

Ask HN:  Launching? - lakeeffect

What is the best way to launch and grow a new site?  What unique things or standard issue things have you done that you found successful?
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brianlash
Throw the launch mindset to the wind.

I think our preoccupation with a huge launch owes more to its sexiness than to
its practical importance for a startup. You may catch lightning in a bottle
with a launch that's met with a ton of fanfare. But you can also build an
enduring success by focusing your time and energy on sale #1, then #2, and so
on.

Your odds are long one way or the next (and granted things change when you
need to observe network effects to succeed) but it seems it's almost always
the better shot to build fast, iterate faster, and lean into whatever success
you find along the way.

~~~
russell
Agreed. I did big launches in the pre-internet days, when the sage marketing
advice was that you only had one chance to make a debut. No one was going to
write about a 6 month old product. It was hugely expensive and the risk of
failure or being ignore was high. Today it's way different. Put your site out
there quietly. Find out the problems and strengths. Polish it. There is lots
of good advice, here and elsewhere, about how to publicize your site.

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mdolon
If your site is Stumble worthy, check out their advertising service @
<http://www.stumbleupon.com/ads/>. I've been using it for my flash games site
with decent success so far and their rates seem pretty fair to me.

Also, take a look at the following two posts in which petercooper makes some
great suggestions:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=341138>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=351709>

~~~
lakeeffect
thank you

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critke
Wouldn't it depend heavily on what your site is about? B2B or B2C? Is revenue
ad or subscription driven? Is the site even supposed to make money? Or just
build cred? Have you figured out your vertical? Going broad? (probably not a
good idea IMHO)

~~~
lakeeffect
B2C in the first wave, ad based also initially, we are attempting to make
money of course

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Fuca
Ranking in Google will bring customers, but and this is very ironic, people
visit sites that already have.... people, if you can fake or achieve that the
ball will just keep getting bigger.

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nreece
Have a look at <http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive>
for past coverage on this topic.

~~~
shiranaihito
That looks like a good resource, thanks!

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markessien
Start with a "human interest" story, else you won't get covered. Focus on the
nerds, expand from there.

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curiousgeorge
One piece of advice: make sure you keep your social elements concentrated if
you want people to contribute/comment. Nothing kills a site like a big empty
forum.

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ig1
At the moment I'm using a pre-launch signup page with most traffic driven by
adwords. Only time will tell how well it works though, Mint famously managed
to get 20,000+ signups this way but most sites will have less of a "wow I need
this" factor than Mint.

My current conversion rate (i.e. user signing up) is around 25% - I'm not sure
if this is good/bad or even reflective of common conversion rates.

------
drusenko
Here are my previous thoughts on the subject:

[http://david.weebly.com/1/post/2008/02/press-for-
startups-10...](http://david.weebly.com/1/post/2008/02/press-for-
startups-10-tips.html) [http://david.weebly.com/1/post/2008/02/the-importance-
of-lau...](http://david.weebly.com/1/post/2008/02/the-importance-of-launching-
early-and-staying-alive.html)

------
peterlai
My experience consists of one sample point. WebNotes just launched an invite-
only beta with decent success. Alex, our marketing guy wrote a great blog
entry detailing the entire experience from preparation to payoff.
[http://blog.webnotes.net/post/2008/12/15/How-to-Launch-a-
Sta...](http://blog.webnotes.net/post/2008/12/15/How-to-Launch-a-
Startup.aspx). Our biggest breaks came from having mashable and readwriteweb
simultaneous write great reviews of our product. From there, we surfed traffic
onto the front page of delicious and were picked up by several other personal
blogs and websites. Good luck with implementing your launch!

~~~
tocomment
I've written to them for a couple projects I made, but never heard a peep
back. What does it take to get their attention? Any tips?

~~~
peterlai
We targeted much smaller blogs for several weeks before developing the
credibility necessary to approach the larger ones. Also, when approaching the
larger blogs, we approached as a company launching a product. Perhaps you
should try maturing your projects a bit more before asking some of the larger
blogs to cover your work. Do you have any specific projects in mind that
you're trying to launch?

~~~
tocomment
I'm launching gigbayes.com though it's more like a public beta/alpha at this
point since I figure I'll change it a lot depending on the feedback I get.

Perhaps you're right that it doesn't look professional enough for major blogs
to cover.

What is involved in "approaching them as a company"?

~~~
peterlai
I think the general maturing of your service is all that's necessary. Checkout
99designs.com if you're looking for web design help.

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nathanburke
Just submitted my post, 10 Tips On Attacking The Chicken and Egg Problem: New
Users Won’t Sign Up Because No One Is There. If you have any specific
questions, let me know. Happy to give feedback.

~~~
mattmaroon
Those are decent (yet obvious) ideas for a startup that appeals to the sort of
people who read TechCrunch. Most people have never heard of Twitter (or at
least never been there) or killerstartups or squidoo. We've found out the hard
way that marketing toward Joe the Plumber takes a much different set of
tricks.

~~~
nathanburke
You're right, these are pretty obvious and appealing to a mass audience is
much harder than just marketing to the tech crowd. I'd suggest checking out
Andrew Chen's blog: <http://andrewchenblog.com/> This guy is THE guy to read
when it comes to user acquisition.

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izak30
Here is the most general thoughts I have on the subject:

If your site NEEDS users to get users, you need a soft launch where you do
whatever you can to get users in and keep them, then you have a bigger launch
where you can say "Look what we've done with only x users! This is going to be
great!"

If your site doesn't need users, then grow organically, 5 or 10 at a time, and
work towards an exponential curve.

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whyleyc
One thing we did on launch to put some traffic through the system was to setup
a small budget on Google Adwords and drive some targetted traffic to the site.
This was very helpful in:

(a) Working bugs out of the system

(b) Giving us an idea about what features people would actually used (and how)

(c) Allowing us to see what keywords converted best (useful in helping to
drive future marketing)

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puzzle-out
We're a pre-commercial enterprise startup, with very limited marketing cash -
so favoring open source - it could be the way to go given the b2b market's
response to the downturn, with IT budgets focussed on cost-cutting rather than
revenue maximisation. Then launch a superior product at the start of the
upturn and start to charge.

