I did a Show HN a few years ago on another account. It got no upvotes but that website/app has generated over $6m in revenue in that time (over $4.5m profit). Not sure what my point is but thought I'd share

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mchaver 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think HN is a very particular group of people and not representative of the market for a lot of the products we make. We tend to like open-source things, ask lots of technical questions and complain about minute things. Also, Show HNs tend to perform better if they are quick to use (no sign in required, don't need to download, etc.).

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marginalia_nu 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's also a pretty big lottery. Two nearly identical projects can get very different receptions depending on the phase of the moon.

	▲	ben_w 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If there's a non-lottery option for $6m in revenue and $4.5m profit over a few years, I wouldn't be alone in wanting to find it and work that option. As per the old efficient market jokes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28029044

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weird-eye-issue 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes, this was in a marketing niche and I knew it wasn't a good fit

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pdyc 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

mine got lot of upvotes and huge traffic but it died after few days. I think it has more to do with novelty of idea rather than commercial interest.

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wewewedxfgdf 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Show us the Show HN!

	▲	weird-eye-issue 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Our revenue isn't public and this is a throwaway

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prodigycorp 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

what channel did you find success in?

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weird-eye-issue 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Affiliates. They made it blow up overnight with an existing audience

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reconnecting 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Interesting, may I ask what network exactly you used?

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weird-eye-issue 2 hours ago | parent [-]

We don't use one. Got connected through with the first affiliates in a paid/private community in that particular niche

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reconnecting 2 hours ago | parent [-]

This is helpful. Just to clarify, so you had created your own affiliate network and run this manually? Tracking, payouts, etc?

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weird-eye-issue 2 hours ago | parent [-]

There's software for running your own program so they handle most of that except the actual payment part, monitoring for fraud, etc. Plus they don't give any visibility to your program which a network would help with to an extent

	▲	reconnecting 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Can you recommend this software? It's definitely not considered an ad, but just to understand what exactly you find useful.

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jansan 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

So the affiliates obviously get 25%.

	▲	weird-eye-issue 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		30%. But it brought tons of word of mouth and such after the ball got rolling so the total affiliate commission compared to our revenue lifetime is closer to 10-15%