Were you able to capitalize on any of the traffic? Get signups to the RSS feed at least? That's the problem with junk traffic: most don't really provide any value other than raw pageviews.
To a certain extent, yes. After the "it turns out" post I think some people went around to other parts of my site and started submitting different posts to HN. There was one point where I had three posts simultaneously on the front page (it was a glorious moment).
That converted into about a doubling of my RSS subscriber base to just over 100.
But culling RSS subscribers seems to be mostly a game of posting and linking and getting buzz on close a daily basis, whereas I'll occasionally have one or two months of inactivity.
Otherwise, somewhere between 0.5 and 1% of visitors ever check out other posts.
That converted into about a doubling of my RSS subscriber base to just over 100.
But culling RSS subscribers seems to be mostly a game of posting and linking and getting buzz on close a daily basis, whereas I'll occasionally have one or two months of inactivity.
Otherwise, somewhere between 0.5 and 1% of visitors ever check out other posts.