One week ago, I went public with 501 Words. I was overwhelmed with the positive response to the site from the start. Thanks to all who gave a thumbs up to the idea. Here’s how it went:
- We’ve had 105 registrations to the site, not including a few spam registrations that I already deleted. (All of you early adopters go the benefit of a streamlined registration process, but I’ll likely have to add some anti-spam measures soon.)
- I set a goal to have 40 active members, people who had written at least once, in the first week. We’ve had 25 people write who set their blogs as public. I know there are more, but I can’t easily track those who chose not to include their blog in home page listings.
- So far, we have about 75 followers on Twitter. If you are on Twitter, @501words that is the best reminder of the word of the day, plus site updates like this one.
- In the first week, we had 987 unique visitors to the site — thanks to all who helped spread the word.
Your Feedback
I’ve had feedback from a few of you. The most popular request has been to somehow bring more visibility to each of the individual blogs. Right now, the featured posts on the homepage show the last post by ten unique (and public) blogs, and stretch back a few days. As the site grows, that data will change more rapidly, and I will add in the means to show extra activity. This is one of my priorities as I work on some updates to the site in the coming weeks. However, it will always be limited to those blogs that are set as public.
Did You Know?
For those that are looking to help expose your writing, there is a plugin in your blog called WordTwit. In the dashboard, expand the settings menu and click on WordTwit. Enter your twitter login info, and you can set it up to automatically post your writings to Twitter each time you write.
About Those Spammers
If you run across a blog that looks like spam, let me know. I’m ruthless about removing anything that looks like spam.
And One Last Thing…
I have set the stats for the site to public. If you want to take a peek at what the traffic for the site is like, and what the most popular blogs are, you can visit 501words.com/mint.
Now get back to writing!
