400 waitlist signups, half turned out to be bots
A launched a waitlist page for a prompt- tool and woke up to nearly 400 signups, feeling great about it for about twelve hours. Running the signup list through mail tester to catch typos before importing it into a mail client revealed that roughly half the list consisted of spam traps, disposable temporary emails, and scrapers.
Sending beta invites to that unfiltered list, as many startup guides recommend, would likely have permanently damaged the new domain's with Google before a single real user ever received an email. New projects that go public are quickly swarmed by junk traffic that distorts their metrics from day one.
Key points
- Waitlist page got nearly 400 signups within a day of launch
- About half the list turned out to be spam traps, disposable emails, or scrapers when checked with mail tester
- Sending unfiltered invites could have permanently damaged the new domain's with Google
- Newly launched projects quickly attract junk traffic that skews their metrics