[Negitivefrags]

I absolutely know how this feels.

When we announced our game we managed to get articles on a bunch of top tier gaming media. IGN, PC Gamer, G4TV, and a whole host of smaller sites.

And here is what it all amounted to: http://i.imgur.com/IqBcy.png

Sad isn't it.

Each time you get a new article you get a spike, and then a downturn, but each one leaves your baseline higher. Now we get many times the traffic we got in a spike at announcement every day.

[leelin]

  Each time you get a new article you get a spike, and then 
  a downturn, but each one leaves your baseline higher. Now
  we get many times the traffic we got in a spike at
  announcement every day.

I've noticed this higher baseline effect and it seems to hold true even though I am 3+ years into my startup. Others have spoken about it too (David Rusenko of Weebly quite recently). I find it fascinating.

Why is the baseline higher? Is it link juice from SEO? Is it some mysterious equilibrium of new users and returning users but more of them find you through the article? Is it simply that X out of 1,000,000 people have heard of you, and X gets incremented by a small amount and therefore your daily base traffic increases?

To be honest our traffic has been very predictable, both in the weekly steady state and the year-over-year growth. I'm shocked the daily variance of visits isn't a lot more.

[ohashi]

I've seen the effect too and depending on the nature of the site it can go down after a while too. Content sites come to mind, if you don't keep generating new content, the baseline drops.

I think the answer though is a combination of all the little boosts each article gives (seo, returning visitors, links). Even old articles send visitors. As you collect more of them, the baseline increases.