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Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

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Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#391

Post by donatj »

Kye wrote: post #373
donatj wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run a blog that gets about 200k unique users a month. My wife lost her job at the beginning of Covid-19, and I slapped a single ad on my most popular post to supplement our income. I hate ads, but income is income. It’s bringing in over $300 a month. Fast forward to now, my wife has a new job. I still hate ads, but I have become accustomed to that extra $300 each month and have had trouble talking myself into takin…

1: set up a Patreon or Ko-fi with monthly memberships enabled 2: replace the ad with an ad for your thing You don't even have to offer any perks. In my experience and in those I've heard, most people don't care about "rewards." They come to support. Just make a few tiers since people tend to pledge along them.

I might try that. I've got a PayPal donation button that used to fetch me maybe $30 a month but it's been far less since the ad went up.

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#392

Post by jokethrowaway »

urthor wrote: post #215
JonChesterfield wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you think of any amazing software written by one person who was working for another person who owned the company that owned said software? I sympathize with the argument that one engineer can be sufficient but am doubtful about them being an employee as opposed to founder.

That's exactly what happened with Twitter. It was at a company named Odeo. But yes, I think you can have two high quality employees make good software? I mean they're employees, you're going to give them marching orders to do something presumably.

This is hard to achieve because generally good engineers are either working high pay tech jobs OR they work in a startup as founders / early employees with make-me-rich shares.

Sure, there are exceptions who don't know their worth. In general it's hard to find mediocre technical cofounders and very very hard to find good technical cofounders.

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#393

Post by sbayeta »

1thrasher wrote: post #372
themanmaran wrote: post #24

Marketing. The one thing I pushed off for as long as possible. Because it was always easier to build more, than it was to go into marketing / sales. No clever tricks, or growth hacks. Me and my cofounders just connected with everyone we could on LinkedIn, twitter, discord, etc. and talked to people about the product: https://rysolv.com/ . In fact, part of the reason we delayed marketing was looking for some clever wa…

I'm a solo developer with little marketing knowledge with a few hundred dollars to burn each month, where and how do I spend advertising money? It strikes me as imprudent to split it between Google, FB, and Twitter ads when I don't know what I'm doing.

I would say, don't spend a dime before you read at least one marketing book. I'm now reading "Marketing Made Simple" and so far it's very insightful.

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#395

Post by ketzo »

1thrasher wrote: post #372
themanmaran wrote: post #24

Marketing. The one thing I pushed off for as long as possible. Because it was always easier to build more, than it was to go into marketing / sales. No clever tricks, or growth hacks. Me and my cofounders just connected with everyone we could on LinkedIn, twitter, discord, etc. and talked to people about the product: https://rysolv.com/ . In fact, part of the reason we delayed marketing was looking for some clever wa…

I'm a solo developer with little marketing knowledge with a few hundred dollars to burn each month, where and how do I spend advertising money? It strikes me as imprudent to split it between Google, FB, and Twitter ads when I don't know what I'm doing.

I am not an expert, but any advertising >>> no advertising. I would go with your first instincts, slap some cash down in a few different places, and start refining later.

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#396

Post by ignoramous »

donatj wrote: post #389
revicon wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which ad network/provider did you use for your ad? Did you shop around for the best paying one?

I just use adsense. Haven't shopped around at all . If you have recommendations I'm all ears.

You could try this if you want to: www.ethicalads.io (by folks at Read the Docs).

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#397

Post by ffhhj »

joshfee wrote: post #364
holgersindbaek wrote: post #269

It might sound dumb, but monetizing my site was the stepping stone to make it take off. I run a solitaire website called https://online-solitaire.com/ that ran for a few years without me earning any money from it. I kind of thought that no-one earned money from banner ads anymore, so I didn't even bother with them. One day I decided to try it out and earned around $1000 the first month. That gave me the boost to spen…

Glad you're earning some money, but I turned ad-blocker off to see how you incorporated ads on your site - honestly taking up a quarter of the screen with autoplay videos and blinking ads is some toxic 90s geocities stuff... ad-blocker going right back on.

I use uBlock Origin, but as developer the easier way to earn money is to feed ads to that 90-ish % of users that don't have an adblocker. I used to force interstitials and videos when starting my apps, but removed them to avoid bad ratings. People seem happy with double banners top/down and affiliate links.

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#398

Post by blairanderson »

1thrasher wrote: post #372
themanmaran wrote: post #24

Marketing. The one thing I pushed off for as long as possible. Because it was always easier to build more, than it was to go into marketing / sales. No clever tricks, or growth hacks. Me and my cofounders just connected with everyone we could on LinkedIn, twitter, discord, etc. and talked to people about the product: https://rysolv.com/ . In fact, part of the reason we delayed marketing was looking for some clever wa…

I'm a solo developer with little marketing knowledge with a few hundred dollars to burn each month, where and how do I spend advertising money? It strikes me as imprudent to split it between Google, FB, and Twitter ads when I don't know what I'm doing.

he's not talking about ADVERTISING. You need to reach out to people yourself, cold email, tell them you have a product that does XYZ and think it might solve their problems.

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#400

Post by revicon »

donatj wrote: post #389
revicon wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which ad network/provider did you use for your ad? Did you shop around for the best paying one?

I just use adsense. Haven't shopped around at all . If you have recommendations I'm all ears.

I've got no experience in shopping around for ads, was hoping you did :) My blog gets decent traffic these days, seems like I should stick an ad or two someplace so it pays for itsself.
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