Before I started writing at Attention Land, I used to write at a place called Blog by Bake. I started the blog as a way to practice my writing and post my thoughts on things I found interesting (much like Attention Land).
I had a lot of fun on the site, even though very few people ever knew it existed (much like Attention Land).
These days, I do not pay much attention to Blog by Bake, but recently I got a notification that said the web traffic was “booming” on the site. Curious, I looked at what could be causing the “booming.”
When I was looking at the site’s statistics, I noticed something odd. The blog had gotten significantly more popular since I had stopped posting. In 2013, I posted 143 times and the site had 1276 visitors. In 2014, I posted 83 times and the site’s readership increased to 7815 visitors. In 2015, I have posted 0 times and site is on pace to surpass 9000 visitors.
What is going on? Am I a better writer when I am not even writing? Is going away the best thing I can do for my own popularity? How come no one was reading when I was creating content on a daily basis, but now people are finding the site when I haven’t even touched it in over a year?
After a little investigating, I discovered that a few of my posts have worked their way up the Google search rankings. For example, if you Google the phrase “Lion King lesson”, you will find my post of 10 Lessons To Learn From The Lion King. Similar stories for my posts about Jay Bilas’ book Toughness & a Kid President video.
I wrote each of those posts because I felt readers would enjoy them. At the time, however, no one knew of the site, thus, there were very few readers to enjoy them.
I am not sure how Google search ranking work (probably a bad thing to admit since I am in the book selling business), but little by little my posts worked their way to a place where they became visible to others.
Their growth in popularity had nothing to do with my lack of writing on the site and more to do with time.
Just another example that some things just take time. We want to click “post” and have our story blow up and become popular. But it doesn’t always work that way.
More often than not, we click “post” and nothing happens. But with a little patience and a little luck, it is just a matter of time before — boom goes the dynamite!
