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I launched Indie Hackers (https://www.indiehackers.com https://www.indiehackers.com) a few weeks ago on HN. To make the site, I worked with about 12 different f
by csallen 10y ago
I launched Indie Hackers (https://www.indiehackers.com https://www.indiehackers.com) a few weeks ago on HN. To make the site, I worked with about 12 different founders to decide on formatting; come up with questions; and ultimately conduct, edit, and publish interviews.
I waited to post on a Thursday morning, partly because I didn't want to compete with tons of new stories on a Monday/Tuesday, and partly because I wanted to launch as early as possible and I knew the MVP was basically done.
I let the founders I worked with know I'd be posting on HN, and they were eager to jump in the thread and answer questions that people had about their companies. I think this made the thread a lot more engaging. I also think the interviews themselves really resonated with people on HN, because they have a very "Ask HN" feel to them.
The thread ended up being on the front page of HN for about 36 hours, and stayed in the top 1-3 spots for most of that, finishing with 971 upvotes. (link to HN comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12269425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12269425) I got about 100,000 pageviews on Thursday and 60,000 on Friday. Someone submitted it to ProductHunt on Sunday morning, where it stayed at #1 all day and got about 20,000 pageviews.
That was 3 weeks ago. Today the site has gotten 283,000 pageviews total. Daily traffic is around 2-3k pageviews (30-50x lower than it was on launch day). I've added a blog, more than doubled the number of interviews, and I'm working on adding a forum. I've also added two sponsors, from whom I've made about $600 total so far.
- Guyag 10y agoWould love a RSS feed for the blog
- csallen 10y agoYep, it's on the way! I've got a question for you, as someone who doesn't use RSS feeds personally. Does it matter to you whether or not the full content of the post is included in the feed? Also, what RSS reader do you use?
- AussieCoder 10y agoI think an RSS feed would be great too. I use Digg Reader and just headlines, or headlines and key facts (revenue, founders, etc.) would be fine.
- Guyag 10y agoIt would be nice to have the full content in the feed so I can read it in my reader. I use feedly.
- palakz 10y agoI came across Indie Hackers on PH few days back. Loving it and this was insightful. Thanks! :D