I launched my side project 2 weeks ago, here are the stats
This is a follow-up post from my first weeks stats
Summary: 3 weeks ago I got to work building a tool that lets you customise your own iOS 14 icons and download them for free. After a week, I launched the tool on Reddit to gauge interest. I wouldn't call the results amazing, but it did seem that people were interested and the r/Ios14homescreen subreddit has been a steady source of traffic.
After 1 week of posting on various subreddits, I decided it was time to launch on Hacker News. This got 5 upvotes and only 97 visitors to the site. I think it's fair to say that it was a flop 🤷♂️.
I posted my first-weeks stats on Indie Hackers, which yielded much better results, with 194 visitors. The post peaked at No. 2 on the front page and also took the top spot in the daily digest newsletter for that day. I didn't expect the post to be received so well here. I had created my account a couple of days before and this was my first post which was written at 12:30 am, whilst waiting for my newborn son to wake up for his 1 am feed.
A couple of days later I saw a wave of traffic from China. A Chinese developer and blogger by the name of Ruan YiFeng had posted my site on his blog. Traffic went from 2-3 concurrent user at any given moment to around 80-90 concurrent users consistently for 2 days.
Second-week stats (week on week increase):
- Users: 1.3K (+ 525.5%)
- Returning users: 164 (+ 241.7%)
- Page Views: 2.7k (+ 380.6%)
- Countries: 73 (+ 33)
- Average engagement time: 1m 01s (- 64.7%)
- Downloads: 251 (+ 3.7%)
- Device: desktop 74.01% (+ 1,273.5%)
- Premium Icon packs sold: 0 (I'm thinking the price may be too high for what they are but I do have some nice neon and neomorphic designs on the way. What do you think about the price?)
Top 3 Traffic Sources (users):
- ruanyifeng.com (477)
- Direct (323)
- Indie Hackers post (194)
Questions to IH: What other platforms would you recommend posting a product like MyIcon.io? And, do you bother tracking analytic events on a free product?
One thing though - I think you can just wait a week or two and try this again. Just because it flopped the first time doesn't mean you can't post it again. :)
Yeah, my plan is to post regular updates and feature releases.
I post screenshots of different iOS icon styles on the r/Ios14homescreen sub regularly and that brings in a small but steady flow of users to the site