge and tactics to make my own business stronger. I am never disappointed when I come here. Keep up the good work

  • Geoserv

    January 26th, 2009 1:55 pm

    Congrats, but I can’t help but think your name attached to it had something to do with it.

    This is why beginner bloggers can’t reach the front page, big bloggers submitting, people see their name and think oh it must be good and thumb it up.

    Envious yes, it’s all in the name of the submitter in my books.

    Let’s do an experiment, I submit a post and you submit the same post and let’s see who gets the most thumbs up, I guarantee you will.

    Seriously, let’s do an experiment.

    Let me know if you are interested in proving me wrong.

  • Anthony

    January 26th, 2009 5:50 pm

    Problogger is the king of posting killer post, you are something else…..250,000 visitor in 24 hour, wow. I don’t even know what to say….you are dangerous.

  • reflux

    January 26th, 2009 5:52 pm

    the key is getting big traffic stream…. automatic increasing your income online, congratulations daren

  • Cheap iPods

    January 26th, 2009 6:06 pm

    I too have seen tons of traffic from Stumble, all though the traffic isn’t the best for conversions it can bring some clicks, sales and readers.

  • TechMata

    January 26th, 2009 7:07 pm

    How I wish I have 250,000 people showing in my blog even just for a year.hehe ^_^

  • The Geek Entrepreneur

    January 27th, 2009 12:36 am

    A great example of the power of viral marketing via social bookmarking sites.

    I’ve had some traffic resulting from social bookmarking sites (notably StumbleUpon). While it is nice to see, the key to remember is to make those new visitors regular visitors, and to ensure your blog is “sticky” so that they’ll explore your site. A problem which I’m sure you didn’t have.

    Great inspirational post, Darren!

    Wesley
    The Geek Entrepreneur

  • Nick Stamoulis

    January 27th, 2009 1:07 am

    I actually saw that post the other day and I agreed it was an amazing post. It great how wide it spread.

  • Rohit

    January 27th, 2009 2:52 am

    Congratulations !

  • Ruben Ricart

    January 27th, 2009 5:05 am

    I enjoyed reading your post Darren! Congratulations on the spike of traffic – that is a great thing indeed.

  • Popular Wealth

    January 27th, 2009 6:54 am

    Google “Stumbleupon Traffic Guide” for a blueprint on how to reproduce this.

  • JeepnDave

    January 27th, 2009 7:55 am

    Thanks for the break down on the rush of traffic Darren. Amazing the power two little social sites can yield if you just manage to strike the right cord with it’s viewers.

  • Kenney Works From Home

    January 27th, 2009 8:35 am

    That’s crazy Darren. Congrats though. Totally awesome. I know that that was quite the adrenaline rush for real. You really have some great tracking systems in place to have been able to keep up with all of that.

    Kenney
    The Work From Home Secret

  • Trevor

    January 27th, 2009 11:09 am

    Wow. Amazing.

    That’s all I have to say about that.

  • A.B. Dada

    January 27th, 2009 1:28 pm

    Why don’t you use Quantcast on dPS, Darren? Would be amazing to analyze such traffic.

    I was “slashdotted” once and was able to analyze the traffic quite nicely using other analytics, always a fun thing to do.

  • Neil Matthews

    January 27th, 2009 7:43 pm

    Do you do anything to protect your site from spikes like this? I am thinking cache plugins etc, the majority of blogs would just crumble under traffic like that :)

  • Jewel

    January 27th, 2009 9:42 pm

    I just wonder when will I be able to reach that level of achievement. I mean this is not something that happens to any ordinary blogs. Well…Congrats.

  • dev

    January 27th, 2009 10:03 pm

    WOW, Really big number!

  • Michael Aulia

    January 27th, 2009 10:35 pm

    Wow it’ll take me a year to get that kind of traffic to my blog

    Wondering whether a cache plug-in that I use (WP-SuperCache) can save me from this kind of massive traffic

  • TripleAAA

    January 28th, 2009 12:42 am

    Thanks for the great in depth report. This shows content is king. Thanks for breaking it down like that.

  • One More Bite

    January 28th, 2009 1:18 am

    Tracking Traffic: Could you elaborate as to what you use to track your site’s traffic in real-time? You said, “I had a feeling that the post would do well on StumbleUpon so was on the lookout for traffic.”

    Awesome “how to” get huge traffic numbers by simply posting good information.

  • talkingfuture

    January 28th, 2009 3:03 am

    I’d be happy with 10% of that!

  • mobiles in NZ

    January 28th, 2009 3:07 am

    Yes WP Cache can help by reducing the loads on the PHP pages, congrats Darren. I guess you didn’t do it for the money then.

  • Jai Jeswani

    January 28th, 2009 3:42 am

    WOW!
    I wonder when I will be able to manage atleast 10% of that traffic.

  • Amanda

    January 28th, 2009 5:23 am

    Congrats Darren. I love reading your site because it is so obvious that all this success has not gone to your head. You are such a great person, and I’m so happy this happened for you! You earned it and deserve it.

    Keep up the great work!

  • qt money

    January 28th, 2009 8:49 am

    Amazing , that is really impressive , thanks for sharing that with us , i dont get anywhere near those figures but im new here , thanks for the info

  • JanS

    January 28th, 2009 9:21 am

    I know the feeling of just one post going viral. It does give you a rush. I did a post on the horse jumping events at the Olympics last year and thought I would just get a few hundred visitors like I normally get. It ended up at Digg and someone Stumbled it and I had over 15K visitors to that one post.

  • Janith | Blogussion

    January 28th, 2009 3:50 pm

    Woah, 250,000 Visitors in just 24 hours?!

    That’s truly remarkable, I’d be happy with that in just one month if not in 4 or 5!

    Thank you once more, Darren – there’s a lot helpful information in this post alone if one can take it and make use of it.

    Will definitely be working on some of the tips you’ve mentioned here.

    Janith
    http://www.blogussion.com/blog

  • Infonote

    January 29th, 2009 12:07 am

    Congratulations Darren,

    To be honest when looking at Analytics I only consider the number of Search Engine referrals.

    I have a question If I may ask. Is there a way to measure actual conversion/click-through rates from stumble or digg. I would like to compare CTR.

    BTW, today I just found out that you can integrate Analytics with Adsense. Can you explain exactly how it works?

    Thanks

  • Taylor at Household Management 101

    January 29th, 2009 6:18 am

    Wow, I was excited for you as I read this. Congratulations. It is especially encouraging that so many people signed up for your RSS feed and newsletter.

  • Robby G

    January 29th, 2009 6:50 am

    I remember I had day exactly like that. But it was 700,000 visitors. Lol I wish! Whatever, there’s still time and room to improve.

  • Matt Seymour

    January 29th, 2009 7:40 am

    Was this 250,000 hits on your website problogger.net or on the digital-photography-school website

  • Manuel

    January 29th, 2009 8:12 pm

    Very Impressive. I would be happy with 25,000 people showing up at my blog ;)

  • Lee, 6 Figure Blogging Strategies

    January 29th, 2009 9:21 pm

    Darren, that’s simply amazing! Thanks for this very uplifting story… and congrats on your traffic tsunami!

    It’s also pretty inspiring for the rest of us… you never know what will happen, so we’ve just got to keep plugging along!

    Lee

  • Tom

    January 30th, 2009 12:04 am

    Congratulations! 250,000 visitors per day is a lot.Wish I had that kind of traffic.Well, maybe some day.

  • Albert

    January 30th, 2009 3:48 am

    Stories like this keeps me glued to my keyboard. Am barely 3 months into blogging and my highest traffic has been in the hundreds. I find this story quite inspiring.

  • Graphic Design Blog

    January 30th, 2009 4:25 pm

    Lucky man….just wondering how nice you must be feeling about this all happening with you. I am really thankful that you shared your shared your experience with us and informed us with some really useful tips which can help us promote our blogs as well.

    Great work…I must say!

  • Sally Croft

    January 30th, 2009 5:01 pm

    It is such an inspiring story Darren, I am so glad you shared it with us all and yes hats off to you on achieving such AMAZING milestone, waiting for one such miracle for my blog too :) Wish me luck :)

  • rudy

    January 30th, 2009 8:36 pm

    Hi, it’s really inspiring such a newbie like me. Thanks for sharing with us for the analysis and what you did. Appreciate it.

  • Jane

    January 30th, 2009 11:22 pm

    Very inspirational Mate.

  • Greg House hydro codone

    January 31st, 2009 2:29 am

    It is true that much money is spent on health information, but is also true that so far not found a cure for terrible diseases and quickly spread throughout the body, it calls on the authorities to have a better distribution of this money because it costs so far in vain, I have friends who suffer from cancer, HIV, Alzheimer’s, and so far we can not find any solution to the disease, only control their pain medication, but even when taken the same? will actually one day cure? please you have to be sensible and remember that no one is free of disease and therefore it is important for everyone, it is important to reflect on the subject and provide information on http://www.findrxonline.com, web differentiated have good information that can help many people in the world.

  • Danielsmonde

    January 31st, 2009 3:21 am

    250,000 is a pretty impressive number. Congrats!

  • Rebecca

    January 31st, 2009 5:03 am

    Very interesting. Thank you for sharing this with us. And congratulations on your wonderful day!

  • Kate

    January 31st, 2009 5:26 am

    Congratulations on all those hits, that’s an amazing amount of people! I’ve been looking to problogger for awhile now to help search for job posts (which I always needs) and ways to improve the hits on my blog. Thanks so much for sharing what you know, it’s very helpful! Also, great post :-)

  • Rick Answer Analyst

    January 31st, 2009 3:01 pm

    Wow,
    I just went and looked at the pictures. They are so full and multidimensional.

    Thanks for the post, it will be interesting to see how many people come back to the site.

    Rick

  • An Avid Reader

    January 31st, 2009 4:06 pm

    Very interesting to see how the surge of traffic has effected the site (in a positive way) Also going to go through the links on some comments left by your readers.

    I’ve found a few great sites linked to via blog comments! :-)

  • andy

    January 31st, 2009 11:52 pm

    Great post and good to see that managed to get so many hits to your blog. Just shows what can be done if you go the right way about it!

  • José

    February 1st, 2009 7:28 am

    Hi,

    It will take me 20 years to reach that number…..

    Have a great weekend,

    José :-)

  • Brian

    February 2nd, 2009 2:59 am

    Wow, kudos on that great feat. it helps to have a popular issue as well, but using social media is a great tool. Thanks!

  • Kadmiel

    February 10th, 2009 7:54 am

    I actually saw that post the other day and I agreed it was an amazing post. It great how wide it spread.

  • Timon weller

    February 12th, 2009 12:01 am

    Well done there Darren, I am trying to catch up in hits lol.. What about this blog, how many hits is this one getting..?

  • seth

    February 17th, 2009 11:15 am

    Well… I have never hit the front page of Digg or gotten 250,000 visits in a day, but man that is incredible…. Congratulations on your wonderful day. Hope the traffic will continue to be there for you.

  • Mr Cakes

    February 19th, 2009 3:34 am

    Now that is an awesome wave of traffic! How did you manage to keep your site up and running during quarter of a million? Didn’t your servers die down?.. And yeah, that must be expensive too.

  • Jess

    February 20th, 2009 8:01 am

    Fascinating article! I am a brand new blogger (which you can check out at henryralph.blogspot.com – I know, shameless plug), and I appreciate all the information I could get on blogging. I, too, may have contributed to the phenomenon mentioned above, as I too saw those amazing shots and passed them along to my friends using my various forms of social media (e.g., twitter, facebook, etc.)

    Thanks for the great story!

  • Crysfel

    March 5th, 2009 5:18 am

    Thanks for share the story, i hope some day that happens to me :D

  • Patrick

    April 13th, 2009 10:58 pm

    Wow! For now I can only dream about that number of visits to my blog.

  • Shalini

    May 1st, 2009 1:14 am

    WOW!! Really, wow. It gives the rest of us hope that we can also have such a great traffic day. Great job! Thank you for sharing your story.


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