
Ask HN: How do you make use of traffic surges from sites like HN and Reddit? - Curiositry
Last week one of my projects made it to #12 on reddit.com (from &#x2F;r&#x2F;InternetIsBeautiful), and I’ve had sites or blogposts do well on ProductHunt, Reddit, and here on HN in the past.<p>What are the best ways to make use of surges of traffic like this?<p>Getting 250,000+ hits helps with search ranking, but I don’t run ads, so it doesn’t translate directly into revenue. It’d make sense to use it to grow a mailing list for future projects, but traffic from link aggregators converts 90% worse than normal referral &#x2F; search traffic. So I have two questions:<p>1. <i></i>What do you do when one of your sites does well on HN &#x2F; Reddit &#x2F; Producthunt?<i></i><p>2. <i></i>Is there any way to improve the abysmal optin rate that usually goes along with link aggregator traffic?<i></i><p>Thanks!
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mgalka
I've have a few massive traffic surges from Reddit in the past, as much as a
few 100k visitors, and have been wondering the same. Usually it amounts to
just a handful of opt ins, fewer than I get from about 1k of organic traffic.

My impression is that people are most just interested in taking a peek before
returning to reddit, so unlikely there is much you can do. I think the real
value from scoring well on these sites comes not from the traffic, but from
journalists and bloggers who monitor reddit for things to write about. I've
found a high scoring link on reddit often leads to several secondary
backlinks, which bring more engaged visitors.

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Curiositry
Sounds like we have a similar experience. I noticed HN and ProductHunt
resulted in more press than Reddit, even though they drove far less traffic to
the site.

But maybe success on Reddit / HN / PH could be used as social proof when
pitching journalists?

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fratlas
In the past I have included a "contact us for API access" email address, even
if what I was posting was just an MVP. This helps me gauge interest in a
potential SaaS, and has resulted in beta testers for a few of my projects.

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zerognowl
If the sites are on a root domain, then you can put ADWords on the site and
get paid, but not much. Typically a thousand impressions is a dollar.
Depending on how long the URL stays on the frontpage, you could be looking at
20,000 - 50,000 impressions which roughly translates as USD 20-50.

You get paid even more when ADs are clicked on.

To be honest this is a rather dated way to monetize a site now with the sudden
surge of visitors using ADBlockers, and you might want to look into other ways
to monetize, such as

\- Affiliate links

\- Premium/paywalled articles / content

\- Donation buttons, using PayPal / Bitcoin/Litecoin

Also keep in mind that since getting frontpage on HN is so rare, then it can't
be a sustainable source of income

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Curiositry
Thanks. That's the impression I got, too: I looked at the numbers and decided
running on ads wouldn't be worth it until I was getting far more steady
traffic.

Do you know how the visitors:dollars ratio for less intrusive methods -- such
as affiliate links or donation buttons -- compares to the ratio for display
ads (~1000:1)?

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itamarst
Consider that most people coming from these sources are just looking for a
quick read; they don't have a problem they're trying to solve (referral/search
traffic), they just want to be entertained.

So I've gotten same number of subscribers from endorsement tweet that was
probably seen by a few hundred people as I've gotten from thousands of
visitors from HN.

It's important to have a good call-to-action for subscribing to the mailing
list that is tied to your page content, rather than generic or unrelated.
Gotten 3x improvement from that. But it's still a low sign up rate.

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seanwilson
Do you charge for a product? Why don't you run ads? Do you have affiliate
links?

I'm not sure what can be suggested if you don't have some revenue generating
conversion goals. Trying to get mailing list signups, social follows and
social shares can't hurt though.

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Curiositry
1\. I do charge for products — just not the more interesting open-source ones
that tend to do well on HN & Reddit. (Also, my income from client web design &
writing is probably loosely affected by the success of my blogposts and open-
source side projects.)

2\. I don’t run ads (at the moment) for both practical and philosophical
reasons. (Practical: most of my sites don’t get enough steady traffic to
generate much revenue. Philosophical: ads are annoying and I block them,
targeted ads invade privacy, and ads are designed to get people to buy things
that they (probably) don’t need.

3\. I’ve considered affiliate links in that past, but haven’t used them yet:
like ads, the benefits don’t yet seem to outweigh the costs. Aside from
Amazon, which seems to be the most popular, what affiliate networks would you
recommend?

~~~
seanwilson
Fair enough, but I don't understand what the big deal is. I'd try ads,
affiliate links and monetising existing free projects myself. If you're going
to make your interesting projects free, avoid ads and avoid affiliate links
you're not leaving yourself many options. Would you have any income at all if
you extended these ideas to your client work?

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Mz
What are you trying to accomplish? What are your goals?

