I had the honor of being "Instalanched" last month. Very interesting experience. Not as many hits as you (my post didn't stay at the top that long), but I did manage to get around 10,000 during a 24 hour period that day.

Not too shabby...

Fishing for a link?

I wouldn't have chosen the flattery bait but you know these waters better, not to mention your target.

Actually, I'm on Paxil. It's my blog that's on The Web

There is a flip side to the "Instalanche," however, and I believe it is sorely overrated. Many webloggers spend a whole lot of time trying to get Glenn's attention, not realizing that a single link from him is rather like snorting a line of cocaine: a thrilling rush that disappears in fairly short order. A week from now, most of your Instapundit visitors will be gone, and won't be back. If you're lucky, a small handful of them, probably well under 1%, will stick around and become regular visitors to your site.

Furthermore, you got a lucky double-whammy Instalanche: mid-week, when traffic is heaviest, and you stayed at the top of the page for a while. The last Instalanche I got was probably worth about 6,000 visits.

But here's the thing: I currently average a bit over 5,000 visits a day throughout the month, and trend toward 6,000 visits a day on weekdays anyway. When Glenn last linked me, he did no more than double my traffic for the next day.

Now, I do not mention this to brag, or to dismiss the fine blog that is Instapundit.com. I mention it to make a point: many webloggers spend a long time chasing down the cocaine-style fix of the "Instalanche," not realizing that it's a one-shot boost to traffic that quickly peters off. So the temptation is to try for another fix, rather than put the hard work into building something more durable.

Indeed, you should read this post by the Commissar to realize that, whatever its charms, the Instalanche is no substitute for the long-term work it takes to establish your own audience and your own circle of mutual blog-friends.

I am not trying to diss Glenn Reynolds, at all. He is an inspiration and was helpful to me when I first got started. However, the truth of the matter is that I treasure links from the likes of Winds of Change, A Small Victory, Bill Hobbs, The Politburo Diktat, The Patriette, Lilac Rose, Outside the Beltway, Arguing With Signposts, IB Bill, and dozens of other bloggers (I can't list them all) you haven't heard of every bit as much, if not more.

In fact, honest to God, you know what my biggest thrill of all is? Some brand new blogger who's been in the game for a few months or less, someone I've absolutely never heard of, sends me a trackback out of the blue. I have no idea who they are, but they found me somehow, and they saw something they liked that I wrote about, and they shared it with their readers.

That, to me, is more precious than Instalanche gold, it really is.

Last month, when I got in trouble and aske d for help, Glenn linked me. But before he did, a half-dozen bloggers you've probably never heard of already had, and in the end, almost 40 linked me, and of those, more than 80% of those were folks I knew, who I had linked to before or who had linked me before. Honestly, those meant ten times as much to me. These were people who knew me, at least a little bit, and genuinely cared about me and weren't just following the Instapundit herd.

Again, not dissing Glenn or his readers. But if the Instalanche is the hare, building a steady readership and support among your peers is the tortoise, and slow but steady really does usually win the race. Just pointing out that there's more to the game than getting Glenn's attention. Indeed, as the Commissar to cleverly put it:

"Maybe you get Instalanche. Suppose, since YOUR blog is most perceptive document...that InstaPlutocrat links to it. You get your Instalanche. Then what? Khorosho, you send pants to dry cleaner. Good. What next? Will you impale yourself on temporary spike in your Site Meter?"

Glenn's cool. But there are cooler things than an Instalanche. ;-)

There old formula was based on total references and rewarded prolific posters. I was ranked in 6-8 slots most days, ahead of some much more popular bloggers but also ahead of the likes of Tom Friedman and George Will.

I've gotten to the point that if I send Glenn an item -- and he seems to read and/or post my items I send to him with some frequency (maybe one time in eight), I don't even bother plugging my blog. I've got my 150 hits a day and while, sure, I'd like 1,000, I don't worry about it too much.

Well said, Dean, though I'd like to add that an Instalanche (or indeed a link on VodkaPundit or several other blogs of large traffic) often expose one's blog to people who have never seen it before and some of them become regular readers.

I actually didn't write the post to encourage chasing links on Instapundit, though I do email Glenn links when I think I've posted something that will interest him/his readers and represents a worthwhile addition to the debate. The Kerry-plays-defense post was exactly that kind of post - someone needed to point out that Kerry's approach to terrorism was essentially that of a battered wife - waiting to be hit again.

Apparently, the Insta-audience found it interesting - I've had other links on Glenn's blog that have brought in only 2,000 visits but the Kerry post brought about 5,000 and caused numerous blogs to link to me that I've never heard of and have never linked to me before.

I mostly wrote this post because of the BlogRunner ranking.

...That said, there are ways to maximize an Instalanche if you get one. One of the key things I've found is, have another good post on a completely different topic, either right before or right after the item that Glenn links to. What happens is, readers come for the first post, and then see the next and realize your blog is not a one-note blog, making them more likely to come back later without being sent there by Instapundit. Also, bloggers who find you via the instapundit link might find two reasons to link to you, increasing the chances that they will do so.

Yesterday, soon after I posted the Kerry post, I posted a piece on the economy. It got a lot of links from new blogs I hadn't heard of before - I can only assume they found me via Glenn's link to the Kerry post.

There is a flip side to the "Instalanche," however, and I believe it is sorely overrated.

The flip side would, of course, be the infamous "Outstalanche".

Dean is right - an Instalanche is nice, but content is important. Having said that, though, getting the attention of a major blog is a very valuable way to get some attention for that content we should be focusing on.

It's only one way, but it does allow some smaller bloggers to get attention when we write something relatively significant.

There really is a lot of quality blogging bubbling around under the Higher Beings....Bill Hobbs being a good example.

On the other hand, I've had 2 articles get major spikes. One was a comment on a USS Clueless article that SDB was kind enough to link to; that got me around 5000 page views. But another article, on a completely different subject, several posts and days away, got me even more - and the only referral to it was a google search - illegal "carry a baseball bat"...

Here are my thoughts on blog promotion.

I'm a non-blogger, so much of what you're discussing is foreign to me. About 2 months ago, I discovered Instapundit and the many links it had. I checked out a lot of them, and from my take the link is nice, but you have to have a quality site. The only sites I still go to (that I got from Insta) are this one and Lt-Smash. Both are excellent sites.

Plus, by coming here, I get to see what it's like in bizarro world everytime JadeGold sits at the keyboard.

Sometimes out here I get the same feeling that I experience when strolling through a book warehouse store. Stacks and stacks of books, representing a lot of hard work, by a lot of motivated people--selling for a buck apiece.

Fifteen seconds of fame.

There's fame, and there's blog-fame. Do you think any heads would turn if you stood in the middle of Times Square at noon and screamed "Look -- it's Glenn Reynolds!" Even Matt Drudge, with 7 million hits a day, wouldn't register with that many people in a crowd.

The biggest spike I ever got from a blogger was from Den Beste, good for about 600 extra a day. But nothing compared with being the top Google search for "Kobe Bryant Rape Victim," which was good for about 3,000 last summer. For some reason I'm still number 5 on that. But who wants to be famous among people seeking the identity of a rape victim?

P.S. I've found out that being right about everything all the time is only good for about 200 hits per day.