Our startup was featured on Mashable last November. We didn't know anyone there, or have any connections that did. We just fell under the criteria, applied, and landed on the front page a week later.
In the month following the post, we only received ~800 uniques directly from Mashable (it was posted on a late Friday afternoon). But, if you lump in Twitter and direct visits, it was probably closer to 4-5k. Plus the bounce rate on those visits was very low, and the post definitely impacted our Google search result positively.
It only drive 800 uniques? That is impressively low.
I used to buy a weekly link on a blog with 34 times less traffic than mashable. It was generally is a pack of maybe 10-20 other links. That sent me ~10,000-20,000 per week.
Other than SEO benefit, that's very disappointing.
I think time of day made a huge difference. I found out about the post at around 7 PM on a Friday, while I was at a bar with friends. We weren't checking our feed readers; someone texted me the news.
All the same - you're right, the traffic was low. A lot of people had thought "we'd made it" from being "Mashed", but clearly, that was anything but the truth. Still, I'll take it.
Speak for yourself. Plenty of bootstrapped startups grow very slowly over 3+ years and earn around $100k per month which would technically put them above $1m/year.
9 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 25.8 ms ] threadI used to buy a weekly link on a blog with 34 times less traffic than mashable. It was generally is a pack of maybe 10-20 other links. That sent me ~10,000-20,000 per week.
Other than SEO benefit, that's very disappointing.
All the same - you're right, the traffic was low. A lot of people had thought "we'd made it" from being "Mashed", but clearly, that was anything but the truth. Still, I'll take it.
If you're curious, the post was here: http://mashable.com/2009/11/27/guestlist/