So, I soft launched my economic and financial social news site, http://Newsley.com two months ago. So far, I've had around 500 uniques and I've served around 2000 pages. I'm fairly happy with that start, but I have no idea what to expect in terms of traffic and growth. The vibe that I get is that at some point, the site will reach a critical mass, and then the community will take on a life of it's own. How long does it take to get to that point? I know sometimes it's never. I'd love to hear some anecdotes from people in similar situations.My guess is that it takes about a year. I've been looking at the internet archive of Reddit: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://reddit.com and it seems like it took them about a year to have people comment on articles on a regular basis.
I'd love to hear some thoughts, experiences, from people who were in similar situations. And, any tips along the way on getting to the first 5k users, would be greatly appreciated.