My Plan Succeeded! So Far…

Your achievement can be no greater than your plans are sound.
-Napoleon Hill

How is my plan unfolding?

Last week I talked about creating a plan for success. I described two plans I had to increase subscribers and pageviews on MacTips. The first part of the plan was:

If I can build a Dashboard widget that enough people use, I can keep it in Apple’s Top 50 Widgets. This is a huge source of traffic, but the key is keeping it in the top 50. I’ve been building this widget all weekend–but I’ve still got lots more to do until it’s ready.

I said in my post I would report back with my results. Its been a week since I released the Widget–and so far its been a huge success.

The number of subscribers on MacTips jumped from 3,757 to 4,788. That’s a 20% increase in one week. Not bad for a little planning.

Creating a widget is easy. Creating a widget that stays in the top 50 is a little more difficult. Currently it’s settled at spot #17, but it jumps around quite a bit. Yesterday it was at #27.

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I just made the realization if the widget gets into the top 10 it gets bumped to the Apple Downloads page. I’m willing to bet the traffic difference in #17 and #10 is worth the extra effort.

So What’s Next?

Well, the second part of my plan is working on an iTunes podcast. I’m not sure this will be as successful as the Widget has been–but it’s worth a try.

If the MacTips widget drops out of the top 50 (entirely possible), I’ll make some changes users have been asking for and try again.

By keeping a widget in the top 50 I’m adding 1,000 new subscribers to MacTips every week. That’s worth the effort.

My Plan Succeeded! So Far… was posted by Brad on 3/7/2008 at 9:44 pm. It was categorized in Building Traffic. There have been 1 comment.

One Comments on “My Plan Succeeded! So Far…”

  1. [...] jump in traffic is largely caused by the MacTips Widget in the top 50, but other media like images and videos have contributed as [...]
    By Pitfalls of Scaling a Web Site - Brad Jasper’s Blog on May 11th, 2008 at 9:38 pm

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