Ask HN: Getting traffic to a new Blog | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Getting traffic to a new Blog

7 pointssilent1mezzo6 comments

I started a new blog a couple weeks ago that focuses mainly on Programming but also has some content on Startups, Food and Drinks.

I've been doing a numerous things to get traffic to the site like commenting on similar blogs, submitting articles I think are interesting to here, reddit and other sites and spreading through Twitter and Facebook and while this brings in a little traffic every time I do these things I'm finding none of this traffic is staying (drops off if I don't promote for a day).

My question is what are some good ways to get traffic that sticks to a new blog?

View on HN

Sounds like you're doing all the right things; now it's about content. Submitting to HN will always give you a little spike, but if it's something interesting that sparks debate you'll stay on the front page, get people tweeting about it, etc. and maintain that increase for a much longer period.

I'm definitely trying to do that. I've been sticking to a schedule of 3 posts a week. All of them are as high of a quality as I can write (I'm still a little rusty).

I guess I'll just keep it up.

careful submitting to HN. My submissions are now all marked dead automatically for the past 2 weeks... Even one of my blog submissions got 10 upvotes before being marked dead.. No idea why this is happening / how I can stop it.

So you can either buy your audience or earn your audience.

If you want to earn your audience, you're doing the right thing. Additionally, consider guest blogging on other blogs in your space.

For buying your audience, I have found Facebook ads targeted at your page can be very effective. I've paid ~$.60/US per fan, who then come to your site when you post new things, etc. I bet you could get the CPF (cost per fan) lower if you played with the optimization for a while. (I targeted the ads at people who liked sites and interests similiar to mine.)

Why don't you put it in your HN profile?

I just did. I hadn't thought of doing that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com