

Ask HN: Why don't people share our viral page with their friends? - outdooricon

I'm a web developer. I love dev and I think that I'm pretty decent at it. I am definitely not a marketer, which is why I bring this question to you all. My wife and I are starting a fun side project together called Happy Nerd Shirts where we will sell shirts with designs specifically targeted at developers, blah blah... I'm not here to make a pitch, I just need your advice.<p>Since we're trying to follow in the footsteps of the startup greats, we've made a Launchrock page at signup.happynerdshirts.com where we are offering what we thought was a good incentive. We have it set up where their incentive increases in value as they get more friends signed up. The problem is, people are signing up but they really aren't sharing their viral links out with anyone. Is this because our infographic isn't good, is it because our incentive sucks, or is it because people want our products only for themselves? I'm at a loss, so I'd really appreciate your insight. Thank you guys!
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koopajah
I really dislike sharing links of future products/projects to my friends as
it's like "recommanding" something I haven't tested yet. So even if the
incentive seems great (1$ per referral seems almost too much for me) I don't
think it would make me jump ahead and forward it.

The problem is that you seem to target a specific kind of people that might
think like me and not immediately provide a referral link on the
FB/twitter/whatever profile to have as many people as possible to signup for.

Anyway, I love the idea, this kind of shirts are 90% of my current clothes so
I'll signup for it right away.

What prevents you from trying with ONE design first and see how it goes? Maybe
rely on another t-shirt design shirt for your first go? In France
<http://www.lafraise.com/> is pretty well-known or websites like teefury.com
could be a good start!

How will you handle fake accounts and people trying to game your system? Most
of the time, the 1$ incentive is tied to "someone signing up AND ordering
something on the site" first, no?

EDIT: Some additions, the email you send right after signup is nice but I
think the first part should be on your website! It describes clearly who you
are, why you're doing this project and also why your design would really be
better, it would be great along with your examples.

EDIT2: Why not have part of the website already done? I have to "pretend" I
sign up in the launchrock page to know wether anyone used my referral link?
Why not have a "normal" login system and a detailed page where I can see who
accepted the referral link? To avoid spending too much time on the websites
first you could use something like www.dailycred.com to handle signups
properly (this was shown on HN a few weeks ago).

~~~
outdooricon
Love the feedback! Ok, let's see if I can address this.

"The problem is that you seem to target a specific kind of people that might
think like me" - Hmmm, that very well could be. Maybe this going viral just
isn't possible for a market like us. If others back this up, then I'll have to
accept it.

"I'll signup for it right away." - This is very encouraging, thank you!

"What prevents you from trying with ONE design first" - We want to build a
brand, not just drop the designs out there. So instead, we're applying to
Kickstarter with a base of 5 designs. That way we can make sure that we've got
something here.

"How will you handle fake accounts" - There is a definite possibility for hurt
here... but it should be pretty easy to see if someone's messing around with
us

"I think the first part should be on your website" - You know, I have tossed
this idea around. Do you think it's a pretty big selling point? I had just
wondered if people wouldn't care about that story as much as they cared about
the seeing the designs themselves...

"you could use something like www.dailycred.com" - I've never heard of this,
but I will check it out. Launchrock is really simple and quick to set up,
which helped us put our page up quick and start to get people involved. And
since our next step is Kickstarter, i was hoping to transition fairly quickly
into a full blown shop once our Kickstarter goal is complete. I'm going in to
this site right now though.

~~~
koopajah
Glad the feedback is useful !

About your page getting viral the problem, for me, if that the project doesn't
exist. I will not recommend something that don't exist/I haven't tried first,
except if I'm sure it will work/happen. If you have a real store I will
definitely forward it to most of my friends that would wear this and/or like
to buy this for me (like I just did with my gf who likes to buy me this kind
of shirts).

For fake account you really should reconsider it. I don't think it's that easy
to detect in the end (except for people trying to earn 1M$ of course), but it
seems pretty easy to game the systems for 100/200$. And I don't think that
tying the 1$ reward to a real order is a stopping point in the end.

For the email part, I don't know if it's a big selling point, at least not as
the first description, but it could be nice to have a small description of you
and your wife like on the right or an "about us" or "Meet the team" (a lot of
current YC startups use this with their launchrock page). The thing is that,
for me, the signup confirmation email is a bit too long.

I can understand that a launchrock page is really easier to easily garner
emails and have an idea of how many people could be interested. The site/idea
would juste seem more real if it was not just a launchrock page.

I like the idea to apply to kickstarter. But part of me thinks that most of
the costs link to your project would be handle upfront by your customers, no?
If you provide links to 5 t-shirts designs and offer a pre-order option you
can ensure you have enough orders before starting producing and then don't
have to spend a lot of money before being sure you'd sell anything.

~~~
outdooricon
Maybe we can add a cap to the incentive. So if it was gamed, the max someone
could get would be, say $20.

I'm seeing more and more the importance of the real store. I think the
question comes down to how easy is it to show that it truly is a pre-order
system, and that you may not get your shirts for a little while. With
Kickstarter, I think that is pretty clear because you have up to two months to
get a group of pre-orders together that would be large enough to mitigate the
costs of the shirt printing. On a real store, people may become more impatient
if it takes awhile to get a large enough pre-order group. But, the problem
that you state, where people may not take us seriously until we have a real
site, says that we need to move beyond Launchrock. Maybe getting our
Kickstarter project up ASAP and directing our domain to that would both help
us get taken more seriously and allow people to be more willing to share us.
And meanwhile, get a store set up to launch as soon as that project finished.

~~~
koopajah
Hmmm, for me the cap wouldn't be enough, I'd just have to create an account,
fake for twenty referals, then do this multiple times. But maybe I'm over-
paranoid on this. Just that money/discount reward just for pushing people to
signup seems to really start by hurting your business plan. Let's wait for
other opinions on this.

You might consider posting your site with a different title, like a "Show HN :
launching a new brand of t-shirts targetting programmers" or an equivalent?
Because the current title seems to ask advice on how to go viral and a lot of
people might not even know your project exists even if they would like it!

~~~
outdooricon
I'm not completely familiar with Hacker New's rules, but I'm a little
concerned about being considered spam if I post again. Do you think it'd be ok
to just go ahead and make another post?

~~~
koopajah
I'm not really sure but I guess you're right, posting again would not be
really useful, because a Show HN would only show a "launchrock" page for the
moment. Maybe after improving the website or starting the kickstarter campaign
you could come back here and ask for feedback ?

~~~
outdooricon
Yah, I think you're right... we'll definitely have to do that. Also, glad to
hear that you're on board with Kickstarter :)

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eranation
I think it's the wording in the tweet, make it more subtle, I clicked tweet
and the wording kind of scared me off

try to do analytics on clicks on the share button that led to no sharing...
(not easy... but try)

also more T samples will be really nice...

I think if you make one good T shirt compilation, even without the T shirts,
just the drawings, and get it up on blogs as "geek art" or "stuff that only
geeks would understand" you'll get a lot of traffic and shares... just try not
to insult any "old" jokes, I would even put some of the oldschool stuff you
want to replace just to stay friendly with everyone, some people think the
double rainbows are funny. and you want them as customers too. and they will,
if you don't call them out as un-funny...

~~~
outdooricon
"it's the wording in the tweet, make it more subtle" - Will do, I'm trying to
have a sort of brand attitude but I definitely don't want to scare anyone with
it.

"try to do analytics on clicks on the share button" - That is one downside
about using launchrock, they provide absolutely zero analytics hooks for those
buttons. My hands are tied on this... unless I used a different service...
maybe I'll need to...

"more T samples" - This is a common one, we will get some more up ASAP

"get it up on blogs" - Are there any in particular that you're thinking of? I
was considering normal tshirt blogs, but their readership wouldn't really be
developers, so I felt at a loss...

"some people think the double rainbows are funny" - That is very true, I don't
want to insult those people. I'll think more about how I can just make fun of
bad tshirts with that image, instead of the double rainbow video itself...

------
foobert
I do not think the launchrock pages 'sells' me enough that your product will
be much better than current geek shirt offerings because the site itself is
worse than most other websites. I know you don't have much control because it
is just launchrock, but the quick answer is that i'm not sold.

beyond that, I think you shouldn't worry about this much because your products
will sell themselves if the website is appealing and easy to browse.

~~~
outdooricon
It has been a little frustrating being stuck within that default template. At
least I've been able to use it to let people in on our status and our story as
we're building for launch, but I won't deny that the biggest appeal of putting
a Launchrock site up was hoping that it would excite people to spread the news
themselves.

Thank you for your honesty though... I am really excited for when we have an
actual shop up!

------
shock3naw
Besides the points about not sharing products I haven't
bought/tested/tried/etc., your page is not visually appealing. It's hard to
take anyone claiming to 'design' shirts seriously when their launch page is
poorly designed.

Things you could improve:

* Use a nicer font.

* Use horizontal space more effectively.

* Even if the shirts were great, tweeting about 'HappyNerdShirts' is just asking my friends to flame me.

~~~
outdooricon
Very interesting... I'll have to consider what we can do to update the page,
while still working within the confines of LaunchRock.

~~~
shock3naw
Do you have to use LaunchRock? If it's holding you back form presenting a
great first impression, then dump it.

~~~
outdooricon
That is true, I don't have to. At this point, it might not even be worth
changing since our new focus is on beginning Kickstarter... and that should
look nicer.

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Kluny
I'unno, you haven't captured the hearts and minds of nerds yet, I guess. At
first glance I thought you were selling that first example of a crappy tee,
and was a bit put off, but I really like the B-tree design. More examples
would be good. Put it on reddit, on a smaller subreddit.

~~~
outdooricon
"At first glance I thought you were selling that first example of a crappy
tee" - that's a very good point... I should probably make it more obvious that
I'm making fun of it.

"I really like the B-tree design" - very cool!!!

"More examples would be good." - My wife did just finish up one more design,
so we could post that one up now too. We're kind of building this up as we go.
Related to your point here, would it hurt or help if, instead of the current
shirt images we have, that instead there were real images of the shirts? We've
just ordered some singles of the designs and in a few weeks should be able to
show the actual shirts themselves.

"Put it on reddit, on a smaller subreddit." - This may sound lame, but I've
never signed up for reddit. Are there specific topics on there that you'd
recommend posting in?

------
outdooricon
here's a clickable link : <http://signup.happynerdshirts.com>

~~~
sharemywin
Get access to a 50% off coupon if they share it on twitter or facebook. keep
it simple. wokred for groupon or even better 100 people to share your page get
a free t-shirt.

~~~
outdooricon
Ah I see, so the incentive value is just too plain... people may not have the
hope that they will get a large enough incentive to make it worthwhile. This
is something I hadn't considered... I like your suggestions, especially the
first one with 50%. We used to have the incentive more competitive, the top 10
people who had the most friends signed up would get a free shirt, but once
again that would mean you'd have to think more about your sharing and check
back in.

Very good insight!

