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We (unexpectedly) got 60K users in 60 hours - What we learned

patrickambron.me

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Re: We (unexpectedly) got 60K users in 60 hours - What we learned

#81
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, users can pay for premium features (free users can submit, track and boost up to 3 links, paying members can boost unlimited) With our model we hope 2% convert to paid at some point in their Lifetime as a user. In terms of this push, most of the major US press has been a phenomenal source (which was the bulk of this surge). 2-3% converted in the first 24 hours, and by 8 weeks that number was closer to 5%. Mashab…

>The signups from foreign publications were pretty bad. They signed up for free at high rates, but they just don't pay (.5%). Not entirely sure why, but until we figure it out, we put people from those places on a wait list Do you have international friendly payment methods? Regionally tiered pricing? And what do you mean by, "we put people from those places on a wait list"?

What do you mean by regionally tiered pricing? Right now all pricing is in USD which could be another reason for the drop off. Does anybody have experience with this type of thing?

PS-certain countries are put on an invite list so they can't sign up right now. It tells them to sign up to get on the waiting list

Re: We (unexpectedly) got 60K users in 60 hours - What we learned

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, users can pay for premium features (free users can submit, track and boost up to 3 links, paying members can boost unlimited) With our model we hope 2% convert to paid at some point in their Lifetime as a user. In terms of this push, most of the major US press has been a phenomenal source (which was the bulk of this surge). 2-3% converted in the first 24 hours, and by 8 weeks that number was closer to 5%. Mashab…

What kind of payments do you allow? Perhaps this could have something to do with it.

See above

Do you have any experience with this at all?

Re: We (unexpectedly) got 60K users in 60 hours - What we learned

#83
post #60

Have you any thoughts of handling the edge case of users with ridiculously common names? In the top ten for my firstname lastname I have: a famous chef, a life coach who is doing branding SEO, someone else who is a programmer, a professional photographer In the top three firstname middlename lastname various high school kids, a registered sex offender

Make up a new middle name, seriously.

Re: We (unexpectedly) got 60K users in 60 hours - What we learned

#84
Interesting! I made my own guide a while back for my friends, with great success.

1a) Make a "brand" with your middle name Google your first and last name. If you’re like most people on earth, you’re one of many with your particular combination. So how can you rank higher?

Never fight a battle you don’t have to. Pick a middle name, real or imaginary. Google your new full name.

Example: My name is Kevin Barry. The Google result is completely owned by Wikipedia and other impossible to compete against sites.

My full name is Kevin William Lord Barry. I think Lord sounds cool, so I’ll make Kevin Lord Barry my “official” online name. It’s much easier to rank for and even helps with personal branding.

1b) Consistency! Put your new name on top of your resume for consistency.

2) Edit/Create Your Facebook Take your new name. If your Facebook looks professional, change your Facebook name to your new name. If not, make sure your Facebook doesn’t use your new full name.

3) Edit/Create Your LinkedIn Take five minutes to create a LinkedIn account with your new name. Put all of your resume information on it neatly. LinkedIn will rank well for your new name, and you can brag as much as you want on it without looking pompous.

4) Make Yourself Look Good on Amazon Make an account on Amazon, using your new branded name. Pick a couple of books in your industry with good ratings. Read the summaries (read the book, preferably, but I won’t judge if you don’t). Leave a review of the books that makes you look good: show that you know industry terms, talk about your experience, etc.

Each review you leave will go to your Google front page and make you look smarter. This only works if you know enough about your industry to sound smart, of course. You can also do this for textbooks, or fiction that you like if you want to sound interesting.

5) Make Accounts on Web 2.0 Websites Take five minutes to make an account on sites that allow descriptive profiles with your full name Quora, Yahoo Answers, DisQus, Meetup, or anywhere else you want. Feel free to participate in these communities to help even more, although it’s not necessary.

6) Strut Your Stuff! Here’s where you can have fun and really seem impressive. Go to Weebly.com and make a free website, called “yourfullname.weebly.com”. Set the page title to “Your Full Name Online” and the page description to “Your Full Name’s Online Website”. Write a paragraph about yourself on one page, and a page with links to your linkedin, Facebook, or anywhere else you want to show people. Go nuts and add anything else you want that might make you seem interesting. Voila!

Re: We (unexpectedly) got 60K users in 60 hours - What we learned

#85
post #68

More just FYI, but it's weird that your blog doesn't show up in https://www.google.com/search?q=We+(unexpectedly)+Got+60K+Us...

Thanks Eli. That's actually because I just created this blog about 2-3 days ago (this was my first post). It'll take a bit before it's picked up and starts ranking. That said, I should see it go up soon, since I use BrandYourself :)

Cool, I figured as much. It's a nice post, I was googling it to send it the whole team.

Re: We (unexpectedly) got 60K users in 60 hours - What we learned

#87
post #37
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't tried this, but can't just do a whois query for the IP address?

That's not always reliable. For example, if you do a query on my company's web server IP address, you'll just get the name of our ISP as your result.

Whois on an IP address - you mean rDNS, right? Are you sending mail from this server without fcrdns?

Most VPS providers will let you change the rDNS record for the IP.

Re: We (unexpectedly) got 60K users in 60 hours - What we learned

#88
post #84

Interesting! I made my own guide a while back for my friends, with great success. 1a) Make a "brand" with your middle name Google your first and last name. If you’re like most people on earth, you’re one of many with your particular combination. So how can you rank higher? Never fight a battle you don’t have to. Pick a middle name, real or imaginary. Google your new full name. Example: My name is Kevin Barry. The Goo…

We should hire you ;)

Re: We (unexpectedly) got 60K users in 60 hours - What we learned

#89
How are you managing constantly getting blocked by Google for scraping (literally) hundreds of thousands of pages every month.

I'm sure you're running a pretty large proxy pool?

If you're using the Google AJAX Search API (now deprecated) - I don't see the accuracy results being too good.

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