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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?

#441

Post by holgersindbaek »

z-10 wrote: post #426
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…

Hey, just wanted to point out that your spider and freecell games are marked as unsafe/contains malware in Edge for some reason.

Thanks. I'll make a note of it and take a look at it.

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

#442

Post by holgersindbaek »

vyper91 wrote: post #341
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…

Damn, that's an excellent earner! Well done lol. I've never played Solitaire to completion and I just checked it out and spent 8 minutes of my life playing Solitaire and completing for the first time, lol. Really smooth experience :)

Haha. I'm glad you liked it .

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

#443

Post by holgersindbaek »

detritus wrote: post #367
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…

Blimey, well done you! . Tell me, have you set the difficulty on the first played game to some level that might artificially encourage further play? I only ask as I've not played solitaire in literally 20 years or so and everything on the game I just played on your site seemed to fall in to place remarkably easily... . ed - spelling, grammar

Thanks .

Yes I have. Most solitaire games these days have an option of playing a fully random game or a winnable deal. The automatic deal when a user comes to the site is a winnable deal.

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

#444

Post by holgersindbaek »

conradfr wrote: post #334
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…

That's amazing. I'm trying to monetize a site I have but after a few impressions Adsense has left all my slots unfilled since. Of course, you can't contact anybody ... quite frustrating.

I switched from Adsense to Freestar and have been very happy with them. I think you'll have to have a certain amount of volume to get signed with them, but it's difinitely another ballgame than Google Adsense.

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

#445

Post by holgersindbaek »

jasfi wrote: post #324
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…

So, don't sell yourself short?

Something like that .

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

#446

Post by holgersindbaek »

oops wrote: post #273
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…

Really nice execution! How is it monetized though? I don't see any ads, only an "upsell" to a native app but it also appears to be free? Edit: I see the ad sidebar now. FYI on my first visit I played for several minutes and this never opened

It's intentional. The first 5 games are ad-free. Most of the ad-revenue are from people who stick, so I kind of try to give people the best experience the first 5 games.

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

#447

Post by holgersindbaek »

atentaten wrote: post #281
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…

How many monthly visitors do you have?

I can't remember the specifics, but about 4 million games are played on the site each month.

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

#448

Post by holgersindbaek »

baby wrote: post #404
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…

Same here. A long time ago I was running a website for fun, a friend told me I was crazy not to have ads, added ads and started making 4000€/month

Damn man. Sounds nice . What website was it?

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

#449

Post by holgersindbaek »

donatj wrote: post #356
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…

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…

Congrats with the side income .

I've kind of thought about the moral of it myself. I ended up integrating Stripe to let people remove the ads. For a blog that might not make sense, but for a solitaire website where some people play an hour or two a day, it makes sense. I think the lowest pricing I had was a one-time fee of $5 and basically no-one uses it. I'm super surpriced how few people use it. But if you won't pay for playing, you're gonna get ads . And from what I can see, people are fine with this arrangement.

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

#450

Post by OJFord »

sanedigital wrote: post #338
OJFord wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For every one of these stories though, is there a 'we pushed too hard too soon, the product wasn't ready, people were already turned off it by the time it was'?

You don't need to start with a $1M+ Super Bowl Ad. Find 10 people, call them, learn what they need, educate them about your offer, take their feedback back to your product. The earlier you can start that process the better, without exception.

I'm not sure 'call 10 people' is the up-thread intended marketing push though? Maybe it is, but certainly not the way I read it (and hence framed my response).
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