We (unexpectedly) got 60K users in 60 hours - What we learned

Hey Patrick,

I have a question. Why is the title of your http://patrickambron.brandyourself.com/ brandyourself page "Patrick Ambron, Internet"? Specifically, why ", Internet"?

Sometimes a name is just too competetive to realistically expect to own the first page. That said, using our service, you are very likely to get some stuff about you up there. That visibility is important. If your name is Brad Pitt, people know you aren't the actor, but at least they found what they were looking for on result 6.

You are thinking the right way by trying to add an initial or middle name to your name. I'd be very surprised if you're name was too competitive to get some results.

Shoot me an email, I'd be happy to take a look and give somem advice pambron [at] brandyourself [dot] com

Make up a new middle name, seriously.

I remember hearing on a mixergy interview that one founder pointed the importance of having a phone number on her website. She said 100% of the people who called ended up converting it, but just having the number there increased the conversion rates.

Yea, we actually WANT to talk to to as many users as possible. We get at least half a dozen calls a day. Trevor, our "customer happiness officer" spends all day talking to customer, answering people's email, etc. It does a few things

1) People get so excited to talk to a real person, even if they've just experienced a bug. These people become huge fans

2) It's the best way to learn about who's using your product. It's much easier to design and develop when you're thinking of specific people

I'd recommend everybody do it

When you're pitching a writer for the first time, I've found it's best to keep it short, focus on the story (show them the angle), and make it clear you just aren't blasting a bunch of writers. I usually try something like "Hey I'm the cofounder of BY. We just launched a product that helps people improve their own search results without having to spend thousands of dollars on a reputation firm. For example, my co-founder Pete couldn't get an internship in college because he was being mistaken for drug dealer and couldn't afford 7K to fix it. I read some of your posts on online reputation (link to them) and thought this might be a good fit. Let me know if you're interested--have plenty of details if you want to know more"

And yes, once you establish that relationship it becomes easier to tell them about an upcoming story. Even then, you want to keep it short, and focus on the story for them so the hard work is already done. "Hey, we just released a new feature. We can actually tell you when an employer googles you or finds your profile. For example, say you're interviewing at ad agencies in NYC, you might get a alert that says someone from Ogilvy just Googled your name and found your profile" We're really the only place providing this intelligence, let me know if you want more"

Good catch, updated now! So what did you think of the article, was it useful to you?

Hey these are really good questions

1) In terms of duplicate names, the product also helps you optimize for specific relevant terms like "Patrick Ambron, developer" or "Patrick Ambron, BrandYourself" "patrick ambron, NYC" etc. So people looking for you will be able to find you. That said, if two people are competing for the first page of Patrick Ambron using our service, the person more actively updating and creating content will edge the other out (google loves new, relevant content). But, at least they'll be a leg up on all the other Patrick Ambron's of the world

2) This is definately a possibility--in the same way, I can go and create a wordpress site using your name. It's hard to detect, but there are warning flags we look for. If you create an account for Patrick Ambron, but don't have the authentication for any of the other profiles (FB, twitter, LI) it looks suspicious and we check it out. We also have a policy where if you email us because somebody is using your information in an account, we will suspend the account for you, until the user can verify that they are who they say they are.

@pdx yea you nailed it. Most of our users end building a BrandYourself Profile, which is a simple (but pretty) profile that's really well structured around your name, so it generally ranks on your first page. From there we can use the IP addresses of visitors to determine who they are

We could always tell you when someone found that profile and where they came from (they came from FB, or they came from Google after Googling your name", but recently we started mapping the IP address to organizations. That data is really accesible--you can buy a list from most major hosting companies--but it's not really used for this purpose

Yea that's a good point. The nice part is, we don't create any profiles or links on behalf of the user. They need authenticate things like twitter, fb, etc on their own, so they actually need to have or create these profiles. They need to go through the work of creating all the relevant content, and linking it to eachother, we simply let you know if they are optimized/filled out enough, and track their ranking

Interestingly enough, one of the things we need to keep our eye on is people going through the trouble to create accounts--including social media profiles---about other people. Would not have guessed that would be a problem

Thanks for the kind words and for using the product.

Right now we are focused purely on individuals (it helps us keep the product simple). It stems from our mission, "a person shouldn't have to pay a lot of money to manage or improve their own search results." While small businesses are easier to monetize, we're happy to just help as many people out as possible, and as long as 2% want the premium features, we're in a good place

Hey, email me at pambron[at]brandyourself[dot]com. I'll figure out why you can't log in

Our view is pretty simple on this: Whether you like it or not, people are going to Google you, and they expect to find you. 75% of HR depts. are now required to Google candidates before searching for them, 30% of all daily searches are for someone's name. If you don't show up, you miss an opportunity to mold that first impression.

You might as well be proactive and make sure you have some relevant content well optimized. Otherwise you might be represented by something negative posted by somebody else, or something irrelevant, or mistaken for somebody else all together--my cofounder Pete couldn't get an internship in college because he was being mistaken for a drug dealer

In other words, if you don't define yourself, something else will.

Just to be clear: You were asked to share your link after every step in the boosting process?? It should just be your final boost step, which you can choose to do or not. Looking into this now

Thanks. The trick is to figure out how a viral mechanism that aligns with your actual value prop. People want their links to show up higher in google, and sharing them on social networks will actually help in that process. It fits :)

Thanks Nickler. Glad we were able to convert you :) We've actually found that startup founders/entrepreneurs are great, great users for us. If you're interested I'd love to talk to you on the phone, and get an idea of how you approached the product, and what changed your mind.

If you're interested, just shoot me an email (pambron [at] brandyourself [dot] com)

Thanks Eli. That's actually because I just created this blog about 2-3 days ago (this was my first post). It'll take a bit before it's picked up and starts ranking. That said, I should see it go up soon, since I use BrandYourself :)

Nothing in the direct roadmap, but that's a great idea. Right now we're focusing on being more directly integrated w sites so we can you improve them right from us. But again, that's a very good idea

Getting yourname.com is always a Great move (we let you apply a custom domain to your BrandYourself profile), and you want to link all your social media profiles.

We basically walk you through a simple process

1) Make sure you have relevant content on the web (FB, LI, personal website, etc)

2) Make sure that's as search engine friendly as possible (are you using you're actual name, is there enough relevant content on it, can search engines index it correctly, etc)

3) Make sure all of your relevant content links to eachother (Your FB should link to your personal website, etc)

On average users find after going through our "boost process" for any given link, it rises a full 1-2 pages(10-20 results) in their google results.

Hey thanks man! I just happen to really enjoy data--and it's paid off.

I've also been getting some great feedback from the HN crowd, so these are great signups :)

Thanks. I think focusing on a good product is the most important thing. We do one thing really well: when someone googles your name we help you make sure you have the most relevant things showing up. In terms of Hashable, we aren't a direct replacement, but the type of people interested in networking apps generally like to make sure they look good online :)

Yes, users can pay for premium features (free users can submit, track and boost up to 3 links, paying members can boost unlimited) With our model we hope 2% convert to paid at some point in their Lifetime as a user.

In terms of this push, most of the major US press has been a phenomenal source (which was the bulk of this surge). 2-3% converted in the first 24 hours, and by 8 weeks that number was closer to 5%. Mashable by far being the best, followed by Huff Post

BrandYourself profiles were/are another amazing source. This makes sense too, because it's coming from a trusted source.

Google and Direct isn't quite as strong (which makes sense since the sources are so varied) but we still get above the 2% mark by 4-5 weeks

The signups from foreign publications were pretty bad. They signed up for free at high rates, but they just don't pay (.5%). Not entirely sure why, but until we figure it out, we put people from those places on a wait list

Hey, thanks man

Yea absolutely. We track everything through our own internal system and through analytics. We want to know where our best users come from. Which sources get people to sign up, which sources bring the most active people, and which sources lead to the most subscriptions. It helps you focus your marketing/PR efforts.

Do you dislike the quote, or the fact that it's from Fox news?

1) We happen to have a value proposition that appeals to almost everyone. Almost everyone has Googled their name, and thought about improving their results in some way or another--maybe there's something embarrassing, or maybe someone else with their name owns all the results, or maybe they have certain things they just wished showed up.

2) We worked hard on our home page --we explain what it does, who we are, and how it works in as little words as possible, and lead you right to sign up (we tweaked this language so many times I can't tell you) Everytime it seems clear enough to us, we would put it front of random person. If they didn't completely understand what we did and want to sign up, we went back to the drawing board. We did this over and over again.

--For those who need more validation we lead you to more info: our company story/mission, our press, testimonials, et. I call these "credibility boosters"

3) We give a lot away for free. People like free stuff

(not provided) is lame, but I don't think that will hurt how this service tracks who's Googling you. It looks like they look up the IP address to see who is searching for you.

BTW - I run notprovided.com and have had 100% days of (not provided) keywords referrals....at least I have a good idea of what they were searching for : )

The interesting part about it is it allows google access to the data for information in their metrics & analytics while blocking out their competition in the metrics scene.

Rather ingenius move overall.

I thought that's a feature of HTTPS, not sending referral headers to non-HTTPS links. (and so not an explicit move by Google but a necessary consequence of providing secure connections for logged-in users)

We should hire you ;)

This has worked well for me personally. My dad and I have the same name, and I share a fairly common name for Dutch people. My name is Bert Regeer, but I always go by Bert JW Regeer. In conversation I am still Bert, but everywhere else I am Bert JW. This solves a lot of problems.

People no longer get me confused with my dad or some guy working for Shell, when I sign up for mail or anything along those lines it has my middle initials in the first name field (unless they have a special field for middle initials) and I don't have issues with my dad and I sharing a name (If we travel together, sometimes the airline will cancel the ticket because they believe it is a double booking ... makes it really fun when we both go to check-in).

Best of all, I now rank really high for Bert JW Regeer. As in, almost everything on the first through third page are exclusively me (may change depending on location) on Google. That makes it fairly easy to find me.

The first result for my full name is a registered sex offender.. Time for a rebrand..

I thought it was too :D http://cl.ly/0a2r3l2b331l0B1n141U