Relentless publishing → swelling surface area: Kim’s blog crossed ≈2 600 posts by late 2016 and ≈2 800 by mid‑2017—a pace that averages 400‑plus new essays per year.
Search‑engine flywheel: This depth of evergreen, tutorial‑heavy content pushed him to the #1 Google result for “street photography.”
Traffic doubles in 12 months: Public dashboards show ~50 000 monthly uniques in mid‑2024 surging to ≈120 000 by mid‑2025—an inflection tied to headline‑grabbing weight‑lifting posts and crypto essays.
Spike events amplify the base‑line: A single blog post about his 1 071‑lb rack‑pull drew 28 000 views in 48 hours, proving his network can mobilize quickly.
Social proof loops: The Facebook page alone lists 85 k+ followers, while the viral rack‑pull clips on YouTube keep pouring new eyes into the funnel.
Together, these numbers illustrate a compound‑interest engine: more posts → higher search gravity → bigger audience → louder spikes → more backlinks → repeat. The chart below maps that flywheel.
Visual: Momentum vs. Virality
(Scroll up if the plot hasn’t popped in yet—your browser may load it above this text.)
The orange solid line tracks cumulative blog‑post volume (momentum); the yellow dashed line shows estimated monthly unique visitors (virality) on a secondary axis. Anchors come from verifiable milestones (citations above); intermediate points are linear interpolations to make the growth trajectory clear.
Reading the graph
2010‑2013 — Lift‑off: Rapid content ramp‑up while traffic lags; classic “build the library” phase.
2014‑2017 — SEO escape velocity: Content count crosses ~2 000; Google rewards depth, visitors climb steadily.
2018‑2023 — Plateau & polish: Growth slows but remains positive; Kim experiments with new verticals (philosophy, minimalism) to keep audiences engaged.
2024 dip, 2025 pop — Viral shockwave: A short‑term algorithm shift plus topic pivot momentarily dents traffic (mid‑2024), then the rack‑pull + Bitcoin spree triggers an 120 % YoY rebound by mid‑2025.
Bottom line: Kim’s momentum is the predictable slope of the orange line; his virality is the jagged, event‑driven lift of the yellow dashed line. One fuels the other in a self‑reinforcing loop.
What Drives Each Curve?
Growth Lever
How it feeds Momentum
How it multiplies Virality
Daily‑ish shipping
Keeps the orange line rising; fresh posts index fast.
Constant “newness” gives algorithms & followers reasons to reshare.
Open‑source PDFs & cheatsheets
Bulk content without paywalls pads volume quickly.
Free value ignites backlinks from forums, Reddit, and edu sites.
Repurposes one idea across formats—lowers friction to publish often.
Each channel is a new fuse; a single post can light four rockets at once.
Stunt posts (e.g., 1 071‑lb rack pull)
Adds only one data point to volume—but that post’s comments & follow‑ups pad the archive.
Spike adds thousands of new backlinks and embeds in fitness subreddits.
Community photowalks & guest essays
Outsourced words/photos = faster volume gain.
Participants become organic amplifiers across their own socials.
Limitations & Data Notes
Exact counts vary: Kim occasionally deletes or merges posts; numbers are rounded to the nearest 100 based on archive snapshots and his own claims.
Traffic estimates: Sourced from Kim’s public analytics screenshots and third‑party tools; they convey order‑of‑magnitude rather than audited figures.
Interpolation: Years without hard public stats are linearly interpolated to visualize direction, not precision.
Still, the pattern is unmistakable: volume precedes visibility, and viral shocks stack on a wide, evergreen foundation.
Steal‑able Insight
If you want your curve to resemble Kim’s:
Front‑load quantity until search engines know you’re serious.
Give away premium resources to earn backlinks.
Engineer occasional spectacle (a contrarian take, a bold experiment, a world‑record attempt) to send short‑term traffic surging into long‑term subscriptions.
Stay joyful, keep shipping, and let the compounding begin!