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TechCrunch vs. Hacker News: Which is a better front page to launch your startup?

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Re: TechCrunch vs. Hacker News: Which is a better front page to launch your startup?

#12

Post by sync »

Your HN post[0] led to a blog post: http://www.learndot.com/findings/how-to-name-your-startup/

Your TechCrunch post[1] led directly to your homepage.

With that in mind, we can't trust these numbers at all.

[0]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4779410

[1]: http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/13/learndot-launches-its-learn...

Re: TechCrunch vs. Hacker News: Which is a better front page to launch your startup?

#13

Post by eCa »

flexxaeon wrote: post #2

Minor nitpick: 2nd and 3rd graphs say TN instead of TC I always wonder how much of this data is skewed (engagement especially) by the amount of apps that are built on top of HN.

Another nitpick: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misleading_graphs#Truncated_gra...

Especially "Conversions by source".

Re: TechCrunch vs. Hacker News: Which is a better front page to launch your startup?

#16

Post by PabloOsinaga »

Its not surprising to see that TC visitors are more engaged - after all, for you to get to the company from TC you need to click on the article, 'parse' the text and only then click on the right link. many times, simply reading about the company is enough for you to decide not to visit.

Therefore in your calculations, I think you are undervaluing the $ value of TC awareness, since many people that dont visit your site DO read/glimpse over the article/title and are aware of your existance.

Re: TechCrunch vs. Hacker News: Which is a better front page to launch your startup?

#17

Post by JeremyKolb »

slaven wrote: post #7

What you post on HN matters a great deal: when we had a general start-up related article hit the front page we got traffic but few leads (like in OP's example). But when we launched an interesting feature and hit the front page -- with the story's title obviously aimed at our target market of app publishers -- we got massive amount of leads as well.

I've experienced the same thing, off of 1,300 visits for an off topic article we got about 7 leads. When we posted something clearly targeting our market our conversion rate jumped to around 10%

Re: TechCrunch vs. Hacker News: Which is a better front page to launch your startup?

#19

Post by paulitex »

eCa wrote: post #13
flexxaeon wrote: post #2

Minor nitpick: 2nd and 3rd graphs say TN instead of TC I always wonder how much of this data is skewed (engagement especially) by the amount of apps that are built on top of HN.

Another nitpick: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misleading_graphs#Truncated_gra... Especially "Conversions by source".

Thanks, fixed.

Re: TechCrunch vs. Hacker News: Which is a better front page to launch your startup?

#20

Post by paulitex »

sync wrote: post #12

Your HN post[0] led to a blog post: http://www.learndot.com/findings/how-to-name-your-startup/ Your TechCrunch post[1] led directly to your homepage. With that in mind, we can't trust these numbers at all. [0]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4779410 [1]: http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/13/learndot-launches-its-learn...

Numbers are always trustworthy if they're accurate. You just need to right context to interpret them in. These numbers are straight from Google Analytics, and you are correct that one was a direct link and the other was via TC. I say this in the article.

This is a real world scenario. Many people ask how much traffic we got from being on TechCrunch. This is just data, take it as you want. I do my best to explain the main caveats, including the one you pointed out. There are many.

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