There’s been some speculation that we significantly increased the amount of posts here on SvN in the build up to the launch of the new Basecamp, and in particular that we targeted the front page of Hacker News for those articles. Some people aren’t happy about this.
I’d like to bring a little context and fact to bear on this to put these speculations to rest.
In the month before the launch of the new Basecamp, we published 25 posts here on Signal vs. Noise. For comparison, during the same period in prior years, we published (before 2007 we used a different blogging engine, so I don’t have those numbers handy):
- 29 posts in 2011
- 50 posts in 2010
- 36 posts in 2009
- 49 posts in 2008
- 42 posts in 2007
Relatively speaking, this was actually a pretty low level of posting activity for us. During all the years prior to this one in that period, we were also maintaining a separate product blog, whose posts aren’t included in these totals.
During that period, there were 24,826 first time visitors to any of our sites who we could identify as having first gotten to us via Hacker News (in all, we received more like 105,000 unique visitors from Hacker News, but many of those were repeat visitors). 97 of those visitors signed up, with more than 85% of them electing the free plan. This conversion rate pales compared to our average conversion rate, particularly for non-search-engine traffic.
When all is said and done, what’s our likely financial outcome from Hacker News visitors for those 25 posts? About $300 total per month.
We typically write on SvN because we have an announcement to make, or because we have something we’re thinking about that we’d like to share.
Do we benefit from other people noticing our blog posts and linking them up from their blogs or other outlets? Absolutely – we’ve been talking about the power of word-of-mouth marketing for almost a decade.
As a writer, do I like it when more people read what I’ve written? Sure.
Is there any business value for us in getting on the front page of Hacker News? Not really.
Upvote us, downvote us, ignore us – I don’t care, but I hope you’ll make that decision based on the merits of the content of a given post, not because you think we’re trying to manipulate the front page of Hacker News for our gain.
Shaun
on 08 Mar 12Honestly, I don’t care. The Basecamp updates are nice. Talk more about the design and though that went into that, and not this nonsense.
Christophe
on 08 Mar 12Now if this is not HN front-page material, I don’t know what is :)
Andrei
on 08 Mar 12I agree. People will always pick on something. Go back to the fun stuff: caching, design, architecture, tricks, etc. That makes this blog hot for me :)
Andrew
on 08 Mar 12I agree with Shaun. Your updates in the run up to releasing BCX were great to read. Please don’t hold back on that kind of thing because of what is essentially nothing more than trolling.
Guillermo
on 08 Mar 12Doesn’t make sense to say “I don’t care” and also write this post.
The number are ok, but write a blog post as a response to a few comments of random people on HN, is a no sense.
Gabe
on 08 Mar 12I, personally, love the “caching, design, architecture, tricks, etc.” and have used the caching on something I was working on just this week actually. Great work, keep it up!
Rebecca
on 08 Mar 12What a bizarre post. You’ve essentially insulted the community that does support you on HN (you don’t care), and even if you were using it for financial gain, well, you do run a business. Who cares what a minority thinks?
Ryan
on 08 Mar 12I agree with Rebecca. So some people on Hacker News were crying that you were flooding there posts? What where they like 2% of the entire community (I read the comment on HN)? So according to your post, that small minority should basically not be factored in. Take 5 minutes.
Daniel
on 08 Mar 12Screw those guys.
HN is for interesting articles related to web tech and web startups. That is all you guys post about.
Just because you guys are creating real profitable software and blogging about it instead of useless demos, some people are pissed?
Screw those guys.
I hope you did target HN, and I hope more people like you do in the future. We want to hear about successful business practices in the real world, including product launches.
RDO
on 08 Mar 12So you don’t care, yet you post saying your don’t care? Seriously. At best, there’s no point to this blog post, at worst it shows that you do care.
jason
on 08 Mar 12i’ve noticed the posts on here have been much better lately, showing more in-depth features on the inner workings of the apps and systems you’ve created. i can’t remember coming here so often as this year already, and i love it. keep it up!
Andrew White
on 08 Mar 12It’s a tricky decision whether to respond to these kinds of posts. If you do, you’re accused of feeding the trolls, ignore them and you stand accused of not denying the allegations.
Patrick Dobson
on 08 Mar 12“When all is said and done, what’s our likely financial outcome from Hacker News visitors for those 25 posts? About $300 total per month.”
Sounds like you should be doing some conversion rate optimization for visitors from Hacker News. You’ve got a good following there, as your post describes, you should be trying to capitalize on it more.
Optimize your content or some other part of your site to sell to HNers, sell a bunch of stuff to HNers, and then blog about how you did it.
That’s something sure to get on the frontpage of HN.
Andres
on 08 Mar 12Wow, pretty arrogant …
Rob Colburn
on 08 Mar 12Thanks for killing the Ad rail on Mobile. Not dealing with zoom is more convenient.
Maybe it reduces my chance at conversion though. :)
Damian
on 08 Mar 12Why do you guys court so much drama? As a paying customer I don’t really care about Hacker News or anything the community there says about you. Before this post I didn’t even know what Hacker News was or that it existed. If HN has no bearing on your work, why do you care so much? Meanwhile there are several bugs in the new Basecamp. Why not turn your collective attention to those instead?
Brian
on 08 Mar 12My theory is that a large percentage of HN readers want something for nothing. They typically abhor paying for anything. A significant minority of HN readers are also #OWS types that seem to think that the guys creating great products ought to give those products away. They’re the type of people that would stop using google if google were to stop selling ads and charge a $1 per month subscription—even though they use google 8 times per hour.
Don’t sweat it 37signals.. I’ve been a Suite customer for over a year and your software is worth every penny (usually.)
Bryan
on 08 Mar 12I’ve pretty much thrown Hacker News into the same bucket as Tech Crunch… the are both E! for techies and a waste of time.
Mark
on 08 Mar 12Haha, E! for techies. Well said. I take everything I read from HN with a grain of salt. Most of the articles that make the front page are just some guy with a blog with an opinion on a subject matter he’s not really knowledgeable in.
Jamie Martin
on 08 Mar 12Why so combative?
Hutch Carpenter
on 08 Mar 12I look at this post as being engaged with their community. I recall someone on Hacker News posting the following about the appearance of so many posts on the front page:
“To me it seems that either everything that gets posted on the 37Signals blog is pure gold or, more likely, it’s like there’s a Cult of 37Signals around here now. They have some good stuff but come on, the front page is starting to look like their personal RSS feed.”
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3568060
The 37signals guys can’t stop that, nor should they. But they pick up sentiment, hence the post. Works for me.
Łukasz
on 08 Mar 12Hell, as for me, you can manipulate all the sites, as the writing (cases, ideas, comments, explanations and insights) you give us deserve to be in a spotlight. Seriously.
Mario
on 08 Mar 12@Brian you hit the spot man :-)
Please keep on informing us about BCX and so forth. Don’t loose a single second on this. I didn’t even know who the heck HN was before reading this post.
James Dunn
on 08 Mar 12@Andres Really? 37signals, arrogant? This has never happened before.
In all seriousness, Rails was abstracted from the first Basecamp. That alone should be enough reason to keep an eye on Basecamp Next.
Michael Hopkins
on 08 Mar 12The post is interesting enough without the extra stuff about not caring.
Andrew Wicklander
on 08 Mar 12This is great. I’ve personally recommended basecamp to at least 5 or 6 people that have signed up and a few more for highrise.
I guess this means I’m as influential as the front page of hacker news. Awesome.
xx
on 08 Mar 12enough with HN, this community of pimple kids gets way too much attention.
i wish stack overflow had a HN equivalent, there seem to be more balanced people over there
Tomas Ordonez
on 08 Mar 12People complain just for the sake of it. SVN creates a lot of great content and useful information. Isn’t this what matters?
GeeIWonder
on 08 Mar 12If buzz for a SaS PM launch were my primary criteria, I probably:
Would not target Hacker News. Would not launch when ‘Super Tuesday’ results are coming in. Would not launch as the new iPad announcement trickles out.
A Guy From South America
on 08 Mar 12If you don’t care, why do you post this article in the first place?
Dain
on 08 Mar 12I never even saw those articles or people’s comments on Hacker news, and I check it every day. Nobody cares Noah. But it is clear that you do :/ Just relax. We are with you guys, who gives a F**K if you increase posts before launch of basecamp or Don’t! Nobody gives a fig. :) We all love the product that’s all that matters.
PS – The new basecamp is quite possibly the most extraordinarily designed and easy to use thing I have ever used. It rivals Path in simplicity and design beauty. God I effing love to use this. I get more done literally because I love it. Also to note: Catch Up tab has changed my entire life, literally.
Chris Chowdhury
on 12 Mar 12business value… What a novel idea!
This discussion is closed.