I began publishing my blog in 2007. For the first couple years, I wrote under the pseudonym Uncle Saul. I was hesitant to use my own name, as I did not want my blog to be perceived as a self-promotional vanity project. By early 2010, I found my stylistic voice and identified my audience of emerging entrepreneurs and thus dropped my penname. In addition, my role as Partner at Rincon Venture Partners provided me with a business reason to invest additional time and effort into my humble blog.
Last January, I decided to increase the quality and frequency of my blog entries, with the hope that I would generate a corresponding increase in readership. I was not disappointed.
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With the exception of the week of Thanksgiving, I published two entries every week during 2011. Correspondingly, my traffic increased nearly 3 times over the prior year, page views increased approximately 2.5 times and my email newsletter subscribers more than doubled.
Multimedia And Syndication
Another way I attempted to increase the value readers can derive from my blog was to incorporate video interviews. I published 21-Skype interviews during 2011. Of these discussions, my conversations with Guy Kawasaki and Naval Ravikant entered the top ten list shown below.
In addition, I was honored to speak with such notable entrepreneurs as: Kevin O’Connor (Founder DoubleClick and FindTheBest), Brad Feld (Founder TechStars, Partner The Foundry Group), Marten Mickos (Former CEO of MySQL and CEO of Eucalyptus Systems) and Len Short (CMO, (Product) RED, AOL and Charles Schwab). You can subscribe to my YouTube channel HERE by clicking the subscribe button above the video.
After a very kind introduction from Mark Suster, both Technorati and BusinessInsider agreed to syndicate my content. Although it is difficult to directly track the impact of these sites, the expanded exposure from these sites has certainly augmented my overall traffic.
Top Ten infoChachkie Entries Of 2011
The following entries generated the most page views during 2011. Of these entries, four of them are also in my “all time” Top Ten. Surprisingly, not all of these entries were published in 2011. For instance, What Are My Options Worth? was published in 2009 and Time Wounds All Heels was written in 2008. Google likes these entries, as evidenced by the significant organic traffic it consistently drives to them. The traffic generated by the remaining entries was sparked by a particular exogenous factor, as described below.
| 2011 Rank | All Time Rank | Article Title |
| 1 | 1 | Pawn Star Negotiating Appeared on Reddit’s front page |
| 2 | 3 | Startup Tips From Jeff Bezos Generated > 500 Tweets, from Technorati, BusinessInsider and my site |
| 3 | 2 | What Are My Options Worth? Organic traffic |
| 4 | 11 | Ideas Are Worthless Referenced in a viral Quora post |
| 5 | 5 | Time Wounds All Heels Organic traffic |
| 6 | 13 | Worst T-shirt Designs Ever Digg, StumbleUpon and Quora all responded to this entry |
| 7 | 17 | Guy Kawasaki Interview Guy’s great content and notoriety drove lots of views |
| 8 | 19 | 10 Rookie Mistakes You Won’t Make Hacker News and LinkedIn gave it some love |
| 9 | 20 | Naval Ravikant Interview Naval graciously promoted this entry via Twitter |
| 10 | 24 | Do They Believe? StumbleUpon stumbled upon this entry |
2012 And Beyond
I have lots of fun plans for my blog in the coming year. For instance, I was recently asked by Inc.com to write a weekly column. I will also increase the amount of video content, including snippets from talks given by my UC Santa Barbara classroom guest speakers.
I am very thankful for your readership and support. The kind words I receive in comments, Tweets and emails are highly motivational and most appreciated.
If you have not already signed up to receive my email newsletter, you can do so HERE. If you feel my content is worthwhile, a great free holiday gift is a recommendation of my site to a friend or colleague. If you think my content sucks, recommend it to an enemy or competitor.
I will begin publishing new entries the first week in January. Until then, have a safe and fun holiday with those you love the most.
All the best in 2012 and beyond…
John
