

Ask HN: The Quest for Webapp Publicity - Now What? - mstefff

Hey,<p>I launched Streetread.com ( http://www.streetread.com ) about a month ago. Thanks again to all of you who provided great feedback after the launch (I added a handful of features and fixed things mentioned). Streetread is an innovative, free webapp for Wall Street investors. It aggregators the headlines for all of the stocks you follow plus over 20 of the leading financial websites, in a nice, ajax-powered interface. Checking quotes and news is extremely easy - much quicker than the regular Google &#38; Yahoo finance, etc.<p>Anyway, in the never-ending quest for good publicity and user growth, I'm having some problems. I've gotten about 7-10 great write ups that really helped the exposure (Lifehacker, Webware). The problem is, I've pitched to hundreds of sites, writers, bloggers, etc, and it seems I can't get much of a response anywhere. It also seems that even sites interested in doing write ups aren't going to be interested in a month old website. I'm running out of publicity ideas and people to pitch to. It's definitely not the type of site you run advertisements for. I truly feel that 9 out of 10 'hobby investors' seeing the site would be very interested. I see sites getting 5 figure registrations within days of launching and just wonder how.<p>Any suggestions?<p>Thanks.
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mechanical_fish
_I truly feel that 9 out of 10 'hobby investors' seeing the site would be very
interested._

The problem may be that every "hobby investor" is using some site already.
There are communities on those other sites, some of them very old indeed, and
those communities may be pretty sticky.

Generic advice:

Stop talking to bloggers, sites, writers. Those people are useless by
themselves, as you have now discovered. PR can bring people in, but it can't
make them stick.

Talk to some hobby investors. Find some online forum full of them and beg some
of _them_ to come and give you some feedback.

What site all those folks using now? What do they hate about that site, and
can you fix it on yours?

I was going to suggest that you build something that would draw people in,
like a fantasy-trading game... but a quick Google convinces me that the market
for that particular idea may be totally saturated.

~~~
mstefff
It's extremely saturated, and in my mind, completely pointless. I decided not
to include any social features in the site and make it as straight-forward as
possible.

I don't really agree with bloggers and writers being useless. That's how the
word spreads about websites; except for viral means. The article on Lifehacker
alone practically doubled my user registrations (about 20% of the total
traffic from the article registered).

~~~
mechanical_fish
Ah, I carefully avoided writing "useless". I said "useless _by themselves_ ".
You've gotten some use out of them, but hammering further on the publicity
front may yield diminishing returns.

On the other hand, if you built a couple of desirable new features that test
well with samples of your target market and _then_ prod the publicity machine
with your _new and improved_ version 2.0, it might work better.

Of course, here we recognize why the app universe is filled with colossal apps
full of trendy social features: adding one feature after another is the
simplest way to get a series of marketing hooks. If you're pledged to
minimalism life is more difficult. Try subtle changes in the defaults or the
styling. Try building two versions: the elegant and the feature-gaudy. Try to
add just _one_ new feature, but make it so awesome that everyone wants to try
it at least once. Build a second, slightly related app that helps drive
traffic to the first.

------
pedalpete
Hey mstefff, you've clearly done a good ob with the PR so far, getting
yourself on Lifehacker and Webware - any tips on how you managed that? I've
also always been curious as to what % increase sites see as a result of
getting on Lifehacker, and how much of that traffic remains visitors a month
later.

My initial reaction to your site (this time around, I couldn't really make
much sense of it before) is that it likely just isn't sticky enough. Though I
agree that the 'communities' are way over done, you've included a sign-up to
customize option, so you are gathering user details. Your site has the
opportunity to serve users who have signed up, and those who have not. You
don't have to be a social network to be a community, but I think you should be
leveraging the 'community' that you have. For instance - when I come to your
site now, it offers me the opportunity to sign-up, or to click on one of the
above icons. Wouldn't your site be stickier if when I first come to the site
it tells me what you suspect I am looking for? I'm not much of an investor,
but your users should be, therefore I should be able to come to your site and
be shown a few things that the community is currently finding interesting.
Everybody benefits from that kind of stuff- new users and return visitors.

As I see it now, i can get quotes and news from a number of sites. But if you
were to aggregate into a popularity list somehow (it can be done!), or recent
activity, etc. that might bring people back to your site more often. Doesn't
have to be a social network, but even the news sites show you stuff they think
you'd be interested in right off the bat. Right now I go to your site and i
have to decide what I want to look at. You're probably loosing people right
there.

