Read on Twitter
In January 2020, my blog ( http://joshwcomeau.com ) averaged between 50 and 150 visitors a day.
It now consistently gets between 1500 and 3000 a day
A
about what I've learned / why I think it's grown so quickly.
It now consistently gets between 1500 and 3000 a day
A
about what I've learned / why I think it's grown so quickly.
1. I do this for fun, and it shows. I hid lots of little easter eggs and surprises for folks to discover. I had a blast doing this work, and I hear all the time that people love it 
I see a lot of folks share my blog on Twitter because of the blog itself, not even the content.
I see a lot of folks share my blog on Twitter because of the blog itself, not even the content.
2. Content is of course super important! My strategy has been to document things that used to confuse me (either things I just learned, or things I remember being confusing). That, and sharing neat tricks I've picked up that make work easier / more fun.
3. For style/tone, the goal is to be playful and a little quirky, while still being relatively information-dense. I hope that you'll learn a lot reading my blog posts, but that you'll also be entertained.
This is difficult!
This is difficult!
It's taken me years to develop confidence in my writing. It's a long road, but super worth it. Start early! Even if you're not comfortable publishing your articles, you'll reinforce your learning and develop writing skills.
4. Consistency! I've been aiming for 1 post a week, and have more-or-less hit that. I could be more consistent, but some consistency is better than none.
The idea is that each post has a long tail of traffic, so every new post increases the daily traffic by a fair bit.
The idea is that each post has a long tail of traffic, so every new post increases the daily traffic by a fair bit.
5. Not worrying if other blog posts already exist on the same topic. Most ideas have already been written about. I'm not offering unique information, I'm offering a unique perspective and style.
Don't wait for an unclaimed idea. Otherwise, it'll be impossible to publish often!
Don't wait for an unclaimed idea. Otherwise, it'll be impossible to publish often!
6. Use aggregators, but don't count on them for growth.
I submit new posts to HN and an appropriate Reddit. I've hit HN frontpage a few times and it sends maybe 15-30k visitors, but it's so transient. Feels like <1% of these people ever come back.
I submit new posts to HN and an appropriate Reddit. I've hit HN frontpage a few times and it sends maybe 15-30k visitors, but it's so transient. Feels like <1% of these people ever come back.
7. SEO! I've noticed a steady uptick in SEO, it's now maybe 25% of my traffic. I haven't really focused on it much, and it'll always take a backseat to what I _want_ to write about, but I'm starting to take it more seriously.
So far, my biggest traffic sources have been Twitter, and random referrals (some of my posts get linked in Github issues or on StackOverflow). Newsletters account for some of it, as do websites I've never heard of. It's a thousand small things, not 1 big thing.
This is all just scratching the surface, apparently I have a lot of thoughts 
let me know if I should expand this into a blog post!
let me know if I should expand this into a blog post!
