Guest Post Follow-Up
July 8, 2008 by Lillie
At the beginning of June, I let you know that I had written a guest post at John Hewitt’s Poewar: Writer’s Resource Center.
Today, I learned I had won the prize in John’s guest post contest.
In his announcement at John wrote:
… we had a very clear winner for the contest. The average article received about 500 direct page views in the seven days that followed publication. Almost every article stayed within 100 hits of that figure, one way or the other. Lillie Ammann’s article, however, received almost 14,000 hits the first week. That same article went on to rack up 29,000 hits after 30 days.
How did that happen? StumbleUpon. The article was well-reviewed by the people on StumbleUpon, and good reviews translate into page views. That is the power of social media.
There were many excellent guest posts during the month of June, and I’m amazed and thrilled that my post got so much traffic. Thanks to everyone who reviewed the article on StumbleUpon (even the negative reviews!), to everyone who commented, and to everyone who read the post.
Now if I can just figure out how to get that many page views on this blog!
Congratulations, Lillie! You are right SU can have this effect on visits and page views/. And a little controversy added by the negative reviews (if their percentage is not high) is even better!
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Thanks, Alina! I think there were a couple of negative reviews out of 16 total reviews – enough to arouse some curiosity, I guess.
Wow, 14,000. That’s amazing. I knew social bookmarking services could lead to traffic, but I didn’t know it was that much. Lillie, did you have any influence in the stumble effect or do you know how it got there?
I was totally clueless. I had no idea the post had even been stumbled until I read John’s announcement. He had e-mailed me to tell me I won but hadn’t mentioned any numbers.
I’m a total flop at social media and until recently didn’t even know how to find reviews on a specific page. I read on a blog you should thank people who stumbled your posts, and I asked how you knew.
When I read John’s post, I put my new-found knowledge to use and looked at the SU reviews. The first person to review it was a writer/blogger I know; the rest of the reviewers were totally unknown to me.
That’s fantastic! Congrats to you!
Thanks, Jenna! I appreciate your good wishes.
I’m not a writer or editor, but the article looks like great advice for those in the industry or for those that do regular blogging. I guess great content really does have a way of making it to the top of social media.
I think you now have a reason to get a Stumble icon on your site.
Congrats.
Guess I will have to pay more attention to SU and other social media now.
That is great, Lillie! I don’t know if I’ve had that many views in the history of my blog!
Well deserved.
Congrats.
so congrats also from me…..i am so happy because you win
Haleys last blog post..onlinefinanzservice.de: Sommer, Sonne, Bargeld lacht…
Hey, Congratulations. It was well deserved.
I tend to suffer from wordiness myself sometimes(well ok a lot of the time.)
For online articles I usually don’t worry about it as much, because having a lot of words online can be a good thing.
On my sites though I usually write an article, publish it, and come back the next day to edit out all the unnecessary stuff.
For the record this comment was originally a lot longer
Thank you for the good wishes. I’m glad you found the article helpful.
[...] was hoping to share the great news that I’d won the $250 prize for most pageviews. But alas, someone who has mastered StumbleUpon got more pageviews — like 14,000 to everyone else’s [...]
14000 !!! This number is really amazing!
I got 1000 in the last 3 months-so you see how big your number is!
Congratulations!
Congratulations on your win, Lillie… well deserved.
StumbleUpon, as you discovered, can be quite a powerful social media marketing and promotion tool.
Yvonne Russells last blog post..Writers Cafe – Sharing Real Life Social Media Stumbling Blocks, Strategies, ROI & Success Stories
Ben,
No one is more amazed than I am at that traffic. I’ve certainly never had anything like that on this blog.
Yvonne,
Yes, I’ve heard so much about how SU and other social media can drive traffic, but this is my first personal experience.
Stumbleupon is an amazing service which can do the magic of high traffic. Perhaps I am addicted to it and can’t live without it. Somebody(Thank to him) stumbled my site first time almost 6 months ago and I was amazed to see that magic of high traffic.
John,
I have had posts on this blog stumbled, but I got nowhere near 14,000 hits in 7 days, 29,000 hits in 30 days.
Haley,
Thank you for your congratulations and good wishes.
Very nice Lillie! I read your article and found it good quality article. Thanks for sharing
Thanks, hank.I appreciate the kind words.
Hi Lillie – what a great article. You deserved to win. And I’ll remember your advice as I work on my own novel. I just hope I won’t overwrite to that extent, then wind up having to cut thousands of words.
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Cath,
I’m glad you found the article helpful. Whether you overwrite or not, know that the first draft will be “pure green dreck” as the instructor in a writing course I took calls it. You will have to cut … add … revise … delete … and change some more.
Many, many congratulations on the win, Lillie! With that many page views, you’ve certainly more than earned the grand prize! I have to admit that, as I watched your comments roll in, I had a very distinct feeling you’d be the winner–though I didn’t realize it would be by such a wide margin!
My feeling now? It couldn’t have happened to a better blogger!
Sincerely,
Jeanne
Jeanne,
Thanks for your support and confidence.
14000 UNIQUE visitors??
)
I fall on my knees
You can really be glad!
Tell us some of your secrets
Lillie,
Congratulations again on winning my contest. For the record, I’ve had a lot of articles stumbled over the past year, but the response to yours was very high. Only three other articles of mine have had that sort of response from SU, and they were all “funny”, so I’m especially excited that your much more straightforward article got such a great response.
John Hewitts last blog post..I’m Not Perfect and I Don’t Care Who Knows It!
John,
Thank you for allowing me to guest post. I’m really excited about the response to the article. And I’m looking forward to a guest post here from you.
Secra,
I have no idea why that article generated that many hits. If I did, I’d be trying to repeat the success.
I’d tell you my secrets if I had any.
14.000 visitors-I am dreaming about 14.000 people-visiting my blog.
Your plan seems to be a good one.
Joey,
And I’d love to have 14,000 visitors on this blog – all that traffic was on the blog where I guest posted.
You give me too much credit. I don’t have a plan.
This traffic is great. And I think Joey is absolutely right-he did not give you too much credit.
)
I see you on the blog charts!! You will see
Jes,
Thank you. I appreciate your confidence.
Lillie, may I ask, since when you started your blog?
Because your traffic is great and it seems that you are not blogging since a huge timeframe??
Iguana,
I’ve been blogging for more than two years, and I don’t get that much traffic on this blog. All those hits came on a guest post I did at a blog with much more traffic than mine.
I should do the same.
Your strategy was great and you see now what you’ve earned.
Great.
Youre blogging for more than two years?
Okay, I have a lot of work in front of my-my blog is just 3 months old
Riuna,
Maybe I should do more guest posts.
Shina,
Lots of blogs don’t make it for three months, so you’re off to a good start.
This result is really nice.
And interesting too!
Its amazing what is possible-I did not know that Stumbleupon exists but it seems that this is an important place in the internet for publicity.
Selma,
Stumbleupon is a great tool—I just don’t remember to use it. I always intend to Stumble great posts … but when I actually read them, I forget to Stumble. I’m trying to do better.
Renae,
I doubt that I’ve had that many views on my blog in two years, either. Being on Writers Resource Center with much higher traffic than my blog made a big difference.