Sometimes, driving traffic simply demands ingenuity, creativity, and hustle. Be more creative than your competitors, work harder than them, and test faster than them. Go where your competitors dare not because they are too complacent, too conventional, too risk-averse. There are literally thousands of diverse traffic sources out there…go explore them!

Not trying to rag on the author, but the problem here, is that this is just a _platitude_. It can mean anything. Therefore it really means nothing. Until and unless specific examples are given, it's just saying that in order to be better you need to be better.

All-in-all, though, it was a great article. My takeaway was that sticky sites beat plain content sites, but only if you bust your ass getting people participating, and there are no hard and fast rules for that. Do whatever it takes. That's not necessarily a happy piece of information to have, but it's direct and useful.

But that's sort of what I'm getting at, you don't need to think of every idea on your own. Reach out to people tell them what you're doing and they'll come back with ideas you may not have thought of. A fresh set of eyes is usually helpful.

I always give my ideas out for free so if you're looking for traffic building, traffic retention, or SEO ideas give me a shout. Email in profile.

HN is a goldmine of driven, successful, and welcoming people. Reach out and connect.

"Every 2 days or so, I’d go to my school’s quad and chalk every vertical surface I could find. Then I’d do the same thing in town. I even went to one of the dorm’s and used dry-erase marker on the mirrors and windows on each floor and in each bathroom. "

But isn't it considered de rigeur to end a case study with a trite, meaningless yet upbeat platitude? You know, "Here's how this guy is successful, now go forth and be successful like him, because YOU CAN DO IT!"

In any case, I welcome any and all suggestions for an alternate ending.

The problem, like you say, is that you have to wrap it up at the end. This works as good as anything.

But for a novice, it can look as if the "wrapping up" part is where the real summary goes, and that's not true at all. In fact, by summarizing, you miss out on all the good stuff.

So perhaps you're stuck.

I'd like to see somebody talk to a dozen of these guys and ask them questions along the lines of "so, when you realized that you were going to have to be a sock puppet for the rest of your natural life, when and how did you finally figure out to do X?" The dry-erase marking, for example. Great idea. But why that and not door-hanging, or radio ads, or wearing a sandwich board on main street? Why did they choose those particular ad-hoc things that finally made a breakthrough?

I don't believe it's all random. Somebody had some hunches in there somewhere. There are a million random things you can do to try to drive traffic. Somehow some folks pick better things than others.

I chose the white board markers because I wanted something that people would remember. Students especially are subjected to so much spam every day in their classes, dorms, lunchrooms, everywhere. The whiteboard idea was chosen because of its efficiency: maybe $5 for the markers plus a few hours of work, in exchange for people remembering what they've read? Worth it.

Someone even got pissed off. Any press is good press, when we're talking about a site like this. A student was really pissed (rightfully so, most likely) that we spammed his dorm. I'd probably be pissed too. But he remembered it, and everybody he told instantly went to the website to see what all the fuss was about.

I realize I'm just answering this one instance of the more general problem: we need resources for why people choose these things, not merely what they chose to do.

I think this is a really hard problem. Hunches are really difficult to pinpoint.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ev2zb/i_run_thathighco...

ps: I guess quite a few of us have such "Oh that would be a fun site" ideas... I just don't know what traffic will make it worth the effort.

My rent is $1050 / month, I live with two friends. Adsense pays me per click, but when I charge advertisers, I charge them CPM.

August - 150k uniques

Sept. - 100k uniques

Nov. - 140k uniques

organic = ~20%

referral = ~30%

direct = ~50%

I don't get direct advertisers often, but when I do, I charge them anywhere from $2 - $5 CPM (obviously it depends on the company)

Edit: I forgot to mention, the AMA title was "I run ThatHigh and it pays my rent in SF" so I guess it's safe to say that he makes at least $1050/mo from the site.

My niche is probably a bit easier than some others, though.

I also consider it easy in comparison to the fact that it took me 2 1/2 years to get to 600,000 a month when I first started. I could probably do 600,000 organically in half the time now.

If you are just throwing up a generic banner ad network, it's probably close to $.10-.25 CPM. Then multiply by how many ad units displayed per page (networks usually don't allow any more than 2-3).

So: 100,000 * .00025 = $25; x3 = $75

Very rough estimates. With a site with such a particular niche, he can probably get a higher CPM. I also count 7 ads on the home page.

Honestly, I don't know that many people who have built a community site of similar traffic level that quickly, especially without doing any SEO.

If you can put me in touch with others who have accomplished something like this, I would love to write about them too.

Maybe I missed it, but did you mention the site's age anywhere in the article?