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Failed HN Launch vs. Reddit Paid Advertising: Which Converts Better

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Re: Failed HN Launch vs. Reddit Paid Advertising: Which Converts Better

#21

Post by djb_hackernews »

I've done a bit of advertising on reddit (though it was a few years ago), and my one take away is don't target specific subreddits.

I think a general pattern is people subscribe to subreddits and just let reddit do it's thing to populate their front page, never actually visiting the specific subreddit. I do this myself for a lot of subreddits I subscribe to.

I wonder if reddit has any plans to modify the ad display logic to display ads on the front page that are targeted to specific subreddits if the user is subscribed to the same subreddit. I think that'd be interesting.

Re: Failed HN Launch vs. Reddit Paid Advertising: Which Converts Better

#22

Post by crazygringo »

minimaxir wrote: post #3
applecore wrote: post #2

If your launch on HN fails to get any votes in the first 5-10 minutes, and you feel your post has significant merit for the community, your best course of action is to just delete the submission and try again.

Don't do this. pg has said that this is a ban worthy offense. And I still see people doing it.

I've never done it, but considering how random it is to get or not get just a first upvote from someone else (let alone the 5+ needed for front-page), I can't blame people.

HN still needs a vastly better way of separating the wheat from the chaff for new submissions, that involves the whole community, not just the few who occasionally look at "new".

Re: Failed HN Launch vs. Reddit Paid Advertising: Which Converts Better

#23

Post by thehigherlife »

namecast wrote: post #6
mooism2 wrote: post #5

Surely there are subreddits more relevant than /r/programming? May not have been targeted well.

Probably. My thinking is that the low CTR (click through rate) can be explained by poor targeting, but once you arrive to the landing page you should have a pretty good indication of whether you want to trial or not. The low number of conversions to trial just from reddit is a bit strange. That said: any ideas for better subs to target? /r/sysadmin, /r/linux were some of the smaller ones i'd considered, or i could go…

/r/sysadmin is a pretty active community in general. You could always just try to post to their subreddit.

Re: Failed HN Launch vs. Reddit Paid Advertising: Which Converts Better

#24

Post by rsync »

earless1 wrote: post #9

I don't think /r/programming was the correct choice for this campaign. I would think that the web development subs and even the sysadmin subs would be a better place for this stuff.

Yes, but programming is where the hits are ... sysadmin and so on are fairly low in traffic in comparison (programming is almost 10x larger than sysadmin).

You have to dig fairly deep and piece together a lot of little subreddits to equal one /r/programming...

Re: Failed HN Launch vs. Reddit Paid Advertising: Which Converts Better

#27

Post by peacemaker »

I posted a launch post for http://wecombinate.com and also linked http://paymentsplugin.com on HN as well as other places.

For WeCombinate, I received 84 visits from HN or HN related (showhn.com etc) but for Payments Plugin I saw a spike up to 386 for one day straight from HN.

The WeCombinate post fell away very quickly with zero comments but the post with the Payments Plugin link stayed around on the bottom on the home page for about 6-8 hours.

Overall, I didn't see any conversions as a result of the HN traffic although I don't think HN is my target audience really.

Just thought I'd add some more data points into the conversation.

Re: Failed HN Launch vs. Reddit Paid Advertising: Which Converts Better

#28

Post by mathattack »

Great article! One question - The math doesn't work, does it?

A 1.2% conversion ratio end-to-end for SaaS startups that don’t ask for a credit card in advance suggests that if we can get 1000 visitors, then we should expect 100 trial users, converting to 1 paid user. At least that’s the theory.

I follow that the 1.2% is from the total visitors. 10% * 15% * 80% = 1.2%. So they should have expected 12 paid users per 1000 visitors.

One question on the conclusion... Indeed Show HN seems to be a much better (more efficient) option for a good product. But how do you scale it? There are only so many communities you can find. Advertising can be much more easily scaled. If you want 100 more view, pays 100 more times the money. Or perhaps 50 times the money if you can get a volume discount.

Re: Failed HN Launch vs. Reddit Paid Advertising: Which Converts Better

#29

Post by jedberg »

Did you do analytics of which HN users actually signed up? Is it the ones that follow the Show HN twitter? ie. People highly targeted for signing up for trials of new products?

I would say your sample size is not nearly large enough to be conclusive. :)

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