Glenn Reynolds Is A Mean, Mean Man

This post is more of a meta-post about what it is like to author a blog.

While people blog for many reasons, it is very often true that one of the goals becomes increased readership. Consider this: A blog author gets inspired and crafts a long and well-worded post. I don't care what the subject of the post is. It could be politics, it could be cooking, it could be NASCAR racing, it really doesn't matter. If the author then checks traffic later and sees that only four people have read the post, something happens, and the goal of increased readership is born.

There are many articles on how to increase blog traffic, but one of the clear ways to do so is to get linked by one of the "big boys"; a link from a popular blog can temporarily increase the traffic of a small blog by 10x, 100x, 1000x. The most common example of this is getting a link on Instapundit, authored by Glenn Reynolds. Getting a flood of traffic because of a link by Glenn is known as an instalanch.

So recently, Instapundit posted a sign-up sheet for bloggers to go see a screening of the movie Serenity. I did so, posting my review here and my thoughts on the process here. I even wrote Glenn an email, thanking him for the opportunity. Later, I noticed that Glenn had seen the movie as well, and posted his mini-review. In this post, he linked to a number of other blogs that had also posted reviews.

Was it possible? Could I expect my first instalanch? The answer was no, as the Internet Freedom Trail was not one of the blogs he linked. That evening, he posted a follow-up, listing more blogs that had reviews. Did it happen this time? Could I expect a flood of traffic? Again, no.

As it happens (and I have no idea why) my review has for a time been the #1 result on Google's blogsearch, #2 on yahoo, and listed prominently on blogcritics, among other places. The result has been about a 100x increase in traffic over the last few days. I honestly feel a little guilty as this blog is supposed to be about politics and social issues, not movie reviews. My co-author Keith has jokingly (I hope) told me that I'm a sell out...

So in the end, maybe it's for the best that I didn't get an instalanch for an off-topic post. On the other hand, maybe it was my once chance for blog fame. I guess we will never know.

OK, back to politics...