True re: page hits. That said, I think Peter does a good job qualifying the traffic he got, and pointing out the caveats: that it can fade over time (and he's not afraid to post his "shark fin" graphs); that it shouldn't be interpreted as a false positive; that PH's userbase might be very different from your target market.
And even if you do think PH is your target market, you can learn something useful from a shark fin. You're getting feedback from an abnormally insightful group of people, which is both good and bad. Bad, because the feedback isn't necessarily market-generalizable. Good, because the depth you'll get is better than what you'd get from a test group plucked at random from the general population.
In any event, getting featured on PH shouldn't be the beginning and end of one's marketing plan. And Peter is pretty careful to point that out.
I'd imagine that conversion looks better for products whose intended target falls more in line with the PH crowd. (See Ryan's comment re: 40%. My guess is that products on that end of the spectrum were right in the wheelhouse for this community.) So the operative lesson here is to understand the PH userbase, and to put that userbase into context within one's broader marketing strategy.
And even if you do think PH is your target market, you can learn something useful from a shark fin. You're getting feedback from an abnormally insightful group of people, which is both good and bad. Bad, because the feedback isn't necessarily market-generalizable. Good, because the depth you'll get is better than what you'd get from a test group plucked at random from the general population.
In any event, getting featured on PH shouldn't be the beginning and end of one's marketing plan. And Peter is pretty careful to point that out.
I'd imagine that conversion looks better for products whose intended target falls more in line with the PH crowd. (See Ryan's comment re: 40%. My guess is that products on that end of the spectrum were right in the wheelhouse for this community.) So the operative lesson here is to understand the PH userbase, and to put that userbase into context within one's broader marketing strategy.