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39 Comments

First place on HackerNews. Stats: Traffic and Regs

Yesterday I decided to post my app Appliku (Python/Django Deployment SaaS) https://appliku.com/ on HackerNews.

Here is the post:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28468660

Got to the front page almost instantly.
During 6 hours the post was on the front page jumping between 4th and 1st places.

Stats:

  • 108 comments

  • Site visits:: 678

  • New users: 72

  • Newsletter sign ups: 14

  • Servers created: 5

  • Apps created: 5

No new paid subscriptions.

  1. 5

    Interesting, I thought it would be more visits than that. But 10% conversion rate of visits into users is pretty good!

    1. 4

      hey, i think it was higher. HN is a very tech savvy audience. they probably have ad blockers and tracking blockers enabled, so the only stats that we can trust is regs :)

      1. 3

        I might be able to help you with that: https://pirsch.io/

        Congratulations on the launch!

        1. 3

          Oh interesting product. How does it compare to Cloudflare stats?

          1. 3

            Hmm, I haven't tried it. From what I've heard, they seem to do a bad job at filtering bots. It's probably still better than using GA on the client-side.

      2. 2

        Yes, I got number 8 a few month ago and my server logs says I had 20k more visitors than the day before so if you got first, you must have had a whole lot more than that

      3. 2

        A lot will have JS blocked as well. When I landed in the top on HN a few times, I've pulled server logs once, and the numbers were closer to 5K, while Analytics showed around 1K.

        1. 2

          they block JS? that's pretty crazy :O how do people browse lmao

          1. 2

            You don't have to block all scripts of course. I use uBlock Origin for example to block Google Analytics and other ad-tech companies, but it won't block any first-party JS.

            1. 2

              Yeah, I also use a dedicated Analytics blocker, so it won't affect stats on my sites. I know there are different methods, this one is the simplest though.

            2. 2

              Yeah! Brave does this very well with "Brave shields"

          2. 1

            I wanted to say “have you seen HN? that’s how they would see the whole internet without JS”)))

        2. 2

          I am lazy to get and verify that :D but i bet i will see at least double of what GA registered

          1. 3

            Visitors from HN will block quite aggressively. I've seen rates ranging from 60% to 80%, depending on your content. Tech-savvy people will almost always block trackers (which is good!).

  2. 2

    Sharing data from a similar situation.

    We mentioned our product (https://saga.so) in a comment of a post that was on the front page for a few hours. The comment was not even in the upper half of the post.

    • 390 visits
    • 21 signups
    • 5.4% conversion rate
    1. 3

      Oh. Nice tactic, thanks for sharing. I suppose your post was related to the context of the OP? lol

    2. 2

      Yeah, it is more safe tactic to ride someone else's train that is already on top than lottery of putting your own post on the front page.

      Great numbers I just say. Also followed you :)

      1. 1

        Thanks! Yes, we haven't done a show post there yet.

  3. 2

    Thanks for the write up!

    I actually posted a Show HN around the same time (maybe a bit earlier) for Art by an AI here

    There was no discussion and only a handful of upvotes. 100 visits for the day. Though as you mentioned a big chunk of HN users block any analytics.

    Interesting to see the difference between the two!

    1. 2

      What an amazingly weird and cool project you have built 👌

    2. 1

      That’s an intersting thing. So AI actually generates those pics? tell me how it works

  4. 1

    I suspect your analytics aren't correct because so many of the people have ad blockers that block most analytics. And I was also on the front page of Hacker News this week and I got about 11.5k visits from it that are 100% from HN but I suspect the real number is 15-20k since not all browsers give the referrer.

    1. 1

      i am lazy to analyze logs, but on the day of publication - log file weigths 100x more than avg other days' log file. usually it is 20-40 visitors. 100x more - means 2000-3000 visits.

  5. 1

    Congrats on the launch and I think Django/Python projects need your service badly. It's such a pain to deploy. Hope you get some signups as a result.

  6. 1

    That's amazing! I would have expected more traffic, but just the fact that you got the #1 spot on the front page is crazy. I'll be following your journey 💪

  7. 1

    I was one of these new users! Seems like a great app, gonna check it out this weekend

    1. 1

      hey glad you like it. drop me a line in twitter DM or in discord will gladly help you onboard https://appliku.com/discord

  8. 1

    nice share thank you

  9. 1

    Thanks for sharing those numbers. Interesting to see as we are also considering launching on HN after our Product Hunt launch today.

    1. 2

      Make sure you don’t do it with a fresh account. Like with any other community - participate in community long before you choose to publish there. See what is reaction on this or that, maybe you spot similar products published - see what questions/comments happen.

      1. 2

        Great advice - thank you!

      2. 1

        Great advice, this is why my HN (and PH) launch failed miserably xD.

        How much time do you suggest spending on the community before even attempting to post/launch? How much time per day or week if you can be precise :D

        1. 1

          role of chance is too big tbh. well, until you are comfortable i guess? dedicate a morning on one channel every day for some time. like an hour. or evening (to not ruin the rest of the day lol). and give it a week, two? you will get comfortable there, observe some patterns. try posting stuff that is not related to you, but in your niche, see how audience reacts. see if posting in comments work better for you.

          1. 1

            Great advice, I feel like this is a sustainable tactic. Cheers!

  10. 1

    Congrats! I had a article hit the top, ended up with about 4000 visitors day of, and another 2000 over the next week or so.

    As far as I can tell, I had very little signups from it though. Kinda weird that way. I didn't have a CTA at the time though so maybe that's why

    1. 2

      CTA is important, nobody gonna seek your Sign Up button on the outskirts of your article/site :D

      I know what i am talking about. up until recently i had landing page for the app on some secondary page lol. Having it on the main page kind of helps with conversion :D :D

      1. 2

        I guess technically if it's on a secondary page it's not the landing page ^^

      2. 2

        Hahaha funny how the most obvious things aren't very obvious.

        I didn't expect my article to do so well, it was the first blog post I ever wrote that I spent more than like 30 minutes writing. Spent around 15 hours on it. After it blew up, I was like "Ah man", but also "wahoo!". Haha.

  11. 1

    That's amazing! I also had a show HN post a couple months ago and got 2k visitors in 2 days. HN community is very good for technical products :D

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