Ask HN: Why don't people share our viral page with their friends?
I'm a web developer. I love dev and I think that I'm pretty decent at it. I am definitely not a marketer, which is why I bring this question to you all. My wife and I are starting a fun side project together called Happy Nerd Shirts where we will sell shirts with designs specifically targeted at developers, blah blah... I'm not here to make a pitch, I just need your advice.
Since we're trying to follow in the footsteps of the startup greats, we've made a Launchrock page at signup.happynerdshirts.com where we are offering what we thought was a good incentive. We have it set up where their incentive increases in value as they get more friends signed up. The problem is, people are signing up but they really aren't sharing their viral links out with anyone. Is this because our infographic isn't good, is it because our incentive sucks, or is it because people want our products only for themselves? I'm at a loss, so I'd really appreciate your insight. Thank you guys!
22 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 62.2 ms ] threadThe problem is that you seem to target a specific kind of people that might think like me and not immediately provide a referral link on the FB/twitter/whatever profile to have as many people as possible to signup for.
Anyway, I love the idea, this kind of shirts are 90% of my current clothes so I'll signup for it right away.
What prevents you from trying with ONE design first and see how it goes? Maybe rely on another t-shirt design shirt for your first go? In France http://www.lafraise.com/ is pretty well-known or websites like teefury.com could be a good start!
How will you handle fake accounts and people trying to game your system? Most of the time, the 1$ incentive is tied to "someone signing up AND ordering something on the site" first, no?
EDIT: Some additions, the email you send right after signup is nice but I think the first part should be on your website! It describes clearly who you are, why you're doing this project and also why your design would really be better, it would be great along with your examples.
EDIT2: Why not have part of the website already done? I have to "pretend" I sign up in the launchrock page to know wether anyone used my referral link? Why not have a "normal" login system and a detailed page where I can see who accepted the referral link? To avoid spending too much time on the websites first you could use something like www.dailycred.com to handle signups properly (this was shown on HN a few weeks ago).
"The problem is that you seem to target a specific kind of people that might think like me" - Hmmm, that very well could be. Maybe this going viral just isn't possible for a market like us. If others back this up, then I'll have to accept it.
"I'll signup for it right away." - This is very encouraging, thank you!
"What prevents you from trying with ONE design first" - We want to build a brand, not just drop the designs out there. So instead, we're applying to Kickstarter with a base of 5 designs. That way we can make sure that we've got something here.
"How will you handle fake accounts" - There is a definite possibility for hurt here... but it should be pretty easy to see if someone's messing around with us
"I think the first part should be on your website" - You know, I have tossed this idea around. Do you think it's a pretty big selling point? I had just wondered if people wouldn't care about that story as much as they cared about the seeing the designs themselves...
"you could use something like www.dailycred.com" - I've never heard of this, but I will check it out. Launchrock is really simple and quick to set up, which helped us put our page up quick and start to get people involved. And since our next step is Kickstarter, i was hoping to transition fairly quickly into a full blown shop once our Kickstarter goal is complete. I'm going in to this site right now though.
About your page getting viral the problem, for me, if that the project doesn't exist. I will not recommend something that don't exist/I haven't tried first, except if I'm sure it will work/happen. If you have a real store I will definitely forward it to most of my friends that would wear this and/or like to buy this for me (like I just did with my gf who likes to buy me this kind of shirts).
For fake account you really should reconsider it. I don't think it's that easy to detect in the end (except for people trying to earn 1M$ of course), but it seems pretty easy to game the systems for 100/200$. And I don't think that tying the 1$ reward to a real order is a stopping point in the end.
For the email part, I don't know if it's a big selling point, at least not as the first description, but it could be nice to have a small description of you and your wife like on the right or an "about us" or "Meet the team" (a lot of current YC startups use this with their launchrock page). The thing is that, for me, the signup confirmation email is a bit too long.
I can understand that a launchrock page is really easier to easily garner emails and have an idea of how many people could be interested. The site/idea would juste seem more real if it was not just a launchrock page.
I like the idea to apply to kickstarter. But part of me thinks that most of the costs link to your project would be handle upfront by your customers, no? If you provide links to 5 t-shirts designs and offer a pre-order option you can ensure you have enough orders before starting producing and then don't have to spend a lot of money before being sure you'd sell anything.
I'm seeing more and more the importance of the real store. I think the question comes down to how easy is it to show that it truly is a pre-order system, and that you may not get your shirts for a little while. With Kickstarter, I think that is pretty clear because you have up to two months to get a group of pre-orders together that would be large enough to mitigate the costs of the shirt printing. On a real store, people may become more impatient if it takes awhile to get a large enough pre-order group. But, the problem that you state, where people may not take us seriously until we have a real site, says that we need to move beyond Launchrock. Maybe getting our Kickstarter project up ASAP and directing our domain to that would both help us get taken more seriously and allow people to be more willing to share us. And meanwhile, get a store set up to launch as soon as that project finished.
You might consider posting your site with a different title, like a "Show HN : launching a new brand of t-shirts targetting programmers" or an equivalent? Because the current title seems to ask advice on how to go viral and a lot of people might not even know your project exists even if they would like it!
"I really like the B-tree design" - very cool!!!
"More examples would be good." - My wife did just finish up one more design, so we could post that one up now too. We're kind of building this up as we go. Related to your point here, would it hurt or help if, instead of the current shirt images we have, that instead there were real images of the shirts? We've just ordered some singles of the designs and in a few weeks should be able to show the actual shirts themselves.
"Put it on reddit, on a smaller subreddit." - This may sound lame, but I've never signed up for reddit. Are there specific topics on there that you'd recommend posting in?
Very good insight!
try to do analytics on clicks on the share button that led to no sharing... (not easy... but try)
also more T samples will be really nice...
I think if you make one good T shirt compilation, even without the T shirts, just the drawings, and get it up on blogs as "geek art" or "stuff that only geeks would understand" you'll get a lot of traffic and shares... just try not to insult any "old" jokes, I would even put some of the oldschool stuff you want to replace just to stay friendly with everyone, some people think the double rainbows are funny. and you want them as customers too. and they will, if you don't call them out as un-funny...
"try to do analytics on clicks on the share button" - That is one downside about using launchrock, they provide absolutely zero analytics hooks for those buttons. My hands are tied on this... unless I used a different service... maybe I'll need to...
"more T samples" - This is a common one, we will get some more up ASAP
"get it up on blogs" - Are there any in particular that you're thinking of? I was considering normal tshirt blogs, but their readership wouldn't really be developers, so I felt at a loss...
"some people think the double rainbows are funny" - That is very true, I don't want to insult those people. I'll think more about how I can just make fun of bad tshirts with that image, instead of the double rainbow video itself...
Things you could improve:
* Use a nicer font.
* Use horizontal space more effectively.
* Even if the shirts were great, tweeting about 'HappyNerdShirts' is just asking my friends to flame me.
beyond that, I think you shouldn't worry about this much because your products will sell themselves if the website is appealing and easy to browse.
Thank you for your honesty though... I am really excited for when we have an actual shop up!