1,000 Unique Visitors - Winning Challenge #1
Winning the challenge to be the first to 1000 unique visitors to my blog.
It's official, I have won the challenge Zack and I started a few months ago on who would be the first to 1,000 unique visitors to their brand new blog!
If you want to catch up on the process I went through with check-ins at various stages then take a look here:
Kyle Platt
The Stats
That massive spike in December I talk about in my one-month catch-up
Kyle Platt
The TLDR is that two of my articles received interest on IndieHackers, one of which was on the first page for 2 days.
I went through a long stretch from Jan to the end of Feb where I was just getting steady traffic with no real jumps. I was still writing a bit during this time but I wasn't engaging much on Twitter or IndieHackers, my two main areas of previous success. At the beginning of March, I started re-engaging on more platforms taking an effort to link to my articles elsewhere, which is why you see some more action.
That final spike, the one that pushed me over 1,000 was because Supabase shared out an article of mine on their Twitter.
📖 Weekend read
— Supabase (@supabase) March 18, 2023
Using Supabase For Rapid Development: https://t.co/wpADnsWgv2
By Kyle Platt.
That was cool!
What I Learned
I Enjoy Writing
Much of my days are spent either strategizing or working on technical things. Taking some time to write is a nice break from this and helps me consolidate my thoughts. It has been an ongoing challenge to identify and take the time to share things but I believe I believe I am getting better at it and look forward to doing it.
I Dislike SEO
This is something I more or less knew going in but the past few months have reaffirmed it. The main thing that frustrates me is how important it is. It doesn't help that most SEO is educated guesswork and it can take quite a while for things you are testing to take effect. The majority of my traffic has been through my networking and not through 'organic' searches so it is a major weak spot. I like to write naturally and not for the purpose of a keyword most of the time, and that really hurts me here.
My efforts to increase overall website authority have been positive. Jumping from nothing to a Domain Authority (DA) score of 10 in about 100 days, whatever that is worth. I am going to continue looking for shortcuts here as it is not somewhere I want to spend my time.
Leverage Other Networks
I have said it a few times by this point but all of my blog's success so far has been through utilizing other networks. This of course is limited by my available time but it has the potential to kickstart any post by getting quick traffic and hopefully backlinks.
Twitter - The 'Build In Public' crowd is strong here. Even with only ~70 followers, if I time my engagement right I have been able to drive traffic to my blog. Less selfishly, once you block all the politics, the community can be fun to follow along and engage with.
IndieHackers - Indie Hackers is a solid site with the occasional gem popping up. I do find it funny how many "I just made 10 users and $100, here is how you can be successful" posts there are, but hey, just more opportunity to talk about bigger experiences. Even if my posts don't take off here, they get a little bit of traffic so it is almost always worth posting. My recommendation is to be genuine and always offer something to the community, even if it is simple tips or learning.
LinkedIn - There is a lot of potential on LinkedIn, as it is more 'serious'. Some people are already taking advantage of that but I want to shout out a new Building In Public group that you should join here https://www.linkedin.com/groups/14204271/
So far I have enjoyed this journey and am excited to see where I can take it. I will have to propose another challenge to Zack soon, so I can get another prize such as a free dinner out of it 😉