Quick growth is often seen as an indicator of success on the web. But in my experience, hardly anything that grows fast does so without strain and stretch marks. The quick growth often forces your hand to implement before you can strategize. Then you waste time trying to fix mistakes brought on by speed, hopefully before the hoopla surrounding your launch dies down and everyone leaves for greener pixels.
I’m quoting you in my next “Online Strategy” meeting at work. Hope you don’t mind.
What do you mean “Somethng I’m not” ? You have a growing readership that’s about to break 800. Eight hundred subscribers to your feed? Holy moly.. I don’t know what you may have thought about pretending to be but that seems rather hugely awesomely high to me!
Michael, I get the occasional email/conversation that involves people thinking I have way more traffic than I do. I’m not sure where the misconception comes from, but I thought this was an appropriate place for full disclosure. I’m completely and totally happy and overwhelmed that this many people read what I write — it’s clearly insane and I feel mostly along for the ride.
Why thank-you.
I think you’re a mighty fine person as well, Josh.
About The Author
I'm a graphic designer and sometimes writer living in Anderson, South Carolina. I serve as the Design Director for NewSpring Church. I love Jesus, my wife, Levi's Jeans, good Tex-Mex, and 8oz glass bottle Coca-Cola Classic. On good days I love them roughly in that order. Email me.
The Slow (Feed)Burn and How Patience Wins on the Web
Sun 08/24/08
Quick growth is often seen as an indicator of success on the web. But in my experience, hardly anything that grows fast does so without strain and stretch marks. The quick growth often forces your hand to implement before you can strategize. Then you waste time trying to fix mistakes brought on by speed, hopefully before the hoopla surrounding your launch dies down and everyone leaves for greener pixels. I wonder why slow growth isn’t popular on the web? Too boring for us? Not immediately measurable?
Here’s my subscriber stats from when I started using Feedburner in November ’07—current:
No huge swells of change, no massive influxes of traffic. Not very exciting, is it? Just a slow, (surprisingly) steady uphill climb which enables me to (hopefully) build long-term relationships with fine people like you. Nothing flashy. Nothing newsworthy. Not even a lot of traffic* in the grand scheme of things. Then again, sustainable relationships take time, effort and hard work, and those things aren’t nearly as sexy as big stats.
But they’re way more valuable.
*It would have been easy to prove the point without the actual stats numbers, but why bother trying to be something I’m not? Transparency is valuable, too.