> sparking a controversial discussion in the comments.
I suppose that generates views but to me it seems a cynical abuse of the platform.
Not related to your achievement, but...
If you want āusersā - post a well-paid but fake job on Upwork and ask applicants to first check out your site/app.
I donāt suggest this but Iāve noticed it from a couple real jobs Iāve posted. Of course, these āusersā will be beyond meaningless for any useful metric. I guess if your app/site was geared toward Upwork freelancers, it could work as a strategy.
Congrats to the Typefully team, I really like the idea, and I'll give a it try soon.
Also thanks for sharing the numbers, and the your insider thoughts.
For everyone else building a product, don't let this success stories discourage you from launching your product sooner, you are not expected to have 1000 user in a one day, launching is not what you want to celebrate, you need to launch as soon as possible, and celebrate product market fit if it ever happens, learning from your users is what can get you there, but you need to launch first!
It's interesting to see the difference these days between PH numbers on launch day and after being featured in the newsletter.
I launched last week and got to the number 3 product of the day. Traffic stats similar to yours. Next day after the newsletter went out and it was a bit of a letdown. Not what I expected.
Would be interesting to see these numbers for you. Maybe PH isn't the launch pad it used to be
Thanks so much for being forthcoming about the donations you received, as well as your commitment to maintaining free features. I've been weighing a paid subscription against voluntary donation for my own bootstrapped product launch, and I seem to keep finding more evidence that the donation model probably isn't the way to sustainability.
We almost had a similar experience with our front-page HN post here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25314170
Except we were not prepared for the traffic, and it took the site down for over 24 hours! Lesson learned...
> Yesterday we launched Typefully, a write-only interface for Twitter, after weeks of work and refinement. I told the whole story on Twitter @frankdilo.
The idea of a write-only interface is interesting in itself. I was expecting to see something about it on the Typefully page but didn't.
One very slightly annoying thing is that the orange/red "over character limit" only appears after the pause/delay.
I don't know if you could signal that more immediately (inline perhaps, without updating the thing on the right)?
Just because people signed up, it doesn't mean they will stick around. I would be curious how much will stick around.
You mention a tip-jar āpatronā strategy, and I took a second look having not noticed anything like that when you launched the actual product.
I still donāt see anything.
Are you guys hiding a tip button somewhere in the interface after you sign in?
Are you asking for one-offs? Or recurring?
#alwayscurious
Congrats on launching the app! You have mentioned the earnings from a tip-jar system. I also noticed that Typefully links to Mailbrew. It will be interesting to see the traffic numbers to Mailbrew and how many of them ended up signing up/paying for Mailbrew.
Gotta love the whole "frontpage of HN 2.0: meta article about getting to the front page" approach many have found success with recently :D
Seriously though, love seeing the actual metrics on how this process went, thanks!
Thanks for respecting dark mode in browsers that have it set. Sent a tip.
Is this a sort of Twitter Reddit crossover ? I like the two the way they are. One for short form and the other for long form expression.
To even go to Typefully.app, it is asking me to signin with Twitter. Is that how you are getting new users?
get this spam off the front page
8% conversion rate is pretty good for a PH/HN audience.
Three things I'm sure helped the signup rates, which others should copy:
- Low-friction registration using SSO.
- Glimpse of the product in the background.
- Let guests see and click on gated features. (Even if visitor clicks "Or try it instead" they still see "+ New Draft" button, which leads to the signup prompt again.)
I've tested these in other apps and found they significantly increase signups. The first because of low friction, the second because--I suspect--it shows the visitor what they're about to experience in just a few more clicks, and the third because it shows the guest what's possible and offers multiple chances to sign up.
Well done!