TechCrunch vs. Hacker News: Which is a better front page to launch your startup?
prlambert.com
prlambert.com
Your TechCrunch post[1] led directly to your homepage.
With that in mind, we can't trust these numbers at all.
[0]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4779410
[1]: http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/13/learndot-launches-its-learn...
This is a real world scenario. Many people ask how much traffic we got from being on TechCrunch. This is just data, take it as you want. I do my best to explain the main caveats, including the one you pointed out. There are many.
TC leads were potentially worth $5,520 if fully converted (not $1,320 - which is the cost he's willing to pay for equivalent leads)
Of course, very rarely do all conversions occur but I think when doing marketing it is important to know the fully converted value of each channel (in this case PR) so that you can figure out how much to spend. In general $5,000 of potential revenue (or TCV) is my minimum bar for a PR story, for example, so this story makes the cut just barely. I think the TC traffic they got was pretty abysmal, probably would be worth it to hire PR next time since they've got a B2B product that can afford $60 per warm lead
Conversion rates can change and constantly be improved on the product/sales side (public pricing, free trial, free + premium features for upsell, etc) but I've found that often growing the TCV (total converted value) of the channel is more worthwhile than trying to optimize in the early days when fixing conversion is harder than just finding attention opportunities. If you can find channels that consistently drive you leads worth 10-20x CAC and continue opening the channel more (getting more TC stories for example) you can figure out where its limit it.
This topic has been on my mind a lot, needs a whole blog post on DistributionHacks to dig into channel methodology and running multiple experiments to find the TCV of leads for each, stack rank, and implement system for scaling that as a business machine with predictable inputs and outputs --- but I haven't had time. Maybe this weekend.
It's more like this: - We'll pay $300 bucks for 5 warm leads to hand off to sales. - Sales will work the leads to close, spending another $200 of time. One of them will close. - We'll get a customer with a LTV of greater than $2000, for $500. LTV >= 4x total CAC.
In valuing the leads from TechCrunch, it's a mistake to assume they'll all close (in which case their value is beyond $5520), we have to value what they actually are: potential. We have to discount the risk. That value, is about $60, so all 22 are worth $1320.
I like the optimism though. :)
And you're right it's not a great payoff overall. ~$3000 isn't a great ROI for the effort that went into the launch. There were other channels as well beyond HN and TC, but I wanted to keep the story focused on these two.
We've been testing more channels since and there's lot of data there as well and so, so much more to learn. Looking forward to your post!
The reason this methodology matters is that when you have a marketer trying to figure out how to deploy a substantial amount of capital against business goals they've got to break it down by channel. And this common misconception is one of the most painful hurdles to get over with startup management teams who tend to be spending adverse even when the marketer finds a channel she wants to exploit the hell out of.
Marketing, as a function, deals in potential. If I can spend $1 to get you $10 of potential, and you (being sales or self-service conversion funnel) close 20% of that then we are a fucking awesome company :)
Absolutely zero.
The typical LW customer is not at all tech-savvy, which is pretty much the polar opposite of your average HN user. I get far more mileage out of hitting forums where writers actually congregate.
Not to complain, mind you, I posted to talk about aspects of LiberWriter that I found interesting that might be worthwhile for others, not to troll for business.
"Most authors say that more than 80% of their eBook sales are via Amazon."
down to one metric. 'most' can be manipulated to be almost any value... just ask cats.
Which is why for Fork the Cookbook (http://forkthecookbook.com), I've yet to do a Show HN. We even went so far to prevent anyone in the team from calling it Github for recipes, even when Fork the Cookbook IS Github for recipes.
We prefer to focus on our core target market, and work from there. Haven't been very successful yet though. Our forking rates were higher than expected (85% of the people who sign up have forked a recipe), and from that 85%, only a handful (about 5 or so) were from HN. Thoughts and ideas would be very welcome
This led to waiting an extra week or two to launch, was generally a hassle, etc. And our article hit in the afternoon on the west coast, vs. at a reasonable hour on the east coast.
In the future I'd probably just post directly to HN. Getting to pick the time of the HN post is probably worth more than the incremental value of TC. TC might be worthwhile for funding announcements, but I'd never use it for a product announcement.
It also varies highly depending on the time of day and business of both. Hit either on a busy news day and you'll get wiped out. The time of day also has a huge impact on whether the audience is primarily European / East Cost (US) / West Coast (US) which depending on the nature of your startup can make a huge difference.
While the article makes interesting reading I wouldn't recommend trying to apply the findings to your own startup.
Therefore in your calculations, I think you are undervaluing the $ value of TC awareness, since many people that dont visit your site DO read/glimpse over the article/title and are aware of your existance.
If you are raising money or raised already and prepare the next round being on TC is a must. Not only once, better several times. Consider also Mashable, maybe not the same brand but you will get much more traffic and virality than with TC.
Regarding hiring devs HN is of course better.
To get on HN on the front page is much easier than with TC.
But when we launched an interesting feature and hit the front page -- with the story's title obviously aimed at our target market of app publishers -- we got massive amount of leads as well.
This article misses an important benifit of getting large amounts of traffic: Google starts to recognize you through author rank and links as a qualified source of information.
Ever since my articles have been on HN, search traffic has steadily grown. This could be because of something else, but the common connection is large amounts of traffic from you guys.
However when comparing HN to TC you should not just look at the raw numbers but also at what comes with it. On HN if you're selling something on target, you'll get lots of advice and and feedback, Something you're unluckly to get on TC. TC gives you credibility, it's a logo to put on your website's "Featured on" box and it helps you selling your product and doing fundraising.
Hit me up! @TheNickFrost on Twitter :)
So just posting on HN is not a launch strategy unless you know people who will upvote your submission.
I always wonder how much of this data is skewed (engagement especially) by the amount of apps that are built on top of HN.
Especially "Conversions by source".
Built from ~6 months of email capture on the landing page + 4 months of active customer discovery interviews.
@TheNickFrost