Get huge traffic spikes from CSS galleries

Many blogs and websites invest a lot of time into writing content that is Digg and Reddit ready. They focus on keywords, top 10 lists, topical entries, etc… Being Dugg is one of the rare occasions where you actually enjoy seeing your server go down and your hosting bill up.

If you’re not an “A-list blogebrity� and have a cult following reminiscent of Steve Jobs’, getting Dugg, Reddit-ed, Techmemed, etc… is pretty damn tough.

This is where CSS galleries come in. If you put the time and energy into designing a unique blog that isn’t just a template that thousands of others use, you might get featured in a CSS gallery.

Some of these galleries match the effect of being Dugg and their steady flow of unique visitors usually lasts for 4 or 5 days. With Digg, you’re lucky if you can get 2 days out of it.

When we launched the latest version of YGG nine or so days ago, our daily Alexa ranking was about 303,000. Ouch. After about three or four days of the new site being up, we were featured in a couple CSS galleries. The results? Our daily ranking has averaged about 24,000 for the past 5 days. That’s 1,262% more traffic by Alexa’s rankings (which are questioned by many but are one of the few metrics available).

We didn’t submit YGG to any of the galleries this time around, someone else did and all the secondary galleries that copy from the big boys latched on and added to the traffic.

There are literally hundreds of galleries out there that range from design, to web standards, to dark sites, etc… It can be tough to choose which ones to submit your site to.

To help you with the process, I’ve created a list of the best CSS galleries to submit your site to. Here they are, in no specific order.

Interview with Jennifer Kushell of YSN

jennifer kushell

After passing through customs and finding a quiet corner to call her own, Jennifer Kushell was able to find some time to allow me to interview her. When we’d normally be struggling to gain prime position in the buffet line at lunch, Jennifer is hopping and skipping from state to state presenting keynotes, promoting her book, introducing her new website, and being a strategic consultant, among many other things.

You know you’re speaking to a very powerful individual when a message from their PR rep and personal assistant await you in your voicemail, confirming the interview later that day.

YSN is the network Jennifer just brought out of beta a couple weeks ago. Your Success Network pretty much enables you to develop relationships with business persons on all levels. As you’ll hear in the interview, there are millionaires and billionaires in YSN that interact with young go getters like you and I, and enable us to get advice from the frontline.

Every instructional video should be made like this

How to poop.

The Procrastinator’s Clock

It’s safe to say that quite a few entrepreneurs switch into procrastination mode every now and then. It’s hard not to make excuses if you don’t enjoy the task at hand or are surrounded by distractions.

David Seah, creator of The Printable CEO and many other productivity tools, has just released what he calls the Procrastinator’s Clock. It stands out in the world of clocks because of a little trick it plays on your mind.

The clock can be up to 15 minutes ahead of your regular clocks. But that’s not the kicker. It also speeds up and slows down unannounced. So if the pressure of a flashing colon helps push you, tricking yourself into thinking that you’re 12, no, 14, no, 9, no, 15, yes, 15 minutes ahead of schedule, can really boost your mood and efficiency.

You can test drive The Procrastinator’s Clock directly here (full window), or by clicking the link at the bottom of this page (pop-up).

The inspirational story of Threadless

Like thousands of others, I’m a self-proclaimed Threadless addict. Over the past year I probably mentioned them a couple dozen times. If you haven’t heard of them, take a look at their website before you read any further.

Instead of retelling their story, I’ll let two of their owners do it themselves in a video clip I just stumbled upon.

How Threadless began and operates each day is as inspirational a story as you can get. If you’re looking for a role-model or attitude to imitate, Threadless is the best, as many universities who study them will tell you as well.

Please don’t watch this video and decide that you want to open an online t-shirt shop, because there’s no question, you’ll fail. You can’t clone what they’ve done in their industry, or expect to produce and sell a product that you’ve never designed for or worked with.

But you can learn from the community they’ve created around a business, the laid back nature of the Threadless brand, and how they’ve created a work environment that resembles a playground.

Why you need to worry about the future

Blame the education system. Blame tanning salons. Or just blame me for making you watch this video and killing dozens of your brain cells while doing so. Girls Gone Wild at CES 2007. Brought to you in part by UBS, not to be confused with USB. ;)

Found at I4U News via Digg.

Indexed

indexed

If you have the slightest sense of humor, Indexed will have you rolling almost every day. Written and sketched by Jessica Hagy, Indexed is visual blog powered by 3″ x 5″ index cards. Her topical hilarity ranges from business, to pop culture, to every aspect of life. She is quickly becoming a micro-superstar on the web and her sketches are essential reading for anyone and everyone. If you enjoy a bit of tongue in cheek humor, you’ll love Indexed as much as we do.

To quote VW - “What does that do?”

“It’s definitely sucking.” This is sort of a random, off-topic post, but am I the only one who thinks these are completely birdbrained? I get the idea behind trying to make something stand out, make it different…but…huh?

Imagine putting one of these logs in your laptop case and have a branch protruding from the pocket. How annoying. They’ve taken the convenient mobility out of a product that was specifically designed for that.

But hey, as we’ve discussed in the forums recently, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. So here’s a link for those of you that want a woodie. OOMS

How To Market Your Blog in 2007

Just saw a post on ProBlogger that any YGG that blogs should take a look at. It’s a little long winded so instead of re-posting it here, I’ll just link ya.

ProBlogger

GoodSearch - Why didn’t I think of that?

GoodSearch

I think this is a fantastic idea. A Yahoo! powered search engine that donates half of its search revenues to charity. The best part? You get to pick the charity. They even let you see how much money has been raised. I went on there and did a search for some charities and there are TONS of them.

Even though the search is good, their homepage is not. It’s awful - tons of whitespace and things just scattered about. It’s almost so bad that I don’t want to use it frequently. They definitely should have put more effort into the design, and who knows if it’ll catch on, but the idea is worth mentioning. Browsing the internet never felt so good.

GoodSearch