

What I Learned From Launching on HN - sidwyn
http://blog.sidwyn.com/post/11696185581/what-i-learned-from-launching-on-hn

======
eggbrain
I'll be completely honest, this felt too much like a fluff piece with advice
that was too general to be helpful.

I can break down your post into this advice:

    
    
      1) Listen to what people say
    
      2) Ignore the people insulting you
    
      3) Post on a weekend
    
      4) Reply to feedback
    
      5) Use feedback to improve your product
    

The problem is, you really go no deeper than that. For example, in #1,
(Comments that are targeted at you can be hurtful at first, but don’t take
them personally), you say "However, it is important to not take them
personally. View it from a larger perspective. Why are they criticizing you?
There must be a reason why. Try to understand them and see what you are able
to do." What did you do to understand them? What were you able to do based on
their comments? How can you iterate off that? Why do you think people said
that? How did you incorporate their thoughts into your product? Your second
paragraph (For the record, English is my first language and I’ve been speaking
it since I was born) sounded too much like you were still taking the comments
personally.

#3 is another example. You seem to only have one data point to support your
theory. You also said yourself you added samples and changed prices. Could
that have been it? Could it have been luck? Could it have been the hour it was
posted at? It sounds like it might be true but you have barely any evidence to
support that claim.

#5 is another example. I would hope that you would always use feedback from a
community to improve your product, especially a community with it's pulse on
the tech world and entrepreneurship. How did changing things increase your
sales? What other things are you trying to do to improve?

I hope you don't take this as a negative comment, just more constructive
criticism. When I read a blog post, if it offers advice to me, I want to read
something more specific than "Use suggestions to improve product".

~~~
abbasmehdi
I think you're confusing two very different concepts. Observations and
analysis. An observation is a fact, something that happened at a point in
time, the analysis is a series of hypothesis justified through logic and
evidence.

The OP does an excellent job of sharing his observations, things that caught
him off guard. Will these be useful to someone launching on HN? Definitely,
because they will observe all the same things as the OP, who is now
eliminating the surprise factor and enabling the next launcher to create a
strategy around their launch.

Will the analysis be useful? No. Because the analysis is limited by the OP’s
capacity to analyze and is limited to the scope of his project. X will not
happen to both A and B for the same P reason.

Hope this makes sense. You're asking for fluff when the OP gave straight
facts, because me observing the same facts for my launch might have completely
different reasons.

~~~
eggbrain
I can see what you are saying, but I'd disagree that this would be useful to
someone launching on HN. The advice given is very general [besides the "Post
on a weekend" suggestion]. Even as children we were told that "sticks and
stones may break our bones, but words will never hurt me", a very early
version of "filter out the unhelpful".

For me, if the advice seems obvious, I at least want to know how the author
came to that observation, why it is beneficial, and how he will use it going
forward. For example, check out this blog post on "What I learned from
watching notch code":

<http://gun.io/blog/what-i-learned-from-watching-notch-code/>

You can see that while the author of this piece gave perhaps generic advice
with things like "incredibly thorough testing", he told the story of what he
observed, how it is beneficial, and at the end showed us how he would use that
knowledge to improve himself. I didn't get that feeling with the OP's
submission, such as when he said "However, it is important to not take them
personally. View it from a larger perspective. Why are they criticizing you?
There must be a reason why. Try to understand them and see what you are able
to do." What did he do to understand the comments? How did he finally reach
seeing it from a larger perspective? What was he "able to do" at the end? The
author doesn't touch on this at all, and so all we are left for is very
generic advice.

For example, with #5 as well, we get a single instance of how he used feedback
to improve his product. But what about the other feedback? What feedback did
he disagree with, and why? What we get is just "We saw the top comment was to
divide the videos into smaller chunks. We did that."

~~~
abbasmehdi
I prefer not to have a play-by-play handbook. If I know what's coming, I like
to make my own plays. Just like no two games are the same, I prefer to have
the rules so I can use my own head.

Analysis is nice but not necessary.

------
Meai
Well since you like criticism:

1\. Your post was common sense material and provided me with no further
necessary info to even see it in context (of your launch) Which link did you
post to HN?

2\. You disabled the standard scroll bar, I can't use middle click to scroll
on your page.

------
amandalim89
you mentioned posting on a weekend is a gd strategy to get traffic. yet now
you posted on a weekday morning. why did you switch your strategy? just
curious.

~~~
chad_oliver
I suspect because he wasn't so interested in traffic this time.

~~~
sidwyn
Yep, just interested in sharing my observations.

~~~
amandalim89
tks!

------
Mizza
I've learned that HN traffic and Reddit traffic are good for quick feedback
and high viewcounts, but not for repeat visitors or people stick around. It's
almost entirely bounce traffic.

------
jsavimbi
> (how many of you even know where Singapore is? ;)

I'm quite uncertain that goading people based on a stereotypical notion that
Americans are map-ignorant is the ideal manner by which to overcome initial
resistance to one's proposals. Even if you're idea were a good one and
perfectly executed, you still have to practically ram it down people's throats
in order to convert them.

HN is not a great place to sell tutorials; video or otherwise. I looked at
your site over the weekend, kept it open in a tab as a tickler and then last
night decided that buying updated Xcode and Objective-C materials would be
both a cheaper and better option. That wasn't based on your experience, lack
thereof or price. It was based on my own process and interest in learning, and
judging by the number of books people produce and sell on the subjects of
programming, I'd say that I'm not alone in that category. You may have picked
the wrong audience.

Also, in regards to this post, you've let your dissatisfaction with HN's
receptiveness towards your idea get the best of you. One submission and a
"lessons learned" follow up post five days later is not a sign that you've
externalized negative feedback or that you've been able to collect sufficient
data to pontificate over the HN submission process and provide useful advice
for others. If anything, you should create a marketing campaign, gather and
interpret your data and use it to back up your assumptions.

Either way, I wish you the best of luck with your endeavors. Based on what
I've seen so far, you're far ahead than many people your age.

ps. Yes, I've been to Singapore. It's okay.

~~~
sidwyn
Thanks for your advice. My post was more of observation than analysis (like
someone else said on this thread)

Also, you were mistaken. I didn't goad nor chide Americans. The Hacker News
community is international (I'm proof), and based off visitor stats, there
were a lot of them from the U.K. and Canada as well.

~~~
jsavimbi
> Thanks for your advice.

You should've left it at that.

------
afdssfda
Good points. I'd add: There is a good chance that HN users that read your post
are not your demographic; it is made of of a mix of tech entrepreneurs (people
that don't have a company but wish they did, or 1-2 person company CEO/CTO)
and other IT professionals/developers. This may be a place to get helpful
critical feedback from a technical and small tech business sense, but is _not_
a good indicator of what others outside that realm think.

~~~
sidwyn
Great point as well.

