I'll be completely honest, this felt too much like a fluff piece with advice that was too general to be helpful.<p>I can break down your post into this advice:<p><pre><code> 1) Listen to what people say
2) Ignore the people insulting you
3) Post on a weekend
4) Reply to feedback
5) Use feedback to improve your product
</code></pre>
The problem is, you really go no deeper than that. For example, in #1, (Comments that are targeted at you can be hurtful at first, but don’t take them personally), you say "However, it is important to not take them personally. View it from a larger perspective. Why are they criticizing you? There must be a reason why. Try to understand them and see what you are able to do." What did you do to understand them? What were you able to do based on their comments? How can you iterate off that? Why do you think people said that? How did you incorporate their thoughts into your product? Your second paragraph (For the record, English is my first language and I’ve been speaking it since I was born) sounded too much like you were still taking the comments personally.<p>#3 is another example. You seem to only have one data point to support your theory. You also said yourself you added samples and changed prices. Could that have been it? Could it have been luck? Could it have been the hour it was posted at? It sounds like it might be true but you have barely any evidence to support that claim.<p>#5 is another example. I would hope that you would always use feedback from a community to improve your product, especially a community with it's pulse on the tech world and entrepreneurship. How did changing things increase your sales? What other things are you trying to do to improve?<p>I hope you don't take this as a negative comment, just more constructive criticism. When I read a blog post, if it offers advice to me, I want to read something more specific than "Use suggestions to improve product".
Well since you like criticism:<p>1. Your post was common sense material and provided me with no further necessary info to even see it in context (of your launch) Which link did you post to HN?<p>2. You disabled the standard scroll bar, I can't use middle click to scroll on your page.
you mentioned posting on a weekend is a gd strategy to get traffic. yet now you posted on a weekday morning. why did you switch your strategy? just curious.
I've learned that HN traffic and Reddit traffic are good for quick feedback and high viewcounts, but not for repeat visitors or people stick around. It's almost entirely bounce traffic.
> (how many of you even know where Singapore is? ;)<p>I'm quite uncertain that goading people based on a stereotypical notion that Americans are map-ignorant is the ideal manner by which to overcome initial resistance to one's proposals. Even if you're idea were a good one and perfectly executed, you still have to practically ram it down people's throats in order to convert them.<p>HN is not a great place to sell tutorials; video or otherwise. I looked at your site over the weekend, kept it open in a tab as a tickler and then last night decided that buying updated Xcode and Objective-C materials would be both a cheaper and better option. That wasn't based on your experience, lack thereof or price. It was based on my own process and interest in learning, and judging by the number of books people produce and sell on the subjects of programming, I'd say that I'm not alone in that category. You may have picked the wrong audience.<p>Also, in regards to this post, you've let your dissatisfaction with HN's receptiveness towards your idea get the best of you. One submission and a "lessons learned" follow up post five days later is not a sign that you've externalized negative feedback or that you've been able to collect sufficient data to pontificate over the HN submission process and provide useful advice for others. If anything, you should create a marketing campaign, gather and interpret your data and use it to back up your assumptions.<p>Either way, I wish you the best of luck with your endeavors. Based on what I've seen so far, you're far ahead than many people your age.<p>ps. Yes, I've been to Singapore. It's okay.
Good points. I'd add: There is a good chance that HN users that read your post are not your demographic; it is made of of a mix of tech entrepreneurs (people that don't have a company but wish they did, or 1-2 person company CEO/CTO) and other IT professionals/developers. This may be a place to get helpful critical feedback from a technical and small tech business sense, but is <i>not</i> a good indicator of what others outside that realm think.