Following my previous post about using Quora for business purposes, I was conscious that my own usage of the platform meant I was barely scratching the surface of what could be achieved. So, with just 43 answers so far, I set myself a challenge to reach 100+ answers within 30 days.

For 30 days straight, I answered on average two questions a day, and kept a record of my Quora stats throughout.

This post shares all that data so you can see the effect. You’ll see my starting position – and where I ended up after just 30 days.

Although the final results are remarkable on their own, as you’ll see the effect is truly staggering when using the data to forecast the results forward.

My Starting Position

Here are the initial metrics at the start of my 30-Day Quora Challenge:

  • Views of my answers for previous 30 day period: 3.1k
  • All time answer views: 20.7k
  • Most viewed writer: 1 topic (Blogging Platforms)
  • Follower count: I neglected (okay, forgot) to take a proper record of this at the start, but it was around 23 followers.

I then proceeded with the challenge.

For 30 days straight, I added an average of two answers a day to suitable questions in my niche. Most days I did enter two, though for five days I entered zero, and on four days I entered more than two answers to compensate.

On average, it worked out at 2.1 answers a day.

To find questions to answer, I used number of methods including the following.

Quora Selected Questions

Click on the Answer link at the top:

I clicked the Answer link at the top of Quora to find questions

This displays questions Quora believes are suitable for you, based on topics you’ve said you know about and questions you’ve answered previously.

Quora selects suitable questions for you

Some are more suitable than others, and you can simply pass on those you’d prefer not to answer.

Ask-to-Answer Questions

The more you answer questions on Quora and more visible you become, the more regularly you’ll receive notifications of questions that other Quora users have asked you to answer (known as A2As in Quora parlance).

Quora send you notifications about questions other Quora users have asked you to answer (A2As)

Again you can simply pass on questions you don’t want to answer. However, one advantage of responding on these is that prompt, helpful answers can attract more followers and upvotes from those who sent the A2A to you.

Topic Questions

You can also click through on the topics you’ve declared you know about to find suitable questions.

Click through on topics you know about to find suitable questions to answer

So I’d spend a couple of minutes or so finding a suitable question, and then provide the best answer I could, while linking back to relevant resources on my blog or elsewhere if and when applicable.

While I didn’t time it exactly, answers on average took up to thirty minutes or so to provide. In other words, my Quora 30-Day Challenge involved an hour or so a day.

During the Challenge

Answering two questions a day took a bit of getting used to, but it soon became part of my daily routine and the habit was set.

In fact, answering a question often acted as a break – sometimes a welcome distraction, an enjoyable interlude – from whatever else I may have been working on.

And measuring and recording the results each day, and seeing the numbers stack up over time – as I show you below – became very motivating.

As I provided more answers, I became a Most Viewed Writer within a number of additional topics. This accolade is awarded to you for a topic when you are in the top ten writers based on the number of views of your answers within the previous 30 days.

When you’re a Most Viewed Writer, it has a few advantages such as more visibility for your profile and your answers.

I therefore began choosing which questions to answer more carefully, in order to maximize the number of topics I was a Most Viewed Writer for.

Here’s how.

Via the Most Viewed Writer information available via your profile, Quora displays the topics where you’re Up and Coming as a Most Viewed Writer (i.e. not there yet).

Quora shows when you are an Up and Coming Most Viewed Writer

By purposefully answering questions within these topics, I found it a relatively easy and rapid process to acquire new Most Viewed Writer awards as a result.

By answering questions strategically, you can rapidly acquire new Most Viewed Writer accolades

30 Days Later… The Results

After 30 days of answering an average of 2 questions a day, here are the results.

Every day during the 30 Day Quora Challenge, I kept track of my main Quora stats via a spreadsheet. This is shown below.

Spreadsheet shows the results from the 30 Day Quora Challenge

As you can see, while the number of answers I’d provided increased by around 2.5 times, the number of views I’d received for answers during a 30 day period increased nearly 5 times – from 3.1k to 14.5k.

Views for my Quora answers after 30 days

Part of this is of course because I was answering more questions within a condensed time period. But it’s still impressive. Thanks to the 30 Day Quora Challenge, I was now reaching 14,500 people a month on the platform with my answers, over 11,000 more than I would have been otherwise.

Also, note the average increase in views each day was 5.32%. As you’ll see, this becomes particularly significant – more on this below.

Although I didn’t track it specifically in terms of increase, I also received 29 upvotes for the period. That’s roughly one upvote for every two answers I provided.

While I started out as a Most Viewed Writer in a single topic, after 30 days that had extended to seven:

After 30 days, I became a Most Viewed Writer in seven different topicsWhat about followers?

This was probably the most disappointing effect. By more than doubling the number of answers I had on Quora, I was expecting the number of followers to perhaps at least double as well.

Disappointingly, that wasn’t the case, far from it. Instead I went from around 23 to just 29.

At one point, I even tried following several others to see if that had an effect. It didn’t.

However, with a lot more content now on the platform, my followers are likely to increase at a faster rate going forward. In other words, it may be a little too early to judge the actual longer-term benefits for my follower count and overall visibility. And I suspect some topics attract followers more readily than others.

(If you want to help me feel better and you’re finding this content valuable, please follow me on Quora here! 🙂 )

With that said, followers on Quora are just part of the picture. My content gained plenty of visibility despite the lack of increase in followers.

Here’s a quick summary of the final stats after the 30 Day Quora Challenge:

  • Views of my answers for previous 30 day period: 14.5k (368% increase)
  • All time answer views: 35.3k (70.5% increase)
  • Most viewed writer: 7 topics (600% increase)
  • Follower count: 29 followers (26% increase approx.)

Although I found these increases in visibility pretty impressive by themselves, I found many people on Quora with view counts of hundreds of thousands a month or more (you’ll see some below).

What was the key to achieving these kind of results.

I began looking at the numbers on the spreadsheet (shown above) in more detail. Charting the results so far, as well as using them as a basis of forecasting, told an even more exciting story.

In fact, I began to wonder if it would really be possible to reach…

A Million Views a Month?

The data seemed to suggest it would. And within a further period of just 60 days.

Here’s what I discovered.

By analyzing the data further, I found the average percentage increase in 30 day answer views was actually rising week by week.

The average weekly percentage increase rises over time

In other words, the rate of increase appeared to be accelerating over time, and showing signs of an exponential growth pattern. Note that as the data set is fairly small, this may not play out over time. But at the very least, it’s worth exploring further.

These percentage increases are of course cumulative. So on top of the percentage increases themselves increasing, the actual increases get larger over time.

I played around with the figures.

As you can see above, while the average percentage increase for the 30 day period was 5.32%, the average for the most recent 7 day period was 6.13%. Presuming that it would continue at a rate of 6% growth (or higher) in view count per day, I used this to forecast over the course of a further couple of months.

In other words, what would happen if I extended the 30-Day Quora Challenge to a 90-Day Quora Challenge?

This is what the figures look like at the end of that 90 day period (so with another 60 days added on), using a 6% daily rate of increase to forecast potential results.

90 day forecast of view counts based on a 6% rate of increase

Thanks to the cumulative impact of percentages acting on an ever-increasing view count, the forecast shows that after a further 60 day period continuing the same activity, the view count of my answers for a 30 day period would leap from 14.5 thousand views to nearly half a million!

Of course, my curiosity got the better of me.

What would happen if those average percentage increases carried on increasing themselves, rather than staying at 6%?

For example, let’s say the average percentage increase for the further 60 days was just a percentage point or two higher, say 7.5%?

Let’s see.

What would happen if the percentage was slightly higher? This shows over a million views.

As you can see, with only a slightly higher average percentage daily increase, the view count more than doubles to over a million views of my content within a 30 day period. Worth shooting for?

How realistic is a 7.5% daily increase in views?

With the percentages apparently increasing anyway, it’s seems perfectly possible. And even if not, it’s probably only a case of answering an additional question a day.

Not too much of a hardship for the additional reach of an extra half a million people every 30 days.

Charting the data helped visualize the potential growth pattern.

This is how it looks with 30 days worth of data.

What a graph looks like based on 30 days of answering questions on Quora

Already you can see the implication of an upward, perhaps exponentially increasing, growth curve. But if you stopped here, you’d completely miss the longer term potential.

Here’s how it looks after another 30 days (60 days total), based on the 7.5% forecast percentage.

Graph forecasting view counts on Quora over 60 days

The exponential curve is now far more pronounced. With only another 30 days’ worth of activity, the answer views have increased nearly nine times, from 14.5 thousand to nearly 130 thousand.

And then with the full 90 days:

After 90 days, the exponential growth in view counts is clear

Imagine if you’d just stopped after the first 30 days? Again it’s leapt nearly nine times within 30 days. It completely dwarfs the 14.5k views achieved within the first 30 days.

Although of course the first 30 days represent the only data I’m sure of at this point. The rest is pure speculation.

Even so, you can imagine the implications of enjoying over a million views of your answers (with only just over 200 answers!), where they contain links back your site and content elsewhere.

Sounds Amazing! But Is Any Of This Actually Possible?

Is this is just pie in the sky thinking? Who knows! Perhaps.

But then, there are plenty of people on Quora enjoying a million or more views of their content every 30 days. Plenty others in the high hundreds-of-thousands. Here’s just a few.

Robert Charles Lee's profile on Quora

Robert Charles Lee (Hong Kong) on Quora – over 13,000 answers

Balaji Viswanathan on Quora

Balaji Viswanathan (India) on Quora – over 3,000 answers

Dusk

Dushka Zapata (USA) on Quora – over 1,400 answers

Vichitra Zawar

Vichitra Zawar (India) on Quora – nearly 400 answers

Mi

Mira Zaslove (USA) – nearly 300 answers

Although it’s not hard to find Quorans with at least a million views of their answers a month, the majority appear to also have thousands of answers built up over years.

I only managed to find one (Vichitra Zawar above) after a few minutes of searching with under a thousand answers, though he also has over 4,000,000 views a month, so it just shows what’s possible. I’m sure there are others too, but there’s no quick list you can access to find them.

It was also interesting in that few of them are actually using Quora for business purposes. For most, I suspect it’s a form of free-time blogging or a more mentally-engaging form of social media (e.g. compared to Facebook).

For business purposes, I suspect Quora is still a largely untapped resource, one most don’t realize the potential of.

It certainly seems possible to reach a million views a month with some consistent answering, maybe for just another 60 days. Seems easy enough.

Even if I try and don’t reach a million – perhaps the growth curve will plateau at some point – I suspect hundreds of thousands of views are within reach, along with a ton of other potential benefits.

In other words, I won’t lose by trying…

The only solution to discover what actually happens is to keep the 30-Day Quora Challenge going for longer – turn it into a 90-Day Quora Challenge – and update this blog with the results in due course.

Make sure you’re on my list so I can keep you updated!

Other Advantages

On top of the main advantages – increased authority, traffic, leads etc. – from publishing regularly on Quora, I noticed a couple of other clear benefits too:

  • Answers I gave would frequently spark new ideas for blog posts. On at least one occasion, I expanded an answer into a full post (and then returned to enhance the answer!). The original answer acted like a synopsis, and the post was quicker to produce as a consequence.
  • I attracted more social followers, particularly on Twitter.

Should the longer 90-Day Quora Challenge pan out as forecast above, I’m sure there will be many more advantages to add to the list.
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In Conclusion

There are few other content platforms where you can reach so many people in such a short space of time, and on a purely organic basis. For less than an hour a day, the time investment is minimal, and the benefits – particularly if the exponential growth in answer views continues – make it more than worthwhile.

What do you think? Will you try the 30 Day Quora Challenge yourself?

Related content: Quora for Business: The Complete Guide for Business Owners and Marketers