6 ms·

The Connection Between Viral Events, Traffic, and Sales

40 points by saddington 12y ago

davidw 12y ago
Depends entirely on the product! I've had LiberWriter on the front page. 0 sales. Because it's the kind of thing that HN readers can do themselves. My guess is that patio11's bingo card thing is pretty similar, despite having been widely covered here.
- saddington 12y ago
  Fascinating! Do you have retrospectives that I could read so that I might learn from your experiences? Thanks for sharing!
  - davidw 12y ago
    I think I pretty much summed it up, above! HN links to my site, 0 sales. I wasn't disappointed; it's pretty clear that HN is very different from my target market.
    - saddington 12y ago
      It's good you had the right perspective... I gave myself a little legroom emotionally and just prepped myself for nothing to happen.
ssharp 12y ago
Sales? Maybe not directly but what about new links generated?
- saddington 12y ago
  Now that's a great point. There were a bunch of back-links... I will do my research and see how this impacts sales on the long-run. GREAT point and one I didn't think about initiatially... yikes...
pbnjay 12y ago
If anything this just goes to say that "Going Viral" in the wrong market isn't worth it - you have to know your market! I'm sure the publicity will be good in the long-term, hard-to-measure sense, but targeting the right market will be more beneficial to short term sales.
- saddington 12y ago
  I couldn't say this any better... "viral" is so context-driven these days! It's a great publicity piece, for sure, but it doesn't always impact the business... which is very clear now in my own experience!
weisser 12y ago
Getting on the front page of Hacker News doesn't really qualify as going viral unless the conversation spreads outwards in some significant way.
- saddington 12y ago
  This is a good perspective and you're probably right... for what its worth, it was the most significant traffic day EVER... but, i think semantically you're comment here is more accurate. All tell you though... it "FELT" like a viral event for me!
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
lucb1e 12y ago
I'm not every surprised that pageviews don't directly correlate with sales. People come to Hacker News, and thereby your blog, to read something interesting, not to see an ad for your product let alone buy it. If your blog post is written in a way that shows people the value of your innovative product, it might turn into a sale. But that's not what we're here for. For the record, I never heard of Desk, but now I have. And if I'd seen your earlier blog post I guess I would have too. Now if I am googling for whatever Desk does (I have no idea) and I find a few products among which Desk, then I am much more likely to go "Oh that was this thing on hacker news" and buy that instead of your competitors. Why? Because I know most products on HN are open source products or small startups with hard working people behind it, and that's something I value and trust rather than any random other search result. Not direct sales perhaps, but publicity is worth something too.
- saddington 12y ago
  You know what's kinda sad... Is that I wasn't thinking about sales when I wrote the post... But after I was like... Doh! I wondered if I had missed an opportunity. But your perspective is a really healthy one. Publicity is good.
  - eli 12y ago
    This is the basic idea of a branding campaign. Lexus buys ads on the web where their target demographic hangs out just so people get used to seeing the logo next to things they enjoy. They don't really expect anyone to click on the banner let alone click on the banner and immediately buy a car.
    - saddington 12y ago
      I read a report once via a big university (I.e. Harvard, Stanford), that spend like this is to remind current customers of the value of their investment, NOT to get new ones...!
DanielBMarkham 12y ago
My favorite description regarding the effect of getting on the front page of HN was from a guy who ran mom and pop site. He said it was like running a small country store and having a busload full of old cantankerous seniors come in, criticize all the merchandise, complain about the free stuff, and then leave without purchasing anything. There was a lot of bustle and noise, but that was about it.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- saddington 12y ago
  I suppose this is what happened to me... A lot of "noise" (it was fun!) but not many sales.
cvs268 12y ago
In terms of SEO it does wonders to the pagerank. The page continues to be placed on the first page of search results for few weeks after the viral influx of visitors. The key is to ensure that relevant keywords are part of the anchor text i.e. the "Title" submitted to HN.
- saddington 12y ago
  Do you think my title(s) were "good"? What do you think could be done better as you review my posts and submissions? I don't often post...
  - cvs268 12y ago
    Would you want your page to be in the results of a search query containing any/all the words in the title? If yes, then the title is good. Also, following the massive influx of visitors on "D-day" a secondary influx of visitors often follows. This is from mentions on twitter/fb/G+. Combined together thats a LOT of eyeballs. The key is to be relevant when posting content on HN. As long as you share something that people find interesting, everyone wins.
    - saddington 12y ago
      Appreciate your advice. I'm going to continue to noodle on this for a bit.
cantbecool 12y ago
This is a definite. Traffic always increases sales of a product if the traffic is focused. Evidence suggests this since people shell out significant sums of money for Adwords for specific keyword terms. As an anecdotal example I used $100 Adwords voucher to drive traffic to my movie torrent meta-search engine https://moviemagnet.net https://moviemagnet.net on specific keywords: 'movie torrents', 'torrents', and 'movie downloads'. The most successful visitors by bounce rate and time on the site was for the most focused keyword, 'movie torrents' by a significant margin. I'd love to see some white papers on the affiliation between sales and focused marketing to tech-savvy consumers, not just casual internet users.
- saddington 12y ago
  I would love to see this too. All of this is "gold" for an indie developer... I'll take all the help I can get!
- josephjrobison 12y ago
  Only because I'm not aware if there are Adsense vouchers, do you mean Adsense or Adwords?
  - cantbecool 12y ago
    Thanks for pointing that out, brother. I always get confused between the two services.
prawn 12y ago
There was a fairly prominent comment in the Hacker News discussion of the original submission that was critical of the product and saying it lacked a very basic, essential feature. I wonder if that deterred many from buying? I know it stood out to me, and a friend who read the same discussion mentioned it in conversation too. Here it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8948414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8948414 The recent Lockitron discussion was quite damning and negative - I imagine that overwhelmingly negative feedback might have limited any sales from HN readers too. That discussion was here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8953457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8953457
- saddington 12y ago
  It's possible, for sure. It makes me think about timing and if one can "prep" for these more like marketing campaigns... But that's probably impossible.
- CPLX 12y ago
  I am one of the people who bought the product this week after reading about it on HN and I like it at lot. I did see that comment but I ignored it, at least in part because it seemed to be sort of templated "hipster dislike" complaints, like about how it's trendy and other people are doing similar things, etc, and not a specific or understandable critique of how the product did/didn't live up to his hopes when purchasing it.
  - saddington 12y ago
    I really do appreciate this. I'm working hard, as best as I can, to iterate on the releases. As I mentioned in that previous comment, i've gotten a lot of grace from users who joined me on this small journey as an indie developer. it's fun, rewarding, and i'm learning a ton. each version will get better and i'm quite thankful it's not a sole echo chamber where i'm justifying my own beliefs with... myself. :)
  - thomasdavis 12y ago
    Oh my fickle psychology is tricked once again. I was put off by the referenced comment the other day and now my confidence is restored. I don't even own a mac...
benologist 12y ago
"If I were to connect raw traffic figures with sales directly it would have equated with something around ~$25,000 in net revenue." If success was as easy as writing content for HN we could all just skip to being millionaires.
- gk1 12y ago
  I think you're overestimating the likelihood of making it to the frontpage... And underestimating the work involved in writing good content.
  - saddington 12y ago
    My hope with all of my blog posts on the development blog is to create value for my readers... All the time. I hope others can learn from my journey... And if it gets a lot of attention then great! Otherwise, the small community that I have will do.
  - benologist 12y ago
    Is "effort" the best metric to measure success with?
    - gk1 12y ago
      I don't understand what you mean. What are you referring to?
      - benologist 12y ago
        HN being hard to reach doesn't compensate for the 25x difference in value against their ideal customers. Reaching HN is a recipe - write, submit, and master getting 2 or 3 early upvotes. There's no unknown steps, there's no mystery, the best time of day to submit has been documented 100 times along with the words you should use and the topics you should write about. Reaching your ideal customers is much harder because you don't have meticulous instructions that read "just add labor".
known 12y ago
Google announced that 56.1% of ads served on the internet are never even “in view”—defined as being on screen for one second or more http://qz.com/307204/google-admits-that-advertisers-wasted-their-money-on-more-than-half-of-internet-ads/ http://qz.com/307204/google-admits-that-advertisers-wasted-t...
UnethicalHacks 12y ago
Can we please stop calling 35k pageviews in one day as "viral"? that's pretty low traffic by any reasonable standard.
- saddington 12y ago
  Context is king, as many people say... That figure is pretty huge considering I average 250 pvs (on a good day)! But it's a good reminder that this is still pretty small in comparison to really big viral experiences. Thanks for that.
arenaninja 12y ago
I missed the previous post, but I've been looking for something to help me write... Then I went to the homepage and saw "...exclusively for OS X". I noped out of that tab as soon as I could
nicky0 12y ago
I disagree that a developer's blog of this kind is important. I believe it is a distraction. Sure, with a bit of effort and luck you can find yourself being discussed on HN for a day. But your time would be better spend improving the product itself. Indie dev "business stats" blogging is more about trying to gain recognition, show off a little bit, and validate your part in the perceived community. For a first time indie, I can see how attractive it is to get into the HN glare. But ultimately it's an ego thing. It has little relation to the actual business. If you do have a blog it should be about something important to the users of the product. Topics relevant to the product itself, and its development. Not the business and the marketing.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

40 points by saddington 12y ago

Depends entirely on the product! I've had LiberWriter on the front page. 0 sales. Because it's the kind of thing that HN readers can do themselves. My guess is that patio11's bingo card thing is pretty similar, despite having been widely covered here.

saddington 12y ago
Fascinating! Do you have retrospectives that I could read so that I might learn from your experiences? Thanks for sharing!
- davidw 12y ago
  I think I pretty much summed it up, above! HN links to my site, 0 sales. I wasn't disappointed; it's pretty clear that HN is very different from my target market.
  - saddington 12y ago
    It's good you had the right perspective... I gave myself a little legroom emotionally and just prepped myself for nothing to happen.

ssharp 12y ago

Sales? Maybe not directly but what about new links generated?

saddington 12y ago
Now that's a great point. There were a bunch of back-links... I will do my research and see how this impacts sales on the long-run. GREAT point and one I didn't think about initiatially... yikes...

pbnjay 12y ago

If anything this just goes to say that "Going Viral" in the wrong market isn't worth it - you have to know your market! I'm sure the publicity will be good in the long-term, hard-to-measure sense, but targeting the right market will be more beneficial to short term sales.

saddington 12y ago
I couldn't say this any better... "viral" is so context-driven these days! It's a great publicity piece, for sure, but it doesn't always impact the business... which is very clear now in my own experience!

weisser 12y ago

Getting on the front page of Hacker News doesn't really qualify as going viral unless the conversation spreads outwards in some significant way.

saddington 12y ago
This is a good perspective and you're probably right... for what its worth, it was the most significant traffic day EVER... but, i think semantically you're comment here is more accurate. All tell you though... it "FELT" like a viral event for me!

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

lucb1e 12y ago

I'm not every surprised that pageviews don't directly correlate with sales. People come to Hacker News, and thereby your blog, to read something interesting, not to see an ad for your product let alone buy it. If your blog post is written in a way that shows people the value of your innovative product, it might turn into a sale. But that's not what we're here for. For the record, I never heard of Desk, but now I have. And if I'd seen your earlier blog post I guess I would have too. Now if I am googling for whatever Desk does (I have no idea) and I find a few products among which Desk, then I am much more likely to go "Oh that was this thing on hacker news" and buy that instead of your competitors. Why? Because I know most products on HN are open source products or small startups with hard working people behind it, and that's something I value and trust rather than any random other search result. Not direct sales perhaps, but publicity is worth something too.

saddington 12y ago
You know what's kinda sad... Is that I wasn't thinking about sales when I wrote the post... But after I was like... Doh! I wondered if I had missed an opportunity. But your perspective is a really healthy one. Publicity is good.
- eli 12y ago
  This is the basic idea of a branding campaign. Lexus buys ads on the web where their target demographic hangs out just so people get used to seeing the logo next to things they enjoy. They don't really expect anyone to click on the banner let alone click on the banner and immediately buy a car.
  - saddington 12y ago
    I read a report once via a big university (I.e. Harvard, Stanford), that spend like this is to remind current customers of the value of their investment, NOT to get new ones...!

DanielBMarkham 12y ago

My favorite description regarding the effect of getting on the front page of HN was from a guy who ran mom and pop site. He said it was like running a small country store and having a busload full of old cantankerous seniors come in, criticize all the merchandise, complain about the free stuff, and then leave without purchasing anything. There was a lot of bustle and noise, but that was about it.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
saddington 12y ago
I suppose this is what happened to me... A lot of "noise" (it was fun!) but not many sales.

cvs268 12y ago

In terms of SEO it does wonders to the pagerank. The page continues to be placed on the first page of search results for few weeks after the viral influx of visitors. The key is to ensure that relevant keywords are part of the anchor text i.e. the "Title" submitted to HN.

saddington 12y ago
Do you think my title(s) were "good"? What do you think could be done better as you review my posts and submissions? I don't often post...
- cvs268 12y ago
  Would you want your page to be in the results of a search query containing any/all the words in the title? If yes, then the title is good. Also, following the massive influx of visitors on "D-day" a secondary influx of visitors often follows. This is from mentions on twitter/fb/G+. Combined together thats a LOT of eyeballs. The key is to be relevant when posting content on HN. As long as you share something that people find interesting, everyone wins.
  - saddington 12y ago
    Appreciate your advice. I'm going to continue to noodle on this for a bit.

cantbecool 12y ago

This is a definite. Traffic always increases sales of a product if the traffic is focused. Evidence suggests this since people shell out significant sums of money for Adwords for specific keyword terms. As an anecdotal example I used $100 Adwords voucher to drive traffic to my movie torrent meta-search engine https://moviemagnet.net https://moviemagnet.net on specific keywords: 'movie torrents', 'torrents', and 'movie downloads'. The most successful visitors by bounce rate and time on the site was for the most focused keyword, 'movie torrents' by a significant margin. I'd love to see some white papers on the affiliation between sales and focused marketing to tech-savvy consumers, not just casual internet users.

saddington 12y ago
I would love to see this too. All of this is "gold" for an indie developer... I'll take all the help I can get!
josephjrobison 12y ago
Only because I'm not aware if there are Adsense vouchers, do you mean Adsense or Adwords?
- cantbecool 12y ago
  Thanks for pointing that out, brother. I always get confused between the two services.

prawn 12y ago

There was a fairly prominent comment in the Hacker News discussion of the original submission that was critical of the product and saying it lacked a very basic, essential feature. I wonder if that deterred many from buying? I know it stood out to me, and a friend who read the same discussion mentioned it in conversation too. Here it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8948414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8948414 The recent Lockitron discussion was quite damning and negative - I imagine that overwhelmingly negative feedback might have limited any sales from HN readers too. That discussion was here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8953457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8953457

saddington 12y ago
It's possible, for sure. It makes me think about timing and if one can "prep" for these more like marketing campaigns... But that's probably impossible.
CPLX 12y ago
I am one of the people who bought the product this week after reading about it on HN and I like it at lot. I did see that comment but I ignored it, at least in part because it seemed to be sort of templated "hipster dislike" complaints, like about how it's trendy and other people are doing similar things, etc, and not a specific or understandable critique of how the product did/didn't live up to his hopes when purchasing it.
- saddington 12y ago
  I really do appreciate this. I'm working hard, as best as I can, to iterate on the releases. As I mentioned in that previous comment, i've gotten a lot of grace from users who joined me on this small journey as an indie developer. it's fun, rewarding, and i'm learning a ton. each version will get better and i'm quite thankful it's not a sole echo chamber where i'm justifying my own beliefs with... myself. :)
- thomasdavis 12y ago
  Oh my fickle psychology is tricked once again. I was put off by the referenced comment the other day and now my confidence is restored. I don't even own a mac...

benologist 12y ago

"If I were to connect raw traffic figures with sales directly it would have equated with something around ~$25,000 in net revenue." If success was as easy as writing content for HN we could all just skip to being millionaires.

gk1 12y ago
I think you're overestimating the likelihood of making it to the frontpage... And underestimating the work involved in writing good content.
- saddington 12y ago
  My hope with all of my blog posts on the development blog is to create value for my readers... All the time. I hope others can learn from my journey... And if it gets a lot of attention then great! Otherwise, the small community that I have will do.
- benologist 12y ago
  Is "effort" the best metric to measure success with?
  - gk1 12y ago
    I don't understand what you mean. What are you referring to?
    - benologist 12y ago
      HN being hard to reach doesn't compensate for the 25x difference in value against their ideal customers. Reaching HN is a recipe - write, submit, and master getting 2 or 3 early upvotes. There's no unknown steps, there's no mystery, the best time of day to submit has been documented 100 times along with the words you should use and the topics you should write about. Reaching your ideal customers is much harder because you don't have meticulous instructions that read "just add labor".

known 12y ago

Google announced that 56.1% of ads served on the internet are never even “in view”—defined as being on screen for one second or more http://qz.com/307204/google-admits-that-advertisers-wasted-their-money-on-more-than-half-of-internet-ads/ http://qz.com/307204/google-admits-that-advertisers-wasted-t...

UnethicalHacks 12y ago

Can we please stop calling 35k pageviews in one day as "viral"? that's pretty low traffic by any reasonable standard.

saddington 12y ago
Context is king, as many people say... That figure is pretty huge considering I average 250 pvs (on a good day)! But it's a good reminder that this is still pretty small in comparison to really big viral experiences. Thanks for that.

arenaninja 12y ago

I missed the previous post, but I've been looking for something to help me write... Then I went to the homepage and saw "...exclusively for OS X". I noped out of that tab as soon as I could

nicky0 12y ago

I disagree that a developer's blog of this kind is important. I believe it is a distraction. Sure, with a bit of effort and luck you can find yourself being discussed on HN for a day. But your time would be better spend improving the product itself. Indie dev "business stats" blogging is more about trying to gain recognition, show off a little bit, and validate your part in the perceived community. For a first time indie, I can see how attractive it is to get into the HN glare. But ultimately it's an ego thing. It has little relation to the actual business. If you do have a blog it should be about something important to the users of the product. Topics relevant to the product itself, and its development. Not the business and the marketing.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]