A well-timed "Show HackerNews" post brings in 10 new paying customers — a mini analysis

TL;DR

My e-book containing annotated Elasticsearch examples is getting some traction, thanks in large part to a well-timed "Show HackerNews" post bringing in over 1K page views in a day:

10 of those visitors became customers — i.e. purchased access to the handbook:

The Backstory

I've been experimenting with various channels to promote my (quite technical) handbook — from Typeform pre-sales, through Reddit posts, to "shameless plugs" in some of my StackOverflow answers. All of these channels brought some customers but they didn't seem to have enough reach.

I then tried posting on HackerNews where the audience is much broader. I was too eager to post something — so I did. On a Friday 🥴. Two upvotes and barely any reach.

So I tried again

I chose a Thursday — when people still work but are already thinking about the weekend.
But more importantly, I had to adjust the wording. Something that works on LinkedIn likely won't work on HackerNews. The community over there prefers no-nonsense, straight-to-the-point posts.

The copy from the first post:

Chances are, you or someone you know is struggling with Elasticsearch. I got something for y'all.
I found some time during quarantine and put together a collection of actionable guides containing step-by-step solutions to real-world, non-trivial Elasticsearch use cases that I faced over the years.
Long story short, this handbook is something I wish existed back when I was starting off w/ ES.

got changed to:

Hello all, after hundreds of hours spent on answering questions on stackoverflow, I observed a few barriers of entry that Elasticsearch newbies struggle with. It's first and foremost the formidable query language.
Most of us learn a new technology by reverse-engineering what works elsewhere. So I've published a handbook with carefully curated practical examples that demystify the query language and provide a solid foundation to build on.

See the difference? The first post was focused on my experience.

The second introduces a value proposition — what is my reader's experience and what will the book bring them?

That's something that people can connect with.

In hindsight, this seems more than obvious. I bet I saw @harrydry discuss the psychology of the second approach in one of his posts… But I suppose I had to learn it on my own.

Forcing my luck?

HackerNews virality and reach are difficult, if not impossible, to force. The content needs to resonate with the community.

At the same time, there is the aspect of luck and coincidences.

I reckon I was lucky to submit my post exactly one day after a highly upvoted post about the Go Programming Language:

I used a very similar title for my post and skimmed through the other thread to learn what worked and what did not.

Something tells me that a non-trivial percentage of those who clicked on the first post also clicked on mine (be it out of curiosity or due to a positive case of the Association Fallacy 😊).

On the other hand, approx. 25% of the 1K visits were non-referred — meaning that HackerNews users actually shared the site with friends and colleagues who are into Elasticsearch and might find the Elasticsearch Handbook useful 👌.