How Much Traffic is Too Much?
I think most personal bloggers have an idea of how much traffic they would like. There are numbers of subscribers, or visitors, or comments, they aim for. Usually, those numbers are small because personal blogs are not (generally) driven by ambition. I still remember the first time I got comments on my blog from people I didn’t know. I still remember the first time my blog was viewed 10, 20, 50, 100 times in a day.
It’s always nice to see progress and if you are anything like me, each time a small goal is attained you fill the void with another.
But at what point should we stop increasing those numbers in our head?
In the last two months I have had 2 major traffic spikes on my personal blog, one due to StumbleUpon and one due to a link from a blog in the Technorati Top 50. Rather than being thrilled, I found myself a little freaked out. I found the idea of dealing with that amount of traffic overwhelming.
The beauty of slow growth on a personal blog is, for me, the organic evolution of relationships. My readers and I grow in our understanding of one another. We are building friendships and it is comfortable.
When spikes occur, or your blog grows at a faster pace, I think things get harder.
Being Invaded
My personal blog is a sanctuary. I don’t mean it’s private or closed: In fact, I try my best to make it open and I rarely censor myself. But it’s a living room not a town square. An influx of strangers can seem like an invasion and leave me feeling defenseless. It’s a crowd standing too close.
Sometimes that’s a wonderful thing - it’s how friendships begin- but in real life you can only maintain a limited number of friendships and a blog is the same.
Being Responsive
Most of the personal bloggers I know place a very high value on being responsive to their readers. When the numbers become too great, it’s hard to adjust your expectations of yourself and do only what you can. If you can’t reply (or visit, or subscribe, or comment, or email, or Stumble, or link, or reward..) the way you like to, the “invasion” creates a lot of pressure.
For me, those spikes were something to be proud of because I was proud of those two articles. Until the added responsibility made me feel as though I had failed.
What I Am Left With
I’m not sure there is such a thing as too much traffic, but there is definitely such a thing as too fast. With those spikes, I learned how ill-prepared I was for them. I learned what expectations I have for myself when I clearly failed to meet them. I learned what I have the capacity to handle right now, and what I need to build on.
The weakness that was really highlighted for me by those spikes was that I need to be more organised. I can’t afford to be a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants blogger any more if I want to live up to my own standards of responsiveness. In my current schedule (I use that term loosely), there isn’t much wiggle room to allow for the extra tasks spikes generate, let alone the time for me capitalise on them, so I’m left with this…
Next time I will do better.
Blogs are perpetual learning. Have you ever been sent into a tailspin by an influx of traffic? Did it thrill you, or freak you out? What did you learn from it?
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16 Responses to “How Much Traffic is Too Much?”
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Boo-hoo, I have NEVER had 100 visitors in one day. I think it is wondrous indeed if I get 50 in one week.
Well, that’s out here in the wider Blogosphere, where I am fairly new. On MySpace I am happy to add more friends to my haiku group page because more participants make more fun, but I have long been limiting the number I accept on my personal blog, because I simply can’t be a good friend to too many; there just isn’t that much time! I have met wonderful people I would not otherwise have known, including brilliant poets, and also it’s a great way to keep in touch with far-flung real-life friends - but as for all the other wonderful people out there, we’ll just have to live without each other.
Out here, though, I would like more readers, just to know I’m not having a mere self-indulgent wank!
I have met wonderful people here too, but not so many yet. My MySpace numbers grew slowly for the first year, so perhaps it will be the same here.
And I have an added agenda. I really want my poetry to be read. Would I do better to put everything in my personal (SnakyPoet) blog, which gets the most traffic so far, or did I do right to create The Passionate Crone especially for poems?
Which brings me to my next point. Perhaps it belongs more in the “About Me” post, but since I’m here - I’m not posting as SnakyPoet any more, (though keeping it as the name of my blog) because I read in one of those blogs with advice to commercial bloggers (maybe it was Dosh Dosh, can’t remember now) about the importance of having a brand name, and as a writer I’d like my actual name to be the one that gets known. (Just in case I ever do get any influx of traffic, lol.)
When mine spiked one time from around an average of 50 to over 150 and I had 20 + comments instead of the usual 10, I decided then and there that I didn’t want huge traffic numbers on my blog. That’s why I haven’t bothered with stumble, entrecard etc etc.
At the moment blogging is fun and it’s making connections and having a great time of it. But if my blog got big, I think it would then become a pressure and a source of more guilt for not doing all the “s’pose to’s” which would kinda defeat the whole purpose for me.
I blog for me. And for SEO.
If no one read it I’d probably still do it because it’s an easy way to journal.
I do get jazzed when I get spikes…oh wait, I’ve only had one.
I jumped from maybe 40 unique visitors a day to over 500! It was so fun. I loved it. But I’m glad it’s back down to my regular number.
I agree…slow and steady growth is what I prefer. =)
Interesting discussion Lani. I’m not sure I qualify specifically in the “personal” niche, because I really don’t reveal that much personal information. But I have become a little more open writing about my kids. I like the feel of a personal blog, because you get to know the author (or your visitors) and share their ups and downs - it’s so much more intimate.
My biggest traffic day was when I wrote about a young model, who was controversial at the time. I ranked well on Google for some reason, and next thing I’d had over 8,000 visitors that day. I too was unprepared for the “invasion” and the post ended up with over 100 comments (many of which I had to delete). I gave up trying to respond, because I knew most wouldn’t be back. I’ve learnt to stay away from hot topics.
I don’t want an audience of thousands! I think the pressure to be interesting or informative would be too great.
I definitely like slow and steady and while at the moment my goals are to increase in traffic, I still don’t see myself ever being a really HUGE blog with hundreds of comments.
The traffic spikes I have had have not usually resulted in much difference in terms of comments so it hasn’t really changed anything. When you get a sudden rush of traffic it seems to very rarely convert into regular traffic (well, that’s been my experience so far - which I admit is rather limited).
I know this one thing for sure - I do not want to ever get to the point where any of my readers feels that they aren’t individually valued. I work hard to respond personally to comments because I want my readers to know I care about what they have to say. I don’t like personal blogs where the blog author never responds to comments at all. To me that is missing the point of blogging.
Great post Lani!!!!
I’ve had a few spikes too and I agree with Lightening - they haven’t really amounted to many more comments. It depends on where the spike is coming from I guess. I have found posts that get a lot more comments than most a bit overwhelming too and its not enjoyable when you get to a point where you can’t respond to each comment. While I was away, I didn’t get a chance to respond to commenters much which I felt bad about. I try to get back to everyone and welcome every new commenter, but sometimes the time just gets away from you. I don’t think I’d want a huge jump in traffic because I just couldn’t keep up.
Also, I’ve noticed on the really popular blogs that comments are either disabled, or they aren’t responded to, or they are mostly “jump on the bandwagon” type comments, which don’t really add much to the conversation. I don’t think I’d bother commenting on a blog unless I thought I’d get a response from the author. I almost always go back and check posts I’ve commented on to see if they’ve replied.
Which is all a very long winded way of saying - I agree, organic growth is much better and easier to manage.
[…] This insightful quote comes from Lani Giesen from Blogging Personal. Lani asks, “How much traffic is too much?” […]
I have a few spikes now and then but they haven’t translated into an overwhelming number of comments.
Slow and steady is nice, sedate and civilised
There are days when I care about traffic and rankings etc and then there are other days where I only write for myself and don’t care if anyone reads it or not. To be fair though those days are very few and fair between. I would prefer though to get only twenty visitors a day that all commented rather than just lurking. That I think is my ultimate goal is to get a lot of comments running where people discuss what I wrote about between themselves - which has happened a couple of times.
Ultimately though I like it when the figure is higher than last month.
I really liked this post and didn’t intend to read the whole thing, but ya got me! And now I’ve been moved to comment as well!
I haven’t had my fist spike in traffic yet so I can’t comment on that aspect of your post. However I can say my fear in a sudden rush of traffic, provided it turned into anything stable would be to keep doing whatever I did to bring people there in the first place. If someone came because something I wrote was funny, I’d feel pressure to ALWAYS produce something of that quality.
And, you can’t be perfect all the time. Sometimes a post will be really good and other times, not so much.
But I do like the idea of growing gradually. It gives everyone a chance to adjust.
I also think it’s funny that I LOVE getting comments on posts, but I am reluctant to comment on someone else’s blog if they already have a ton of responses. So I think lot of comments can turn off a select few.
Anyways, this is my 2 cents!
@ Rosemary - It is a slow build. It took months for me to get my first comment, even. A good idea to use your name - the name you publish your poetry under - in your case, I think. Dosh Dosh (or whoever) was right about branding.
@ Bettina - I agree with you. I’m sure other people have a greater social capacity than me, but I think my “optimum” number of readers/comments is fairly low. Essentially, I’m very much an introvert. I couldn’t cope with a huge party every day.
@ Castocreations - Spikes are definitely a buzz, but it really is nice to get back to normal once it is over.
@ Meg - Yes, one of my spikes was due to a news related topic too, and the other was a “big issue” thing. I can’t imagine it was pleasant to “give up”, or to have to delete so many comments.
@ Lightening - In my experience there are few “conversions” from spikes too. But I can never be sure if it is because that’s just the way it is, or because usually after writing those major posts I feel drained and the content that follows isn’t up to my usual standards. That’s one of the pressures I find difficult, and I guess that’s when having a couple of good quality posts up your sleeve comes in handy.
@ Guera - I’ve found long comment threads sometimes contain many comments which add little to the discussion too.
@ Jayne - I never thought “sedate” would be something I aimed for in my life, but you’re right!
@ Lee - That’s the kind of comment thread which would work really well with your content. Do you do anything specific to try and encourage that?
@ Jillian - Thanks for making it all the way through! I have the same fear. And I’m the same as you when there are long comment threads. I feel like I have to have something really important to say in order to add my voice. I find it especially difficult on personal blogs when the blogger has had something great or terrible happen and everyone is just saying either congratulations or sorry. Even though I want to be supportive, it starts to feel impersonal to me, too crowded to really express myself in a meaningful way.
Outstanding Post, Lani!
First time visiting.
It’s funny, because I’ve started to realize that I have just the right amount of commentors for my speed. I REALLY enjoy taking my time answering comments - fully. I look at some of the wonderful bloggers that I blog with who have a plethora of commentors and often wonder how they do it? It makes me nervous. For me, my personal blog is about building relationships slowly (such as I do with my life away from blogging). Beside content, responding to comments is my top priority.
Also, we as bloggers seem to forget that there are many people who come to our blogs and simply enjoy reading (to be honest, sometimes I do that).
I don’t always feel like talking.
From my present stats, I can see that I have a nice amount of readers, so I’m content with that.
I have to keep a close watch on myself when it comes to stats. I can sometimes become too concerned with them and begin spending more time ckecking them…than writing. In the year and a half that I’ve been blogging, I’ve learned that stats will rise and fall, so I have to watch my ego.
So glad I found your blog, and look forward to reading more. Thanks for sharing such valuable information!
Traffic spikes seem to be just so random and I doubt that they translate into return readers. I have had a few of those and there was no logic to them. They also didn’t translate into additional comments, so I only knew because I looked at sitemeter, which I check very infrequently now.
I can remember being surprised going back that I did have some readers in the early days.
Beware the flip side of the coin. Whatever goes up, comes down again - and it can take you through some pretty wild emotional swings.
I finally threw in the towel and walked away after site traffic finally plummeted to 2-3 visitors a day; just a couple weeks back. Let me explain. A year ago, the average was about 100,000/day and I had been through several million hit days. These spikes usually corresponded to a large websites linking to a few popular articles. I also have one of my community members to thank for being the “I’m feeling lucky” on the day Brittney left her panties at home. I had no idea that entire continents had landed on my webpages.
By Xmas last year traffic had dropped to 30,000 daily - but you could clearly see the bell curve take shape. I hadn’t seen 2-3 a day since I was running on a dialup modem back in 1983.
Now to be fair, about 80% of those hits were search engines doing their routine crawl, but that still amounted to thousands of human readers daily. Millions of visitors over the several years the site was running.
Enjoy the spikes while they last.
Hi Lani. I agree with you that traffic can be tricky. In my case, my old blogs and websites get 80% of its traffic from search engines.
I guess traffic comes in and go. A blog post link usually last for a day to a week. Only a few of that you retain by being a blog subscriber.
On a long term, for having a sustainable modest traffic, I would still stick to writing good post, commenting on blogs, and submit to social media sites for posts that could be of relevance to others.
So what should a blogger of that status do?? Do you keep a seperate portfolio of good blogs in the event of a spike?? How did you disapoint yourself? As someone interested in seeing her blog hit it big, this was a really interesting entry to read! Thanks!!