As you guys have realized, I’m pretty open about my blogging stats.  I like analyzing them and hearing your thoughts on things like why certain articles are doing well or why traffic could be down in a given month.  But one thing has been puzzling me of late: followers.

You see, I was flipping through my ‘Trophies’ in WordPress (which is a feature that shows when you achieved certain milestones in likes, comments or followers) and saw that I had 200 followers on January 31, 2013.  That’s a year and a couple weeks after I started my blog.  I figured that was pretty good, getting 200 followers in only a year considering that I don’t blog on controversial things that get lots of clicks.

Then I noticed another trophy: I had 500 followers on September 26, 2013.  Less than 9 months after getting my 200 follower trophy, I suddenly had 500 followers.  That’s 300 followers in less than 9 months.  Considering it took me a little over a year to get just 200 followers you could say it took me by surprise.  Then I started thinking: the more followers a blog has, the more new followers it seems to get.  But why is that?

Is it because people seem more attracted to bloggers who look like they have their act together?  Or is it because they see a good commenting community?  Could it be because more people hear other people talking about the blog?  It’s hard to say.

What do you think?  Why do blogs with more followers have an easier time getting new followers than smaller blogs?