

Ask HN: How long did it take to get a good amount of users visiting your site? - mootothemax

I launched a web app in February '10, and whilst it's started to come close to ramen-profitable, I consider the amount of users visiting it to be pretty low: 30-40 unique visitors per day who haven't previously visited the site.<p>I realise that everyone will have a different opinion of what is a <i>good amount</i> of traffic, but how long did it take before you thought "Yup, it's all going to plan"?<p>Personally, my knowledge of how to market and bring in traffic is essentially zero; did any of you have one major insight that helped you get to where you are today?
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makeee
I started an image bookmarking site 2.5 years ago: <http://imgfave.com>

Now gets ~40,000 visitors a day and just pays my rent.. so not exactly ramen
profitable yet.

A few things I did which helped it grow:

\- Got my initial core group of users by soliciting feedback on friendfeed and
a few other places. The first version was based on identi.ca and I got some
buzz just because it was a novel use of the identi.ca microblogging software.

\- Started a bunch of facebook pages around different topics (photography,
design, etc..). Got a lot of fans, and posted a new image every day to each
one. This was probably the single biggest driver of return traffic.

\- Made sure the site is fast. Every time I'd upgrade my server or improve
performance in some way (like move files to a CDN) I'd see a huge increase in
traffic. Speed is really important.

\- Besides that I just gave it time to grow, periodically added a new feature,
and sending an email to all my users about it.

Top traffic sources are: direct traffic, Facebook, Stumbleupon, Tumblr, and
google search.

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revorad
List your site on the Chrome web store. It will at least double your traffic.

Oh and stop trying to hide the damn thing. You just lost a few hundred
visitors by not even saying it's name here. Do you really want traffic or not?

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mootothemax
_List your site on the Chrome web store. It will at least double your traffic_

Thanks, great suggestion and I have now done this :)

 _Do you really want traffic or not_

Well, yes I do, but at the same time I didn't want this Ask HN to be solely
about me. Lesson learned ;)

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Neputys
Off topic but I like your app and it looks to me like you can be loosing
significant amount of first time visitors (How big is your bounce rate on
homepage?) so I'll write it anyway.

Try some A/B testing with copy and amount of info (3 main blocks instead of
6... write not about what app does, but about what I don't need to do if I use
it and so on). Now I see that it's something nice, well made and can be useful
but it takes effort to actually understand it while it should be obvious.

It's hard to describe. I just think that this is a bigger problem because of
conversion. (I'm a UX designer :))

~~~
mootothemax
Hiya, thanks, great suggestion! The bounce rate currently hovers between 40
and 50%, so there's definitely some testing to be done on the design :)

If you have any other suggestions, I'm all ears :)

~~~
Neputys
It's all just scientific poking :) but I'd try for example to address the
audience instead of describing app it self. Now you have "Twitter Machine -
tool packed with features" so maybe just "tool for Twitter stars" or something
like it would work better. What you should understand is that you are
basically trying to get people to pay for using Twitter :) so you have to be
talking with hardcore users and providing some solid arguments.

Hypothetical but I hope it helps :)

~~~
mootothemax
It really does help - I'm a complete and utter newbie at actively trying to
market and sell, so it's making a huge difference, thanks :)

~~~
Neputys
You are welcome. neputys at gmail dot com can't promise much but I'll help if
I'll be able to

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bobpotter
I came across this article on SEOMoz by a YOUMoz member who in two years was
able to rank #1 out of 92,000,000 for the term "auto accessories." He doesn't
tell us in detail how he did it (step by step), but he does talk about the
high level steps he used to rank well and drive traffic to his site.
[http://www.seomoz.org/blog/boy-do-i-love-linkbuilding-and-
yo...](http://www.seomoz.org/blog/boy-do-i-love-linkbuilding-and-you-should-
too)

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solost
In my experience the fastest way to acquire users, other than paid search, is
via an affiliate program. I have launched 7 programs for e-commerce properties
in the last 3 years and the average first months traffic to a brand new site
has been 20,000 unique visitors in the first month. Traffic growth has always
excellerated from month to month as we acquired new affiliates to participate
in the program.

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user24
I have a hobby launching wallpaper sites. <http://www.ScienceWallpaper.com>
has gone from 0 to 80 organic visitors per day in one month. I've linked it
from 3 or 4 of my blogs, and it had a popular reddit post last month. Other
than that, just regular updates.

Same story for most other sites. Get lots of content up there, and carry on.

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jcfrei
I got a site up and running from zero to 600 daily users in 2 weeks. Then
again it was mostly black hat stuff.

~~~
mootothemax
Wow, nice work! (even if it is admittedly via black hat ;))

What niche is the site in?

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shogunmike
What are your current methods for marketing the site?

~~~
mootothemax
Searching for reviews of my competitors, contacting the blog owners and asking
for something similar, along with a free subscription - so far to a resounding
silence.

It's listed in a few directories, and I still get a few visitors from the
likes of KillerStartups (featured it back in March), but other than that I
don't really know where to begin :)

Oh! I added an affiliate programme about a month ago and submitted that to
various directories, and have had about ten users sign up for it, leading to
zero sales.

Honestly, I think the product itself is good and enough people seem to want to
pay for it - I'm just not sure what the next steps should be. I'm deliberately
not mentioning the site as I want this question to not be specifically about
me, but if you have any tips I'd love to hear them! :)

~~~
rmah
While on one hand your restraint in self-promoting your site here on HN is
admirable, I suspect that it reflects a reluctance on your part to
_aggressively_ market/promote/sell your site.

If I may be so bold, I suggest you try to get over this reluctance. If you're
shy or self deprecating with your marketing message, you won't attract as much
attention as you may deserve. Be bold, be aggressive. For example, try
different approaches with the media (just asking isn't enough, you have to
give them a reason to cover you).

Good luck!

~~~
mootothemax
You make a good point and I suspect that you may be right :)

I'll give it a try, I'm going to sit down now and think about what rocks about
my web app (ahh, sod it, it's <http://tweetingmachine.com>), what makes it
relevant to the people I contact, and why it should be covered. Thanks!

~~~
fbnt
Looks like a nicely executed product, I haven't tested it, but this is the
feeling I get from visiting the site.

However, I think you might have two minor problems here:

1) Getting people on the site and let people know you exist. See rmah's
suggstion above. Free accounts for bloggers is a good idea at this stage, but
not enough.

2) Customer acquisition: Please tell me immediately _how much_ I am going to
spend. I won't hook my twitter account with your app, I've come to know your
site 10 seconds ago, I won't let you dive through my contacts. I don't even
know if this is a paid or a free service. To me this is a enough to let me
close the browser tab and look away.

~~~
mootothemax
Thanks! Good point about the money, I've temporarily placed this on the
homepage, and will be working at a better way to display and get people
clicking "Buy now!" :)

I'm now following the advice and have spent a good amount of time today
finding relevant websites and contacting them about TweetingMachine. If all
goes to plan I hope to write a successful post here in a couple of months
stating everything I did.

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el_chief
go to the library and get some Ries, Kawasaki, and Godin

