15 minutes of fame
When I published the blog post about our Shopify app growth story, I expected it to reach 50 likes. Sankalp and I would quietly celebrate with a beer or something better, and call it a day.
Instead, that post blew up.
It's the first time anything I've written went viral, or was read by tens of thousands of people. And this is only a week after Sankalp's post on how we manage our AWS bills blew up to #3 on HackerNews.
72 hours later, most of the traffic has died down. I fully expected it - my 15 minutes of fame - and yet it stings a little for the big and fancy numbers to settle back.
Ah well.
Whenever I see someone's posts or Tweets go viral, I always wished I could see their numbers.
So, let's talk numbers 👇
• 203,000 total impressions
• 86,000 impressions, 13,000 engagements on the main tweet
• 1203 -> 1899 follows
HackerNews
• #24 on the front page for 12 hours
• 139 points
My original post on HN got flagged. Someone else who liked the post ended up submitting it again. Thank you kind soul.
• Top 3 posts on r/entrepreneur
• 509 upvotes, 95% upvoted
Reddit as a community rewards authenticity. If they get as much as a hint that you're trying to sell something, the community ignores and downvotes you out.
The authenticity of sharing our learnings and failures, combined with the significance of the milestone is why I think my post did well over there.
• 9,600 views on the post
• 121 reactions
Indiehackers
• #1 milestone for July 4 with 85 upvotes, 2700 views
• 519 views on the post
Super interesting that the milestone post did better on IndieHackers than the actual post. I thought a summary of the 11 lessons would do well. And funny enough, the post picked up more steam after 24 hours, once the milestone was no longer visible. I found it a bit odd.
Facebook Groups
• 70 reactions on the SaaS Products & Marketing group
• 76 reactions on the Shopify App Developers community
If you're building a Shopify app, I highly recommend joining the app developers group. The community is warm and lovely, they help out each other with technical and non-technical problems. It's a gem.
Preetamnath.com blog
The traffic from various social media was driving views to my blog post.
The results?
Traffic (pageviews / users)
• July 4: 3181 / 2310
• July 5: 22708 / 16203
• July 6: 6147 / 4257
• July 7: 1230 / 807
At its peak, I saw more than 100 concurrent users on the blog. But I got busy having my mouth hanging open. So I only managed to grab a screenshot showing 91.
You'll just have to take my word for it.
I kept digging at the numbers. Here's more observations:
• US: 38% of users who visited
• India: 2nd best bounce rate and average session duration
• Germany: Awfully impatient about leaving the site in 37 seconds
• Netherlands: browsed the most with 1.59 pages/session
There's more.
• 81% of blog readers were on their phone
• 3x more Mac users than Windows
• Who is browsing on a BlackBerry or Amazon Silk?
Sunday Coffee ☕️ Newsletter
I also added 138 subscribers to my weekly newsletter Sunday Coffee ☕️.
That takes the grand total to 165 subscribers. It's 164 more than I had expected when I started.
My post went viral. Why?
1) Content
• Milestone
People love celebrating a milestone with fellow entrepreneurs. It's overwhelming, the positivity and support Red heart
• Authenticity
I bared it all in the post. It felt like reliving those 14 months. And I think people can feel that.
2) Distribution
I tailored the content for every platform
• Twitter: Broke down the journey into a Tweet thread
• Reddit: Full post with link to blog at the end
• IH: Milestone, and Post with summary of the 11 learnings
• LinkedIn: Short summary, go to the post for more
Closing words
I also got dozens of DMs and emails from fellow and aspiring entrepreneurs, and I hope to have made a few new friends :)
One word to the aspiring entrepreneurs - START
Two words to fellow entrepreneurs - KEEP HUSTLING
Want to see any other numbers or have questions? Message me on Twitter
