It’s been over four months since I started working on wikitry. A week back, I was even thinking to upgrade my server, just in case my launch traffic is huge. Here’s the reality, I launched wikitry yesterday (02/19) on Product hunt and it failed miserably. It hurts even more when that stupid GIF Maker ranks more than you
Wikitry got 7 votes in total (of which one came from me and one from my wife) 😎
And here’s my traffic from google analytics (5 users from PH):
Though it’s a disappointing start, I am not totally lost. Infact one of my previous project zittly.com did well on producthunt. It ranked #3 Product of the day, it received 1500 users and 120 signups on the launch day. How is zittly.com doing now ?, pfff, its shutdown already due to not enough traction. ☹
So, the lessons learnt,
🔥 Producthunt / (humans in general) go by trends, when chatbots are famous, any chatbot startup ups the charts, when crypto is trending it gets the votes...
🔥 Sometimes its just plain luck and timing.
🔥 And most important, be prepared for any disappointment. Its just a temporary setback. If it works, its good.
Why not pitch to other press outlets:
Product hunt users are early adopters and they are so forgiving and kind to startups. Plus its easy to get featured in PH.
On the contrary, Its getting more and more difficult to grab reporters attention from sites like Tech Crunch, the next web, Mashable, Lifehacker...
Even if you succeed in grabbing their attention, you are too early to get any press (and they are right too). wiki is always a work in progress and it takes a while before it becomes actually useful.
Why this article:
The web is flooded with success stories of PH Launches, and they never talked about the rest of the 50 apps that flopped for the day. Well you have one now :)
Whats next:
That said, I’ll try running more micro experiments / growth hacking and update the real numbers / results and keep you all informed.
What am I going to do next, I don’t know yet, but I will figure it out in a while 🤔. Because that’s what indie hackers do best.
🎉 Bonus: If you want to get your startup hunted on product hunt. I can help you, DM on twitter @naveen_pacha
🤔 If you have any feedback about https://wikitry.com or have suggestions on what i should try next, please comment
Thanks for posting a failure story about PH! I agree they're thin-spread. As for feedback on Wikitry: I like it but :
I don't think travel planning is niche, but agree on the lack of photos / poor UX that other comments touched on.
Thanks for checking out, understand pictures are so important and ill plan them up in my todo's
Thanks for posting your journey! It definitely helps 'normalize' the ups and downs of launching products. Your awesome attitude and openness for sharing is inspiring to me!
Thanks for checking out and for the kind words :)
You also should try https://betalist.com/ when are on early stages. I think PH is good when you are a little higher in mature level.
For example, for Wikitry, if you got more users before publishing on PH you would probably got more content to show do PH users which would had more change to engage them.
Thanks for the feedback, and sure, ill give it a try
Thanks Douglas for sharing the link! I heard for betalist before but your share came just in time as a remainder. So I submitted my app https://shareguru.io to betalist and let's see what they'll say.
Thanks again
Be ready to wait at least 1 to 2 weeks. At least the last time I applied, it took about 2 weeks to get approved.
How does wikitry differ from Google's top sights? i.e. if I google 'los angeles things to do', I get this, which offers all the same information you do + photos:
https://www.google.com/destination/map/topsights?q=los+angeles+things+to+do&sa=X&biw=1280&bih=1339&site=search&output=search&dest_mid=/m/030qb3t&ved=0ahUKEwiDtfmbybXZAhUS5GMKHchOBroQ6tEBCC0oBTAA
thanks for checking out. yes, once we add more specific info like tickets, planning and parking, wikitry can become a useful resource
@naveen_pacha Great post and most importantly a very self-aware one 👍
Success stories are a bit of a double-edged sword, a lot can be learned, but it doesn't really tell a sane entrepreneurial story.
Great job of shinning a light and being transparent!
What were the most valuable lessons learned, both from your good features on PH, as well as the failed ones?
Thanks and good luck with Wikitry!
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P.S. Also might be helpful to link back to the site everytime you mention it. (SEO, backlinks etc.)
Thanks, for reminding
I have now edited this article and planted few links. Hurray!
Yay! 😄
This was a very interesting and familiar post. Written well thought.
I like wikitry: I like the minimalism aspect of it. For someone like me, I like the quick overview. My suggestions would be, a little bit more information on the main card when you first search a city. The title and hastags are nice, but maybe a star rating or something like that which gives users a quick way of understanding that this is a popular spot. Also on that same page, I have no idea how you are sorting the destinations. So I don't know if the first card is the best destination or the worst.
Second I agree, people like pictures so integrate that.
Third I tried adding a popular destination spot for a city, but was unable to find out how to do so.
But all in all, I like the website it is a good start. Maybe put a section on the website where users can provide feedback. best!
Thanks for checking out. I will work on the pictures integration
Thanks for taking time to leave a comment :)
Thanks for sharing!
I think the homepage needs a lot of work though, I didn't bother checking past there as I was confused and felt it wasn't near ready for launch.
"Ninja tips"? I think the Ninja trend has been gone for years, and it's such an empty term. On mobile you can't see the value proposition which you've displayed below the banner-like slogan. "Above the fold" is very important, as it's the first impression. You should also have someone proofread the copy, as there are weird sentences and misspellings.
If I, a fellow Indie Hacker, won't bother to go beyond the homepage, I don't think a lot of other people will.
I can appreciate the work and effort it took, but in my opinion there is still some polishing to be done before it can even be called an MVP.
Hopefully you can appreciate the honesty, hit me up on Twitter if you want more ;)
PS; if you see people linking their own products on such a personal article as yours, reconsider their motives and feedback..
I strongly agree with you, the homepage needs AB testing. Of course i am happy to see any feedback that helps.
And yeah, i don't mind people piggybacking links. we are all indie hackers and that's what we do. And its not totally a personal article, I did receive some very good feedback in return like yours :)
Quick question about Wikitry:
Are scraping that data from Google? It seems like all of the data you show ("Things to do in <city>", average waiting time, average time spent at the location, etc.) is already provided by Google.
Yes the info is already on google. what we will add is more info like tickets, parking, ticket deals and so on
Although I really would like for your product to have been a success story, it's nice knowing that we all fail. Failing is part of this journey and the only way you learn. This encourages me to push out things I've been working on regardless of where they are and see what happens. Thanks for sharing!
eventually it will, it just a temporary set-back :)
Thanks for sharing your experience. I can relate. My project https://HackSource.xyz didn’t do well on PH either. I finished the day with 15 upvotes mostly from friends and family. If I could do it over again I’d start out marketing to smaller communities to hone my pitch, get early feedback and build an audience before launching on PH.
Thanks for checking it out and leaving a comment :)
Totally agree with @poehah and @douglascorrea .Your site will look better with images .By the way, why have all your sites the same look?
I used the same template, because its easy for me :)
Hi Naveen. I see you have already gotten some really important feebdback. I would like to add one more thing to that. The domain name itself doesn't imply that it's a travel wiki. You might wanna find a more suitable name that says it all without having to explain it every time. I myself have made that mistake and learnt it the hard way. I had to find a more suitable domain name, redo the whole branding and implementation stuff and a year's marketing gone to waste. The product's name was short and self-explaining this time and people loved it and the product.
Apart from that it looks a little too minimalist for my taste, also as others pointed out. But I love the idea and the potential that it has. You should definitely give it a little more time to mature and see if it goes places :)
Appreciate the feedback!
I am going to launch https://www.servicesfordd.com/ on PH
Hey great to see someone talk about the lows of launching and not gaining traction. I have just launched Hipimg on Product hunt today ( https://www.producthunt.com/posts/hipimg ) and I can relate to all the stuff you wrote.
Wow, congrats on your launch. Just upvoted hipimg on PH :)