Mmmm that was del.icio.us

One of the reasons I started this blog was to show other young entrepreneurs the ups and downs of running a business. I tend to be a pretty optimistic guy but I know that to be successful my failures will likely outnumber my successes, and concurrently more of my blog posts will be laced with frustration as opposed to joy. But I also think that it's EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to take some time to celebrate and enjoy the moment when something good happens. After all, why are you playing the game if you can't take a break and enjoy a victory from time to time?

Yesterday was one of those really, really good days - on par with quitting my job or winning an award from Microsoft and getting a letter from Bill Gates. As recently as two days ago I was questioning my time-management and simplifying my marketing plan. For the first week, iPrioritize's traffic had settled around 50 - 75 visitors a day...not bad for a 9 day old business but plenty of room for improvement. With SportsLizard I steadily increased traffic - from 50 to 75, 75 to 100, 100 to 200, etc so I figured that was what I was in for with iPrioritize and I was OK with it.

That's why I was so surprised when I checked my stats yesterday afternoon. On Wednesday, iPrioritize had 39 visitors. I scrolled down and my jaw dropped - 875 visitors in half a day! That's more than I've ever done with SportsLizard...and it happened in half a day...with a site that's a whopping 9 days old. Holy #$&%! I went and checked how many users I'd gotten in that time and it was around 100. That means that well over 10% of the people coming to iPrioritize are signing up (for free accounts that is).

So how did this happen? A BIG thanks to the very popular social bookmarking site del.icio.us. Apparently someone like my site and bookmarked it. A few more people came along and checked it out and they did the same. By mid afternoon I was on the "most popular" page and that was that.

So a day later I've calmed down but my traffic hasn't. I'm going to spend the weekend working on an advertising campaign to try to monetize all of these free accounts that have suddenly and unexpectedly fell into my lap. I don't want to show ads on the site itself and I don't want to show ads to business accounts. I want to make sure that only free accounts see ads, only when they log in, and that they are non-invasive. I'm going to weigh all of the options and see what will work best under those constraints. It's important to me to keep a "professional" look on the site so I'm going to be careful with what I do. I'm open to any suggestions you guys have :)

Have a great weekend everyone, and be sure to enjoy the fruits of your labor from time to time. We all work hard and deserve to take a step back and admire what we accomplish.