Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How do you start a website that requires user contribution?

news.ycombinator.com

1–10 of 54 posts

Ask HN: How do you start a website that requires user contribution?

#1
How do you attract users to use your website, if the website requires users to create the content? When there is no content, there will be no users. When there are no users, there will be no content. What are the best practices to escape this loop and build up a user base that is most likely to visit repeatedly?

Do you know/Do you remember what StackExchange looked like in its early days? How about Quora, Wikipedia or any other website with similar experience?

Re: Ask HN: How do you start a website that requires user contribution?

#2
You have to create the content by yourself. No user is going to create your content magically on an empty site. So build your content (it will be a rather long process), and then it will (not organically) generate interest.

Also, target your friends / people you know that could use your website, and ask them which content they would like to see, if they want to help you build the initial content.

What's your website ?

Re: Ask HN: How do you start a website that requires user contribution?

#3
Unless you have an existing audience you've built up before launching, I think the not-so-secret secret of most user generated content sites is that they faked it when they were starting out.

Alexis Ohanian has talked about how they seeded Reddit with posts made under various fake usernames for the first few months after launching. They made it so that as admins, they just had an extra field for "username to post with" when creating new posts.

Re: Ask HN: How do you start a website that requires user contribution?

#5
I started a classifieds site a while back. I advertised it on google adwords. 10 cents a click US only. it got users. I spent $1000. It cost me about $1 per post with email address no email validation. stopped advertising and traffic dropped like a rock. If your interested in doing a tech news faq site. I might be interested in working with you on it.

Re: Ask HN: How do you start a website that requires user contribution?

#7
A) Do it in Q/A form, where people can ask questions and answerers get some kind of reward/currency/rep token in exchange for taking the time to answer. That way the initial content - questions - is low cost and easy to add to the site, and the high-value content is compensated for with something other than money out of your pocket.

B) If that's not an option, and you can afford this, fake it. Go to a freelance writer jobsite and find freelance writers who specialize in bootstrapping content for social news/discussion sites. Hire a bunch of them to create the initial content..

Re: Ask HN: How do you start a website that requires user contribution?

#8
post #3

Unless you have an existing audience you've built up before launching, I think the not-so-secret secret of most user generated content sites is that they faked it when they were starting out. Alexis Ohanian has talked about how they seeded Reddit with posts made under various fake usernames for the first few months after launching. They made it so that as admins, they just had an extra field for "username to post wit…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How do you start a website that requires user contribution?

#10
post #3

Unless you have an existing audience you've built up before launching, I think the not-so-secret secret of most user generated content sites is that they faked it when they were starting out. Alexis Ohanian has talked about how they seeded Reddit with posts made under various fake usernames for the first few months after launching. They made it so that as admins, they just had an extra field for "username to post wit…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmeDzx4SUME
Post reply on HN