What being on the front page of Hacker News does for our bottom line
37signals.com
37signals.com
For example, Y Combinator makes zero direct revenue from hosting HN. But I would feel pretty dishonest if I were to claim on that account that it has no effect on our bottom line.
Not every kind of word of mouth matters. HN is not that big of community, and is comprised mostly of certain types of users that either don't care about 37's products, or know about them already anyway.
Based on the data provided Noah does not know if the HN readers who signed up for the free accounts are recommending the paid services to others.
Why, can't he check for affiliate links?
So the value is at the very least $300 a month, it could be significantly more than that.
Like a whooping $1000 a month?
I think this is a good attitude to have, but I have to point out that obviously it matters a little. Otherwise, this post wouldn't exist.
I personally don't like their posts on HN, I don't even bother reading them anymore. The first few I read where totally devoid of any kind of useful information for me and for most people that are a little bit technical. For the non-technical posts they are merely interesting like "Look at our desks", I found them to be the equivalent of feminine magazine articles for geeks.
However this is only my opinion, and this is not a popular opinion. If you criticize them, invariably you are going to get downvoted. And if there's hate here, how come there's systematically sitting on the top 5 position every time one of their article shows up?
I have found that the criticisms found here are very polite and constructive. This show nothing but good things about HN if people can civilly disagree on a subject.
I agree hate is a strong word, and I used it only a short-hand description of what I meant. I'm not overly sure which other words would be more accurate.
Anyway, 37signals could be the Kim Kardashian of Software Engineering, very popular and very successful, lots of people following the Gossip. Popularity does not imply quality, that's why civil disagree-ing is useful, we need safe guardians of the quality, even if they seem obnoxious when they criticize what we like.
PS: 37signals is NOT, in my opinion, the Kim Kardashian of Software Engineering.
So maybe not technical, but definitely not "merely interesting"
The amount of exposure they get is extremely out of proportion to what they are and do. They do have it down to a fine art. Even this blog post is designed to get people talking about them - which it's succeeded in doing.
They created ruby on rails, which a few people use, and they make a few webapps. They're not a startup. They give (IMHO) fairly poor startup advice, most of which would only work if you're them.
The 37 signals fanboyism all just gets a little bit too much sometimes. Best to ignore and move on though...
I believe a lot of what they have to say is at least interesting to the hacker crowd at large, and as such, they have a place.
A few people? Really? Now that's just petty.
http://trends.builtwith.com/framework/Ruby-on-Rails
You're entitled to not like 37 Signals or think they give poor advice, but you shouldn't downplay their contribution so much.
I believe you mean:
The amount of exposure HNers give them by submitting and upvoting their posts, and then the endless hours HNers spend debating them…
37S doesn't ask to be on the front page of HN. They don't even appear to submit their own posts. Certainly they don't have a secret vote-sharing group, because HN now has features to discount those.
So personally, I find it pretty hilarious that there's so much sturm und drang about what 37s "gets". Everything they "get" from HN, HNers give them, all on their own initiative.
ps- you can't downvote articles anyway
As to the response to their response, well, nobody likes being ignored or perceived as insignificant, especially those with large egos, and there are a lot of large egos here on HN.
They quoted the number of posts they made on their blog but they didn't address whether: 1) they submitted more of their own blog posts to HN or 2) changed the content of their blog posts to appeal to HN readers more. I think they probably did (which is fine with me).
Skimming their archives, they were't posting frequently towards the back end of 2011 but if they were pushing to finish Basecamp it's understandable.
In relation to the content of the articles, I think they were more attractive to the HN community - behind the scenes look at development; interesting technical articles on development.
Left unsaid: how many of the 105,000 unique HN visitors are customers?
Also left unsaid (but harder to quantify): how many of those 105,000 HN visitors are influencers who have referred 37 Signal products to others? (FWIW, I know of at least half a dozen teams who've signed up for BaseCamp paid accounts as a result of my recommendation.)
[ UPDATE: In response to subsequent comments below, I've created a poll here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3680400 ]
Word of mouth = great
links = great
hackernews popularity = no value
That's a pretty big hole in their logic.
My supposition; but really, what ethical difference does it make? If the HN community likes to read the 37Signals viral marketing material then I suppose we all gain, right?
37s is attacked all the time by a tiny, but very loud minority. I'm sure that they wrote this not because they personally care, but because if nobody demonstrates that this loud, tiny minority is wrong, that loud, tiny minority has the only voice that people will hear.
It's valuable for the quiet majority to understand that A) traffic may be nice, but B) that doesn't mean being on the front page of HN is a good plan for revenue growth.
No. Just Kidding.
Noah, take me off from the "some people aren't happy about this" list please. I think you're smart enough to read my post and understand what I pointed out back then.
It wasn't about whether I dislike the post or not. I was merely pointing out the marketing aspect 37signals did via the blog post (i.e.: the message for the audience), not the whole 37signals posts are everywhere.
If the best of their posts weren't on HN I'd add their blog to my RSS. To me, that certainly indicates that their posts belong here.
I don't have anything against the guys at 37Signals. Seems like they are doing some cool stuff. They have set themselves up as being awesome as part of their marketing strategy. While sales from HN hits probably don't amount to anything, I can't help but think that being on here is a big part of their portraying themselves as thought leaders.
I've been on the front page of HN a lot -- and I know a lot of other HNers here have also. I enjoy the feedback from the community, which to me is more valuable than anything else. So while being here is not some kind of master plan for business world domination, it's not like it's worthless either.
But I personally find their posts(and many others on HN) lacking in objectiveness and follow the below trend:
1) Find something (eg. sharpening pencils), that most companies/people do.
2) Write an article about how a policy of not doing that immensely helped their company. (save time not sharpening pencils and make a million bucks). "Sharpening Pencils Considered Harmful"
3) Make it sound absolute and generalize it(no company should do this and if they do, they're bureaucratic fools). This may not be explicitly stated, but it's implied.
4) Rake in page views
Then it hits front page of HN(surprising how their posts get immediately on FP, but I don't think it's foul play, maybe it's their Twitter followers?).
Then the inevitable follow up HN comments/blog posts come along "Why 37 Signals is wrong about Pencil Sharpening and how it can work/worked for me/us and we made millions Sharpening Pencils". Full of noise, flamebait comments, back and forth opinionated arguments and even personal attacks that are sometimes totally worthless since the whole argument is very subjective to individual circumstances.
Navigating through this morass for finding the 1% of posts that are actually insightful is an exercise in frustration and usually a waste of time. The big risk is that you'll find a comment which you vehemently disagree with and fall prey to spending ten precious minutes composing a reply ("Look Mom! Somebody is wrong on the internet!") which will lead to a comment tree of arguments.
For reference, look at this very discussion, it will be very similar to what I just stated.
This is repeated ad nauseum on here, not just by 37 Signals but by many other posts. I've slowly learned to ignore the noise generated by this but not always successfully. It's like chewing gum for your brain except you can easily get sucked into a wasteful time sink.
Yeah, the problem is that we're always dropping into the middle of this continuous rehash-posting cycle. When you spot a topic that may be new to you, that could still just be a reaction post.
>For reference, look at this very discussion, it will be very similar to what I just stated.
Sadly, you couldn't be more right.
But I get asked several times a month to recommend solutions and though I've personally never used more than the free version of Basecamp I've probably sold a dozen subscriptions for them. By targetting the readers of HN they're really just going after the influencers.
Now go get back to building the web, you smart folks you!
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.
A bit simplistic and conveniently short-sighted view if you ask me.
However, I can confirm with at least myself that the blog posts have given me confidence about their product that competitors don't have. In effect their posts have pushed me closer to using their product.
What i'm trying to get at, is that their posts are probably more effective at sales than they're giving themselves credit for. However it's hard to measure.
Personally, I found quite a few of the posts to be a very interesting read (especially the stuff about caching).
Please, HN-ers, let's be friendly unless there really is a pressing reason not to be.
Disclosure: I'm a big fan of 37signals. This is kind of a surprise.
People need to realize that sources of content almost always come in waves here on HN -- when someone makes an erudite post that makes it to the front page, there are a lot of people who will watch that source looking to repeat that success. And then you'll get the voters who'll vote it up just because it's familiar, until it becomes too familiar when they'll vote it down for the same reason.
We've seen these come in waves over the years (I've used HN far longer than this account). Coding Horror, Daring Fireball, Marco.org, Scott Adams, Dustin Curtis, etc. A small amount of very good content, and then lots and lots and lots of turgid waste that makes the front page simply because the author once did.
That means I'm not statistically popular! Nooooooo!
The MUCH BETTER news is that HN is not an easily manipulated marketing tool, thus its content stays relevant, rather than "optimized" for sales.
$300 / month? Ok, so -
1) how many people buy, due to HN, that they can't directly attribute to a HN follow-through click?
2) what has the exposure been worth, for literally everything they do (from pushing books to all their services)? Particularly given the rather high value group that they reach through HN.
Try putting a price on the massive branding and credibility they've acquired through reaching the HN audience, and then the follow-on value. I'd argue that their exposure on HN is worth radically more than advertising; for the same reason your friend sharing a link directly with you is worth a zillion times more than a block ad on facebook.
Spanning several years, I'd peg the value into the millions of dollars given the size of their business and how hard it actually is to get traction and exposure in their market.