

Which HN members were able to grow a site from 0 to a Million unique visitors? - davecraige

I would love to meet some hard working HN members who were able to grow their sites from 0 to 1,000,000 unique visitors a year.<p>What is your site?<p>What did you do to get that traffic?<p>How long did it take?<p>What would you do differently next time?<p>Thanks so much!<p>Dave Craige
www.tugboat.io
======
idoh
I did it with a Horoscopes app on Facebook. I don't own it, my employer does.
In October of last year it was at 12,000 users a day, and now it is 1.8
million users a day.

I did it by having a really nice app, really understanding how to grow an app
on the Facebook platform, and a combination of black magic and luck.

If I had to do it all over again, I'd do a couple things: try to get into the
build-measure-learn loop faster, and once inside BML space try to loop around
faster. Second, for funnel optimization focus on removing or rearranging
steps, as opposed to optimizing the conversion from one step to another.

~~~
davecraige
@idoh - awesome job. 1.8million users a day is fantastic!

if you want, feel free to link us to the app. would love to see it.

keep us posted if you work on another great app like that.

~~~
idoh
Here is the link: <https://apps.facebook.com/horoscopes/>

It is also on the iOS app store: [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/horoscope-
astrology-experts/i...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/horoscope-astrology-
experts/id522194871?ls=1&mt=8)

For iOS it launched on Aug 28, and it was at #5 for the Lifestyle / Free
section for a while. It's been a really fun ride and I've learned a ton about
growing apps on FB and mobile.

------
ilikecars
I've gotten over 25 million unique visitors to my site, WreckedExotics.com
since I launched it 10 years ago.

Here's a screenshot of the google analytics: <http://i.imgur.com/gz9hJ.jpg>

It's missing 3 years worth of data - and those were some of the highest
traffic years, so essentially, the site has done over 1 billion pageviews.
Best month was 1 million visitors. I run the site by myself.

I also created <http://www.exoticspotter.com> which attracts over 1 million
visits per year and am working on a 3rd site that attracts about 500,000
visits per year.

I was just lucky to get the traffic - basically started a site that was
naturally viral. I don't know how to program, I just know how to code
HTML/CSS, so I've been running it as a completely static site this entire
time. It needs an update badly.

The traffic took off almost immediately, I had it on a hosted server that
crashed and I got a bill for almost $1,000 for overages. Moved it to a
dedicated server and the rest is history.

~~~
davecraige
@ilikecars - awesome job. love your sites.

what would you recommend is the quickest way to get to 1m for people just
starting out?

best,

------
alpb
This would be a great Quora question. Why don't you go ahead and ask there and
post a link here?

~~~
davecraige
@alpb - Your wish is my command! [http://www.quora.com/Startups/Which-Quora-
members-were-able-...](http://www.quora.com/Startups/Which-Quora-members-were-
able-..).

I'd still love to hear if anyone here at hackernews has any tips or stories.

~~~
nivla
The above link is incomplete, its throws a 404 Not Found error. Here is the
corrected one [http://www.quora.com/Startups/Which-Quora-members-were-
able-...](http://www.quora.com/Startups/Which-Quora-members-were-able-to-grow-
a-site-from-0-to-a-Million-unique-visitors)

~~~
davecraige
nivla,

thanks! yea the link got cut off.

you are right, the correct link is: [http://www.quora.com/Startups/Which-
Quora-members-were-able-...](http://www.quora.com/Startups/Which-Quora-
members-were-able-to-grow-a-site-from-0-to-a-Million-unique-visitors)

