A Comment Worth $140
Sometimes we’ll walk past a $50 bill, just lying there on the pavement. If we’re lucky, we’ll spot it and pick it up.
That’s just the sort of luck that Jack from Semicolon&Sons had. Here is what he wrote on Indie Hackers:
I was positively shocked this week at how strong a response I got from writing a single comment on Hacker News.
Basically, I was taking a breather from coding and saw someone had just posted a question Ask HN: How do you learn to build substantial, real-world apps?.
Considering this is my business, I simply chimed in with the following comment, basically saying “THIS IS WHAT I DO” and expecting a maximum of 2-3 sign-ups:
The comment got upvoted 20 times on HN and I netted about 70 sign-ups.
I reached out to Jack to ask if I could share his story here. He agreed and provided this additional insight:
Currently paying about $2 per sign-up on my best paid channel (Reddit). So one comment (70 sign-ups) was worth $140 to me.
It works for me, too
In the discussion that followed someone mentioned Syften:
I can’t compare that to the 70 sign-ups that Jack got. But as you see the comment got a fair amount of attention. And based on the emails I received, at least three new trials were started as a result.
As well as others
Simple Analytics share their statistics openly. Here is its traffic analysis (read more):
Summary
Opportunities like that present themselves all the time, but to get lucky you have to:
- Spot them. How many $50 bills have you walked past without noticing?
- Respond authentically. Everybody loves to buy, but nobody likes being sold to.
- Post early. Most users only go through the comment section once.