You can expect up to low 5-digits of page views -<p><a href="https://ma.ttias.be/the-frontpage-hacker-news-stats-graphs-analysis/" rel="nofollow">https://ma.ttias.be/the-frontpage-hacker-news-stats-graphs-a...</a><p><a href="http://alainmeier.com/traffic-data-after-hitting-the-hacker-news-homepage" rel="nofollow">http://alainmeier.com/traffic-data-after-hitting-the-hacker-...</a><p><a href="http://purde.net/2015/01/hacker-news-number-one-post-stats/" rel="nofollow">http://purde.net/2015/01/hacker-news-number-one-post-stats/</a><p>But unless you're selling something most people can enjoy (dropbox, github, etc) it may not be of much value to you -<p><a href="http://blog.yesgraph.com/yesgraph-tc-ph-hn-omg-bbq/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.yesgraph.com/yesgraph-tc-ph-hn-omg-bbq/</a><p>9.3k uniques -> 44 free trial registrations = 0.4% conversion rate, or 0+ paying customers from 3 front page posts
Single data point: My personal best for one of my blog posts is currently at 20432 in total page views. IIRC, about 15k of that was from hitting the front page and the rest is residual traffic that keeps trickling in. Those numbers are handwavy and I have reason to suspect they probably aren't really all that good. It isn't like that post got really wildly upvoted. There is some relationship between how much it gets upvoted, how long it remains on the front page and how much traffic it gets.