Last night I checked my stats for my fan site. I’d not done this since the last time we chatted about the stats. So imagine how freaked out I was when I saw this (I updated it this morning)…
I couldn’t believe it.  I mean look at that - it’s only the 20th and I’ve doubled what I did in May. I’m over the freakin’ moon. I spazzed out. My hubby didn’t know what was going on… and then he was like… “it’s your ##### site isn’t it!… hahahahaha”. I told him to take a look and I mean whoa. I’ve never had such a jump in stats … ever.
Now I was over the freakin’ moon. OVER THE MOON! So I took a peek at the daily stats and this is what I found:
Yesterday I had 291 unique visitors. Look at the crazy numbers. For the past 3 days I’ve had over 200 uniques. That is totally awesome. I mean, I can’t explain how long it took for this site to reach that many visitors a day. I sat back and wondered why the big jump. Maybe it has to do with the fact the search engines are now picking up the site. My alexa rank has jumped from 8,000,000 down to around 1,400,000 in popularity. That’s got to mean something right?
Then I was thinking about what I’ve added my site to. I don’t think the 4 directories I added the site too matters that much for a bounce in the traffic… I think I’ve cracked a little secret… little known to me anyway - or maybe it never really was useful for my sites before now. I went to Wikipedia. I added my fan site to the page in Wikipedia. Since adding the site I’ve had over 120 new visitors to the site from that link. Not a lot… but way more than any other link so far coming in.
Maybe I’m a bit slow on the uptake, but Wikipedia might just be a great source for incoming visitors to your site. Wouldn’t hurt to add your site - if it’s relevant to the page your listing on and has some good content to provide to the visitors.
So that’s the crazy happy day I’ve had 
Popularity: 7% [?]
pagepeel by webpicasso.de
June 20th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Congrats on the nice stats
It’s always great to finally stop thinking about a site, checking the stats daily, to suddenly check them and see a major rise.
Are most of the visitors coming from search engines? If so which one(s)?
As for adding links to Wikipedia. Never tried it myself but from what I’ve read you need to do it subtley and slowly.
June 20th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Nice one Empress!
I have a couple of my sites listed in wikipedia, one of them averages about 30 visitors a day from that source alone.
The key with wikipedia links is the over-officiousness of some of the moderators. But if your content is good, and you manage to stay there, it can be a great source of traffic.
A point worth remembering though, is that wikipedia uses nofollow on all outgoing links (but, strangely, not for their intra-site links - PR hoarding, anyone?), so you won’t get any PR juice from the links, but the fact that wikipedia dominates the google rankings for just about any keyword you can imagine, it’s well worth being listed there.
BTW empress, my site’s had about a dozen visitors from your link to it, thanks!
June 21st, 2007 at 12:44 am
Congrats
So visitors have been increasing, but what about adsense income?
June 21st, 2007 at 9:50 am
Hey Adam - interestingly enough, yes it’s gone up. I changed the colours for the ad - rather than blending it in I made it stand out (the colours aren’t vibrant… but the ad stands out) and I’ve seen an increase in revenue.
By far my best performing site. Also the one site that I’ve actually paid SEO attention too. Seems to be working *knock on wood*
Stu - I’m glad you’re getting the link love from my site. You’ve sent a couple dozen my way as well
cheers! So far Wikipedia hasn’t slapped me for adding the link… and I’m hoping they don’t remove it. We’ll see.
Sarah - I’ve had most of my traffic come in from Google. Actually most of my traffic has been seen from them. I’m hoping the site gets more love from MSN and Yahoo - because I’m not confident that the Google love will last much longer. With Wikipedia… I’ve tried my best at subtle… and slow - only added the fan site so far. So I’m hoping I don’t get penalized for it.
June 21st, 2007 at 9:23 pm
Stumble (stumbleupon.com) your site and you’ll see an influx of traffic. The traffic may or may not convert. You’ll have to test it. If you’re not familiar with StumbleUpon, it’s a social bookmarking type of site.
June 22nd, 2007 at 9:01 am
Hock - that’s a great idea! I’m going to test that out
Thanks!
June 23rd, 2007 at 12:04 am
Watch out for idiot moderators on wikipedia. See http://www.osworld.biz/816/wikipedia-a-source-of-traffic/ for more