Ask HN: HNers who got their “Show HNs” on homepage, how is your site doing now? - superasn
======
bwang29
Submitted my Show HN 1075 days ago
([https://photoeditor.polarr.co/](https://photoeditor.polarr.co/)), for a
WebGL photo editing tool, now has turned into a startup with more than 10M
users.

~~~
jerrre
Just wanted to let you know that your website is shown to me in very badly
translated Dutch, personally I'd rather have correct English than bad Dutch,
but I don't see a way to change it.

~~~
wazoox
Same thing in French. inexplicably, "key" (I suppose) is translated not as
"touche" (or wrongly but understandably as "clef") but as "robinet" ("sink
tap"). Oh I just got it. The original in some other language probably is
equivalent to the verb "press", translated to "tap", then to "robinet" which
is comically absurd.

------
jastr
CSV Explorer, 4 months ago
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14043527](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14043527)).
It's a tool to open CSVs that are too big for Excel. It hit the homepage, but
many comments were "I would never trust my data in the cloud" or "Why doesn't
everyone use Python/Pandas/SQL".

Paying customers now include consultants, journalists, realtors, insurance
companies, and others! There are few developers who use it because it saves
them time, but they're the exception.

~~~
nsx147
the ability to CRUD the CSV via API endpoint after it's in there would be
great.

~~~
isuckatcoding
Hmm this might be a good idea for my next side project. How much would you pay
for this and why does [https://github.com/project-open-data/csv-to-
api](https://github.com/project-open-data/csv-to-api) fall short?

~~~
nsx147
Yes - I thought so too, but still haven't gotten around to it :)

For my use case this does not fall short. Although I'm sure you could come up
with features I didn't know I needed.

------
rwieruch
222 Days Ago - Show HN: The Road to learn React – Build a Hacker News App on
the Way [0]

The book [1] was downloaded by 9600+ people by now. It is an open source book
that gets continuously improved. You build an React.js application along the
way and transition smoothly from JavaScript ES5 to JavaScript ES6. It teaches
the fundamentals of React without any tooling or Redux. Afterward you are
ready to go to build your own React applications.

I must say I never expected this amazing reaction from the community.

\- [0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13170837](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13170837)

\- [1] [https://www.robinwieruch.de/the-road-to-learn-
react/](https://www.robinwieruch.de/the-road-to-learn-react/)

~~~
riteshpatel
I bought it the other day :)

~~~
ChristianGeek
I bought it when you first posted.

------
bbx
I had 3 of my "Show HN" hit the front page. I have stats about 2 of them. They
had a huge spike at the start, but the current traffic is more correlated with
SEO and backlinks rather than the initial influx of visitors.

My actual most visited website is one that has hit the front page, but not
because of my "Show HN".

[1] [http://jgthms.com/web-design-in-4-minutes/](http://jgthms.com/web-design-
in-4-minutes/)

[2] [http://cssreference.io/](http://cssreference.io/)

[3] [http://htmlreference.io/](http://htmlreference.io/)

[4] [http://bulma.io/](http://bulma.io/)

~~~
dmjio
You do excellent work sir. Use bulma /a lot/.

~~~
zbuttram
Same. Bulma is my favorite CSS library to work with.

------
gnicholas
I did a Show HN back when I was still a full-time corporate lawyer, and
BeeLine Reader was just my side project. Much to my surprise, my post garnered
over 700 points and was at #1 for the better part of a day. A HN-ranking site
had it as the 9th-most popular Show HN ever, at the time (2013).

Almost four years later, we've raised a couple hundred thousand in equity and
grants (mostly the latter, happily), and I'm working full-time on it. Equity
is from Intel Capital and grant awards are from Stanford, The Tech Museum of
Innovation, and NewSchools Venture Fund (a nonprofit backed by various SV
family offices).

I will say that there is lots of luck in where posts end up. My second post
about BeeLine Reader — when we released our Chrome extension — hardly got any
attention. This was a big surprise, given how popular the (very alpha-version)
bookmarklet had been.

original post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6335784](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6335784)

current website: [http://www.beelinereader.com](http://www.beelinereader.com)

\---

We're looking for a rails dev and a dev with PDF experience, BTW! Email
developers@ ..

~~~
ChristianGeek
Looks interesting, but your iOS app hasn't been updated in over a year. That's
a red flag for me.

~~~
gnicholas
It's a news reader that lets you browse sites with our technology. There's not
much to update, and going through Apple's app review gauntlet is expensive and
time consuming. We avoid it as much as possible.

That said, we wouldn't want to let bugs linger! Is there anything in
particular that you think the app should be updated to do?

We recently released another app (Read Across The Aisle, [1] a free utility
for monitoring the political polarity of one's news consumption), and it used
the same code base. We got no complaints about the app being outdated. Both
apps seem to get the job done — let me know if we're missing something here!

1: [http://www.readacrosstheaisle.com](http://www.readacrosstheaisle.com)

------
jboggan
3 years ago I tried to launch my Bitcoin options trading platform (or at least
the paper-trading version of it) with a Show HN post which did briefly reach
the front page. I got 0 signups and mostly a lot of comments about how the
landing page was so ugly and using an outdated Bootstrap that they wouldn't
consider using it. As a backend dev that was a revelatory experience and I
appreciated the honest feedback after my hurt feelings recovered.

------
gkoberger
Great! I launched ReadMe 2.5 years ago as a Show HN
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8422408](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8422408)),
then did a Product Hunt launch ([https://blog.readme.io/product-hunter-
becomes-the-hunted/](https://blog.readme.io/product-hunter-becomes-the-
hunted/)), and got into YC a few weeks later. Having a good launch was
something we could point VCs to.

We got some awesome customers (including some big names) from our HN launch,
and it kickstarted out growth. If I remember correctly, we finished out the
week at about $4k MRR... nothing compared to now, but at the time it felt
awesome to be making money.

We've come a long way since then, but our Show HN was a great way to kick
things off!

~~~
tiffanyh
Hi Gregory

I've really been interested in ReadMe because it fills such a simply yet
extremely important need for developers. Would you be willing to ever do one
of those Indie Hacker posts [0]?

Also, question: is ReadMe no longer free to Open Source projects? I see
reference in your docs that say that ReadMe is free for Open Source projects
[1] but on your current pricing page [2] I don't see any reference to the
free-open source version.

[0] [https://www.indiehackers.com/](https://www.indiehackers.com/)

[1] [https://readme.readme.io/v2.0/docs/open-
source](https://readme.readme.io/v2.0/docs/open-source)

[2] [http://readme.io/pricing/](http://readme.io/pricing/)

~~~
gkoberger
We still have an open source tier! It's available on the credit card page :)

------
errozero
I submitted my Acid Machine site in 2015, it's a web based synth and drum
machine app. I didn't expect much to happen, just wanted to get a bit of
feedback. It ended up featuring on a few high profile music sites and for the
next week it got 70,000 users a day. I didn't post it anywhere else so it all
originated from HN in some way.

Since then I have released version 2 which has the ability to add fx to the
instruments, use MIDI devices and lots more. It gets a few sales a week with
traffic still coming from those music sites.

[http://errozero.co.uk/acid-machine](http://errozero.co.uk/acid-machine)

~~~
fpgaminer
That's really cool. I had no idea Web MIDI API existed to allow stuff like
that (though it appears to still be Chrome-specific :/ ).

~~~
errozero
Thanks. The Web MIDI API is really fun to play with.

I also made this synth that uses it, you can use your typing keyboard too:
[http://www.errozero.co.uk/stuff/poly/](http://www.errozero.co.uk/stuff/poly/)

...and a little pong game, you can control the paddle with any knob on a
connected MIDI controller. [http://errozero.co.uk/midi-
pong/](http://errozero.co.uk/midi-pong/)

------
espitia
1124 days ago I submitted my first app - Habit Streaks.

Over time I got 60k+ downloads and sold it for $8.5k :)!

Original link:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7950866](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7950866)
Story: [http://www.germanespitia.com/habit-
streaks](http://www.germanespitia.com/habit-streaks)

~~~
tswartz
As someone trying to build my own apps, I really enjoyed your write-up on how
you grew Habit Streaks.

~~~
espitia
Thank you, I appreciate that!

------
westoncb
I messed up my wrists from typing/mousing too much a number of years ago, so I
spent a couple years working at a grocery store while building a new kind of
text editor meant for efficiently writing code with motion sensors (e.g. Leap
Motion, Kinect). It made it to the front page here, which was an interesting
experience, but my end game with the project was basically, "get far enough,
post to HN and the world will see how cool this is, and somehow you'll be able
to continue working on it"—and that did not materialize.

Project:
[http://symbolflux.com/projects/tiledtext](http://symbolflux.com/projects/tiledtext)
[video]

Original Show HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5306155](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5306155)

~~~
house9-2
Just watched the video, really cool.

Sorry about your wrists, I also suffer from RSI issues; recently I have
started using voicecode which has allowed me to use voice for about 80% of my
coding/computer use instead of typing/mousing. You might want to check it out?

It does have a large learning curve, is not cheap (Dragon + voicecode) and
currently runs on Mac only (windows/linux in the pipeline), I am using that in
conjunction with SmartNav for mousing.

\- [http://voicecode.io/](http://voicecode.io/)

~~~
westoncb
Thanks house9-2. I briefly tried Dragon like six years ago and didn't have a
very good experience with it—though I imagine it's improved since then.
Probably the bigger issue for me though is that I just don't personally like
speaking as an interface to coding. SmartNav looks cool. IIRC I looked into it
way back when but it was prohibitively expensive for me, though I might be
thinking of something else.

I'm mostly just using mouse/keyboard now, but I have learned some things about
how to do it. Partly it's about not freaking out about things—seems like the
added tension makes it a lot worse. That has been much more difficult than I
can describe briefly here, but it was important at least in my case.
Additionally, having some mindfulness about how I was feeling physically at
the computer and letting that direct break-taking has been very useful. Same
with various stretching/yoga things I do regularly. I spent a lot of time
learning/practicing meditation in order to getter better, unadulterated
feedback about physical problems (and to help stay relaxed while computing).
It's interesting how oblivious we can be to discomforts from posture etc., and
how automatic correcting them can be once you just tune in.

Anyway, I'm still not fully recovered either, but computing is a much more
pleasant thing these days than it has been for many years.

~~~
mvleming
Sounds like you might like the book A Guide to Better Movement by Todd
Hargrove.

~~~
westoncb
That does look interesting—I'll check it out!

------
daveid
Mastodon first got on the frontpage 292 days ago, then a second time 203 days
ago ([https://joinmastodon.org](https://joinmastodon.org)). Federated network
now more than 2,000 servers, 720,000 users, GitHub repository closing in on
10k stars. Pretty happy with that!

------
archildress
A project I'm working on, Gridmaster, hit the frontpage of HN back in
November. The traffic and mailing list signups were nice, but the product
feedback we got was way more valuable.

It helped us realize that a web-based version of our "CodeAcademy for Excel"
product wasn't going to cut it. We built an integrated version that actually
lives inside of Excel and won a contest with Microsoft.

I talk a little more about what happened here:

[https://medium.com/gridmaster/what-weve-been-up-to-since-
hit...](https://medium.com/gridmaster/what-weve-been-up-to-since-hitting-the-
hacker-news-frontpage-2f4a51f765b5)

------
endymi0n
899 days ago - Show HN: JustWatch – Choose your favorite streaming providers
and see what’s new

By now largest streaming search engine in the world at Alexa/Similarweb Top
~#4700 global with around 12 million unique visits per month. Not too shabby
all around.

Launch post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9005641](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9005641)

~~~
udkl
That's great. How did you go about promoting the site ?

------
mxstbr
While not technically a "Show HN", 576 days ago @tilt submitted my react-
boilerplate to HN.
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10794502](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10794502))
The submission garnered a bunch of votes and was on the frontpage for a good
20 hours.

The project went from 50 to 550 stars overnight, eventually reaching
3,000-something stars when the hype died down. (it's now at ~14,500 stars and
growing)

That submission kickstarted my career. Among other things it led to me
speaking at over 20 international conferences, to being featured in Forbes
Austria and to the privilege of being employed as a full-time open source
developer. (which eventually led to the creation of styled-components)

I wrote a bit more about my journey on my blog a while ago too in case you
want the longer version: [https://mxstbr.blog/2016/12/a-dream-come-
true/](https://mxstbr.blog/2016/12/a-dream-come-true/)

It's been an awesome ride and I wouldn't be where I am without HN!

~~~
acemarke
And the React community is that much better for having Max as a speaker and
developer :)

~~~
mxstbr
Awww, thanks Mark

------
oldboyFX
995 Days Ago - Show HN: A database for browsing and discovering movies
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8547351](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8547351))

It was on the homepage for around 24 hours I think. We had ~500,000 unique
sessions during the first month after the launch. Hacker News played a big
part in that.

We stopped actively working on the project, but it's still being used by more
than 100,000 people every month.

I wrote a little case study about the whole thing here -
[http://codetree.co/case-studies/movieo](http://codetree.co/case-
studies/movieo)

~~~
5_minutes
That's a gorgeous project. Kudos.

------
sytse
Did an ask HN in 2012
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4428278](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4428278)
Now GitLab is a 170 people company
[https://about.gitlab.com/history/](https://about.gitlab.com/history/)

~~~
tobyhinloopen
We recently moved to gitlab and I kind of enjoy some features. Built in CICD,
pipelines, create MR buttons. I find the UI quite messy though, I'd love for
the UI to be cleaned up a bit.

Buttons and action links are all over the place and I feel like most are added
just to make them pass a "there is a button" test, without caring where it is
or what it looks like

~~~
jobvandervoort
Did you try turning on the new navigation? [0] Profile picture in navbar ->
Turn on new navigation

[0]:
[https://about.gitlab.com/2017/07/22/gitlab-9-4-released/#new...](https://about.gitlab.com/2017/07/22/gitlab-9-4-released/#new-
navigation)

------
adzicg
Two things my team announced on Show HN appeared on the home page for a day or
so.

MindMup ([https://www.mindmup.com](https://www.mindmup.com)), an online mind
mapping tool appeared in 2013, and got a nice traffic bump that day, it took
about two years to reach that level of regular traffic. the site now gets
between 400 and 500k visits monthly during busy school periods (seems to be
mostly used by educational users), and grows around 5% per month.

ClaudiaJS ([https://claudiajs.com](https://claudiajs.com)) is an open source
tool that helps deploy Node.js projects to AWS Lambda and API Gateway easily.
Originally built for MindMup, we decided to spin it off as a separate open
source tool. It appeared on HN about a year ago, and according to NPM stats
now has roughly 85K downloads.

~~~
elektor
It's really cool to see the people behind websites that I use post on HN!

I've been using MindMup for a few months now and really enjoy it.

------
welder
Project 1: [https://wakatime.com/](https://wakatime.com/)

Show HN Link:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6046227](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6046227)

Status: Still growing, almost 100k users, vibrant leaderboards

Project 2: CLMapper Chrome Extension
([https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clmapper/omonmigal...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clmapper/omonmigaleaafgpkgoammpclbcdepjpi))

Show HN Link:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4324884](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4324884)

Status: Unmaintained. Reached peak of over 4k users, now under 2k and
decreasing

~~~
BartSaM
I use WakaTime A LOT. I wish there would be more functionality and an ergonomy
though - are you focusing mainly on new platforms now? Things like email
reports could use some refreshing! Keep up good work!

~~~
welder
Thanks for the feedback... the report emails are almost 4 years old now so
could definitely use a refresher. I personally prefer emails without images,
but would you want charts as images in the report emails?

~~~
BartSaM
Anything really that is an improvement from "You have not reached your goal.
You need to code more" or something along those lines. Any graph or even a
summary would be an awesome improvement!

------
titel
Submitted a Show HN two days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14822897](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14822897)

Not even one upvote though. Do any of these posts get on the homepage
organically?

LE: 2nd (and last) try:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14841172](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14841172)

~~~
vtlynch
I would recommend a total redesign of your front page. It sounds like it could
be a great tool, but I have literally no impression of it from clicking on any
of the non-gated links on your site.

The basic info on [https://visualtip.com/tour](https://visualtip.com/tour) is
closer to what you need on the homepage. But visual-focused instead of text.
And absolutely reduce the noise on the page by getting rid of meaningless text
such as

"Security: We take security very seriously and have taken measures to protect
our customer's data"

and the Deiter Rams quote which _looks_ like a user endorsement needs to go
too.

~~~
lucb1e
I agree. I clicked to the front page and I see something about annotating
images, but then also something about users... and I just don't really get
what it does without reading the whole page. The company name is also not very
illuminating.

The tour page however tells me almost instantly that it's meant to get
feedback on designs (even if that is only made clear in step three out of
three). Now going back to the front page, those three steps are there as well,
except they're shown as three separate features of the product instead of
logical steps (I didn't make that connection) and the "You, the designer" part
puts the "so what's that about clients/customers" in place.

Then again, I often feel like I'm thick-witted so take it for what you will.
Or perhaps where you link from (e.g. link text / ad text / the search query
they entered) gives enough context for them to get it.

------
Scirra_Tom
Construct 3 - Game editor in the browser:

[https://www.construct.net](https://www.construct.net)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13984951](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13984951)

Subscribers increasing slowly but steadily. ShowHN didn't lead to any direct
sales as far as our reporting shows but doing a "ShowHN" is something of an
internal milestone for us and the comments have been interesting a good
motivational boost. Hopefully have more to Show HN in the future!

~~~
andrewstuart
It might be worth having a version focused on kids learning to program.

------
sv123
My show HN was posted 2555 days ago
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1548584](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1548584)),
roughly one month after the site was launched.

Led to a large traffic spike, and attention from a company that would acquire
it roughly 18 months later. The team has grown from 3 to 100+, with over 1m
registered users. Although the domain has changed and it looks like nobody
bothered to keep the original registered (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

------
Jack000
(oldest first):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9848124](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9848124)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10376468](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10376468)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13960214](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13960214)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10913789](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10913789)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14409255](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14409255)

A few of them rank on google and get consistent traffic. There's definitely a
lot of randomness in getting to the front page. If I were to do it again I
think I'd collect emails or have some kind of plan for the traffic.

~~~
gnicholas
Very good point about collecting emails. We had an alpha version that went
sky-high, but it was just a bookmarklet with no login or communication
features. Subsequent Show HNs, when we launched our tools for Chrome, Firefox,
iOS, and PDF, didn't get nearly as popular. If we'd had a net in place to
capture some of that traffic, it could have made a big difference.

But of course, don't be too aggressive in collecting emails — none of that
full-screen modal garbage — that doesn't do well in the HN world.

------
jblok
186 days ago I posted my app Dongle Daddy -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13434787](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13434787)

On this day, it was also featured on Product Hunt and The Next Web leading to
around 30k uniques across 2 days. Traffic is now nothing like that
unfortunately.

One nice upside is that when I launched, it was picked up by a manager at BT
Shop, a fairly large online electronics store in the UK, and I have released a
variant of the app which uses their own affiliate scheme and branding. They've
integrated this into one of their category pages at
[https://www.shop.bt.com/category/cables-and-
adapters,cables/...](https://www.shop.bt.com/category/cables-and-
adapters,cables/11125).

------
makaimc
My open source side project Full Stack Python
([https://www.fullstackpython.com/](https://www.fullstackpython.com/)) hit
front page over July 4th weekend in 2014
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7985692](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7985692)).
I've continued to write and grow the site from ~5k users per month to over
100k/month now.

The traffic bump and feedback was motivating and helpful to know I was on the
right track with my content. I also learned there are some comments you just
need to ignore and focus on your own vision :)

edit: my traffic was lower than I originally remembered, it was ~5k per month,
not 25k in mid-2014

~~~
rwieruch
That's amazing. I would love to connect with you on Twitter if you would have
the time. But since we are not following each other, I cannot send any
messages. I am growing my blog similar to yours, but it is an personal blog
though.

~~~
makaimc
Sure, no problem. Tweet @fullstackpython or @mattmakai and I can follow you
for DMs.

------
bharani_m
I did a Show HN for Resumonk back in 2012:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3934370](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3934370)

I was in college then and found making a well formatted resume a huge pain
when I was applying for internships. I met my Co-Founder also via that
particular post, and went full time on it after passing out of college.

We are bootstrapped, pay ourselves well and work remotely. Not sure if that
qualifies as a 'big' success, but we receive these kind of comments from our
users that make us super happy -
[https://www.resumonk.com/testimonials](https://www.resumonk.com/testimonials)

------
meagher
Notational, a notes app built with Vue.js.
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14409760](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14409760))
61 days ago

Response was great: lots of sign ups and feedback, but I haven't had time to
do anything. Started a new job and moved cities. Everything is open-sourced if
anyone wants to take a crack:
[https://github.com/tmm/notational](https://github.com/tmm/notational)

------
rsoto
Not exactly the home page, but PullToRefresh.js[1] was on HN's front page last
december and since we've basically doubled our traffic, altough sales haven't
been affected by it, since we are offering a product only for Mexico.

Besides the traffic increase, the repo trended on Github and now we have
+1,400 stars.

1:
[https://www.boxfactura.com/pulltorefresh.js/](https://www.boxfactura.com/pulltorefresh.js/)

------
taxicabjesus
Show HN: Taxi Wars – Stories from the front line -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12193273](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12193273)
(359 days ago - HN submission links directly to
[http://taxiwars.org/](http://taxiwars.org/))

tl/dr: HN provided a nice boost, but websites don't grow if you don't feed
them.

Backstory: ~5 years ago I started driving a taxi, for fun & adventure &
freedom. And to support myself, while trying to figure out how to finish
recovering from a head injury [1]. After 8 days I made an account on
kuro5hin.org (k5) & started blogging about my experiences.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13123659](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13123659)

At first I was just trolling k5 user "Zombie Jesus Christ", who had grand
ambitions to help people, but was handicapped by a history of mercury
poisoning -> mental illness. My point in being 'TaxiCabJesus' on k5 was to
show that it's the little things that count. After a 3.5 years I'd learned a
lot about what people actually experience (which I hadn't appreciated due to
my upper-middle-class upbringing), and was forced into retiring from the taxi
driving gig...

One day kuro5hin.org went away. K5's absentee founder Rusty hadn't prepared
for a datacenter move, and the site was lost. I posted in HN submission _RIP
kuro5hin_ that my story "Electronic Taxi Dispatch, v1.0" was last to post [2],
and one of you responded that you appreciated my k5 submissions & encouraged
me to re-post them at a site of my own.

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11609802](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11609802)

I still intend to write a _Taxi Wars_ trilogy: _A New Hope_ , _The Vultures
Strike Back,_ and _Return of the Drivers_. I also have some other stories to
tell. Retrospectively I realized that I was learning about the various
'predicaments' that people find themselves experiencing. Draft titles include:

 _The Predicament of 'old people'_ / _Ordinary Rendition: The Public Servants
' Quagmire_ / _the predicaments of doctors and patients_

I joined Toastmasters several months ago. Recently I gave a speech that's
based the 'predicaments of doctors and patients'. It went over pretty well,
which was motivation to work on my little site...

------
dangrossman
1\. Show HN: HN Replies – Get notified of replies to your comments (
[http://hnreplies.com](http://hnreplies.com) )

933 HN users are signed up and have received 38109 email notifications so far.

Comments:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11080539](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11080539)

Stats:
[https://www.w3counter.com/stats/98986/dashboard](https://www.w3counter.com/stats/98986/dashboard)

\----------

2\. Show HN: A date range picker for Twitter Bootstrap (
[http://daterangepicker.com](http://daterangepicker.com) )

5-year-old open source code that averages 3000 visits per day and 750 git
clones per day.

Comments:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4408070](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4408070)

Stats:
[https://www.w3counter.com/stats/90840/dashboard](https://www.w3counter.com/stats/90840/dashboard)

------
jventura
I submitted a Show HN a month and a half ago
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14537247](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14537247)),
and altough I got some initial visits (some 500 users), it has dropped to
nearly zero lately. Here's how the analytics curve looks like:
[https://s2.postimg.org/6z9gmo8bt/Captura_de_ecra_2017-07-24_...](https://s2.postimg.org/6z9gmo8bt/Captura_de_ecra_2017-07-24_a_s_23.09.29.png)

Basically, I've built this simple project to see if there was any commercial
interest in building rest apis using mock data, and I am almost certain that
the answer is no - which is fine by me, i'm waiting for the next idea.. :)

Edit: By the way, besides simple SEO with google, I haven't bothered doing any
marketing at all with this project, because I'm being mostly lazy, also
because if the idea was any good, it should (hopefully) had success initially,
and also because I suck at marketing..

~~~
udkl
500 is a small sample size.

Moreso when your tool serves a very specific target of people looking to
satisfy a particular need.

I would try user profiling and then search engine optimization or content
marketing around use cases where people will want to use it.

You also want to compare it against the apiary's of the world.

------
llamataboot
My very first side project, a real-time API for the World Cup built on a
scraper, went to the frontpage. Obviously it hasn't seen as much traffic since
then as it was a very time limited thing, but it was fun to have a side
project on the front page.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7907070](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7907070)

I submitted a Show HN the other day for a natural language chatbot that gives
harm reduction info about drugs and it pretty much went nowhere fast. Got way
more traffic from being on the front page of reddit r/drugs (and arguably a
more useful demographic)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14690658](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14690658)

To the people asking, I definitely think there is a high amount of luck
getting anything on the front page of HN. Just has to be right time, right
place, but it's inspiring to read about people who have seen their businesses
launch, in part, from that brief exposure.

------
wheresvic1
I recently had my Show HN make it to the front page:
[https://ewolo.fitness/](https://ewolo.fitness/)

It was up for a nice 24 hours and while I got a huge amount of traffic (10,000
page views) it resulted in only 100 accounts.

I'm not giving up though - I'm still constantly improving it and it has come
quite far since the first Show HN version :)

~~~
williamdclt
1% of visitor creating an account seems quite a good conversion to me, do not
be disappointed!

~~~
wheresvic1
Thanks! I've previously worked at a startup so I do have an idea of how
difficult it is to get users and to actually get Daily Active Users.

I'm taking this as a learning opportunity but the best part is that I use
ewolo myself everyday and it's really keeping me motivated :)

------
mmathias
My project "UrlRoulette" was on the HN homepage for about 24 hours. I received
a huge traffic spike at the start. Since then traffic came from other sources
such as Reddit, some blog posts and articles that were written - and of course
some search engines. After being on HN, UrlRoulette was featured in the german
C'T magazine and received a lot of traffic from their website and their print
edition. Also, being featured on some more sites certainly helped pushing the
site's page rank on Google.

The project: [https://urlroulette.net/](https://urlroulette.net/)

I actually wrote a post about being on the HN front page:
[https://hackernoon.com/urlroulette-24-hours-on-hacker-
news-e...](https://hackernoon.com/urlroulette-24-hours-on-hacker-
news-e272ef6637d8)

------
git-pull
_The Tao of tmux_ ([https://leanpub.com/the-tao-of-
tmux](https://leanpub.com/the-tao-of-tmux)) gained initial exposure and
eventually became highly cited throughout the tmux community.

It's also available to read for free online ([https://leanpub.com/the-tao-of-
tmux/read](https://leanpub.com/the-tao-of-tmux/read)).

 _tmuxp_ ([https://tmuxp.git-pull.com](https://tmuxp.git-pull.com)), a tmux
session manager, gained over 1k stars over the years.

 _vcspull_ ([https://vcspull.git-pull.com](https://vcspull.git-pull.com)), a
repo sync tool, compare to myrepos. Received a lot of valuable feedback on
documentation that I ported to other projects.

------
abhas9
My Show HN
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14782936](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14782936))
made it to the front page 7 days ago and stayed there for a couple of hours.
We got 70 downloads and some very good feedback.

We are consistently getting a good rating in Play Store [1] and thanks to HN
we now have around 50 daily active users playing 75-100 games. Meanwhile, we
are developing the features that were suggested in the comments and we felt
are required.

[1]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.buildmyvoc...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.buildmyvocab.greenglishgame)
\- Two-Player Vocabulary Game

------
austincheney
Project:
[http://prettydiff.com/guide/unrelated_diff.xhtml](http://prettydiff.com/guide/unrelated_diff.xhtml)

Show HN Link:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13983085](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13983085)

Summary: A new diff algorithm

Result: About 50,000 visits to the web site, which then averaged about 1000
visits a day. Not much repeat traffic from those visits, but the daily traffic
is now about 1200 visits a day.

------
dmjio
Project: [https://haskell-miso.org](https://haskell-miso.org),
[https://github.com/dmjio/miso](https://github.com/dmjio/miso)

Synopsis: Elm arch. in Haskell, but supports isomorphic js

Show HN link:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14685677](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14685677)

Status: Still kickin', ~17k views, top 15 repo globally on GH (for a day)

------
prohor
6 years ago I submitted cloud computing comparison -
[https://www.cloudorado.com/](https://www.cloudorado.com/) . It has hit first
page with 38 comments. There was a nice spike in traffic that I've never seen
later but it faded quickly. Now traffic mostly comes from search and some
links that popped up here and there. The site is live and provides revenue
(but not spectacular; fraction of what I need for living).

------
kamranahmed_se
I had about five of my submissions hit the front page. All of them were mostly
projects on github and articles on my blog. For how they helped me:

\- They got me around ~3000 subscribers for hugobots.com which I have been
promoting through my repositories (it would have been much more;
unfortunately, I forgot to put the link on the first day while the repository
was on the first page. I put it on the third day and the emails that I got
were mostly from the traffic from the people sharing the post on
twitter/facebook/reddit etc)

\- One of the project (developer roadmap) got me two sponsors paying me around
~1000$ each every 6 months for just putting their links in the project readme.

\- Follower count on my github profile was around ~100 at that time; now it is
about 2.3k

\- Had been approached for freelancing gigs and was able to make connections.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13970781](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13970781)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13664127](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13664127)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12282264](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12282264)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13927262](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13927262)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14568050](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14568050)

~~~
franciscop
Just curious, how did you get those sponsors? Did they contact you or did you
reach out?

~~~
kamranahmed_se
I was contacted.

------
vivekseth
What kinds of Show HNs are you asking about? What do you mean by how is a site
doing?

My Show HN
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14778497](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14778497))
made it to the homepage, but I don't think its what you're asking about. My
site is just a personal site with random content so its no different than
before my post.

~~~
superasn
Any type is great, but projects that can have actual user are more
interesting.

------
peterburkimsher
Project: [https://pingtype.github.io](https://pingtype.github.io)

Show HN Links:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=peterburkimsher](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=peterburkimsher)

Summary: Chinese-English word-for-word translator for education.

Result: 16 points, 4 comments, still no idea how to market it.

------
aml183
We closed. Company was called Koalah.

------
khc
Open source project so not quite a "site": submitted goofys
([https://github.com/kahing/goofys/](https://github.com/kahing/goofys/)) 644
days ago and had 40 upvotes on HN, and from what I recall I had a couple
hundred stars on github right after. Now I am approaching 900 stars, a niche
community of users, and occasional drive-by contributions.

Compare to catfs
([https://github.com/kahing/catfs/](https://github.com/kahing/catfs/)) which I
recently posted but did not make to front page, and right now it's at 14
stars. I would say both projects have similar audiences comparable in
complexity, which would mean front page on HN gave goofys a 20x or so boost in
terms of github stars.

Note that the first time I posted goofys it did not make it to front page.
@dang emailed me to re-post it and the second time it was boosted to front
page.

------
stockkid
I have two sites.

I submitted RemoteBase 400 days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11890991](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11890991)

For the first time, someone paid for something I made from scratch. I wrote
about what I learned from this launch: [https://sung.io/lessons-from-
successfully-launching-remoteba...](https://sung.io/lessons-from-successfully-
launching-remotebase). I have since gotten a job, and the site sort of stopped
making money. But I am still iterating on it.

Also submitted Dnote 100 days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14031649](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14031649)

I pitched it to a live audience shortly after: [https://sung.io/pitching-
dnote](https://sung.io/pitching-dnote). I never got around making an actual
sale.

------
ThomPete
I submitted 4 which all got on the frontpage.

Ghostnote
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9145007](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9145007)

I still make good money on Ghostnote and is working on new features plus a new
SAAS service.

Weekendhacker
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2563718](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2563718)

This one is alive but not really active. Around 8K users on a mailing list. If
anyone want to take over this project pm me.

PinView
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3862889](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3862889)

FinalTouch
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2991206](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2991206)

This was fun to do but just a project we did for fun.

~~~
laksmanv
What's a good email to reach out about WH?

~~~
ThomPete
Just updated my personal info. So should be there.

------
StriverGuy
[https://www.techconferences.io/](https://www.techconferences.io/)

Posted in November 2016. Got a ton of traffic for about three days (~20k
users/day). Now DAU is around 10-15. More a side-project type site, never was
intended as a business.

------
iambrakes
I released SoundKit ([https://soundkit.io](https://soundkit.io)), a library of
UI sounds a few years back. At the time, there weren't really people marketing
sounds for UI, so people were interested in discussing. I learned a lot from
the feedback (some good, some bad) and saw a lot of traffic in the first few
weeks from it.

I still get a regular stream of traffic now, and there are tons of others
making sounds for UI. So, hopefully it helped kickstart that market a little.

I'm in the process of creating a second set of sounds now to try and keep the
interest alive.

Original Post
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8527861](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8527861)

------
Cogbotter
My attempt at creating realistic images from Gameboy camera pictures[1] got
posted by someone else.

I did not notice it, and the traffic brought down my tiny blog with the 25.000
visits I got the next couple of days.

It was a really cool feeling, and I learned what measures to take to keep my
self hosted WordPress blog up in these cases. Unfortunately I never needed it
afterwards. If someone is interested in a write up, let me know so I can make
one.

Since then my blog gets about 40 visits a day. Only a small amount, but it
still satisfies me and keeps me writing.

[1][http://www.pinchofintelligence.com/photorealistic-neural-
net...](http://www.pinchofintelligence.com/photorealistic-neural-network-
gameboy/)

------
garysieling
My site gets 50-100 users a day
([https://www.findlectures.com](https://www.findlectures.com)). I got a ton of
great feedback, which I'm slowly working through, e.g. bug reports, requests
for more content, and one $20 sponsorship. I've also got a conference talk
coming up at a Solr conference in September.

I have just under 900 people signed up for an email list of hand-picked talk
recommendations - about 200 of these were from HN, and a couple people sign up
every day.

Based on the feedback I got, I'm working on an add-on to send email alerts
with talks based on people's interests (if you want in, contact me, I need a
few beta users)

------
nailer
Launched CertSimple with a 'Show HN' 862 days ago
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9210908](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9210908)),
for a significantly faster and easier way to do the identity checks required
EV HTTPS certificates. We got our first customer on that day - I already knew
them from previous dev work, but they saw the post on HN, hated their existing
EV CA, and signed up.

[https://certsimple.com](https://certsimple.com) now has clients including
Superdry, CrowdCube, The Motley Fool and most of the fintech startups in
London.

------
michaeloblak
Submitted [https://sheetsu.com](https://sheetsu.com) 673 days ago
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10251686](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10251686)).
Hit home page and stayed in the 2nd position for couple hours. I got 12,715
visitors in a week when it was submitted from HN only. A lot of them being my
first users. HN was kind of a perfect audience for the early version of my
product. Many great people with awesome feedback.

It was a solo attempt at the beginning. Right now there are 5 of us working on
it and building a business around it.

------
sideshowb
I didn't call it "Show HN" as was unaware of that protocol at the time, but
"Help me check my quantum physics game for accuracy" [1] got a lot of helpful
comments on the physics.

Also a lot of complaints over my poor choice of language, and "why don't you
open source it, we'll do a JS port". I did. They didn't.

Anyway I don't think it's seen much use since that (mostly positive)
experience - if you're willing to download and execute a java app you still
can:

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11813473](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11813473)

------
cantbecool
I posted [http://moviemagnet.co](http://moviemagnet.co) (movie torrent search
engine) awhile back, it was removed from Google search results and still
receive a steady 2k+ visitors a day.

------
mitul_45
Submitted an expense-manager PWA 83 days ago -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14279653](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14279653).

There was a lot of traffic in first few weeks. Now it has been stable - around
25 weekly (<100 monthly) active users.

I guess these are the people who are actually using it daily to manage their
expenses. I had the same question - how can I make all of these people
visiting first time come back again.

------
leandot
463 points, 332 days ago submitted
[http://hackernewsbooks.com](http://hackernewsbooks.com)

Got ~1500 active subscribers on the newsletter, some web traffic, some passive
income, a lot of interesting contacts, met some cool people in Zurich, where I
live. Overall, really glad I did it.

Original post here -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12365693](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12365693)

------
mboelen
Someone submitted my security tool Lynis during Black Hat Europe:
[https://github.com/CISOfy/lynis](https://github.com/CISOfy/lynis) (original
link
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12870753](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12870753)).

The result was a spike in GitHub stars, more users and feedback. So a great
way to increase an open source project.

------
eerikkivistik
Submitted [https://3dc.io](https://3dc.io) (a simple cross-platform 3d design
tool) about 2 months ago, got a massive spike in traffic, that lasted for
about 2-3 days. In addition we got some good and thorough feedback from the
community.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14360921](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14360921)

------
krptos
My Show HN
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13857137](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13857137))
HexoPress earned 200 signups in a span of couple of days.

The traffic spike, remained a spike and didn't continue long. But it gained a
few regular users. I run my own blog with HexoPress
([http://hexopress.com](http://hexopress.com)).

------
nikivi
We submitted our search engine a few days ago ([https://learn-
anything.xyz/](https://learn-anything.xyz/)) and it has been pretty well
received. We got quite a bit of valuable feedback on it which we used in turn
to improve the engine.

Here is the HN post :

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14798336](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14798336)

------
nappy
Made HN when we launched late last Summer- we're doing our first 5k+ unit
wholesale orders and have shipped caffeinated toothpaste to thousands of
customers.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12504012](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12504012)
[https://www.powertoothpaste.com/](https://www.powertoothpaste.com/)

------
greenwalls
Submitted GlassWire [https://www.glasswire.com](https://www.glasswire.com) for
Windows 1064 days ago. Now we have a new Android app!
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.glasswire....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.glasswire.android)

------
avisk
I submitted logtrail
([https://github.com/sivasamyk/logtrail](https://github.com/sivasamyk/logtrail))
312 days ago (more of a side project of mine) and made it to front page. Got
lots of stars :). Helped me boost my confidence and currently has active users
and made multiple releases with new features. Happy I did it.

------
shykes
Docker is doing pretty well. It was a HN-only launch.

~~~
andrewstuart
No comments on the billion dollar plus company launched via Show HN?

This should be at the top of the list.

~~~
shykes
I think I posted a little too late. A good reminder of how much is left to
chance in a launch :)

------
borski
Tinfoil Security
([https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com](https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com))
originally started as a Show HN, and hit the front page back then:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2291944](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2291944)

We're doing well, and hiring! :)

------
twoslide
On the front page about 1.5 years ago with 2sli.de, my web app for interactive
slides:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10890531](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10890531)

I got a few hundred sign-ups but not much else; I am still maintaining the
site but have not found as much time as I would like to develop it.

------
ransom1538
Submitted a week ago or so:
[https://www.opendoctor.io/opioid/highest/](https://www.opendoctor.io/opioid/highest/)

When it was first posted it hit front page, then hit reddit, melted my
machine. I started moving to static files, but not in time! HN removed it from
the homepage.

~~~
pmontra
Good tip, thanks. Plan in advance for high load before advertising or cache
all the things.

By the way, the image at the top should be served in different weights (bytes)
for different screen sizes. Instead it's unnecessarily large (bytes) for a
small screen phone where it's kind of 1.5 x 2 cm. It's wasted bandwidth on the
server and not nice to look at while it loads one line at the time.

------
monokai_nl
Submitted the new installment of the Monokai syntax highlighting colors for
Sublime Text (Monokai Pro) a month ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14611823](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14611823)

I got a good spike of traffic from Reddit and Medium, HN a bit less.

------
aparks517
Project: [https://getmirrorshades.com](https://getmirrorshades.com)

Show HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13687353](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13687353)

Summary: Simple web analytics

Result: Lots of great feedback, added about 100 active users

------
soheil
We got netin.co on the front page a few months ago. The post was about hiring
a team as opposed to individual candidates. We are still doing well, although
don't expect the visibility to have a long term effect. Think of it more as a
sugar rush without the crash, no pun intended.

------
grimmdude
Submitted MidiWriterJS about a year and a half ago
([https://github.com/grimmdude/MidiWriterJS](https://github.com/grimmdude/MidiWriterJS)).
I think the majority of the stars and usage it gets came because of that.

------
kermittd
How meta! I submitted my side project
[http://www.bookeyes.co/](http://www.bookeyes.co/). Though it was simplistic
and still is BookEyes was well received. I got feature ideas I'm in the
process of implementing.

------
chuhnk
Project evolved from a small framework with a couple hundred stars to
something now used by a number of billion dollar enterprise companies. Still a
long road ahead.

[https://micro.mu/](https://micro.mu/)

------
Lerc
Mostly when I show things they're just things I made that I put on github. I
get github stars.

I think the exchange rate between Github stars and Facebook/Twitter Likes is
favourable. Tinder Swipes, not so much.

Not much of a BTC/Github-Star exchange yet.

------
herbst
I had a few i think. One for example ascii.li which front paged twice. It's
just a stupid content site so traffic died again but for a week or more I got
thousands of users and plenty backlinks.

------
mcjiggerlog
Artpip was on the front page for a while 3 weeks ago [1].

I had around a 30% increase in users and around $500 in sales over the
following couple of weeks, which was pretty great.

~~~
BartSaM
ALWAYS link to your site when mentioning it. You do not have enough SEO
presence for me to find it or for most people to bother looking for.

------
crobertsbmw
I launched deckofcardsapi.com and it has about 16,000 decks created per day. I
don't make any money, but it's fun that it gets a lot of traffic.

------
dang
I've been meaning to publish the tips that we send to people who email us
asking for Show HN advice. Anybody want to add anything? or see anything
incorrect?

\-----------

_Read[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html).
Point users to something they can try out for themselves. Don't require
signups or permissions that aren't obviously needed. Avoid popups. Avoid
overly slick website design and (especially) marketing language: HN users tune
all that out and in fact it hurts you. Text and text-based layouts are good.
Information density is good. Avoid super-large fonts and excessive pictures,
they make you look lightweight. Put intellectually interesting details up
front. If you're launching a company, corporate branding is fine; otherwise
it's a negative, so tune it down.

Add a first comment to the thread with the backstory of how you came to work
on this and explaining what's different about it. This tends to seed better
discussion.

Make it easy to tell what the product/project is; otherwise the discussion
will consist of "I can't tell what this is". Link to any relevant past
threads.

Your primary mission is to engage intellectual curiosity. If you try to sell
HN readers on your stuff, you'll evoke objections. Engage their curiosity and
they will sell themselves.

Mention areas you'd like feedback about or open questions. Surprising or
whimsical things that came up during the work are also good--they are
unpredictable and that makes them interesting.

A little humor is ok; more than a little feels presumptuous. Don't be chummy,
just answer straightforwardly. Don't address other users by their usernames
(it's not the convention on HN and feels out of place). Don't introduce
yourself more than once.

Don't say nice things about yourself or your work. It invites comeuppance.
Instead, be humble or even mildly self-critical; then readers will look for
nice things to say, and even when finding fault, won't make as big a deal
about it.

Don't ask for upvotes. Our software ignores most promo-votes, plus HN users
notice them and get mad. Especially make sure that your friends don't post
booster comments or softball questions. HN users sniff that out a mile away
and then we have to kill the thread.

Email us a link to your submission when it's up and we might be able to give
you some help or make sure it doesn't get flagged._

\-----------

This originated as advice for YC startups but I always liked the pg/yc
tradition of giving the same advice to everybody.

~~~
eps
Between posting (a link + a comment) and making a text post with a link -
which one is a preferred option?

Also, do these sink at different speeds (they used to I think)?

~~~
dang
They used to but they don't anymore (this is specific to Show HNs). For Show
HN the tradition is to link to an external URL but I wouldn't say that either
is preferred.

