
How we Went from Zero Audience to Over a Thousand Beta Signups - goldvine
https://medium.com/what-i-learned-building/63fa3e5603b
======
k-mcgrady
>> "In the spirit of executing, we will also soon be launching a book
detailing the show-not-tell process much further, making it easier for you to
implement in your own products."

Good post but I'm curious about this. You are already working on two products
which haven't launched - why did you decide to add a third task of writing a
book? Would it not have been better to launch the products, see if those
signups converted to users, and then write the book?

~~~
goldvine
That certainly was an option, to wait.

But since it is just the two of us, and I'm the only one who can work on
backend code, Joelle has some open time. She is doing much of the early work
on the book while I push product (currently focusing more on Minimalytics to
get the first beta open).

As for waiting to see if the signups convert to users...I think that has more
to do with the traffic sources versus the techniques being taught in the book.
I wouldn't want to wait months when the inspiration has already struck and is
fresh :-)

~~~
codex
Why do you consider collecting 1,100 email addresses to be particularly
noteworthy? I see inane YouTube videos of the worst possible quality getting
orders of magnitude more views. And how many of these email addresses are
bots?

~~~
goldvine
Based on the emails and avatars tied to them, very few (if any) are bots.
We've of course had a random a@a.com and a this.site.is@gay.com but beyond
that most are legitimate.

And re: YouTube...I watch plenty of YouTube videos by people I would never
give my email address to. I also give my email to alot of people I would never
buy from. It's a numbers game.

And 1,100 email addresses is a huge number for us, and for many people who
have fewer than that on their list. We spent years wondering how to build a
list of engaged folks, so when we hit on something that resonated...we knew it
was a big deal :-)

------
StavrosK
I've scanned the article two-three times and didn't find the salient point:
Where did you get the 10,000-100,000 visitors required to get 1,000 signups?

~~~
goldvine
Sorry :-(

As for traffic, we initially got retweeted a couple times by people with a few
thousand followers in the design space. Both products also were on
news.layervault.com as a result for some time, as well as BetaList a bit later
on.

Our conversion rate to beta signups is around 30%. We've had nowhere near
10,000 or even 100,000 visits.

~~~
StavrosK
Oh wow, 30% is a great conversion rate. However, step #1 of "how to get 1000
signups" is "get 3000 views" :P

~~~
josh2600
To add a bit of info on this, we had over 6000 signups in our beta (month 1)
using LaunchRock as the landing site with a 28% conversion rate.

I would say that we could've driven more traffic to the site and increased the
absolute conversions while lowering the conversion rate BUT I'm comfortable
with having our beta site a little more hidden than say a general marketing
splash page.

My two cents are that if you have a compelling product, your beta launch page
is a pretty trivial commitment and you should expect conversion rates much
higher than Ecommerce. 30% is not unreasonable if you're not spamming. If
you're spamming, 10% is achievable but hard.

Traffic sources: Our Portal, Twitter, Launchrock virality. I have to say the
Launchrock virality techniques worked much better than I thought they would.
It made my job as a marketer much easier.

------
count
How many of your signups came from the Amy Hoy 30x500 empire?

*edit: Not to take away from any of what you've done or the product, just curious as to how big just her network effect is at this point, vs really having 'no following'.

~~~
goldvine
I'm not a part of 30x500. Is that what you meant?

~~~
count
Yep, cool. Good article and neat site, either way!

~~~
goldvine
Mind if I ask what made you think we were affiliated?

~~~
count
Joelle's twitter stream :)

And following her playbook pretty closely (or seemingly so).

------
callmeed
I have an honest question that I hope you won't take offense to (your two
products look great, btw) ...

Did you consider that doing a startup with your boyfriend/girlfriend might be
a bad idea? Startups are hard enough on co-founder friends and non-involved
SOs/spouses. It seems your situation adds more possible bad/awkward outcomes.

I'm curious if you guys discussed this at all (not that it's any of my
business of course).

~~~
goldvine
We worked together at an agency for 2 years prior, she was Project Manager, I
was a developer. That's actually where we met.

When it came time to decide whether or not we should work together, we weren't
really worried about it.

It's turned out amazingly well. But we can handle being around each other ALL
DAY most days. That won't work for everyone, I guess.

But I'm glad I didn't blindly avoid it based on the advice of the masses
(which is usually wrong/naïve).

:-)

------
alexshye
Great writeup on your showing-not-telling approach to designing a landing
page.

But after reading it, here is what I really want to know: what does "a few
tweets" mean? I know many people (myself included) who have tried to "kick out
a few tweets" and did not get 1000 email signups quickly. My belief is you are
writing it because it makes a better story, and puts emphasis on your design.
But is it true?

How did the tweets get out to that many people in your target audience? Do you
have many followers? Did an influential person retweet it? If so, was it a
friend or an unplanned retweet? I'd love to hear more about this side of the
story.

~~~
goldvine
I tweeted at Drew Wilson and Josh Long who wrote the Execute book. I had no
prior relationship with them, and they were kind enough to retweet, after I
let them know how the book inspired me. This triggered a lot of traffic from
designers, and since some of those folks liked our design/product, it got
posted to Designer News and some other galleries where it picked up more
traffic.

We later got on BetaList which drove about 300 signups and a bunch of traffic
to each product. That was easy, just submitted the site, and eventually got
included.

I think all of that traffic converted better than usual thanks to solid
design, and good communication of the core value of each product via showing,
and not telling with a dry headline :-)

~~~
krmmalik
How long did it take before Betali.st featured you? i submitted my app over 8
weeks ago

~~~
goldvine
Minimalytics took about 2 weeks, I think HookFeed was 5-6 weeks.

------
buro9
Interesting thing... Medium's branding is stronger than I thought.

I didn't register that Minimalytic or Hookfeed were new projects and
independent startups until the end, and still had to double check and then saw
the very small text that mentioned "Small HQ".

I interpreted the project names as being cute names for projects within
Medium, not the product of an external company.

It's a strange thing when the content screams "Medium" more than it screams
the content. I suspect it has a lot more to do with the design consistency and
experience rather than the words.

------
canterburry
How many twitter subscribers did you have at the time of Tweeting? How did you
acquire them without a product to show?

~~~
goldvine
not very many at all, the tweets that drove traffic were not from me. They
were from a couple other people that did have a following in the thousands. My
follower count has grown since then.

------
kamakazizuru
call me a cynic - but I dont get why everyone who has a half decent idea and
questionable success feels like they should write a book about it? Why not
wait until you have something really worth sharing and where people would pay
for the knowledge?

~~~
goldvine
I've bought eBooks/read valuable insight from tons of people with
"questionable" success.

That doesn't make the information not useful/inspiring. Most of what I do, I
learned from other people who chose to share that info.

And most of the people I follow...I originally discovered thanks to them
sharing/selling content based on their learnings. I see nothing wrong with the
way the industry works.

~~~
kamakazizuru
sure I learn a lot from people sharing as well - and try to share too - but I
do see a difference in charging people a few bucks for telling them things
they will find in blogs and trumpetting my "success" story - and reading a
blog post from someone sharing a good insight. Sorry if I'm being harsh here -
but we do have a bit of a pat on the back community here - however I realize
that might not have been the most constructive comment. So heres some more
constructive advice - its great that you got a bunch of beta signups. Build
your product - that will be worth a lot more than an ebook about how to build
a landing page that will get you more signups. There are plenty of people out
there with significant experience in this space who publish tonnes of great
free content weekly about these things - a lot of it backed up by research too
(ref: copyhackers.com). Same thing with marketing related advice - check out
the blogs of hubspot and kissmetrics for example. If I were you - rather than
spending time writing an ebook and trying to sell that - I would use that
content - publish it on my products blog - and use that to drive traffic to my
product. Ref: content marketing. Just my 2 bits - the industry doesnt work
that way - people buy content from those who have had considerably larger
successes - but prove me wrong on this and I'm the happiest guy around :D - it
would be an indication for me to go publish a whole lot of ebooks that I didnt
think would ever sell!

------
cldr
So... It was basically all thanks to a well-designed landing page, or did I
miss something?

~~~
goldvine
I think design was a factor. But it wouldn't have mattered how well it was
designed, if it didn't show the functionality.

Our first attempt was following the accepted format for landing pages... 1\.
Pick a headline 2\. Take some screenshots 3\. Write about benefits

But we realized that wasn't compelling enough.

You could have the best headline in the world, backed by a solid design, and
it still wouldn't communicate in the same way as an example/demo/animation of
functionality.

Cheers, @mattgoldman_sd

~~~
purplelobster
What do you think about an embedded video? Personally, I love being able to
see a video of how it works (with minimal marketing speak of course), but
maybe it turns away some users?

~~~
goldvine
I think it's great, but it's tough for people who are pre-launch. Animated
videos are expensive, and actual screenshot-backed videos become outdated
quickly due to changing screens/product vision.

I think a bit of jQuery and a clever explanation can achieve much more in the
early stages.

------
mijustin
Wow, I love both of these examples.

On both landing pages you get a really quick idea of what the product is about
(without having to read any text).

It took me a few more seconds to understand HookFeed, but once I saw the feed
updating (the animation) I instantly understood.

~~~
WA
I didn't get HookFeed and lost interest before I understood. So I still don't
know what it is.

------
Ixiaus
Your javascript on that page pegs my CPU up to 100% - I'm on a MacBook on
Chrome.

~~~
goldvine
On the Medium blog page? Or on Minimalytics/HookFeed/Small HQ sites? Thanks!

~~~
Ixiaus
I'm sorry, should have been more specific. It's on the Minimalytics site.

~~~
akjetma
likewise for ubuntu/chrome

------
gearoidoc
Since launching my startup recently I've discovered that SO much success in
marketing comes down to luck.

The best way to increase your chances of luck? Work smart, work hard and keep
showing up.

~~~
goldvine
"Keep showing up" is huge. But it's not equivalent to luck. Many people here
are talking about how most startups succeed due to luck, and I don't think
that is true.

We've been working on product for a very long time, and things didn't start to
click until we started being social and talking to others in the industry,
helping others out and getting helped out.

Much of the sharing that took place around our products came out of a few new
relationships with others. We made an effort to meet new people, so I wouldn't
exactly call that luck...

The more we show up, and participate, including writing...the more traction we
get. It's amazing how easy it's been once some momentum kicked in!

------
quizotic
Love this, and will try it myself. Thanks for sharing!

------
redguava
Why try to build two apps at once? One is hard enough.

~~~
goldvine
There has actually been a ton of overlap code-wise. Also, we wanted to be able
to cross-promote the products which has worked incredibly well, building both
audiences simultaneously. Most of our focus is on Minimalytics, but HookFeed
is moving very quickly as well due to the overlap.

I would recommend it if the two products are similar.

Also, we have the choice to context-switch and work on what we are most
passionate about on any given day.

