Who might be interested in this article? For those who are related to content, IT, blog on one of them and look closely at others.
Than compared
A medium-sized article that fit into all four sites by topic. The topic of the article is quite hype - about cheating a buyer in electronics stores. Hype because it ultimately affects almost all buyers, and not just one type of product or store.
The core of the story is a story about friend Serega, who bought four USB drives for 34 thousand rubles, one of which turned out to be counterfeit. At what moment the product was replaced in a box with untouched holographic stickers - it was not fully understood. But the priority version is as follows: there are some scammers who buy goods for cash, skillfully open the boxes (without touching the stickers), replace the goods, carefully close them and make a return on the same day. Then this product goes to a new buyer, who can no longer prove that it is not a camel. However, this is not the only substitution option, there are others.
So, at first the article was published on three sites: iXBT.Live , Habr , Pikabu... But not at the same time. First, on iXBT, because they demand that they publish their texts in the first place, and on other sites no earlier than two days later. Then on Habr (here the ban on cross-posting was lifted a year and a half ago) and Pikabu.
Accordingly, on Sunday evening I threw it on iXBT, on Wednesday evening on Habr, and on Thursday morning on Pikabu. Why didn't I drop it on Habr the day before? New facts surfaced, and the article required minor adjustments. And since the work is already a blockage, there was a delay.
About adapting the text to the site: the text was written with an eye to Habr and iXBT. It got to Pikabu with minimal editing (a couple of holivar details were discarded so that they would not cling), but Zen is a separate story, about which below.
What happened
For each site, I recorded the number of views, likes and comments after seven days, fourteen and twenty-one.
Below are a few comments on each site.
iXBT.Live
The indicator of 34 thousand views per week for this site is almost a record. Posts in their blogs, which generally surpass the level of 20 thousand, are recruited three or four pieces per month. Of course, there were posts that received 50+ thousand per week, but these are exceptions, and the traffic to them came from the accounts of popular bloggers in social networks.
In our case, a lot of traffic came from social networks, because in the first couple of days the growth slowed down around 16 thousand (collecting everything possible from the site itself), and then continued again.
Now they add 1-2 thousand views per day. This is partly due to the fact that iXBT started using this note for their native social media ads. But most of the traffic seems to be already search engines (here iXBT are right that they require priority placement with them).
The audience at iXBT is advanced, although there are teapots, however, also hardened. If criticized, then on the case. At the same time, there are also “mother's miners” who do not admit that they are wrong and argue to the last.
In general, a lot of useful information and links to other stores where there were similar cases were thrown in the comments.
PPA (Author Support Program)
The author support program has been running on iXBT.Live for several years, but this year it has been radically updated . If earlier for an article that received 5-10-20 thousand views per week it was possible to get up to 2 thousand "candy wrappers" with the possibility of exchanging them for goods in shop.ixbt.com , now it is a percentage of the advertisement spun off on all posts of the author ... It sounds beautiful, but in practice, after the next single publication, it turns on for five days with a gradually decreasing percentage. Let's add here that ads are shown only to ~ 60% of readers. As a result, we get ~ 350 rubles from the hit publication (deducted a penny from traffic from other blog articles), which cannot be withdrawn (only after 5 thousand rubles have been accumulated).
You can probably earn something there if you post three good articles a week. Then the affiliate ratio will be high. But all the same, all this is not serious.
Habr
For Habr, 77 thousand per week is not a record. The article got here already taking into account the criticism and reviews collected on iXBT: I added a paragraph to the text mentioning the store where the discs were bought, and a story sent to me by the reader about the fact that the most likely source of counterfeit is a scheme with the return of goods by scammers who make substitution.
A week later, the number of views was fixed at around 81 thousand and did not grow further, but exactly until one of the popular bloggers referred to it.
There was a very constructive dialogue in the comments. Khabrovites threw links and told several similar cases. But in the end, everything slipped into a discussion of stores and possible ways to fake firmware.
In general, the dialogues on Habr are more cultured, and there are practically no characters that put an idiot on the author (or someone else in the thread).
PPA
She has been working on Habré since 2011, and many people know about her, but I will briefly remind you. To participate in the PPAyou need to have any of the statuses "Author", "Star", "Legend", "Old-timer" and write a post with a rating of more than +30. In this case, 3 thousand rubles will fall into the piggy bank. For a post with a rating of more than +50, 5 thousand rubles fall. Withdrawal only to Webmoney with a previous agreement.
Pikabu
The post relatively quickly got into the "hot" (not as fast as all sorts of nude pictures), as well as the Anti-Fraud community. Having slipped through all their social networks in a few days, traffic to it dropped to almost zero. As a result, two weeks later, Habr formally bypassed him.
In general, this article is far from the records on Pikabu. Small provocative posts easily get 15 thousand pluses and 200-500 thousand views there. Well, here ... Practice shows that technical materials, even of average difficulty, come in so-so.
In the comments, there are many answers to the case, links to similar cases, all sorts of stories on the topic, but more empty chatter from people who know the topic superficially. There are also characters telling the author that he is an idiot. The audience as a whole is simpler and more emotional - they actively rate both posts and comments.
PAP Have you
already smiled? This is how it looks:
Yes, these are badges. And here everything is logical, taking into account the positioning of the resource.
Yandex Zen
It shouldn't have been in this comparison, but chance helped. I myself did not begin to post this longread (by Zen standards) to my account "frostbitten" by admins, but I did it on my own AlexeyNadezhin... Moreover, he did not copy my text, but made a short retelling of a couple of thousand characters - right in the Zen format.
Another important point is that Alexei has 39 thousand subscribers in Zen, which can be considered a handicap. Although, it seems to me, this does not play a big role.
In fact, there are techies on Zen, but they are heavily diluted by comrades who are not at all in the subject. In addition, Zen's algorithm is experiencing enormous difficulties in recruiting audiences for tech posts, which all tech bloggers note. If you take a heel of publications that have successfully entered other sites, only one of them will shoot on Zen, and even then if you're lucky.
As a result, in two weeks Nadezhin's post got 19 thousand views, which are quite good for technical articles on Zen (the figure I calculated by multiplying the number of reads by a factor of 1.3, typical for such short notes). In the process, it was clear that the Zen recommendation algorithm was at first stupid, and after 2-3 days it suddenly began to pour traffic there, stopping ten days later. Taking into account the handicap and the adjusted format, the result, in comparison with other sites, is so-so.
PPA
There is a relatively high threshold for entry: you need to have more than 500 subscribers and reach the bar of 10 thousand minutes of viewing posts in seven days. Next, the blogger is credited with a percentage of the ads spun in posts. At one time it turned out at the level of 130 rubles. per 1000 unique readers. So, perhaps, Alexey got a couple of thousand drops from this publication.
Among other useful things on Zen, this is the ability to connect a Yandex.metrica counter to your account and monitor who what his knowledge in the field of web analytics allows.
What is the result
Habr and Pikabu gather the same audience for a hype IT topic, but Pikabu has more “schoolchildren” with all the consequences (if the audiences of these platforms are generally correct to compare). iXBT.Live lags behind them at least twice, but it's good that this site is slowly growing.
Well, on Zen, IT bloggers, in terms of audience coverage, have nothing special to do. Looking at the statistics of Wylsacom, Nadezhin and a couple of other gadget bloggers who have been sitting there for a long time, it is clear that the typical readability of articles lies in the range of 200-1300 reads. No, there are separate visits for ~ 40 thousand, but these are rare cases. Although, if you sculpt clickbait headlines all the time, then something will go off.
A reasonable question is, what are these bloggers doing on Zen, if there is such low readability? The answer is simple - PPA. Taking into account search traffic and articles that have been shot, 30-90 thousand rubles can be added per month. Here they are everywhere and praise Zen.
Yes, I said almost nothing about the specifics of the sites and the adaptation of texts. Just not to be the captain. Someone else may ask about VC, but it is rather sad with technical and near-technical topics. However, earlier I had a similar post VC vs Habr on the example of a couple of articles, which is here .