One thing that bugs me is that when people build cool apps or launch web based services their marketing plan doesn’t really extend past trying everything in their powers to get on Techcrunch. It is the world’s biggest tech blog with nearly 4 million RSS subscribers alone but we wanted to take a look and see how that translated in pure traffic terms after we got featured on the there on Wednesday. Just remember that this is just from the 24 hours the article was featured on the site and there is still plenty of traffic coming even today…
Overall
As you can see the traffic numbers are fairly small. I say they are small yet the article was popular by Techcrunch standards with over 400 Re tweets yet as you can see the referral traffic is not massive. It’s clear that the majority of people read the site through RSS and very few click through to the actual source of the story. I must say this is how I read Techcrunch too, I rarely look at sites they cover instead scanning the site for latest news.
Geographic Spread
Referring Sites
The site was getting traffic from lots of different places that day and you can see from the following chart just how important Twitter is in the overall picture and where Techcrunch slots in the bigger picture…
RSS Readers
This is probably the most important measurement of the day as people signing up to RSS are people who liked what they saw and want to hang around for the future. As you can see from the graph below we added a significant amount of RSS readers on day itself, about 70 in total
Facebook Interaction
Just like RSS Facebook is another great call to action and we moved the Facebook box on the right hand of our site up so as we could capture fans (about 30 on the day) and increase interactions with our page.
Summary
You should try and get covered on Techcrunch. It is very good for traffic but as you can see the numbers are not as big as some might think. The key is catching some of the traffic through RSS or Facebook so as they keep coming back to your site in the future. Companies should try and get coverage in Techcrunch and similar sites as part of their marketing plan and not as their entire marketing plan, you will quickly be forgotten.
Read other posts related to this topic:
- Do Retweets Actually Send You Any Traffic? I was looking through our stats this evening here on the blog and one...
- How Much Traffic Can Stumbleupon Send You? If you have a website or blog online and one of your main goals...
- Is Your Website Set Up To Benefit From Traffic Spikes? Chances are at some stage your website or blog is going to get covered...
- Twitter Revenge On Techcrunch For Leaked Documents So You would think as Twitter as a pretty friendly media friendly company right?...
This was our experience as well.
It’s not like the old days when they had a few quality posts in a day. People were able to read them all and you were on the home page for 1-2 days at least. Now they have so many posts that you might be off the home page after an hour or two and you cannot read them all. I have heard from a few others that while the numbers are smaller it did bring them some really good quality leads and contacts.
I still read and love the site though.
Yeah I read it a few times every day as well Alan, I find it kind of addictive even if I don’t actually go in there and visits the sites themselves that much. I reckon they are building up for a sale by aggresively growing the numbers, authors, posts etc, it’s a numbers game for them
Re: Alan and Niall. “”It is a numbers game, quality.
Yes it is, I acknowledge that. But can’t they design their page for that ’strategy’? It isn’t Arrington’s blog anymore, it is a full fledged Tech News (Network). And the design and usability improvements over the time have only been minor. And I don’t perceive it as pleasant anymore to read on TechCrunch. Period.
Oh and congrats on the mention
I think this view of TC is very valid today, and not so valid to the past, and Alan, you hit the nail on the head for the reason why… The number of news stories. As a consumer of news, I couldn’t be happier. I read it in the morning, check my RSS at lunch and have to catch up on 5-8 stories, and then when I’m home from work it seems like there are 10 more. Couldn’t be better. Unfortunately as an entrepreneur I have realized that means one thing… less screen time on a blog that has changes the face of technology news. Classic double edged sword.
Niall,
Did you have to jump through any hoops to get featured? Or did they just find you and like the idea?
Sometimes it is just impossible to get to Techcrunch, but time will tell…:)
Even I found your website on Techcrunch. You have a collection of interesting articles. Looking forward to more of your updates
I didn’t expect at something like this with their RSS readers and Alexa rank to be honest.
wow! this article is really impressive! The topic is one of the most interesting and had became a sort of “leyend”, thanks a lot for bring clarity to our work!
TechCrunch is great, and I think we should keep attention to it. I really like it.
The value of TC is not purely in the numbers but in the quality of those numbers. TC commands a good mindshare of the early-adopters. Hence, the number of clicks may be small – but may actually turn out to be of very high quality. Now, how do you judge that??? Clicks converting into sign-ups, maybe!
Very interesting read, thanks. It’s good to put it into perspective, one blog isn’t going to make or break your traffic, but it’s not a bad thing to be featured at all.
Personally I’d grab any decent quote and put it on the front page, it just adds a little bit of credibility.
Thanks for the analysis.
PS – I found this post through AllTop !
Great Article, Niall. So direct traffic is bad. But how about indirect traffic? Doesn’t every tech journalist in the world take inspiration from techcrunch? Did you get significant exposure on other websites / blogs / magazines / newspapers / radio / tv following your techcrunch article?
[...] media coverage including appearing on the Dragons’ Den UK for Lookandtaste, getting covered in Techcrunch here, making the homepage of Digg, getting stumbled plenty of times and appearing in the LA Times and [...]