Show HN: Retrospective on having my “Show HN” on the front-page
I wanted to share some stats on the results after 3 days. Worth noting was that I submitted it on a Friday morning (at which point I went for a walk and a coffee; eek).
- 24,997 page views. I (embarrassingly) didn’t have GA set up when I first submitted it, so this is probably missing a few hundred page views
- 21 “feedback” emails (half of which were spam). I assume such a high percentage of these were spam because my Feedback form didn’t require email addresses.
- 5 note-worthy emails from people which may result in some sort of collaboration
- 10 mailing list subscriber sign ups. Running through MailChimp, and it’s not emphasized at all (eg. just a link in the footer). Purposefully not email-gating people to download, since I want this to be a very developer-centric site, and it feels a bit unsettling to email-gate other people’s digital content.
- 2,670 icon downloads
- 74 comments. A big caveat to this one: I replied to almost every comment. The thinking is that if someone took the time to comment (even just a “thanks”), I wanted to take the time to reply to them as well.
Also, I purposefully didn’t reply to people who were commenting on their own alternative services. Perhaps a tad uncouth, but I didn’t want to shine a light on a comment that was designed to detract from my submission. I would have made an exception if there was substance to those comments beyond the detraction.
- One founder from a related (and leading) service (Flaticon) jumping into the comments. I really appreciated this. Similar to how Patrick Collison (of Stripe) is often seen replying to comments on Stripe-related posts. This founder submitted thoughtful replies to people’s criticisms, which I thought was quite considerate.