What to Expect When You Aren’t Expecting
The response I’ve gotten to my blog in the last couple of months has been so exciting. I really just created it so that I could learn and get better at CSS and HTML after becoming slightly bored of the flash and print worlds. I never dreamed that it would have gotten about 80,000 visits, and almost a quarter million page views from people in over 160 countries (less than 1/3 being from the US). So for this post, I just wanted to take the time to show you what to expect if your site starts gaining popularity, and talk about a couple of things I wish I would have known before starting on this journey.
The Flood
It seems that when you get on one site, others tend to follow. I was excited when my google analytics told me that I’d been added on a couple of small sites like cssbased.com, and free-css.com. These three combined for more than 100 visits per day, which seemed huge for me. I wasn’t used to getting 100 visits in a year let alone in a single day! A couple of days later though, my expectations were blown out of the water when my site was posted on webcreme.com. With almost 2,000 visits that day alone, more people had seen my website than had graduated with me from college. At the end of September, only 10 days after launching, my site had been listed on at least a dozen galleries, and had served almost 25,000 page views. Crazy!
The month of October provided no rest for the weary web server. In fact, during this month, I had over 30,000 visits and almost 100,000 page views. If only I’d had the foresight to run ads! ;) Some of the biggest spikes occurred when my site was posted onto galleries such as cssmania.com (Oct. 13 had 2,340 visits), and was featured in an article on Smashing Magazine (Oct. 24 had 3,199 visits). Finally, toward the end of the month I was listed on bestwebgallery.com which has ended up becoming the site’s sugar daddy, sending the site 13,325 visits and 46,637 page views.
Of course the waters have calmed down a bit in the last couple of months. These days, I average about 1,700 page views and 500 visits a day. How that can be the “calm” period just blows my mind.
Some of you might be wondering what browsers people are using coming from these sites. Here are the raw numbers: Firefox 65%, IE7 10.8%, IE6 4.2%, Safari 12.68%, Chrome 3.65%, Opera 2.83% (I am sure most of you, like me, are overjoyed to notice the low IE6 number).
The Frosting
Over the last 4 months I have gotten more emails and job offers than I could shake a stick at and it’s been wonderful and humbling. Don’t worry Sunlight, I’m not going anywhere! Through it all, I’ve really valued:
- Connecting with people, whether they are old friends I have lost touch with or new and interesting people from around the world. About a month ago I got the opportunity to meet with a couple from Berlin while they were in town, and had a great time sitting and talking with them over coffee.
- It’s been flattering and wonderful knowing that I’ve inspired people to strive to improve design on the web. If I’ve influenced the web, even just a little, it would be worth all the time and effort I’ve put toward it.
The Liver and Onions (and advice I wish I’d had)
Of course not everything can be puppies and long cycling rides through the hills. Here are some of the things I wish I’d considered a while ago:
- Decide upfront how much time you have to dedicate to freelance work, what kind of work you’ll accept and keep everything organized. I feel like I’ve missed interesting opportunities by not responding quickly to jobs that I wasn’t sure I’d have time for, or have offended people for jobs that weren’t as interesting because I wasn’t sure how to reply back.
- Respond to emails directly after you read them or decide not to respond to all of them. Up front I decided that I would email everyone who emailed me which has resulted in much more time spent in front of my computer (my eyes are crying). Most emails I receive don’t require a long response, and if I’d just taken the time to respond to them immediately they wouldn’t have gotten pushed off for another day, and would have left me much more time down the road. I’m sorry if I haven’t written you back. While my office is closed this week I am going to catch up, I promise :)
- Don’t get too wrapped up in what is happening with your website. It is easy to spend hours responding to emails or reading Bloglines but you don’t become a great designer by watching CSS galleries all day. You just learn how to make websites that look like everyone else’s. Inspiration is everywhere, so go out and find it ;)
27 Comments
Jen 12/31 12:37pm
Ali - you’ve inspired me! I was thrilled when I stumbled upon your site via Smashing Magazine! After reading your blog post I’ll definately make sure to keep some of these thing in mind while I start my own blogging adventure. I’m not sure where it will take me yet, but I do hope it will be a great learning experience.
Take care and I hope the New Year brings you much happiness!
-Jen
Adam Kayce 01/01 1:26pm
Great advice, Ali - thanks. So true about not spending too much time watching other people’s sites… I’m finding my design tastes are leaning down certain channels, just because I’ve been looking at a couple sites too long!
Congrats on the popularity… you’ve got a beautiful design here.
Wesley 01/02 5:41pm
I had no idea those CSS galleries could bring you that much traffic!
Jack Hoge 01/03 2:59am
Sharing your traffic stats is a great idea and should inspire anyone who’s just getting started with their own websites or blogs to do the same.
@Wesley: Yeah, CSSMania especially can bring massive traffic to get a young site started. The important thing to remember though is to have content before they profile you...if you don’t have the RSS, blog content, etc., then those initial people won’t come back...I made this mistake a few months ago :-)
Vinoth Kumar 01/06 6:24am
Its nice to share your traffic report, all that happens because of your design and the listing on the sites.. if you post trend related topic posts then you will sure to get plenty of traffics throughout the year..
just refer google.com/trends and google insight and make some posts with high keywords, then victory is yours..
All the best
vinoth kumar
http://vinothkumarm.blogspot.com
Bernd Matzner 01/14 4:38pm
You forgot to mention the traditional German Halloween Hickory Farms Vintage Sausage we gave you! ;-) It truly was a pleasure meeting you… Thanks for the fun afternoon!
Creamy CSS 01/20 2:52pm
Your works and your website are really beautiful!
I added AliFelski.com to my gallery also ;)
(hope you don’t mind)
Greg Comstock 01/28 1:16pm
Ali! I’m so happy to hear about your successes! I’ve visited your page a few times for some inspiration on updating mine. I’m making a links section now, so make that one more link out there to your site!
Antti Lehtinen 02/09 10:40am
You deserve all the traffic you’ve gotten. I often browse css galleries to see beautiful layout designs. I have to say that yours is one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. The way you bring your own unique drawing style to Web design is very refreshing!
Best Regards,
Antti
Second Picture
Ben Peck 02/09 6:51pm
You have a pretty sweet site. That’s for sure. Keep it up.
Suzanne 03/21 10:50am
Beautiful site! I love the way you’ve integrated the illustrative feel of printed work to the web world.
Elizabeth 03/28 8:52am
followed a link on twitter to http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/40-beautiful-examples-of-vintage-and-retro-in-web-design/, which listed your site, and I saw “Michigander” in the screenshot and had to come say hello.
Your banner is truly beautiful. Best of luck in all your endeavors!
Elizabeth from Lansing
Webdesign Garmisch 04/14 7:04pm
WOW!!! Hard work and great results!!!
Andy Holland 05/01 1:29pm
I,am a little jealous about your visits! :) Nice work. Go on
Apotheke 06/07 6:46am
Amazing site! Your banner is very beautiful
Eric 06/24 1:59pm
Excellent website, great inspiration and a good story. I am glad that I took the time to check out your web site.
Regards,
Eric
Rak Design 07/02 8:16am
excellent work, well-done css galleries have great potential for bringing in web traffic, and are all often underestimated.
great job!
Lauren Wolff 08/05 11:30am
Creative and hard work pays off. Well done!
Karpfenruten 10/22 2:15pm
realy well done !! angelruten
David 11/17 10:49am
Brilliant site - truly unique and inspirational. What a fantastic banner you’ve designed. Well done! More to come I hope…
Kreyj 11/19 5:41pm
I’d passion to coordinate woman with that too!
ClubPenguinCheats 12/22 3:47am
I’m so happy to hear about your successes! I’ve visited your page a few times for some inspiration on updating mine. I’m making a links section now, so make that one more link out there to your site!
PS: Why do not you join the Google AdSense ???
Nicolas Chevallier 02/12 11:34am
This blog was really instructive with a lot of tips. The design is also impressive for a personal blog.
Why have you stop blogging?
Too much visitors?
I hope to see new posts from you soon!
Jimina from Paris 02/12 9:49pm
Ali, Your site is simply ART!
What I like about your graphic designing the most is its simplicity and subtlety.
It dosent feel like a web site .
It feels like an illustrated book.
m65 03/01 9:18pm
very nice banner..did you make it?
flv converter 03/27 7:15am
what if Looks like a great product, I love the package design and the cool booklet. Thanks for the neat post Ali.
Nagobonar 04/14 1:37am
Ali - you inspire me to stay on the webmaster job. I minister jobberies.com just for hobby and suddenly given up on certain things including this website due to i find there is nothing web can do for me.
Thank ali. You cheer the webmaster too