LessAccounting.com's referrer traffic 2011 breakdown
written by Allan on January 23, 2012
I’ve often wondered where other apps get their traffic...
In 2011 we spent $0 on advertising for our LessAccounting.com application. Our traffic and revenue isn’t in the millions yet, but we’re growing at a steady rate. The following is a breakdown of the referral traffic we’ve received, where it came from and how/why we got linked on those sites.
I guess the lesson is that every little bit of traffic helps. Every mention you receive about one of your blog post helps. There hasn’t been any one link that has skyrocketed our traffic and revenue. It’s always been a slow and steady curve upwards.
I look for easy wins; places to ghost write or people to connect with who need our services and/or could provide promotion with our potential audience.
FreelanceSwitch.com = 10,000+ Clicks
I’ve written 4 articles for FreelanceSwitch, and we’ve also been written about in 4 articles. The articles I’ve written can be found here and the articles that mention us (having to do with invoicing and accounting apps) can be found here. An easy win would be adding your app to their directory.
LessEverything.com, Our Project Page and Our Blog = 8,000+ Clicks
Blogging on LessEverything.com has been a great source of traffic for all our apps. Our blog posts get linked in other blogs, mentioned on twitter and have helped build our creditability in the start-up community.
Basecamphq.com and HighriseHQ.com = 7,000+ Clicks
My advice, integrate with Basecamp and Highrise. Being listed in their Extras page will result in traffic. LessAccounting’s integration is simply that we import contacts from Basecamp and Highrise. Those few hours of work have resulted in a recent amount of qualified traffic. Being mentioned on the 37signals’ product blog only resulted in 200 clicks...
CSSMania.com = 2,500 Clicks
Always submit new designs to this directory. I submitted two design revision in 2011 to CSSMania. Submitting your new design only takes 2 minutes and will result in thousands of clicks. This is an easy win for traffic.
Workingwithrails.com = 186 Clicks
186 clicks is nothing, right? Right, but Steve and I adding links into our workingwithrails.com profiles wasn’t too hard either.
Grasshopper.com = 1,000+ clicks
We’re listed in several places on Grasshopper’s website. They’ve blogged about us, they’ve listed us as “companies we love”, and we’re also on the partners page.
WeAllHateQuickBooks.com = 2,000+ Clicks
In 2006 I was searching for “Quickbooks” and found most people talking were saying nasty things about it. We then proceeded to make a site that used the Twitter API (no RSS feeds at the time) and brought in any mention of Quickbooks. So we launched WeAllHateQuickbooks.com and we've received a decent amount of press for this website.
Facebook.com = 3400+ Clicks
I don’t have any data on where this traffic came from. We don’t have many LessAccounting fans on our facebook page, and we don’t run ads.
OpenForum.com = 300+ Clicks
This isn’t many clicks, but just joining OpenForum.com gave us 300 in a month. I simply filled out our profile with enough data, and it’s resulted in a good number of clicks ever since.
Misc. Referrers = 20,000+ Clicks
We’ve been written about in many blog articles. Most articles are profiling invoicing and accounting apps. In Smashing Magazine, LessAccounting has been profiled several times for our unique design elements. Smashing Magazine alone has sent over 2,000 unique visitors.
Here’s a break down of some of the site who referred traffic to us in 2011. I only list a few of the referrers here, there's probably another 300 sites that sent us less than 200 clicks and I didn't want to spend the time adding them.
| smashingmagazine.com | 2110 |
| freelancefolder.com | 1395 |
| web.appstorm.net | 1105 |
| sixrevisions.com | 1030 |
| quora.com | 697 |
| webdesignerdepot.com | 436 |
| news.ycombinator.com | 428 |
| mashable.com | 355 |
| hongkiat.com | 398 |
| nemetral.com | 330 |
| onextrapixel.com | 272 |
| cloudsurfing.com | 255 |
| instantshift.com | 236 |
| smallbiztrends.com | 235 |
| thesmallbusinessweb.com | 222 |
| softwarebyrob.com | 221 |
| techcrunch.com | 200 |
| fuelcollective.com | 188 |
| feedmyapp.com | 176 |
| designmodo.com | 166 |
| creativeoverflow.com | 151 |
| designreviver.com | 145 |
| gigaom.com | 139 |
| maestrosdelweb.com | 136 |
| gearsofbiz.com | 136 |
How do you acquire traffic?
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Allan loves his family more than breathing. He lives in Panama City, Florida & grew up washing cars at his family's car washes. Oh and Allan hasn't worn underwear since 2004.
11 Comments
Awesome job! Your posts are always fantastic!
Just to play devil’s advocate for a second… What’s the opportunity cost there? How much did your time cost to participate in the community, write articles, find pictures for them, design and create websites, etc. It just irks me when people talk about blogging (etc) being free (like it’s this magic thing) when it’s still time or someone’s salary. (Not that you meant that, but I could see people inferring that..)
Keep rocking! :)
very, very cool.
I think that Jessica made an excellent point about opportunity cost. That’s an under-appreciated concept when talking about any business activity because everything in life is a trade off and there’s no such thing as a free lunch. That being said, I think participating in various communities online is important despite the amount of time it takes. That being said, if money is an issue with advertising online, it seems as if social media is the direction that people are largely going in. Between asking your friends for help, participating in various pages or groups, using Facebook ads, using the types of services at http://www.buyfacebookfansreviews.com for example, and various other cross-promotions that are possible for your website there are tons of ways to get more traffic via social media without breaking the bank. If you approach things scientifically, you try out as many avenues as possible and you keep track of the results it brings and make decisions about what works best for your niche based on this data. I think that’s how any startup has to behave when they have limited resources and need to start up a community from scratch.
Thanks for this post, Allan! This is really helpful for our product as we’re just in the beginning stages of driving traffic to Backstory. I’ve got to get out there and find some places to guest blog now I guess. :)
Hard work pays off, especially when its earned. I’ve come to learn quickly that becoming known in your community is priceless as it will bring you organic traffic for a long time.
@Jessica Barnett: Jessica! Certainly there’s an opportunity cost. At around 80,000 referrer clicks, I imagine that could cost $50,000-$100,000 depending on how qualified the traffic is. So the traffic driven is worth that much. Now that cost doesn’t take into account the aftermath of blogging and sharing… respect, popularity, brand awareness etc. Those are untrackable…currently. So my assessment is that blogging does cost money but that investment, currently is worth it for us. When it becomes an investment that isn’t giving us a good return we’d either stop blogging or find someone to help us with content.
@Brandon Lewis: Hi Brandon, it’s hard to impossible to track everything, sometimes you have to go with your gut, go for easy wins. Blogging for us has been an easy win.
This is very cool. I’m inspired to list out Bidsketch referral traffic on my blog as well since, funny enough, I’ve never looked at it from this perspective.
I saw the same thing from the traffic from a 37signals blog post, not much of it. Being listed in the Highrise add-ons page much more valuable.
I’ll give freelanceswitch.com a try soon; I’ve been looking for places where I can contribute a post.
It’s interesting that you put your stats out in the open like this. I’m glad you do because it gives the rest of us some perspective on how your activities are paying off. Thanks guys.
I was also going to basically say what Jessica did, with the line that you undervalue your time if you consider it free… but you covered that pretty well in your response. Looking forward to seeing you guys at LessConf!
This is awesome, thanks for sharing.
I know there’s a slight chance of shooting yourself in the foot by sharing this, but I’m curious if you can say which of the referrers are most qualified? That is, which drive the most signups, and then the most paying signups/upgrades?
Happy to see and learn from the figures you have revealed for help. The immediate question that comes is how many of them bring in moolah :) Which traffic source converts the most