#1. Sorry for not blogging these past few days. My daily schedule has gone crazy.
#2. This is true for the next few weeks too, between 20 December and about 5 January 2007, because I’ll be in UK. I’ll bring my notebook on, but blogging will still be fairly slow. If anyone wants to meet with me there just give me an e-mail.
#3. Techcrunch is on the menu today.
We’re doing TechCrunch’s Profile, not the other way around
So, what’s this ubberly talked about blog (because it IS a blog) ? It’s a technology blog, it involves the genious of Michael Arrington (which I’ve had the pleasure of knowing only through a video conference – and I read almost a 16 months timeline of posts in this evening/morning – YES, about half his blog’s content – I found invaluable information and interesting resources), was founded in June 2005 and has ~ 140k RSS readers (Feedburner stats).
It’s pretty interesting as how Michael saw the TechCrunch phenomenon at it’s infant stages:
Over the weekend we launched TechCrunch, a new blog that is dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing every newly launched web 2.0 business and service. See the “about†post here.
The link “here” is a broken (the post doesn’t exist anymore), probably because after some time, it didn’t reflected TechCrunch’s goals and ideals anymore, or it was written in an early stage, in an unprofessional way. Or perhaps the current about us page replaced that post. Or who the heck knows ?
He still maintains that same goal:
TechCrunch is a weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies. In addition to new companies, we will profile existing companies that are making an impact (commercial and/or cultural) on the new web space.
What does that tell you ? He had the right ideea from the start, he believed in it, he didn’t shifted to new type of content because the initial one didn’t caught attention or traffic. He just maintained his developed project, and he became a hit. That’s determination, excellent project management and planification.
I am reading him, he is not reading me.
Techcrunch’s trend
Let’s take a few steps backwards:
1. June 20th 2005:
TechCrunch has been up for one week and we now have 63 subscribers to our Feedburner feed.
2. July 11th 2005:
TechCrunch turned one month old today. We are tracking about 400 RSS subscribers and everything’s going great. It’s a ton of fun (and an honor) to write about new companies, and in the process get to know some very interesting people.
So one month after it was launched, Michael already raised 400 RSS subscribers. Imagine that. I mean, after a year, I have about 500 RSS subscribers on my blog. And my blog is popular enough (for my industry). I agree, not the same targets and audiences are involved here, but still.
3. Present:
TechCrunch has been selected as part of the News.com Blog 100, a feature in which News.com editors and reporters are helping find the best news and views on the Web for the convenience of our readers.
Moreover, TechCrunch now has more then 140.000 RSS subscribers. Read more about their 100.000 RSS subscribers mark.
Techcrunch’s traffic
If up until now you could only guess the traffic of TechCrunch (because they don’t state the numbers as public), there are the exact TechCrunch figures and numbers for 2007:
As you can see above, most of TechCrunch’s visitors are geeks too (notice the Firefox versus IE ratios).
If your company ends up beeing reviewed by TechCrunch (Guy has a great interview with Michael Arrington on how to get in TechCrunch), you can get your company the visibility it needs in it’s infant stages. Up to 100.000 visitors will read about your company.
Nice presentation of the stats
If you use the singular “internet marketing blog” rather than the plural “internet marketing blogs” you are on the 3rd page of results, which is still pretty good.
In internet marketing unfortunately the number one statistic is reach.
The big guys in internet marketing have more reach than Techcrunch with their email lists.
Guy’s interview reveals the advertising revenue Techcrunch makes. Some of the best internet marketers can generate that in 24 hours (though obviously it takes them time to develop a product/service before hand)
That being said, I am sure Techcrunch has helped make more people millionaires than many internet marketers with their training products.
Vice versa if more startups used various internet marketing techniques, they would also be more successful.
Actually, I never optimized for any of those words. In fact, for this blog, I never added optimized anchors, or backlinks, or created content to rank for a certain word or phrase. All those ranks I have are purely natural.
Andy, can you generate $60.000/month just with 6 damn small banners ? :)
I was just trying to represent the “big picture” of internet marketing.
You stated
I was putting a slightly different perspective on it.
Currently most internet marketers don’t use blogging extensively. For a product launch they will start a blog and send traffic to a blog using email.
Subscribers to the blog are a very low priority.
Subscribers to email is a high priority
It doesn’t take many high end marketers sending traffic to a site which just happens to be a blog to send it a huge amount of traffic. I think the Stomper launch the blog hit maybe 270 on Alexa.
Or you can look at Mike Filsaime’s Death of Internet Marketing launch.
That is a massive traffic spike
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=thedeathofinternetmarketing.com
For internet marketers, a blog is a focal point to gain feedback but also reinforce the sales message .
No – whilst I am involved in internet marketing, CPM or other forms of banner adverts isn’t my business model, and for that matter nor is email marketing.
There is also a lot more work to do on RSS subscription services before they are truly marketing friendly
What staggers me in the stats is that Opera is hardly used by anyone. In my mind it’s far superior to Firefox but with a less cool name.
Webmasters get paid for promoting Firefox with Google Toolbar
Sorry to tell you, but I wouldn’t trade my Firefox for anything else.
Firefox is not just a browser. It’s a religion for most of us.
Fortunately Netscape wasn’t a religion otherwise they’d be a lot of people questioning their faith
#2 – have a nice trip and happy hollidays!
Thanks Mike. Still in Austria ?
no, no, no!!! I managed to escape :D