whowinsChoosing Your First Board on whowins
The board you pick decides who sees your listing and what the seat costs. This post is a short method for choosing a first board: who the visitors are, what the seats are carrying and whether to start open or take a held seat.
A listing on the wrong board is a listing the wrong people see. Before you pay for a seat, spend a few minutes deciding where your product belongs, what the seats on that board are carrying and whether to start with an open seat or take a held one. This post is the method we would use ourselves.
Who visits the board?
Each board on whowins is a category, and the visitors a board attracts are the people looking for that category. The home page lists the boards; the leaders page shows the top seats of each. Pick the board a buyer of your product would open, not the board with the most activity. A note-taking app on a developer tools board gets developer visits, and developers may not be the buyers you want.
If your product fits two boards, choose the one where the visitors are closest to your paying customer. You can take a seat on the second board later, as a separate purchase.
Read the seats before you pay
Every seat shows two numbers: what it costs right now and what was last paid. Together they tell you how contested the board is. A board whose top seats carry high last payments has founders who keep coming back for those rows; a board where most seats are open or near the flat amount is quiet. Neither is better in itself. A contested board has traffic and rivalry; a quiet board has cheap seats and room to be seen.
Look also at the rows below the top. On a contested board the top three seats may be expensive while the fifth is open. A listing in the fifth row is still on the same board in front of the same visitors.
Open seat or held seat?
An open seat costs the flat $5 and puts you on the board at once. A held seat costs more than its last payment and puts you in a specific row. The choice depends on what you want to learn first.
- Start open if you want to see how much traffic the board sends before spending more
- Take a held seat if the row matters to you and you have looked at what it has been changing hands for
- Take a held seat near the bottom if you want a specific position without the top-row prices
Whichever you choose, the seat changes hands the moment the payment clears, and you keep every visit it sends out. Our walkthrough of how a seat changes hands covers the mechanic itself.
What if the board is crowded?
Boards do not fill up. When the held seats run out, the board extends downward, so there is always a seat to take. A crowded board is a board with traffic, which is the reason it is crowded; a seat lower down on it can be worth more than a top seat on a board nobody opens.
If the board has its first ten seats taken, it also carries clocks. A seat on a clock behaves the same way while the clock runs and locks for two days at zero; the details are in the challenge clock explained. For a first seat, a board without clocks is simpler to read.
Match the listing to the board
The board sets the audience; the listing has to speak to it. A listing on a design tools board should say what the tool does for designers in the first line. A listing on a marketing board should say what it does for marketers. Same product, different first line. Our post on writing a listing that earns clicks goes through the parts of a listing.
A short checklist
Before paying for a first seat:
- Open the board a buyer of your product would open
- Note the current price and last payment on the rows you would want
- Decide between an open seat and a held one, and set a number you will not go past
- Write the listing’s first line for that board’s visitors
- Take the seat
Two products, two boards: an example
A team ships a screenshot tool with a developer API. The developer tools board is where engineers browse; the design tools board is where the people who would pay for the screenshots browse. The team takes an open seat on the design board first, writes the line for designers, and watches the exit clicks for a week. The clicks are good, so a second seat on the developer board follows, with a line written for engineers and the link pointing at the API page.
The order could have been reversed. What made it work was writing a different line for each board and judging each seat by its own clicks, rather than treating the two boards as one audience.
When the board turns out to be wrong
It happens. A board that looked right sends visits that do not convert. The fix is to take a seat on a better board, which is a new purchase at whatever that seat carries. The seat you leave stays yours until someone pays more than you did; there is no penalty for holding two.
If you are unsure which board fits, the contact page reaches a person who has watched every board and will say which one your product belongs on.
Questions
Can I list the same product on more than one board?
Each seat is a separate purchase, so a product can hold seats on more than one board if you pay for each. Most founders start with one board where the product clearly belongs.
Does a higher seat always send more visits?
Higher rows are seen first, and the leaders page shows the top of each board. How many visits a seat sends depends on the board's traffic and on your listing, not on the row alone.
What if every seat on my board is held?
Boards do not fill up; a board extends downward when needed, so there is always a seat to take. You can also take a held seat by paying more than its last payment.
Should I start with an open seat or a held one?
An open seat costs the flat amount and puts you on the board at once. A held seat costs more than its last payment and puts you in a specific row. Start open if you want to see the board's traffic before spending more.
Can I move to another board later?
Yes, by taking a seat there. The price stays with the seat, so the new seat starts from whatever that seat is carrying.