Fellow hackers, this is TOTALLY CRAZY!
Yesterday on Sunday at noon, my phone starts buzzing and beeping with email list sign ups and Intercom messages.
I go check Google Analytics, but it says ZERO users. What the heck? Am I getting attacked?!
Then I remember I made a server routing change the day before that might have broken my GA. Sure enough, I had broken it.
I quickly deployed a fix, and BOOM. There it is. A TON of traffic coming from Lifehacker.com. WHAT? Really? No way!
But yes, there it was, The Gluten Project, right on the front of Lifehacker.com.
This was the start to 12 hours of solid craziness. At any one time, there were 80–120 people on the site.
Four weeks ago when I started building it, I knew there was no way I could gather affiliate links for all 35,000 products on my site. So instead, I added a Find button that triggers an Intercom message asking where to find the product. It was a great idea and worked well.
But it works less well when you get a new Intercom message every other minute for hours on end!! My wife and I spent all day finding products for people as fast as possible. We finally surfaced at the top of the backlog a little after midnight.
But this morning, we wake up to another 100 messages waiting for help. It's going to be a long week!
The Gluten Project is the first website in the world for finding all certified gluten free products. If you know someone with a gluten disorder, please tell them about it!
Nice work! Hope you’re tracking everything so you can share some traffic stats.
Yep! 8,000 new visitors yesterday and 4,200 so far today.
About 15,000 since launch!
And today, we passed over 1,000 email subscribers!
Totally crazy :D
Awesome. Congrats! How'd you get that connection in order to be chosen for an article on Lifehacker?
I didn't even make a connection! I'm assuming the author saw it on Product Hunt last week, but I'm not sure.
I sent this to my sister last week who has 2 celiac children! Thank you so much for making this. :D
Wow, that's crazy! You're welcome!
Congrats! 🎉 I’m not sure was it you or not, but I remember someone shared a link to a landig page here on the forum. Anyway happy that you have such a big launch!!!
Yes, that was me with the landing page! And thank you! :)
That's a big win. Lifehacker is incredibly powerful.
Congrats!
I don't know if it's intended, but the layout seems to be broken https://imgur.com/a/3FF2R
Uh oh! What browser and OS was this with?
Windows, latest stable Chrome.
I guess part of the issue is that I was scale the screen by 200%
That's awesome! Congrats on the success and I wish you many more.
Thank you! :)
Woah congrats on the Lifehacker feature Brandon! I'm rooting for you guys!
Hey, fancy seeing you on here! lol. And thank you very much!
Congrats! You'll probably see other blogs picking up your story as well after being featured on Lifehacker, which creates massive SEO benefits and long-term traffic!
Yeah, I'm hoping!! :D
Congratulations! I can feel the excitement in your words. Happy for you :)
I was wondering if this is a not for project? If not, then do you mind sharing how you are currently monetizing the traffic or are planning it in future? No need to be elaborate just some hints would suffice. Thanks!
We have affiliate links on the site right now, but only for about 300 products. We'll hopefully have an affiliate link on every product, but it'll take some time to accomplish that!
Also right now, when some messages us about where to find a product, we'll send them an affiliate link.
We're currently affiliates for ThirveMarket.com, Nuts.com, Walmart, and Amazon. But we're still in the Amazon probation period.
Great work on this Brandon! You might want to check out iHerb's affiliate program as well (as someone who's signed up to a few programs) + adding gluten-free cookbooks, in a non-distracting way, might be interesting in the future.
Hey that's a new one for me! Thank you for the tip!
Congratulations!
Thank you! :)
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