I knew when I created my Triond account that I would not be able to live off the income it generated. In fact, for me, the process of researching and writing the articles was, and still is, far more important than any financial rewards. I saw the benefits of publishing my work coming from the feedback of my fellow writers and the wider internet community.

But one article took me completely by surprise yesterday. Although it received views every day, “Why are There 60 Minutes in an Hour?” was never a huge success. That all changed over the course of the day and, hopefully, the story of how things changed will persuade some of those who are new here to carry on.

From Small Beginnings

“Why are There 60 Minutes in an Hour?” was submitted to Triond, and published at Scienceray, on the 10th of February this year. After a small peak in the first couple of days the views settled down to an average of just over four and a half a day. Checking the page views in my Triond profile before going to bed on Thursday night I could see that, in the first 135 days of its life, the article had been read 630 times.

But something changed overnight. By lunchtime on Friday the total page views had reached 11000; by 7pm the figure was over 26000. The comments and likes started rolling in as well. Now, 36 hours later, the totals stand at over 40000 views, 31 comments and 104 likes.

Investigating the Causes

I have an inquisitive nature, so I wanted to know why this had happened. One of the comments mentioned that the article was listed at popurls.com, a site that lists popular pages over many social networks. On investigating this site I found my article listed in the top pages at Delicious, a social bookmarking site. So here was part of my answer, someone had shared my article at Delicious.

Another useful resource for finding the origin of the views was the “Top Referring Sites” section of my Triond dashboard. This showed me that the top referrer was not Delicious but Reddit, another social bookmarking site. I could also see that quite a few views were coming from Google and Facebook.

These results show that, once a popular member of the social bookmarking community has linked to an article, it can spread rapidly over many other networks. Finding the original bookmarker, however, can be tricky.

Origins

Whoever the original bookmarker was they must have stumbled across the article somehow. Maybe they found it through a search of the Triond site. It could have been the result of a search engine enquiry. Or they may have clicked through a link I placed in my accounts at Xomba or Twitter.

My new Wordpress blog and website could also have been a source. It had only been live for a week and “Why are There 60 Minutes in an Hour?” was displayed prominently on the front page. Wherever the article was found it shows that the more links we can create to our work, the more chance there is of it being discovered.

Don’t Give Up

If you are a new Triond member, or you are thinking of joining, I hope this encourages you to continue. It can be difficult when you are starting out and only seeing a few views for your work. But I hope I have shown that even an article that is several months old can suddenly come to life.

It is also worth considering that the figures mentioned above, for the page views received so far, are a small fraction of the views received by some of the top writers on Triond. But I am happy with the way things are going, and the page views and comments are still more satisfying that the financial rewards.

Further Reading

The article and its supporting diagrams can be found at Scienceray and Picable.

Why are There 60 Minutes in an Hour?

Bones of the Hand

How to Count to 12 on One Hand

How to Count to 60 on Two Hands