Tell HN: A few hours on Hacker News gave us better conversion than TechCrunch | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: A few hours on Hacker News gave us better conversion than TechCrunch

15 pointsBuddhaSource7 comments

We launched http://justmigrate.com to help folks move from Posterous to Tumblr in few clicks (freemium). Our target were people who can't do much with their Posterous backup file and are stuck manually uploading their data into another blogging platform.

We shared the link on Hacker news on Saturday night and picked up some activity on Twitter, by Monday morning we got featured on TechCrunch. Phew a hockey stick, J curve or what ever you want to call it, it was beautiful, soon more websites covered us, our migration signup was designed to think less & do click click click, concluding with a tweet. All this gave us lot of love on twitter, thank you guys. However we were surprised by the payment conversions.

Hacker news - Highest & fastest conversion even though we were in front page for only few hours. Our expectation was very low from tech juggernauts as we thought they would be more comfortable moving to WP using the Posterous backup. They paid without thinking much, and this was amazing. Thank you guys, you are saving our startup.

TechCrunch - Surprisingly faired much lower than hackernews both in terms of conversion & inbound traffic, but they helped us spread across the internet through reblogs & tweets. Conversions took some time from TC users compared to HN. Tweets exploded from 5 tweets in 1min to 30+ per min. The whole conversion effect lasted only 3 days.

Engadget Spain - We got lot of inbound traffic from here but the real conversion spike happened next day, possibly they were evaluating our service. It was fun interacting with them on twitter in Spanish.

Life hacker - They covered us next day, conversions were slow to start with but towards the end of the week they helped us get more stable inbound traffic, ie above average facebook users. Also they score better on SEO.

Hope to get more insights from you all. Lot of users still don't know about Posterous announcement.

Thanks for sharing (and of course, for the product).

It's not just a matter of HN vs TechCrunch, it was that HN led to TechCrunch and other outlets, as they obviously check (or their friends do) HN to see what the community is talking about.

But it's not surprising HN would have more conversions. More people on HN have Posterous blogs than I imagine in other crowds, and probably moreso compared to the average TechCrunch reader.

Thanks you, really appreciate it. Sorry I did not clear myself before, by conversions I meant paid plans. Free plans say a different story.

We had some good number of users trying out the free migration plan but the paid plan conversion was higher for HN when compared to TC, in fact very few HN users even tried free plan.

Is this entire service just migrating from posterous to tumblr? How long could such a thing last? April?

Any particular reason why you picked Saturday night?

We were building this since Jan after hours. On Saturday morning Posterous announced they were shutting down, so we had to launch the same day.

We were actually stoned late Saturday night, yet managed some good customer support and bug fixing.

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks.

I'm speaking anecdotally, but I've seen quite a few cool projects launched on Saturday/Friday nights and I don't understand why.

By "launched", I mean, pitched to HN or other places.

In journalism, it's an accepted convention that anytime the government releases a report or statement on Friday at 4-5 PM, it's something they don't want to be seen. They would do it on Saturday except they don't work on weekends.

And if you're thinking, "Well, if I were a news organization, I would investigate the hell out of anything released on a Friday and print the story on Saturday"...except, all your readers are enjoying their weekends, by SUnday they'll be hungover, and on Monday, your scoop will be somewhat stale news.

There's almost never a good reason to release on a weekend night. Even if it were the case that all HN-geek-savvy users and tech bloggers spend their Saturday night on HN, they still might not provide enough momentum to get the spotlight on Monday/Tuesday, when people are most interested in getting back onto their computers and perusing the news.

The only two reasons I can think why you would post to HN on a weekend night:

1. You're afraid of a stampede of traffic...that's fine...but you should soft-launch on the weekend ,make sure any obvious bugs are out, and then pitch it on Monday.

2. It's possible that HN submissions are so sparse that you'll have a higher chance of being on the front page than on a busy weekday...that's a valid thought, as 15 votes on a Saturday night will get you more exposure than 20 votes on a Tuesday.

It's a tricky balance...but I wouldn't, as standard practice, do big things you want media spotlight for on Saturday.

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