u/willzhong

Trying to reverse-engineer how certain accounts grew, when they grew and why.

So far I've tried Social Blade for historical follower data and it's actually pretty useful for spotting growth spikes and matching them to specific posts or campaigns.

But I'm hitting limits:

• Hard to tell if a spike came from organic viral content, a collab, a paid push, or a giveaway
• Can't see engagement rate trends over time (only follower count)
• No way to see what content was posted at the exact moment of a spike

Anyone found good ways to:

1. Match follower growth spikes to specific content moments?
2. Judge whether growth was paid vs organic vs collab-driven?
3. See engagement rate history (not just current)?

Tools I've heard of but haven't tested yet: HypeAuditor, Phlanx, Modash, SparkToro. Curious if anyone's actually used these and whether they're worth it or overkill for research purposes.

 purely competitive research / benchmarking. Any workflow tips welcome.

Trying to reverse-engineer how certain accounts grew, when they grew and why.

So far I've tried Social Blade for historical follower data and it's actually pretty useful for spotting growth spikes and matching them to specific posts or campaigns.

But I'm hitting limits:

• Hard to tell if a spike came from organic viral content, a collab, a paid push, or a giveaway
• Can't see engagement rate trends over time (only follower count)
• No way to see what content was posted at the exact moment of a spike

Anyone found good ways to:

1. Match follower growth spikes to specific content moments?
2. Judge whether growth was paid vs organic vs collab-driven?
3. See engagement rate history (not just current)?

Tools I've heard of but haven't tested yet: HypeAuditor, Phlanx, Modash, SparkToro. Curious if anyone's actually used these and whether they're worth it or overkill for research purposes.

 purely competitive research / benchmarking. Any workflow tips welcome.

Trying to reverse-engineer how certain accounts grew, when they grew and why.

So far I've tried Social Blade for historical follower data and it's actually pretty useful for spotting growth spikes and matching them to specific posts or campaigns.

But I'm hitting limits:

• Hard to tell if a spike came from organic viral content, a collab, a paid push, or a giveaway
• Can't see engagement rate trends over time (only follower count)
• No way to see what content was posted at the exact moment of a spike

Anyone found good ways to:

1. Match follower growth spikes to specific content moments?
2. Judge whether growth was paid vs organic vs collab-driven?
3. See engagement rate history (not just current)?

Tools I've heard of but haven't tested yet: HypeAuditor, Phlanx, Modash, SparkToro. Curious if anyone's actually used these and whether they're worth it or overkill for research purposes.

purely competitive research / benchmarking. Any workflow tips welcome.

Well, it’s June 30. Scripts are officially gone.
We’re a Shopify Plus store selling consumer electronics. been running a trade-in / upgrade program for 2 years. Part of our checkout logic used a Script to automatically apply store credit when a customer had a trade-in pending. It was hacky but it worked.
As of this morning: nothing. Customers are checking out without their credit being applied. No error, no warning. Just… gone.
Spent the last 3 hours with our dev trying to figure out a Functions-based replacement. It’s doable but it’s not a quick fix.
My question for the community:
Anyone else hit with silent failures today?
If you migrated already how long did it actually take?
Is anyone using a public app to handle store credit / trade-in credit at checkout? Which one?
Also genuinely curious, did Shopify communicate this well enough? We knew the deadline but didn’t fully audit what was running until last week. Our bad, partially. But also… the notification system could’ve been louder.

Well, it’s June 30. Scripts are officially gone.
We’re a Shopify Plus store selling consumer electronics. been running a trade-in / upgrade program for 2 years. Part of our checkout logic used a Script to automatically apply store credit when a customer had a trade-in pending. It was hacky but it worked.
As of this morning: nothing. Customers are checking out without their credit being applied. No error, no warning. Just… gone.
Spent the last 3 hours with our dev trying to figure out a Functions-based replacement. It’s doable but it’s not a quick fix.
My question for the community:
Anyone else hit with silent failures today?
If you migrated already，how long did it actually take?
Is anyone using a public app to handle store credit / trade-in credit at checkout? Which one?
Also genuinely curious did Shopify communicate this well enough? We knew the deadline but didn’t fully audit what was running until last week. Our bad, partially. But also… the notification system could’ve been louder.

Well, it’s June 30. Scripts are officially gone.
We’re a Shopify Plus store selling consumer electronics. been running a trade-in / upgrade program for 2 years. Part of our checkout logic used a Script to automatically apply store credit when a customer had a trade-in pending. It was hacky but it worked.
As of this morning: nothing. Customers are checking out without their credit being applied. No error, no warning. Just… gone.
Spent the last 3 hours with our dev trying to figure out a Functions-based replacement. It’s doable but it’s not a quick fix.

My question for the community:
Anyone else hit with silent failures today?
If you migrated already how long did it actually take?
Is anyone using a public app to handle store credit / trade-in credit at checkout? Which one?
Also genuinely curious, did Shopify communicate this well enough? We knew the deadline but didn’t fully audit what was running until last week. Our bad, partially. But also… the notification system could’ve been louder.

Hi everyone,

I'm moving from Vancouver to Toronto in July for work and will be converting my principal residence in Richmond, BC into a rental property.

The condo will be managed mainly by a close friend in Vancouver, while I'll handle things remotely.

I'm trying to understand the practical side of this transition and would love to hear from anyone who's been through something similar.

A few questions:

- Since I'll be living in Ontario, do I report the rental income as an Ontario resident even though the property is in BC?
- Is provincial income tax based on where I live on December 31?
- Did you update your address with CRA, banks, insurance, driver's licence, and health coverage immediately after moving?
- Were there any tax implications when converting your principal residence into a rental property that caught you by surprise?
- Did you use a local accountant with experience in cross-province moves and rental properties?

Any lessons learned or things you wish you'd known beforehand would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

We’re launching our first app on Product Hunt in 2 weeks, and honestly, I’m both excited and nervous.
Over the past few months, we’ve talked to hundreds of people who care about privacy, remote work, and unrestricted internet access.
We kept hearing the same frustrations:
• Traditional VPNs are becoming easier to detect and block
• Work VPNs often conflict with personal VPNs
• Streaming and smart TVs remain frustratingly difficult to set up
• Users want more control over their traffic, not just another server list
So I decided to build something different.

Instead of relying entirely on centralized infrastructure, I am exploring a decentralized approach to networking. Designed for people who want flexibility, privacy, and a smoother online experience across devices.
We’re still refining the product, and our Product Hunt launch is coming up in two weeks.
Before we hit launch, I’d love to get some honest feedback from this community:
1.What frustrates you most about existing VPNs or privacy tools?
2.Does the idea of decentralized networking make sense to you, or does it sound like overengineering?

No pitch. No links yet.
Just sharing what we’re building and learning from people who care about this space.
I’d genuinely appreciate your thoughts.

We’re launching our first app on Product Hunt in 2 weeks, and honestly, I’m both excited and nervous.
Over the past few months, we’ve talked to hundreds of people who care about privacy, remote work, and unrestricted internet access.
We kept hearing the same frustrations:
• Traditional VPNs are becoming easier to detect and block
• Work VPNs often conflict with personal VPNs
• Streaming and smart TVs remain frustratingly difficult to set up
• Users want more control over their traffic, not just another server list
So I decided to build something different.

Instead of relying entirely on centralized infrastructure, I am exploring a decentralized approach to networking. Designed for people who want flexibility, privacy, and a smoother online experience across devices.
We’re still refining the product, and our Product Hunt launch is coming up in two weeks.
Before we hit launch, I’d love to get some honest feedback from this community:
1.What frustrates you most about existing VPNs or privacy tools?
2.Does the idea of decentralized networking make sense to you, or does it sound like overengineering?

No pitch. No links yet.
Just sharing what we’re building and learning from people who care about this space.
I’d genuinely appreciate your thoughts.

Been seeing some recurring advice from merchants who've run BNPL (Sellit9/Klarna/Afterpay/Sezzle/etc.) for a while, sharing a few takeaways that seemed worth posting:

If BNPL only shows up on the final checkout step, customers have already mentally committed to a payment method by then. Surfacing it earlier on the PDP and cart page, with something like "or 4 payments of $X" tends to move conversion more than checkout-only placement.

Pick one and push it, rather than stacking 3-4 providers.More options on paper doesn't always mean more usage. A few merchants found that concentrating on one primary provider with clear, consistent messaging outperformed having a bunch of logos competing for attention.

I always keep one backup. Different BNPL providers have different approval logic, so a secondary option can catch conversions that get declined by your primary one.

Curious if others have tested placement or provider-stacking and seen similar (or different) results.

You know that specific Vancouver morning after it rains? Everything is just aggressively green. Like the city had a shower and is showing off.

Snuck out for breakfast during work hours (don’t tell my manager). Found a window seat, got my food, and just sat there watching the trees move in the wind outside. That particular shade of wet green. Leaves catching light.

After a late night staring at a screen, I genuinely needed that 40 minutes more than I realized.

Been experimenting with something I haven’t seen talked about much, so wanted to share where I’m at and hear if anyone else has tried it.

The idea: Partner with non-competing Shopify apps that share the same merchant customer base, and co-market to each other’s users.

Specifically, the model I’m testing with one app right now:
• In-app placements we feature each other inside our respective dashboards/UX where it’s contextually relevant (not banner ads, more like “merchants using X also find Y useful”)
• Targeted email campaigns we each send a co-branded or endorsed email to a segment of our user base that fits the other’s ICP

Ongoing co-marketing cadence：a structured, recurring touchpoint schedule we agree on upfront
• Mutual attribution tracking：if the partnership works, we tag the traffic/installs so both sides can actually measure what it’s driving

The logic is simple: CAC inside the Shopify App Store is getting expensive. But if two apps already share the same high-intent merchant audience, the trust transfer from an in-product recommendation is way higher than a cold ad.
好

Where I’m at: I’ve had ad one positive early signal from an initial outreach，the other app was genuinely open to it, and we’re structuring the terms now. Nothing fully closed yet, but the reception has been better than I expected.

What I’m trying to figure out:

•	Has anyone run a formal cross-app partnership like this inside Shopify’s ecosystem?  
•	What’s the biggest friction point：getting alignment on the audience segment? Attribution? Revenue share expectations?  
•	For those who’ve tried co-marketing with complementary apps, what actually moved installs vs. what felt good but didn’t convert?

Would love to hear from both sides app builders who’ve tried this, or merchants who’ve actually responded to (or ignored) these kinds of recommendations.

Been experimenting with something I haven’t seen talked about much, so wanted to share where I’m at and hear if anyone else has tried it.

The idea: Partner with non-competing Shopify apps that share the same merchant customer base, and co-market to each other’s users.

Specifically, the model I’m testing with one app right now:

•	In-app placements we feature each other inside our respective dashboards/UX where it’s contextually relevant (not banner ads, more like “merchants using X also find Y useful”)  
•	Targeted email campaigns we each send a co-branded or endorsed email to a segment of our user base that fits the other’s ICP  
•	Ongoing co-marketing cadence：a structured, recurring touchpoint schedule we agree on upfront  
•	Mutual attribution tracking：if the partnership works, we tag the traffic/installs so both sides can actually measure what it’s driving

The logic is simple: CAC inside the Shopify App Store is getting expensive. But if two apps already share the same high-intent merchant audience, the trust transfer from an in-product recommendation is way higher than a cold ad.
好

Where I’m at: I’ve had one positive early signal from an initial outreach，the other app was genuinely open to it, and we’re structuring the terms now. Nothing fully closed yet, but the reception has been better than I expected.

What I’m trying to figure out:

•	Has anyone run a formal cross-app partnership like this inside Shopify’s ecosystem?  
•	What’s the biggest friction point：getting alignment on the audience segment? Attribution? Revenue share expectations?  
•	For those who’ve tried co-marketing with complementary apps, what actually moved installs vs. what felt good but didn’t convert?

Would love to hear from both sides app builders who’ve tried this, or merchants who’ve actually responded to (or ignored) these kinds of recommendations.

I’m preparing to launch an app and I’m mapping out my beta user activation strategy. One channel I’m experimenting with is Product Hunt, and wanted to see if anyone here has real experience using it this way before I commit too much to it.

Here’s my current thinking on PH as a beta channel specifically:

The way I see it, PH isn’t really a sales channel it’s a discovery surface. The audience skews toward early adopters who don’t mind rough edges, which is exactly who you want for beta feedback. The plan isn’t to optimize for upvotes or “Product of the Day,” but to use the launch event as a forcing function to:

1.	Collect emails pre-launch :use the PH page + a dedicated landing page to capture interested users before anything goes live  
2.	Re-engage existing contacts :use the PH launch as an “event excuse” to email people who already know the product but went quiet. Something like “we’re going live on PH, come check it out” is a much warmer ask than a cold re-engagement email  
3.	Let the community pressure-test messaging the comment section tends to surface objections you didn’t know you had

My concern is that PH traffic is wide but shallow. I’ve seen data suggesting average session duration tanks on launch day even when visitor numbers spike. So I’m trying to treat it as a top-of-funnel email capture play, not a “get users who stick around” play.

What I’m actually curious about:

•	Did PH genuinely move the needle on your beta signups, or did most engaged beta users come from somewhere else (reddit, communities, personal network)?  
•	How did you handle the overlap between PH audience and your existing email list, did you segment them separately?  
•	If you were using PH as one channel among several, what did your activation sequence actually look like post-signup?

Not looking for “here’s how to hit #1 on PH” advice more curious about the honest experience of people who used it as a beta recruitment and re-engagement tool specifically, not a vanity metrics play.

Appreciate any real experience here.

I’m preparing to launch an app and I’m mapping out my beta user activation strategy. One channel I’m experimenting with is Product Hunt, and wanted to see if anyone here has real experience using it this way before I commit too much to it.

Here’s my current thinking on PH as a beta channel specifically:

The way I see it, PH isn’t really a sales channel it’s a discovery surface. The audience skews toward early adopters who don’t mind rough edges, which is exactly who you want for beta feedback. The plan isn’t to optimize for upvotes or “Product of the Day,” but to use the launch event as a forcing function to:

1.	Collect emails pre-launch :use the PH page + a dedicated landing page to capture interested users before anything goes live  
2.	Re-engage existing contacts :use the PH launch as an “event excuse” to email people who already know the product but went quiet. Something like “we’re going live on PH, come check it out” is a much warmer ask than a cold re-engagement email  
3.	Let the community pressure-test messaging the comment section tends to surface objections you didn’t know you had

My concern is that PH traffic is wide but shallow. I’ve seen data suggesting average session duration tanks on launch day even when visitor numbers spike. So I’m trying to treat it as a top-of-funnel email capture play, not a “get users who stick around” play.

What I’m actually curious about:

•	Did PH genuinely move the needle on your beta signups, or did most engaged beta users come from somewhere else (reddit, communities, personal network)?  
•	How did you handle the overlap between PH audience and your existing email list, did you segment them separately?  
•	If you were using PH as one channel among several, what did your activation sequence actually look like post-signup?

Not looking for “here’s how to hit #1 on PH” advice more curious about the honest experience of people who used it as a beta recruitment and re-engagement tool specifically, not a vanity metrics play.

Appreciate any real experience here.

I’m preparing to launch an app and I’m mapping out my beta user activation strategy. One channel I’m experimenting with is Product Hunt, and wanted to see if anyone here has real experience using it this way before I commit too much to it.

Here’s my current thinking on PH as a beta channel specifically:

The way I see it, PH isn’t really a sales channel it’s a discovery surface. The audience skews toward early adopters who don’t mind rough edges, which is exactly who you want for beta feedback. The plan isn’t to optimize for upvotes or “Product of the Day,” but to use the launch event as a forcing function to:

1.	Collect emails pre-launch :use the PH page + a dedicated landing page to capture interested users before anything goes live  
2.	Re-engage existing contacts :use the PH launch as an “event excuse” to email people who already know the product but went quiet. Something like “we’re going live on PH, come check it out” is a much warmer ask than a cold re-engagement email  
3.	Let the community pressure-test messaging the comment section tends to surface objections you didn’t know you had

My concern is that PH traffic is wide but shallow. I’ve seen data suggesting average session duration tanks on launch day even when visitor numbers spike. So I’m trying to treat it as a top-of-funnel email capture play, not a “get users who stick around” play.

What I’m actually curious about:

•	Did PH genuinely move the needle on your beta signups, or did most engaged beta users come from somewhere else (reddit, communities, personal network)?  
•	How did you handle the overlap between PH audience and your existing email list, did you segment them separately?  
•	If you were using PH as one channel among several, what did your activation sequence actually look like post-signup?

Not looking for “here’s how to hit #1 on PH” advice more curious about the honest experience of people who used it as a beta recruitment and re-engagement tool specifically, not a vanity metrics play.

Appreciate any real experience here.

I track traffic attribution using UTM parameters, and for paid ads it’s seamless. parameters get appended automatically. But for organic social posts (Reddit, LinkedIn, etc.), I’m manually adding UTM suffixes to every link I share.

The problem: a URL with ?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=... looks obviously tracked to anyone who glances at it. On platforms like Reddit especially, it can feel off-brand or even erode trust people notice.

Options I’ve thought about:
• Link shorteners (Bitly, etc.) :hides the UTM, but introduces another layer and some communities/spam filters flag shortened links
• Just skip UTM on organic and rely on GA4’s source/medium inference but this feels like leaving data on the table
• Custom slug pages per channel:high effort, doesn’t scale across many platforms
How do you balance data precision vs. feeling natural in communities? Are there cleaner approaches I’m missing?
For context: I’m tracking traffic from Reddit, LinkedIn, Facebook, and a few others back to both a homepage and some content pillar pages. The goal is to understand which organic channels are actually converting for a newly launched app.

recently launched a new app and I’m running paid media across Google Ads, Meta, and LinkedIn simultaneously. The problem: in GA4, all of them are showing up under a single “paid” or “CPC” channel grouping . I can’t tell which platform is actually driving meaningful traffic or conversions to my site.
I understand GA4’s default channel grouping has limits, but I’m surprised at how little granularity I’m getting out of the box.

A few things I’ve tried or am considering:
• Custom channel groups in GA4 to separate by source
• Relying on UTM parameters (utm_source=google, utm_source=facebook, etc.) but this requires discipline across every campaign
• Cross-referencing inside each platform’s native dashboard, but that creates a reconciliation headache

What’s the cleanest way you’ve solved this? Do you just live inside each platform’s native reporting, or have you found a way to get a unified, source-level breakdown in GA4 (or another tool)?
Bonus question: if you’re also running GEO/SEO content alongside paid, how do you cleanly separate organic vs paid traffic from the same domain without it getting messy?
Context: small team, no dedicated data analyst, so ideally something that doesn’t require a full data warehouse setup.

I sell tech hardware and we've been running paid Facebook ads for a while. Like most teams, we had no idea which channels were actually working.

So we did the simple thing: added a single open-text field to our post-purchase form. "Where did you hear about us?" No dropdown, just free text.

The results were immediately humbling. A surprising number of people said Reddit, word of mouth, or "a friend told me" channels we weren't tracking at all. Facebook barely showed up, even though it was eating most of our budget.

But here's the problem I still haven't solved:

This only captures people who actually bought. Which means I'm only learning about the bottom of my funnel. I have no visibility into what's happening above it.

I know from our pixel data that a lot of people see our Facebook ads, then drop off. Some of them probably go search us on Google. Some might read a Reddit thread. Some might follow us for weeks before buying. By the time they convert and fill out my form, they say "Google" because that's the last thing they remember. The Facebook ad that planted the seed? Gone from their memory.

And for the people who don't convert. I have nothing. I don't know if they forgot about us, if a competitor won them, or if they just needed more time.

What I'm trying to figure out:

How do you instrument the mid-funnel? Specifically:

• How do you track intent signals from people who haven't given you their email yet?
• Is there a way to connect "this person saw our Facebook ad" → "this person Googled us 3 days later" → "this person bought"?
• Has anyone run surveys at different funnel stages (not just post-purchase) in a way that actually produces useful signal?

I know tools like Northbeam and Triple Whale exist but they're expensive and I'm skeptical they solve the dark funnel problem they just repackage last-click with some modeling on top.

Curious if anyone has actually cracked mid-funnel attribution at an early-stage company without spending $2k/month on software.

I sell tech hardware and we've been running paid Facebook ads for a while. Like most teams, we had no idea which channels were actually working.

So we did the simple thing: added a single open-text field to our post-purchase form. "Where did you hear about us?" No dropdown, just free text.

The results were immediately humbling. A surprising number of people said Reddit, word of mouth, or "a friend told me" channels we weren't tracking at all. Facebook barely showed up, even though it was eating most of our budget.

But here's the problem I still haven't solved:

This only captures people who actually bought. Which means I'm only learning about the bottom of my funnel. I have no visibility into what's happening above it.

I know from our pixel data that a lot of people see our Facebook ads, then drop off. Some of them probably go search us on Google. Some might read a Reddit thread. Some might follow us for weeks before buying. By the time they convert and fill out my form, they say "Google" because that's the last thing they remember. The Facebook ad that planted the seed? Gone from their memory.

And for the people who don't convert. I have nothing. I don't know if they forgot about us, if a competitor won them, or if they just needed more time.

What I'm trying to figure out:

How do you instrument the mid-funnel? Specifically:

• How do you track intent signals from people who haven't given you their email yet?
• Is there a way to connect "this person saw our Facebook ad" → "this person Googled us 3 days later" → "this person bought"?
• Has anyone run surveys at different funnel stages (not just post-purchase) in a way that actually produces useful signal?

I know tools like Northbeam and Triple Whale exist but they're expensive and I'm skeptical they solve the dark funnel problem they just repackage last-click with some modeling on top.

Curious if anyone has actually cracked mid-funnel attribution at an early-stage company without spending $2k/month on software.