jon
CibbuanoOrble Blog traffic over time: what to expect
October 6th 2007 04:51
I've unleashed the inner geek and done some research into how an Orble blog can be expected to perform over the first 500 days of it's life.
These results show that:
Bloggers need to persevere through the first 6 months of a blog's life when they are getting very little traffic. After this point blog traffic usually increases very quickly.
Patience and persistence are key.
Disclaimer: These results are based on data taken from the Orble network of domain blogs. I have no data on blogs outside of Orble however I would expect Orble blogs to perform better than average due to the fact that they are all networked together and that Orble bloggers are usually well trained. I'm not at all biased
The first graph is the most important and shows the number of readers on an active blog over the first 500 days of it's life.
The graph shows that traffic does not really start to take of until the blog is a year old, and that traffic is particularly slow before the 6 month mark. No wonder so many bloggers give up. However if you persist until the blog is 500 days old (about 16 months) you can expect to have a blog with around 900 readers per day.
I have defined an active blog as one that has had at least 3 new posts in the last 20 days (this is measured for every day in a blog's life, not just the most recent day). Publishing three posts every 20 days is not that arduous I'm sure you'll agree.
You can expect even more readers if you follow all the advice on this blog and the blogging tips blog. It's amazing how many bloggers don't follow the simplest of advice and pull down that average
If you understand the above then you have got the main point of this post: Don't give up! Be patient and keep blogging if you want to succeed. The rest contains a whole array of graphs which are interesting but will only add incrementally to your sum of knowledge.
Next we take a look at what happens when you post more frequently than 3 times every 20 days.
As expected the more frequently you post the better you do. Especially towards the end of the 500 days when blogs which post at least 10 times every 20 days attract about 75% more traffic and those which post only 3 times.
From the graph it looks like there is not much difference between the frequencies for the first 200 days however if we look at just those days:
we can see that it's actually just the scale tricking us. Increased blogging frequency is an asset from the outset.
From this graph we can also see that the first 120 days of a blog's life is particularly brutal with traffic remaining stagnant, and most bloggers do quit before they reach this point.
This pattern can be partly explained by the fact that it takes a long time for word of mouth about a blog to build up to a critical mass, but it's mainly to do with Google. Everyone's favourite search engine just loves older blogs which are frequently updated.
But, I hear you ask, perhaps it's just that older and more frequently updated blogs have a larger library of posts to attract traffic. It's got nothing to do with age and posting frequency, just the number of posts on a blog. I'll just do 500 days worth of posts in a couple of mad days at the start of my blog's life then all the traffic will come straight away. Not according to this graph which actually quite surprised me:
It shows the number of posts on a blog vs the number of readers averaged over the last 3 days (I've removed the outliers for clarity). As you can see there is very little correlation. The number of posts on a blog has got very little to do with the number of readers.
This does not mean that a large number of posts on a blog is a bad thing. It just means that your blog needs to be frequently updated to take advantage of it. Also stuffing a whole heap of posts onto a young domain will not work. Age and frequency of posting are king.
How much of this effect is to do with age and how much with frequency? Could I just put a heap of posts on a blog and then wait for 500 days? This following graph compares inactive and active blogs:
As you can see from this graph, inactive blogs (with at least 20 posts in total to give them a fighting chance) attract far less traffic than active blogs. This shows just how important it is to keep your blog active over time. Without regular posting the traffic to your blog will drop off significantly.
Another Caveat: Some of the trend of the frequently updated blogs could be explained by the fact the bloggers who are getting few readers become discouraged and drop out. Their blogs become inactive and just the good ones are left which contributes to the rising trend.
The reason I don't think that this a big factor is that the number of active bloggers does not drop off that much after the 200 day mark, and even less after the 400 day mark. If a blogger is still going after 200 days they are quite likely to continue for some time. Despite this decline in the dropout rate the trend of the graph continues unchanged which would indicate that dropout has little effect.
Now I'm going to up the geek factor another notch and bring in log graphs. Look away if you don't like math
If you look at the very first graph of active blogs over 500 days those of you who do know a little math will notice that it looks vaguely exponential. Now I'm the last guy to try to fit a line to a graph and start making wild statements, and we all know that exponential growth can't last forever. But if we do go logarithmic we can have a stab at what to expect as a general percentage rate of increase in blog traffic over time.
Here we can see that an exponential is in fact quite a good fit to the data and than it shows a 0.9% increase per day (compounded) in readers over time for active blogs (as defined by at least 3 posts in the last 20 days). Not bad.
What's quite interesting is that we get the same result if we up the frequency to 10 posts in the last 20 days.
It's the same daily increase of 0.9%. However with the more frequently updated blogs the increase is coming of a higher base after the initial wiggle at the start of the graph. So if this trend continues I would expect more active blogs to attract proportionately more and more readers as time goes by.
Well that's all of the graphs I've had time to make I'll be doing more detailed research as time goes by so watch this space and remember to always take statistics with a grain of salt, it's a complex world out there which will defy those who try to simplify it too much.
What are the main lessons we should take from this?
1) Don't give up in the first 6 months of blogging when you are getting few readers.
2) Post as frequently to your blog as you can. It will pay off.
3) If you are starting a new blog it really pays to take over an old inactive Orble blog which has already aged. You can see a list of Orble's inactive blogs here, abandoned by people who did not read this post
There are many ways to get your blog to deviate above the average. For some of those ways have a look at the other posts on this blog.
Very Small Appendix:
The metric I've used to measure the traffic for a given blog is the number of Link Readers. Link Readers are those readers who have clicked on link to arrive at a page on a given blog, or who clicked on a link while they were there. It probably underestimates the true number of readers by around 20% but it's the most stable and reliable measure we have that excludes those pesky robots.
These results show that:
Bloggers need to persevere through the first 6 months of a blog's life when they are getting very little traffic. After this point blog traffic usually increases very quickly.
Patience and persistence are key.
Disclaimer: These results are based on data taken from the Orble network of domain blogs. I have no data on blogs outside of Orble however I would expect Orble blogs to perform better than average due to the fact that they are all networked together and that Orble bloggers are usually well trained. I'm not at all biased
The first graph is the most important and shows the number of readers on an active blog over the first 500 days of it's life.
The graph shows that traffic does not really start to take of until the blog is a year old, and that traffic is particularly slow before the 6 month mark. No wonder so many bloggers give up. However if you persist until the blog is 500 days old (about 16 months) you can expect to have a blog with around 900 readers per day.
I have defined an active blog as one that has had at least 3 new posts in the last 20 days (this is measured for every day in a blog's life, not just the most recent day). Publishing three posts every 20 days is not that arduous I'm sure you'll agree.
You can expect even more readers if you follow all the advice on this blog and the blogging tips blog. It's amazing how many bloggers don't follow the simplest of advice and pull down that average
If you understand the above then you have got the main point of this post: Don't give up! Be patient and keep blogging if you want to succeed. The rest contains a whole array of graphs which are interesting but will only add incrementally to your sum of knowledge.
Next we take a look at what happens when you post more frequently than 3 times every 20 days.
As expected the more frequently you post the better you do. Especially towards the end of the 500 days when blogs which post at least 10 times every 20 days attract about 75% more traffic and those which post only 3 times.
From the graph it looks like there is not much difference between the frequencies for the first 200 days however if we look at just those days:
we can see that it's actually just the scale tricking us. Increased blogging frequency is an asset from the outset.
From this graph we can also see that the first 120 days of a blog's life is particularly brutal with traffic remaining stagnant, and most bloggers do quit before they reach this point.
This pattern can be partly explained by the fact that it takes a long time for word of mouth about a blog to build up to a critical mass, but it's mainly to do with Google. Everyone's favourite search engine just loves older blogs which are frequently updated.
But, I hear you ask, perhaps it's just that older and more frequently updated blogs have a larger library of posts to attract traffic. It's got nothing to do with age and posting frequency, just the number of posts on a blog. I'll just do 500 days worth of posts in a couple of mad days at the start of my blog's life then all the traffic will come straight away. Not according to this graph which actually quite surprised me:
It shows the number of posts on a blog vs the number of readers averaged over the last 3 days (I've removed the outliers for clarity). As you can see there is very little correlation. The number of posts on a blog has got very little to do with the number of readers.
This does not mean that a large number of posts on a blog is a bad thing. It just means that your blog needs to be frequently updated to take advantage of it. Also stuffing a whole heap of posts onto a young domain will not work. Age and frequency of posting are king.
How much of this effect is to do with age and how much with frequency? Could I just put a heap of posts on a blog and then wait for 500 days? This following graph compares inactive and active blogs:
As you can see from this graph, inactive blogs (with at least 20 posts in total to give them a fighting chance) attract far less traffic than active blogs. This shows just how important it is to keep your blog active over time. Without regular posting the traffic to your blog will drop off significantly.
Another Caveat: Some of the trend of the frequently updated blogs could be explained by the fact the bloggers who are getting few readers become discouraged and drop out. Their blogs become inactive and just the good ones are left which contributes to the rising trend.
The reason I don't think that this a big factor is that the number of active bloggers does not drop off that much after the 200 day mark, and even less after the 400 day mark. If a blogger is still going after 200 days they are quite likely to continue for some time. Despite this decline in the dropout rate the trend of the graph continues unchanged which would indicate that dropout has little effect.
Now I'm going to up the geek factor another notch and bring in log graphs. Look away if you don't like math
If you look at the very first graph of active blogs over 500 days those of you who do know a little math will notice that it looks vaguely exponential. Now I'm the last guy to try to fit a line to a graph and start making wild statements, and we all know that exponential growth can't last forever. But if we do go logarithmic we can have a stab at what to expect as a general percentage rate of increase in blog traffic over time.
Here we can see that an exponential is in fact quite a good fit to the data and than it shows a 0.9% increase per day (compounded) in readers over time for active blogs (as defined by at least 3 posts in the last 20 days). Not bad.
What's quite interesting is that we get the same result if we up the frequency to 10 posts in the last 20 days.
It's the same daily increase of 0.9%. However with the more frequently updated blogs the increase is coming of a higher base after the initial wiggle at the start of the graph. So if this trend continues I would expect more active blogs to attract proportionately more and more readers as time goes by.
Well that's all of the graphs I've had time to make
I'll be doing more detailed research as time goes by so watch this space and remember to always take statistics with a grain of salt, it's a complex world out there which will defy those who try to simplify it too much.What are the main lessons we should take from this?
1) Don't give up in the first 6 months of blogging when you are getting few readers.
2) Post as frequently to your blog as you can. It will pay off.
3) If you are starting a new blog it really pays to take over an old inactive Orble blog which has already aged
. You can see a list of Orble's inactive blogs here, abandoned by people who did not read this post There are many ways to get your blog to deviate above the average. For some of those ways have a look at the other posts on this blog.
Very Small Appendix:
The metric I've used to measure the traffic for a given blog is the number of Link Readers. Link Readers are those readers who have clicked on link to arrive at a page on a given blog, or who clicked on a link while they were there. It probably underestimates the true number of readers by around 20% but it's the most stable and reliable measure we have that excludes those pesky robots.
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