Ten Steps To Ten Thousand Sign Ups Before We Even Launch Our Startup | Hacker News Reader

Ten Steps To Ten Thousand Sign Ups Before We Even Launch Our Startup

sachinagarwal.com

139 pointssachinag59 comments

At time of writing:

Twitter followers: 77 Facebook followers: 75

Their tactic of making it really difficult to join the beta doesn't seem to be working so far, but he didn't say how long they've been doing this.

Be interesting to see if they get to a good number in beta. This feels a little like meaningless link bait till then.

Please post again in a few months time with how this worked out!

Agreed. The marketing (blog text) was impressive. But you lost about 90% credibility by having essentially 0 followers on twitter. For a site of such broad appeal, you should be way higher than that.

It's doesn't match the air of authority you project on social media tactics.

"This feels a little like meaningless link bait till then". Spot on.

When I saw the title of the article I assumed that they already got the 10,000 sign ups and were explaining how did they manage to do it.

As I was reading through their list I was getting more and more skeptical. Some of their points make sense, others, simply don't ring true.

I then checked their Twitter account and saw that they had (at the time of writing) 93 followers. Really? 93? Not that I think that Twitter followers is the most useful metric as a measure of interest in a web-app (or that Twitter is really useful as a marketing tool for that matter) but for people that claim to be riding the waves of the viral marketing and that seem to put a lot of value and effort into increasing their Twitter and FB numbers, 93 followers sure looks a little low.

I had to come back to the comments in HN and to read carefully the title of the submission again to realize that they don't actually claim to have the 10,000 followers yet. Only that they want to reach that number. And they hope that the steps outlined in the article will help them to get there.

This misunderstanding may well be because English is not my first language, but even so, it still smells like link bait to me. I'm pretty sure that almost everyone around here will have his own opinion on how to get 10,000 sign ups. Until that opinion has been proven to work in real life, it's still a hunch, not all that useful.

It's not that we want to make it hard to join the beta, it's that we want to reward the people who promote us to others. Everyone who gives us their e-mail address gets in early. Those who help us out get in earlier.

I promise to do a post-mortem, success or failure.

Making it to difficult to join, will stop to success of this. There is a border interested customers won't cross and making them to beg hard probably is that border.

I'm a huge, huge fan of #3 (treating content as something more than blog posts). Calling something a blog post is a lot like calling something a newspaper article: it gives you an instantaneous framing for the value of it. That framing is not the one you desire in most cases.

You'd be freaking amazed how much the presentation of something influences how much people trust it, how long it's shelf life lasts, and whether it spreads. This includes transparently superficial bits like whether it has a decent logo or illustration accompanying it or whether you date the content. (Don't date evergreen content! It only compromises perceived value to know that your article about elementary school arithmetic was first published in 1993. Addition hasn't freaking changed!)

I'm actually going to disagree with the "don't date evergreen content", at least for us. Because we're writing about financial information, we're going to datestamp revisions because we want someone who comes to us via Google/Bing/DDG to know that we're on top of changes to the law/investment environment/etc.

The only reason we haven't yet is because I haven't figured out a way to have it appended automagically to Pages in WordPress.

Edit your theme's page.php to include something similar to:

Last modified <?php the_modified_time('F d, y') ?>

So your understanding of evergreen content and my understanding are a little different. I agree, if I covered topics where my advice would get stale, I would prefer to let people know that I have updated the advice recently so that it was not stale. I just disagree that writing pieces which are capable of getting stale is a good use of my time, since I am time- and resource-constrained.

Writing anything which could go stale is time debt for the future, since I will have to rewrite later, which is extra work for rather little marginal benefit. Worse, it means I'll have to periodically review and rethink everything I've ever published to see whether it needs updating, which is extra work with no benefit that gets progressively more expensive over time as I grow my little content forest.

I think there are virtually infinite topics in investing which are truly evergreen, where you could let the article sit for a hundred years and never need to touch it again. "What is a preferred stock?" is one. "Should I invest in mutual funds managed by a human being?" is another, though that is more controversial. (cough No. cough)

So anyhow, plant evergreens.

On "Should I invest in mutual funds managed by a human being?" we agree. That article is in the editing process as we speak. :)

"Last revised" might be a better wording.

The US was unusually stable, as countries in history go, over the previous 100 years. Even so, the nature of the stock market, the kinds of things traded in it, and the regulations pertaining to them, have changed fairly significantly since 1910. I believe a preferred share is still more or less the same thing now that it was then, but that they're used for fairly different things.

In any case, you should leave the judgment of whether your writing is still worth reading when it's ten, thirty, or a hundred years old to your readers, rather than trying to make the judgment yourself.

I think you just made Gabriels day.

Gabriel will be even happier when our next push goes live. :) (He's in the preview.)

Did you just disagree with Patio11? :)

I couldn't resist.

Interesting and undeniably clever. However given you're looking for so many people you sure make it sound like you're doing me a favour whereas I see it as doing you a favour.

Given I know nothing about your product, or how good it is, why on earth would I want to shout about it from the rooftops before I've even used it for any length of time? You're effectively asking me to lend my trust network to you to promote your product, without letting me use it first.

It seems to me you're more likely to get the techcrunch-refreshing, ohh-shiny, sign-up-to-anything crowd than the kind of people that might be really interested in your product.

There's an air of arrogance about this technique that rubs me up the wrong way.

I'm sure it will be successful for them, but I won't clamouring to be one of the chosen few.

I agree completely. In addition, they seem to have achieved "meta-arrogance" by blogging about it as if it's the right way to do things.

If you sign up for the Preview and never once tweet, Like, link to us, or whatever - if you're just like the 90% of normal users who come our way - you still get early access to Blueleaf. The vast, vast majority of our sign ups look like this, and that's totally OK. But we can't expect random people to come to our site if they don't read about it somewhere. This is what we're doing to try to make it easier for people to find us.

I understand, but that post was written as though you were running an exclusive nightclub, not a startup. Surely if the product really is as good as what came across to me as arrogance suggests, the buzz will happen organically, no?

Excellent point. Why would you blog, tweet, etc. about a site you haven't even used yet. What kind of loser demographic are they shooting for?

I signed up and got an email back that basically said "thanks for signing up, now dance monkey".

I'm the guy whose money you want and the way your blog and the sign up was worded, I feel like I'm dealing with a company who has forgotten this. Usually a company will forget AFTER they are successful, not before.

I'm not sure if I hope this works or not. I will keep tabs on it to see just how far a beta system can be pushed. I'm glad this test is on your dime and not mine! :)

It really said "dance monkey"? Because you know sarcasm is lost in text.

No, but we really should. :)

Here's the part of the e-mail the parent is referring to:

"In the meantime, if you'd like to follow our story as we progress, you can:

1) Subscribe to our blog: http://www.blueleaf.com/blog

2) Follow @blueleafcom on Twitter: http://twitter.com/blueleafcom

3) Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/blueleafcom

4) Join our LinkedIn Blueleaf A-team at http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2631858 and follow the company: http://www.linkedin.com/companies/blueleaf.com "

It's a lot of links, but I don't think it's worded in a way that says we expect a user to do any of these things.

@chegra: Heh, it was surely sarcasm.

The email is not rude, but its not the traditional "we are so thankful you've signed up, here's what you asked for" either.

I figured out what bugs me about this approach. I took the time to punch my email in and instead of getting my reward, I am told of a bunch of other things I can do to get involved with BlueLeaf. Why would I? I don't know how good your reward is and I have no prospect of sampling it.

I'm as simple as a lab mouse hitting the button for a pellet. I received no pellet and am now uninterested as a result.

I am however interested in how other people react. I acknowledge that I'm a crotchety old man at 28. :)

Just to be clear, you expected to be able to use a beta system right away after providing your email, and not having access to that made you feel unsatisfied/uninterested? The signup button does say "request an invite", is that not enough?

They seem to think they're more interesting than they are. That approach might work for getting access to a beta for the next Valve game, or a preview of the PlayStation 4 or whatever. But for this site? Bah. I've lost interest already.

Why not concentrate on a couple of mediums? Have you A/B tested this? Do your emails track clicks? Why not?

If you don't expect people to click the links, why include them?

Question overload, apologies.

Upvoted - great questions.

We use Wufoo for our lead capture; we could A/B test by creating two different forms, but we haven't. These e-mails don't track clicks, but all our other e-mails do.

I'll take the single incremental click/follow/Like any day; it's pretty clear that there's some return there, even if it's low. Also, it appears that those who Like on Facebook, in particular, are normals and not tech enthusiasts, which warms my heart.

I'm confused about if the things outlined in the blog have actually been executed, or if this is just a theoretical plan.

You don't have many twitter users, don't have many facebook 'likes', and there is just one note written so far on the linked facebook notes page.

And what's with the customer acquisition cost - I thought you have not launched yet, who are your 'customers' then?

Twitter does not allow searches for old tweets, so I cannot say how effective the twittter thingy is.

So now, is this a tried and proven way, or is this just someones idea on what could work?

It's what we're doing right now. Time will tell if it works or not, but our e-mail capture numbers indicate that it is working.

#1 and #2 sound like dickhead moves to me. I don't think of any webapp I've ever wanted a part of badly enough to "beg for an invite", nor do I think I'd ever want to trust my financial information to a company that has so much raw contempt for their users that they would even consider making potential users "beg publicly" for an invite.

You think it is a good idea to brag about belittling users?

Oh please, please, let me in, let me use your awesome product!

It doesn't seem like the guy on twitter was pleading. You might have some good ideas about marketing, so please, go ahead with them, but get over your self. You are not that great and you're product is not that great.

Have some respect for the potential consumers who can make or break you.

Pleading is a crappy verb, agreed and point well taken.

Thanks for listening, I hope my criticism is helpful. Best of luck in your endeavor.

I rather enjoyed the article, but the fact that:

  * The site isn't https by default
  * Going to https://www.blueleaf.com (or non-www) shows an untrusted warning in Firefox

made me weary of signing up. It looks like a beautiful service, but any website handling real money or financial information should be secure by default.

Not to be a pedant, but that's 'wary' and not 'weary'. :)

Why would you insist on a homepage, with no secure information or login form whatsoever, have SSL security on it? Neither Quicken nor Mint do this on THEIR home pages.

I didn't know there was a secure.blueleaf.com subdomain, and I don't use Mint or Quicken.

Financial sites should be secure by default, load times be damned.

But what's insecure about the marketing pages being sent in the clear?

It's common practice to setup a subdomain for your secure communications so that you aren't having to send images, javascript and public pages through HTTPS. Load times are part of the reason, but the other is that it takes more resources on the server end too.

I'd love to hear your actual reasoning on this though.

Because the users go to the marketing page to find the login button. You're still just as vulnerable to MITM.

HTTPS for the marketing site increases page load times; there's no real reason to force people just browsing by to a secured server. The app itself, of course, is secure; it's just on a different subdomain: https://secure.blueleaf.com/signin

My todo for today (assuming my cold doesn't lay me low) is to write about our approach to security.

Is the page load time that significant in bounce rates? (Your list includes A/B testing; how about figuring out if you get more emails when the marketing page is secure or insecure?)

We run every single e-mail we get through Flowtown so we know a bit about who’s coming in through the open door.

For some reason, and I'm not 100% sure why, this makes me do a 180. I understand it's a beta and closed and the information is freely available anyway but it does not sit well with me.

The rest of these ideas are great though.

Flowtown is the easiest way I've found to see quickly who on our list has followed @blueleafcom so I can do my invite prioritization. If there's a better way, let me know!

My thought as well. People talk a lot about how social networking services tend to leak information and violate privacy. Scraping those services for your own business purposes just seems shady, especially when done through a third party.

If being an influencer and having a lot of Twitter followers is what gets a potential user beyond the velvet rope before everyone else, then why not be overt about it and let them volunteer that info?

Make that Ten Thousand and One. This post worked on me -- awesome ideas.

I especially like that you just don't default to the blog for all content and announcements. Diversifying your news and updates across multiple channels is a great way to make it more accessible in some cases and always reaching out to new audiences.

As someone who is working on getting a product ready for launch (http://gethifi.com), this post was extremely helpful.

"We run every single e-mail we get through Flowtown so we know a bit about who’s coming in through the open door."

So... as a financial site, the very first thing you do with your user's info is hand it over to another company you have no control over? Awesome!

#1 & #2 (faux scarcity) seem to be at odds with #9 (using Adwords and other paid acquisition channels).

Are you paying for people to arrive at your site and then getting them to beg (or be well connected) to be able to use the service?

For a company that tests the crap out of everything, finding obvious rendering issues makes me wince.

http://skitch.com/coderpath/dxkmu/investment-planning-perfor...

Turns out that fixing it doesn't reduce signup rates. The vast majority of people use the top form above the fold. :)

This is a new approach, but you forget to answer a very useful question: what do I get out of signing up?

Great ideas, many detailed that I have not seen laid out openly before. Being very selective about "who really wants in on the closed beta" is a great point.

I really like this selective sign-in too. Making the pre-launch a scarce comodity and allowing people to invite their friends at a specific hour builds up pressure, nice! I should remember this when I do my product launch.

[meta] this comment is about the company, not the blog post. I liked the blog post[/meta]

Mint is the clear front-runner here, with significant brand recognition and momentum. I think it's a mistake to not position yourself w.r.t. Mint.

. . . unless you're hoping people get the two confused.

seems like you're spending a lot of time and effort that could be better spent on product development. the biggest risk for your company is that you will build something that no one wants. and the best way to mitigate that risk is to have as many people look at your app and give you feedback as early on as possible. you can play games to make invites scarce and drive buzz, but you're optimizing for the wrong problem. that scarcity is depriving you of what you need most right now -- honest and early feedback! don't pull a cuil -- you need more than expectation and buzz to be successful.

What is it that you are A/B testing with such a low level (I assume, the blog post doesn't seem to state an actual number) of current users?

Are these really accurate experiments of the signup process if your only visitors are ones who actively asked for an invite or were referred?

How is this different from Mint?

I'd like to see this answered clearly, myself.

Mint has established itself as the top personal finance management app out there. I love Mint, and think it'll be very difficult to move to yet another PF tool out there. So what exactly is it about BlueLeaf that is so compelling that (1) users have to beg to be invited, and (2) it stands head and shoulders above competitors?

> Soon, you’re going to be in total control of your financial future

As any Warren Buffet would tell you this ^ is possible iff your balance is zero :)

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