

Show HN: Our startup got featured on HN and BetaList: Statistics, comparison. - zubairov
http://blog.elastic.io/post/22253468976/featured-on-hackernews-and-betalist-comparison-and

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3pt14159
Bar charts should always start at the x-axis (where the value is 0) because
otherwise it warps how large the difference is to a casual reader.

~~~
joering2
Indeed. My favorite recently [1]: omg!! look at chart #1! they lost all their
users... not!

[http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-daily-
users-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-daily-users-of-
draw-something-totally-crater-2012-4)

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jamroom
Just wanted to add a second set of 'data points' to this as well - we had a
very similar situation, but for us the traffic we got from Betali.st was
higher quality - while we had significantly less overall referrals from
BetaList than from HN (~1300 vs ~500), the users coming from BetaList were
much more apt to create an account, hang around and give us feedback.

<https://www.trestleapp.com/blog/being-featured-on-beta-list>

So I would highly recommend BetaList if you are just getting rolling.

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keesj
Here's another comparison in case people are interested:
[http://blog.capography.com/comparing-traffic-from-
betalist-w...](http://blog.capography.com/comparing-traffic-from-betalist-
with-traffic)

I should point out the comparison isn't totally fair as in this instance HN
traffic is directed to specific blog posts, while the Beta List post linked to
the homepage.

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Beta List (Marc). The post was written by one
of the startups (Capography) featured on our site.

~~~
zubairov
Right. With HN in our samples users need to do an additional hop over to the
main website. I think next time we could compare it on the other HN link.

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knes
Betali.st is awesome, we used most of the Free Startup beta listing for
Dropdock ( Startupli.st, betapunch ,etc ) and betali.st was definetly the
best!

Here's the Goal completion for the Week we got featured on those website.

[http://dl.dropbox.com/u/149780/Overview%20-%20Google%20Analy...](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/149780/Overview%20-%20Google%20Analytics.jpg)

Also, I chatted a little bit with Marc who run the site and he's a great guy.
;)

~~~
keesj
Thanks, and nice graph :)

Marc from Beta List. ('keesj' is an old nickname of mine)

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drobiazko
Great analysis. Sustainability is pretty reasonable. There are tons of high
quality posts on HN; if you don't gain points fast enough, you disappear from
the first page too fast. BetaList has twitter integration which has a much
more sustainable effect. What puzzles me is the lower willingness of visitors
from HN to provide feedback.

~~~
robotmay
I've noticed that too; I had a similar experience when I asked for feedback on
my project, only with Reddit. I got 0 replies and little traffic from HN
(admittedly it was pretty sparse on data and I'll resubmit it soon now that
I've vastly improved it), but got some wonderfully useful feedback and 100x
the traffic from posting to /r/unitedkingdom. A more specific target market, I
guess.

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driverdan
To get a bit meta, I'm curious what the HN conversion rate is for blog posts
about previous HN conversion rates.

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andreasklinger
Do you have already any data on retention?

~~~
zubairov
Hi Andreas,

We don't have yet any data about this. We are in private beta phase so we just
got started. We track our visitors/users very carefully, so by the time goes
by we will definitely see some numbers that we can share with HN and Betalist
communities.

