We (unexpectedly) got 60K users in 60 hours - What we learned

Hey everyone, just wanted to say I'm truly flattered my blog got posted to HN and made the front page (I'm the author). I hope people found it helpful<p>2 comments<p>1) Some of you wanted to know how HN compares to other sources for us, in terms of signups, conversions, etc. I'll post it in this thread at the end of the day (would you guys want a follow up post on this "Value of HN visits")<p>2) I've gotten some great feedback on the actual product from the HN crowd, which is awesome. Feel free to leave any feedback on this thread (you can try it at <a href="http://brandyourself.com" rel="nofollow">http://brandyourself.com</a>)

Have you any thoughts of handling the edge case of users with ridiculously common names?<p>In the top ten for my firstname lastname I have:<p><pre><code> a famous chef, a life coach who is doing branding SEO, someone else who is a programmer, a professional photographer </code></pre> In the top three firstname middlename lastname<p><pre><code> various high school kids, a registered sex offender</code></pre>

Patrick, can I ask if you get any actual calls in response to "call and talk to the real person" offer on your website? I'm sure many on HN recognize the importance of having a phone number on the site, but it'd be very helpful to know what it translates to in real world.

"As any startup will tell you, most publications will only feature a startup if given some sort of exclusive. In their eyes, the only reason to cover a startup is if it provides readers with something they can’t get anywhere else."<p>How do you start this conversation with a publication? How hard is it to simply cold email Mashable and attempt to get an article?<p>I'm assuming once the relationship is built it's easy to get follow up posts but do you have advice for making that initial connection?

<a href="http://patrickambron.brandyourself.com/" rel="nofollow">http://patrickambron.brandyourself.com/</a><p>&#62; Co-Founder &#38; CEO at BrandYourself.com<p>&#62; January 2009 - January 2000<p>Branding fail

Very interesting product. I haven't yet had a chance to fully explore the site, but I will certainly be creating an account in the future.<p>I have two concerns:<p>1) What happens when two people with the same name sign up? Couldn't that lead to issues where they're both trying to promote their own stuff while burying the others?<p>2) Is there any way that someone could pose as someone they're not in order to sabotage that persons google results, or I could see the possibility of a friend doing that in order to pull a prank on you?<p>As I said I haven't fully explored to site, so if these concerns are addressed on there, apologies. Great article!

How are they determining what companies are googling you?<p>Do they attempt to create a top ranked page about you, and then monitor IP addresses visiting it, and match that to some db that maps company to IP address?

Very cool, looks like it has a lot of potential. I'm hoping you have some spam prevention strategies in place, though, as it seems pretty ripe for it as it takes off (just like any free service that lets you create profiles and post links to sites, but <i>especially</i> a service that promotes SEO and posts followed links to sites)

I love this service, was in the early signup group and within a month controlled my first 10 results.<p>Keep expecting a pivot to small biz though and hope that's in the plans, seems like a much easier group to monetize.

While this break-down is very interesting, it all boils down to one thing: they announced an innovative feature that interests a lot of people. Things could have played out differently but the outcome would be the same - lots of signups.<p>If someone from the company is reading: I found out I already have an account (probably from the time it launched), but I can't access it. Login doesn't work and when I try to reset my password it says "e-mail not found".

Just a thought - some people go to a lot of effort to 'hide' who they are by ensuring their name does not turn up - or if it does its so mixed in with many result's that it would be hard from a casual review to determine this is the John or Jane Doe one is after - while others a lot of effort to make sure a search turns up the correct Mesers Doe.

I really like your product, but the only issue I had was when I was boosting my links. After every step in the boosting process I was asked to share that step with my Social Network, while that may help my SEO it became more of a nuisance. I would like to be asked only after completing all of the boosting steps.<p>Other than that keep up the great work!

Thanks again everyone, I'm truly flattered. We had some great discussions (have some catch-up to do today, had no idea I'd be spending so much time on HN :)).<p>Since so many people were curious to see the affect HN would have on our signups, I think I'm going to do a follow up post next week.

I really like how you guys built a viral mechanism into the product. You incentivize the user to share their BrandYourself with their existing profiles/networks to receive a "boost", which helps spread word of your product. Pretty ingenious if you ask me. Good job guys!

I remember telling people about this when it first launched, citing it as a vanity metrics booster.<p>As a startup founder, however, it's invaluable. I'm a converted fan, and the process even taught this rookie a bunch about link building and SEO.<p>Great work, keep it up, and loved the blog post.

More just FYI, but it's weird that your blog doesn't show up in <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=We+(unexpectedly)+Got+60K+Users+in+60+Hours.+What+we+learned" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=We+(unexpectedly)+Got+60K+Us...</a>

Any chance you will release a plugin for a non-brandyourself site? I'd love to put the "find out who's googling you" feature on my blog or even my startups website.

How much better are your results in boosting visibility as compared to for example getting myname.com and linking to myname.com from all social media profiles?

Awesome piece. It's rare that a startup dives this deep into the details. You deserve the 1000+ signups you'll score from a HackerNews front page ;-)

Good things happen to good products. Though Hashable is closing so might see a influx from users migrating from there over the next few weeks.

Were these high quality users in the sense that they converted to paid from a free account? What source lead to the highest quality users?

I feel like I want these guys to succeed just because Patrick seems such a nice guy, have enjoyed reading the threads.

Good work, man. Takeaway for me is to make the most of Google Analytics' conversion tracking features.

You might want to take the quote from Fox news off your front page. First thing I noticed...

30% is a awesome conversion. Any specifics on how you were able to get it up so high?

How did you implement that particular feature? (Notify when someone searches you)

I want to know how many signups you get from this submission to HN

Hey Patrick, I don't see the link to the article. Did I miss something? Can you please resend, I am very curious. Thanks!

Congratulations, but there's no way to say who a "user" is in 60 hours. What you got was 60k signups in 60 hours.

Thanks for sharing the lessons

There is one problem with the "find who is googling you" feature. For about a year now, google has started hiding the search results from the referral when someone uses google while logged in to google services.<p>You may have seen "not provided" in google analytics for searches that found your site... This is users logged in to google. And with more people using google services such as gmail and g+, more and more results will be hidden. On my corporate, tech web site, I'm seeing 40-50% of results from google as "not provided" nowadays, and its increasing every month.

Interesting! I made my own guide a while back for my friends, with great success.<p>1a) Make a "brand" with your middle name Google your first and last name. If you’re like most people on earth, you’re one of many with your particular combination. So how can you rank higher?<p>Never fight a battle you don’t have to. Pick a middle name, real or imaginary. Google your new full name.<p>Example: My name is Kevin Barry. The Google result is completely owned by Wikipedia and other impossible to compete against sites.<p>My full name is Kevin William Lord Barry. I think Lord sounds cool, so I’ll make Kevin Lord Barry my “official” online name. It’s much easier to rank for and even helps with personal branding.<p>1b) Consistency! Put your new name on top of your resume for consistency.<p>2) Edit/Create Your Facebook Take your new name. If your Facebook looks professional, change your Facebook name to your new name. If not, make sure your Facebook doesn’t use your new full name.<p>3) Edit/Create Your LinkedIn Take five minutes to create a LinkedIn account with your new name. Put all of your resume information on it neatly. LinkedIn will rank well for your new name, and you can brag as much as you want on it without looking pompous.<p>4) Make Yourself Look Good on Amazon Make an account on Amazon, using your new branded name. Pick a couple of books in your industry with good ratings. Read the summaries (read the book, preferably, but I won’t judge if you don’t). Leave a review of the books that makes you look good: show that you know industry terms, talk about your experience, etc.<p>Each review you leave will go to your Google front page and make you look smarter. This only works if you know enough about your industry to sound smart, of course. You can also do this for textbooks, or fiction that you like if you want to sound interesting.<p>5) Make Accounts on Web 2.0 Websites Take five minutes to make an account on sites that allow descriptive profiles with your full name Quora, Yahoo Answers, DisQus, Meetup, or anywhere else you want. Feel free to participate in these communities to help even more, although it’s not necessary.<p>6) Strut Your Stuff! Here’s where you can have fun and really seem impressive. Go to Weebly.com and make a free website, called “yourfullname.weebly.com”. Set the page title to “Your Full Name Online” and the page description to “Your Full Name’s Online Website”. Write a paragraph about yourself on one page, and a page with links to your linkedin, Facebook, or anywhere else you want to show people. Go nuts and add anything else you want that might make you seem interesting. Voila!

"Error establishing a database connection"<p>Is this a joke?