

Traffic sources: Forget what you think about tech PR - pjsullivan3
http://tripl.tumblr.com/post/14729514367

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sbisker
Compared to the news sites you've mentioned, I've increasingly discovered that
the primary reason I read things on HN is the page load times. The
professional commentary, snark, and community of TechCrunch are lovely - but
they simply aren't worth a load time fifteen times longer than a text page
full of HN comments and a quick link to the article/startup in question. Makes
me wonder what other things I would more readily consume with a primarily text
driven interface...

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danso
Also, TC dies on the iPad

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masonhensley
I honestly thought it only happened to me. I've pretty much stopped reading TC
because of it.

I cringe every time there is a good discussion going on HN over a TechCrunch
article, because I just know it will inevitably lead to safari crashing on my
iPad.

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dpogg1
I legitimately read this as "A note to all startups on here: HN killed TC in
traffic driving to our startup." I came in to post condolences.

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SquareWheel
Why is the link back to Hacker News a Facebook doorway page? For tracking
purposes?

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CGamesPlay
Facebook doesn't offer those metrics to third parties AFAIK, so I assume just
a weird mistake.

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pjsullivan3
yeah that was just a mistake because it was posted in our internal group page,
my bad

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resnamen
Comments on HN are a huge value-add. I can't stand other tech sites now, where
the quality of the conversation is pages of fanboys calling each other names.

~~~
eigenvector
I love that comment threads on HN are discussions, not a "who can come up with
the wittiest insult" competition. The "keyboard warrior" mentality is usually
absent here.

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pjsullivan3
very very very true!

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jakeludington
If HN was so awesome for driving traffic, why is the link to the original post
passing through Facebook?

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pjsullivan3
that was a mistake on my part, I copied the link from our Facebook group where
I posted it to our team, changing now!

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crx
A post by TC has still much more "social proof" and SEO juice (stupid word).
We still get converting visitors based on a two year old TC post...

~~~
pjsullivan3
You are right in terms of SEO. On a funny note if you search Tripl on Google,
our SEO is so bad it comes up as domain description we originally bought.
Google must of done some re-indexing. We are trying to fix that this week by
using a site index.

~~~
SquareWheel
It doesn't help that they automatically change searches for "Tripl" to
"Triple".

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AznHisoka
Tech PR is definitely overrated. Just take a look at the startups covered in
January of 20102 and see where they are now. It's sexy having your site be
covered by NY Times, Techcrunch, Gigaom, and all these publications, but it's
no guarantee of success... I mean, whatever happened to Hipster????

Rather than focus on publicity, people should hang out in the communities
where their target audience is. If you're building a travel site, that means
Lonely Planet forums. PR is just smoke and mirrors. What really matters is
reaching the people who will really use your site.

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gjulianm
I think this means HN readers are way more 'engaged' than TC's. HN readers are
more interested in the topics being treated here, and click-through rate is
probably higher. It's also important the fact that in HN you only have a link
to the site, not an article explaining what the site is.

Oh, and I also agree with gojomo: would be very interesting to have followup
data, most signups, most active signups...

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dotBen
This assumes that the kind of traffic you want to your startup is from
industry peers - ie people who read industry websites.

I'd offer you'd be much better off using your resources to gain customer-
traffic rather than industry-traffic. Spend the same PR resource getting into
the publications and websites run by the people who will actually give you
money or engagement.

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gojomo
Interesting followup data would be:

Moreso than traffic, which resulted in the most signups (absolute or as a
percentage of visits)?

Which cohort of signups had the most still-active users weeks/months later?

The service would seem to be of more interest to dedicated travelers than the
kind of tech/startup junkies who visit HN/TC/TNW. Have you had any
traffic/signup surges from coverage in travel-focused forums to compare?

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danso
Let's be careful not to trade one publicity superficiality for another: it's
not only number of page views that counts, but the prestige of the referrer.

For example, I once received 150,000 views through a Reddit/pics submission on
my Flickr account. If the New York Times featured my photo on the front of its
Travel subsite, I would bet my Flickr photo page would get a negligible number
of hits...it's as another HN commenter noted, HN provides more click-throughs
because HN only provides links, not articles.

I would also wager that the NYT Travel section gets fewer than 150,000 views a
day...but in terms of bragging rights, if I were to try to shop my portfolio
around as a professional photog, front page of the NYT Travel would mean a lot
more than front page of Reddit/pics.

If you were a VC investor, would you be more willing to evaluate a startup
that made it to the front of HN or was validated by a TN post?

