Trough Of Sorrow
Launched https://blogsurf.io a few months ago and launching went pretty well, getting to the front-page of Hacker News [0] and some subreddits [1], but the usage has dropped down a lot since then, since I didn't have much retention methods.
Have plans to start getting more consistent traffic, and still generally optimistic, but that trough of sorrow sure is sorrowful.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26506126
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/m51ugh/list_of_c_blogs_by_individual_developers/
Remember, someone else would love to be in your situation. Getting to the front page of HN and getting some traffic are major wins. Even if you stop now (you shouldn't), you have still gotten further than many, many people.
Experiment and see what sticks. Give each experiment enough time though, before you move on.
Thanks for the support!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0m2BT-aDBxU
This comment was deleted 4 years ago
Yeah that's a fair point, I guess it's a bit of a strange product since there are no user accounts or signups or anything like that right now. Right now I quantify users as people who go to the site and click some links, because presumably they found something interesting to click on.
In this case the execution is a bit unclear. I could spend more time building out a fully fledged version of the product with user accounts etc. But I could also spend more time getting consistent traffic to this blog directory, which I believe is attainable with SEO.
The growth vs retention thing is something I've posted about before. Though SEO I think may count more as some type of 'retention' since it is somewhat consistent traffic, even though it's new people.
Current plan is get more consistent traffic, then get sponsorship, then build more sticky features like user accounts, and more functionality.
Indeed, views without signups mean very little. I also have had some up moments with my blog but got 0 friends/followers/emails from it :(
Yeah fair enough, I agree that not all traffic is created equally and if people are bouncing then that's as good as not having them show up in the first place.