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I Just Received 200,000 Visitors In 2 Days

By Frugaling 36 Comments

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Google Analytics Screenshot of Web Traffic

Late Sunday night I published an article about work in America. More specifically, how the 40-hour workweek harms productivity, the environment, and psychological health. The next day, I woke up to find over 50 people on my website. And then something crazy happened.

After my article was published, it was shared on the social networking site Reddit. Currently, it’s the 53rd most visited site on the net. The users of Reddit tend to be more tech savvy and interested in social issues (but isn’t limited to these areas). My article struck a chord with people that support the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement and workers’ rights.

I decided to go over to Starbucks yesterday to complete some academic research, as my site was beginning to launch into a mad frenzy of traffic. In my typical frugal fashion, I had a reward and even got another free refill before I left! I was buzzed by the caffeine, but even more because of the analytics. Hell, I couldn’t concentrate on the research writing because the numbers started to grow.

Suddenly, it hit the hundreds. OWS supporters shared it on Facebook and the niche social site, Hacker News. I texted a couple friends and let my mom know what was happening. Mom hopped on the site, and I could see her individual visit. That’s the last time I could see a person’s click.

I began to tweet out progressively higher traffic statistics, which came from free Google Analytics. When I hit 200, I looked back at Reddit. A big-time user and moderator of one of the largest “subreddits” had shared my article on no less than three other boards. The über popular “Futurology” subreddit generally has thousands of visitors at any one moment. That’s when I could tell it was all about to rollover into the most popular article I’ve ever written.

From there, the article rocketed to the top of five major boards and was shared on Facebook nearly 2000 times. I kept watching the traffic — still ticking higher. It was like gambling or playing a videogame, except I couldn’t lose. The real-time traffic statistics constantly updated every second, and the visitors didn’t stop.

Every time I thought I had hit the max number of visitors at one time, it went up even further. I thought it would all stop before 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, and 1,000. But it didn’t. The highest recorded real-time, active visitors clocked in at 1,212 (see the screenshot above), with my web server straining to handle one more person.

I struggled to get to sleep because the traffic was still in the 900s by Monday night. When I finally began to drift, I assumed that the number would be back to more reasonable levels in the morning. I thought, “Maybe it’ll be around 100 or so?”

Surprise surprise, that wasn’t the case. When I woke up around 9 AM, the site was still reaching about 900 people — 150-200 visitors per minute. The stress on my server hadn’t ceased and my site was still inaccessible for much of the morning.

I was shocked by the total amount of traffic that was driven to my site over two days. Despite being a nerd through much of my life, I had no real appreciation for the level of traffic available on the Internet. After two days, my site has received about 200,000 visitors (probably more than that, due to tracking and server issues). That’s roughly three times the population size of my adopted home, Iowa City.

I was lucky to be able to share this experience with Twitter followers, friends, and family. As a writer, it put a serious smile on my face that people cared that much to read and share my work. I’m deeply honored and humbled by the magnitude of support. Thanks for your support by sharing the article and reading all about it!

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Filed Under: Make Money Tagged With: Blog, Blogging, Google, Hacker News, occupy, reddit, Visitors, Writing

Comments

  1. Liquid says

    July 22, 2014 at 7:19 pm

    Great job, Sam 🙂 I hope a good portion of those new readers will come back and become regular visitors. Your site certainly deserves more attention. I wouldn’t be surprised if you also got tons of emails in your inbox haha. As someone who has over $530,000 of debt, I enjoy reading your take on how to manage debt and money 😀 Keep up the good content.

    Reply
    • Sam Lustgarten says

      July 22, 2014 at 7:24 pm

      Thank you for your incredibly thoughtful and encouraging comment!

      It was such a rush, and I hope that it only continues to go up from here.

      Means a lot to hear that you’ve been reading my work.

      All the best,
      Sam

      Reply
  2. Catherine says

    July 22, 2014 at 7:36 pm

    That’s amazing! Congrats 🙂

    Reply
  3. Roadmap2Retire says

    July 22, 2014 at 9:09 pm

    Congrats on the massive amount of traffic! Enjoy the ride and hope some of the visitors will come back for more stories.

    cheers
    R2R

    Reply
    • Sam Lustgarten says

      July 23, 2014 at 1:22 pm

      Me too! That’s always the big question with social media websites: will the visitors stay for more?! Likely, the vast majority will move on to the next big story. But even getting a few followers from 200,000 means a great deal to me. 🙂

      Reply
  4. Syed says

    July 22, 2014 at 9:18 pm

    Great job Sam. Reddit is definitely a good place to get noticed. Congrats on the continued success.

    Reply
  5. patrickproulx83 says

    July 22, 2014 at 10:59 pm

    I started a following a week before you made it real big!! I feel kindaa hipster 😛

    Congrats! That’s amazing. I loved that article by the way!

    Reply
    • Sam Lustgarten says

      July 23, 2014 at 1:23 pm

      Look at you, Patrick! Heck yes you are a hip reader. Haha. Thanks for the encouragement! That definitely keeps me motivated to write more.

      Reply
  6. Nicola says

    July 23, 2014 at 1:23 am

    That’s awesome! 🙂

    Reply
  7. Dear Dividend says

    July 23, 2014 at 7:26 am

    Congratulations!

    Regards,
    Dear Dividend

    Reply
  8. Will - First Quarter Finance says

    July 23, 2014 at 7:41 am

    Congrats, Sam! That’s insane! I think I may have commented on that post because my traffic has spiked as well!

    Reply
    • Sam Lustgarten says

      July 23, 2014 at 1:26 pm

      Will,

      That’s very likely the case! Visitors were clicking all over the place. 🙂 Glad it even trickled down to your site. Enjoy the traffic!

      Sam

      Reply
  9. kathleen says

    July 23, 2014 at 8:02 am

    LOVE this! Thanks for sharing. 🙂

    Reply
    • Sam Lustgarten says

      July 23, 2014 at 1:27 pm

      You’re welcome! Thanks for reading! 🙂

      Reply
  10. Mrs. Frugalwoods says

    July 23, 2014 at 8:27 am

    Congrats! That’s awesome!

    Reply
  11. debtgal says

    July 23, 2014 at 12:16 pm

    That’s fantastic – congratulations!!

    Reply
  12. J. Money says

    July 23, 2014 at 12:59 pm

    That’s incredible man. See what happens when you focus on good quality content?? Good lesson for us other bloggers out there 🙂

    Reply
    • Sam Lustgarten says

      July 23, 2014 at 1:28 pm

      J,

      You’re absolutely right. It doesn’t much matter the length of a story. What makes all the difference is the content quality and need in the community. If you can meet those two demands, you’ve got a hit!

      Thanks for the support,
      Sam

      Reply
  13. Broke Millennial says

    July 23, 2014 at 3:48 pm

    How amazing! Well deserved viral post.

    Reply
  14. journeytosaving says

    July 23, 2014 at 4:26 pm

    Congrats! I can’t imagine how exhilarating it must have been to watch those numbers. It was a very interesting post, and it’s not hard to see why it went viral considering it’s also easy to relate to and have an opinion on. Hopefully this brings more eyes to your site on a continuing basis!

    Reply
  15. Alexis says

    July 23, 2014 at 10:02 pm

    Congrats! That is so awesome. I wish I could see numbers like that, maybe one day! =)

    Reply
  16. Michelle says

    July 23, 2014 at 11:11 pm

    Wow that is awesome! Good job!

    Reply
  17. kat says

    July 24, 2014 at 9:07 am

    I just assumed you always got that much traffic! Love your site! 🙂

    Reply
  18. thebrokeandbeautifullife says

    July 25, 2014 at 6:34 am

    That’s SO amazing. Thanks for sharing!

    Reply
  19. Kipp says

    July 25, 2014 at 6:53 am

    Congrats on the traffic! I just found your site after Cashville Skyline tweeted about your success, now I need to read that article that caused the chaos.

    Reply
    • Sam Lustgarten says

      July 31, 2014 at 11:55 am

      Kipp,

      Welcome to the site! Thanks for visiting.

      Sam

      Reply
  20. Alicia @ Financial Diffraction says

    July 25, 2014 at 7:07 am

    That is absolutely massive. I think my site would roll over and die with that much traffic 🙂 Congratulations on the major success

    Reply
    • Sam Lustgarten says

      July 31, 2014 at 11:56 am

      Alicia,

      Thanks for your kind words.

      It was a massive surge to the web servers, but they somehow made it through the event relatively unscathed. When it got over 800+ visitors, the site began to fail… But if people clicked again or reloaded, it usually came back. I was lucky that my server made it! 🙂

      Sam

      Reply
  21. thephroogaljason says

    July 25, 2014 at 6:14 pm

    Congrats! I did enjoy that post too and glad it sent you traffic! Cheers.

    Reply
  22. femmefrugality says

    July 27, 2014 at 4:07 pm

    That’s so awesome! Congrats! Reddit is still kind of mysterious to me, though I do know how powerful it can be.

    Reply
  23. Edwin @ Cash Syndrome says

    July 28, 2014 at 4:50 am

    That’s amazing. Congratulations. You should be feeling the effects of that avalanche of traffic for quite a while.

    Reply
  24. MomCents says

    July 28, 2014 at 12:35 pm

    That’s excellent! I got a couple things out of this — neither of which was an intentional point on your part (maybe it was) — but nevertheless here it is:

    1. Traffic spikes comes from skill and quality content first and foremost..but there is an element of luck
    2. Be ready for the surge….
    Since I’m just returning to blogging, my focus right now is getting content up. I’m not worried about monetization or even collecting subscribers. But that could be a mistake. What if I happen to write something that strikes a chord with a mega community. That traffic will come and go…some may return, but I haven’t set up a way to really keep them.

    Makes me think I should set something up sooner rather than later.

    Congrats on your well deserved traffic spike!

    Reply
  25. (2 DOG LOVER) says

    August 2, 2014 at 1:51 pm

    Soo happy to see such good responses. Finally I understand after visiting your website how valuable your data is. Shame on me for waiting so long! Keep up the great work!

    Reply
  26. Talal says

    September 1, 2014 at 8:49 am

    Lucky you.

    Reply
  27. thefirestartercouk says

    December 14, 2014 at 7:13 am

    Wowza! I think the biggest day for my blog so far was 599 page views… hah! 🙂
    What host and hosting package do you use by the way? I am pretty sure my hosting package could not handle that sort of traffic!

    Have you ever read “The Black Swan” by Nicolas Naseem Taleb? It definitely sounds like this was a Black Swan (unexpected event, with huge and nearly limitless consequences compared to the input, i.e. one blog post.) of the good variety for you. Congrats!

    Reply
    • Sam Lustgarten says

      December 14, 2014 at 11:32 am

      My hosting package changed shortly before this event, thankfully. I’m a user of BigScoots.com and would highly recommend you look into using them. They’re inexpensive, reliable, and have fantastic service.

      I’ve never read “The Black Swan,” but it sounds like a perfect winter break read! Thanks for the suggestion and wonderful comment.

      -Sam

      Reply

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