4 ms·

Show HN: Our startup got featured on HN and BetaList: Statistics, comparison.

32 points by zubairov 14y ago

drobiazko 14y ago
Great analysis. Sustainability is pretty reasonable. There are tons of high quality posts on HN; if you don't gain points fast enough, you disappear from the first page too fast. BetaList has twitter integration which has a much more sustainable effect. What puzzles me is the lower willingness of visitors from HN to provide feedback.
- robotmay 14y ago
  I've noticed that too; I had a similar experience when I asked for feedback on my project, only with Reddit. I got 0 replies and little traffic from HN (admittedly it was pretty sparse on data and I'll resubmit it soon now that I've vastly improved it), but got some wonderfully useful feedback and 100x the traffic from posting to /r/unitedkingdom. A more specific target market, I guess.
jamroom 14y ago
Just wanted to add a second set of 'data points' to this as well - we had a very similar situation, but for us the traffic we got from Betali.st was higher quality - while we had significantly less overall referrals from BetaList than from HN (~1300 vs ~500), the users coming from BetaList were much more apt to create an account, hang around and give us feedback. https://www.trestleapp.com/blog/being-featured-on-beta-list https://www.trestleapp.com/blog/being-featured-on-beta-list So I would highly recommend BetaList if you are just getting rolling.
andreasklinger 14y ago
Do you have already any data on retention?
- zubairov 14y ago
  Hi Andreas, We don't have yet any data about this. We are in private beta phase so we just got started. We track our visitors/users very carefully, so by the time goes by we will definitely see some numbers that we can share with HN and Betalist communities.
knes 14y ago
Betali.st is awesome, we used most of the Free Startup beta listing for Dropdock ( Startupli.st, betapunch ,etc ) and betali.st was definetly the best! Here's the Goal completion for the Week we got featured on those website. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/149780/Overview%20-%20Google%20Analytics.jpg http://dl.dropbox.com/u/149780/Overview%20-%20Google%20Analy... Also, I chatted a little bit with Marc who run the site and he's a great guy. ;)
- keesj 14y ago
  Thanks, and nice graph :) Marc from Beta List. ('keesj' is an old nickname of mine)
3pt14159 14y ago
Bar charts should always start at the x-axis (where the value is 0) because otherwise it warps how large the difference is to a casual reader.
- joering2 14y ago
  Indeed. My favorite recently [1]: omg!! look at chart #1! they lost all their users... not! http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-daily-users-of-draw-something-totally-crater-2012-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-daily-users-...
keesj 14y ago
Here's another comparison in case people are interested: http://blog.capography.com/comparing-traffic-from-betalist-with-traffic http://blog.capography.com/comparing-traffic-from-betalist-w... I should point out the comparison isn't totally fair as in this instance HN traffic is directed to specific blog posts, while the Beta List post linked to the homepage. Disclosure: I'm the founder of Beta List (Marc). The post was written by one of the startups (Capography) featured on our site.
- zubairov 14y ago
  Right. With HN in our samples users need to do an additional hop over to the main website. I think next time we could compare it on the other HN link.
driverdan 14y ago
To get a bit meta, I'm curious what the HN conversion rate is for blog posts about previous HN conversion rates.

32 points by zubairov 14y ago

Great analysis. Sustainability is pretty reasonable. There are tons of high quality posts on HN; if you don't gain points fast enough, you disappear from the first page too fast. BetaList has twitter integration which has a much more sustainable effect. What puzzles me is the lower willingness of visitors from HN to provide feedback.

robotmay 14y ago
I've noticed that too; I had a similar experience when I asked for feedback on my project, only with Reddit. I got 0 replies and little traffic from HN (admittedly it was pretty sparse on data and I'll resubmit it soon now that I've vastly improved it), but got some wonderfully useful feedback and 100x the traffic from posting to /r/unitedkingdom. A more specific target market, I guess.

jamroom 14y ago

Just wanted to add a second set of 'data points' to this as well - we had a very similar situation, but for us the traffic we got from Betali.st was higher quality - while we had significantly less overall referrals from BetaList than from HN (~1300 vs ~500), the users coming from BetaList were much more apt to create an account, hang around and give us feedback. https://www.trestleapp.com/blog/being-featured-on-beta-list https://www.trestleapp.com/blog/being-featured-on-beta-list So I would highly recommend BetaList if you are just getting rolling.

andreasklinger 14y ago

Do you have already any data on retention?

zubairov 14y ago
Hi Andreas, We don't have yet any data about this. We are in private beta phase so we just got started. We track our visitors/users very carefully, so by the time goes by we will definitely see some numbers that we can share with HN and Betalist communities.

knes 14y ago

Betali.st is awesome, we used most of the Free Startup beta listing for Dropdock ( Startupli.st, betapunch ,etc ) and betali.st was definetly the best! Here's the Goal completion for the Week we got featured on those website. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/149780/Overview%20-%20Google%20Analytics.jpg http://dl.dropbox.com/u/149780/Overview%20-%20Google%20Analy... Also, I chatted a little bit with Marc who run the site and he's a great guy. ;)

keesj 14y ago
Thanks, and nice graph :) Marc from Beta List. ('keesj' is an old nickname of mine)

3pt14159 14y ago

Bar charts should always start at the x-axis (where the value is 0) because otherwise it warps how large the difference is to a casual reader.

joering2 14y ago
Indeed. My favorite recently [1]: omg!! look at chart #1! they lost all their users... not! http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-daily-users-of-draw-something-totally-crater-2012-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-daily-users-...

keesj 14y ago

Here's another comparison in case people are interested: http://blog.capography.com/comparing-traffic-from-betalist-with-traffic http://blog.capography.com/comparing-traffic-from-betalist-w... I should point out the comparison isn't totally fair as in this instance HN traffic is directed to specific blog posts, while the Beta List post linked to the homepage. Disclosure: I'm the founder of Beta List (Marc). The post was written by one of the startups (Capography) featured on our site.

zubairov 14y ago
Right. With HN in our samples users need to do an additional hop over to the main website. I think next time we could compare it on the other HN link.

driverdan 14y ago

To get a bit meta, I'm curious what the HN conversion rate is for blog posts about previous HN conversion rates.