On July 26, 2010 I launched www.6Laughs.com, a humor website that offers viewers six funny updates a day. During the past three months, I have had over 45,000 views while spending only $13. Since then I have had to overcome two major obstacles. Originally I created 6Laughs as a fun hobby to work on outside of school. That was until I realized the potential for growth.
In my excitement of launching 6Laughs, I quickly stumbled my website URL, www.6laughs.blogspot.com. This was before I had purchased my custom domain. However my stumble took off like wildfire and I received 11,000 views from Stumbleupon in the first week.
This is when I made my first mistake.
I registered the domain name 6Laughs.com for $10 and applied it to my blogspot. Needless to say, it made my 6laughs.blogspot.com link forward to 6laughs.com, thus the original stumble was dropped because the link was no longer available. The blogspot stumble could have grown to 50k+ views and resulted in more traffic if I had been patient and waited to purchase a custom domain. I also could’ve waited to stumble my website, because now my site is more developed then when I originally stumbled it.
Before I released 6Laughs, I launched another website as an experiment in early June. I had to pay $1 per month for the first three months for hosting, which I intended to cancel after the three months to avoid paying $10 per month. By paying for hosting, I received promotional offers for Google Adwords and Facebook Ads. Cleverly, I decided to use these promotional codes for 6Laughs instead.
This led me to my second mistake.
I ran a Facebook ad that linked back to my website, however I had not yet created a Facebook page. Thus I lost precious traffic through people who liked the ad. The Google Adwords coupon proved to be useful, sending surges of traffic on the days I had the campaign running. The best part was the $50 Adwords coupon and the $50 Facebook Ads coupon cost me only $3.
At this point 6Laughs was generating about 500 views a day. I created a Facebook fan page and a Twitter designated for 6Laughs. These have slowly picked up visitors and readers by automatically updating when I make a new post on the website. Also, thanks to Twitter trends, I have had a constant trickle of new traffic to my website.
I noticed a hot trend that fit my audience and posted a related funny picture in a post with the same title, and since then my highest search keyword has been this trend. Along with these useful additions, the biggest addition to the website was the blog widget “LinkWithin”. It has created over 4,000 additional views by simply being underneath all posts.
My last method for gaining traffic is by using Google Images.
Many websites and blogs either keep the image name the same as when they got the image, or label it with random numbers and letters. I took it upon myself to individually name each image I post with a descriptive name. A viral image that spread across the Internet was named “I’m Gonna Crumb“, I named the image “Gonna+Crumb.jpg”. This picture now comes up first in Google Images for this search and all variations of it. It ranks over sites that receive 100,000 views a day because they named the image “j1ds_2k4.jpg” or some other random variation of letters and numbers.
Since I launched www.6Laughs.com I have learned that all web entrepreneurs should have smaller, specific goals with one big picture in mind. You can witness your improvement if you break things down into achievable goals. This will be more effective and much more profitable. My current goals are to gain more back links as well as to improve the amount my site is shared by my readers. My last goal is to generate more Facebook fans and Twitter followers.
What are your goals? Leave me a comment below!
Thanks for the advice. Congrats on the success.
My biggest goal is to add some more good information and rich content to my website. I’ve also been experimenting with Google Images like you – a bit of research has shown me that many of the products I sell get the most hits are from this.
Great article by the way!
Thank You.
congrats. but why 6laughs? why not 7?
Good question, I thought ’6′ was a good goal for the number of videos and pictures each day. That has not changed now, post numbers are basically based on how much content I can feasibly post on a given day.
congrats. but why 6laughs? why not 7?
great article!
kg
great article!
kg
great article!
kg
great article!
kg
Well, that will happen since you haven’t planned 6laughs from the start and it was all for fun. But what is a few dollars to invest even if it for an experiment but may have the potential of being big in the future. It really does matter to have a domain and a paid hosting. Nevertheless, congratulations as your site may well be in an upward trend again. Keep it up.
Well, that will happen since you haven’t planned 6laughs from the start and it was all for fun. But what is a few dollars to invest even if it for an experiment but may have the potential of being big in the future. It really does matter to have a domain and a paid hosting. Nevertheless, congratulations as your site may well be in an upward trend again. Keep it up.
Thank you for the comment! Only about 3 months in, plenty of time to still find out.
Wow, Nick. Thats an amazing post! I like the tip about naming images. Whoa, seems like you almost hit the jackpot with that initial stumble. Also, I could be reading too much between the lines but it sounds like even though the domain fwded you were still able to retain some of that stumble upon traffic. B/c I’m sure 100.00 in ads couldn’t have gotten you that much traffic, no? So I am curious on how were you able to retain your traffic after the domain forward?
I had somewhat of a similar problem about 6 months ago and am only now beginning to get close to prior levels of traffic.
Thanks
Wow, Nick. Thats an amazing post! I like the tip about naming images. Whoa, seems like you almost hit the jackpot with that initial stumble. Also, I could be reading too much between the lines but it sounds like even though the domain fwded you were still able to retain some of that stumble upon traffic. B/c I’m sure 100.00 in ads couldn’t have gotten you that much traffic, no? So I am curious on how were you able to retain your traffic after the domain forward?
I had somewhat of a similar problem about 6 months ago and am only now beginning to get close to prior levels of traffic.
Thanks
Wow, Nick. Thats an amazing post! I like the tip about naming images. Whoa, seems like you almost hit the jackpot with that initial stumble. Also, I could be reading too much between the lines but it sounds like even though the domain fwded you were still able to retain some of that stumble upon traffic. B/c I’m sure 100.00 in ads couldn’t have gotten you that much traffic, no? So I am curious on how were you able to retain your traffic after the domain forward?
I had somewhat of a similar problem about 6 months ago and am only now beginning to get close to prior levels of traffic.
Thanks
I have gained traffic gradually through search engines now, and just commented and sharing posts steadily elsewhere. Twitter and Facebook have also helped. The $100.00 in ads brought me around 80 visitors and 200 pageviews. However, if I can keep only 25%, a small number, that is 20 more constant viewers each day. And it all adds up!
I actually do not get ANY traffic from that initial stumble because if you go to it, it says that the link is dead, so users no longer will stumble across it. It definitely is unfortunate, however I have received a tiny bit of traffic from other stumbles the website has, but only in the hundreds of stumble views.
I see, Nick. So in essence, it has been a steady crescendo rather than a continuous avalanche…Thanks for explaining, that makes a lot of sense.
I see, Nick. So in essence, it has been a steady crescendo rather than a continuous avalanche…Thanks for explaining, that makes a lot of sense.
I keep reading that image names play no part in image ranking it’s only the alt tags and surrounding text that do – can you clarify on that?
Most of my web sites are image based and get image from google images… anything I can do to improve their ranking would help me immensely!
You are correct that image rankings are FIRST based on alt tags and surrounding text, but then image name!
And since these viral images often have the same alt tags and surrounding text, it will come down to the image name, and this is where I have gained strong traffic. I explain above how I name, versus how others name. Hope this helps!
A statistics showed couple of years ago that 90% of human reacts to the image while 10% hangs on text. :)
A statistics showed couple of years ago that 90% of human reacts to the image while 10% hangs on text. :)
and that’s why tumblr’s are so effective.
and that’s why tumblr’s are so effective.
and that’s why tumblr’s are so effective.
obstacles are essential , i think , at the beginning (of course ) so we can learn , any way , i find it great that you share experience , i always want to read only about people’s stories caus that make everyone learns from your mistakes and try to reduce risks !!! i appreciate it , very helpful post ! ;)
Thanks for taking the time to read and comment!
obstacles are essential , i think , at the beginning (of course ) so we can learn , any way , i find it great that you share experience , i always want to read only about people’s stories caus that make everyone learns from your mistakes and try to reduce risks !!! i appreciate it , very helpful post ! ;)
Hi, nice article, but I think a point on the traffic coming from images must be raised:
- unless the image is super relevant to the text, bounce rate will be HUGE
Traffic coming from images is rarely targeted.
Excellent article…
Thanks!
Thanks!
Love to read great posts that I have been missing all the time. Thanks Nick!
Thanks for reading!
wow.. looks like the humor websites are still very popular and drive traffic like crazy!
If you do it right :)
If you do it right :)
Great post and definately some important points to consider. I have just launched an seo jobs board and trying to gain traffic, i usually do name my images correctly but i will be taking care to do this in the future. Is stumbleupon something you would suggest adding to?
Depends on the content. For my website niche, it fits stumbleupon users ideally. It can’t hurt to try though.
I agree with previous comments although any traffic is better than no traffic if the images are not directly related to the text the bounce rate will be super high.
If the images are directly related to your content than I would say otherwise. Anyhoo congratulations and good experiment.