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Ask HN: How do you drive web traffic to your successful side projects?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: How do you drive web traffic to your successful side projects?

#71

Post by fourstar »

tgflynn wrote: post #63
Zaheer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awesome site! You could easily monetize with just placing even a single AdSense ad on the site. An app might also be useful in monetizing. Is this a custom site? Curious what you used to make it.

By monetize you mean make $100 or so a month right ? With RPM's around a few dollars for AdSense isn't that the most he would be looking at in revenue, or am I missing something ?

Pretty much. Buddy of mine runs one of the most popular wallpaper sites and the ads make pennies on the dollar. You can't really monetize a wallpaper site at all (especially if you aren't the one making the wallpapers).

Re: Ask HN: How do you drive web traffic to your successful side projects?

#72

Post by Doches »

I publish a digital-only literary magazine called Far Off Places ( http://faroffplaces.org ) with a team of 4 (myself, two editors, one designer). It has recurring revenue from email and iOS subscriptions that we've ploughed back into the project. Our initial subscription revenue has funded our expansion into related projects (launch an iOS poetry promotion app, record a fortnightly podcast, &c.) all of which we use to drive readers to the magazine. They also make us look pretty awesome on grant applications...

We promote pretty heavily on Facebook (poetry & literary fiction readers are a seriously niche audience), which we use to drive traffic to the (free) side projects. From there it's just straightforward cross-promotion to convert e.g. podcast listeners into magazine subscribers.

Re: Ask HN: How do you drive web traffic to your successful side projects?

#73

Post by fapi1974 »

LukeHoersten wrote: post #54
antr wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an active runner/triathlete, I can't stress enough how f*cked-up online registration processes for races are, and this app almost seems solve this. All I can wish you is the best of luck and I hope to signup to races via your app soon. my 2 cents: I suggest you contact your local running clubs/athlete associations, and race organisers to help them out with this + remove the need to signup (give the user the option…

Thanks for the feedback. That's exactly my goal. I currently have it so you can create a race w/o signing up. Shoot me an email (link on the bottom of the website) if you don't mind chatting a bit more? Thanks!

I've used Active.com before - wondering how this compares to that?

Re: Ask HN: How do you drive web traffic to your successful side projects?

#74

Post by carterschonwald »

codygman wrote: post #66
LukeHoersten wrote: post #41

I have a side project http://racemetric.com for simple athletic race registration and credit card processing (just released). It's all written in Haskell and brand new. Any ideas about how to specifically drive traffic would be extremely helpful. The idea is to accept credit card registration payments within minutes instead of having to talk to sales people, get a merchant account, build a custom web page, etc.

Any more details on the software stack? I'm actually about to write an SAAS in Haskell. Are you using Yesod, Snap, Happstack, plain wai, or something else? Any commentary on making your SAAS with Haskell, where you thought it helped, where you thought it hurt? Thanks!

Knowing Luke I'm going to guess Snap, but I could be wrong, the Haskell web tools allow yah to mix and match. Congrats to Luke on launching!

Re: Ask HN: How do you drive web traffic to your successful side projects?

#75

Post by pranaya_co »

For StartUpLift (http://startuplift.com), the best results have been through contacting related sites / bloggers and requesting a writeup. The only way to get this done on a smaller budget is a relentless hustle. You need to request “getting featured” in as many blogs and sites as possible. Here is a sample list that you can go through:

Hacker News - http://news.ycombinator.com/

StartUpLift - http://startuplift.com/submit-your-startup/

Springwise - http://springwise.com/tipus/

CrunchBase - http://crunchbase.com/

Appvita - http://www.appvita.com/

Techattitude - http://techattitude.com/

Minisprout - http://www.minisprout.com/

Emily Chang - http://emilychang.com/

Rev2 - http://www.rev2.org/

Ziipa - http://www.ziipa.com/

On The App - http://www.ontheapp.com/

Next Web App - http://www.netwebapp.com/

DIY Startup News - http://www.netwebapp.com/

AppUseful - http://appuseful.com/

Startup Booster - http://www.startupbooster.com/

Paggu - http://www.paggu.com/

Robin Speziale - http://robinspeziale.com/

Submit Startup - http://www.submitstartup.com/

TechHotSpot - http://techhotspot.com/

YouNoodle - http://younoodle.com/

Lovely Pages - http://www.lovelypages.net/

Generation-y Startup - http://genystartup.com/

Netted - http://netted.net/

Killer Startups - http://www.killerstartups.com/

GotoWeb2.0 - http://www.go2web20.net/

StartupMeme - http://www.startupmeme.com/

SimpleSpark - http://www.simplespark.com/

VentureBeat Profiles - http://venturebeatprofiles.com/

FeedMyApp - http://www.feedmyapp.com/

BigStartups - http://www.bigstartups.com/

GreatWebApps - http://greatwebapps.com/

Wwwhatsnew - http://wwwhatsnew.com/

Best Websites - http://101bestwebsites.com/

MakeUseOf - http://www.makeuseof.com/

LaunchFeed - http://www.launchfeed.com/

MoMB - http://momb.socio-kybernetics.net/

Demo Girl - http://demogirl.com/

WebDev 2.0 - http://www.webdevtwopointzero.com/

DzineBlog - http://www.webdevtwopointzero.com/

Sociable Blog - http://www.sociableblog.com/

Re: Ask HN: How do you drive web traffic to your successful side projects?

#76

Post by davecap1 »

dangrossman wrote: post #58
JoshTriplett wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do I need to authorize a connection to my Twitter account in order to audit someone else's? What are you using it for, and could you either make that more clear up front or drop the requirement, preferably the latter?

Probably to use your account to make the requests to Twitter's API. The API is very rate-limited, so using his own account for everyone isn't viable.

Yup that's the reason!

Re: Ask HN: How do you drive web traffic to your successful side projects?

#77

Post by emilioolivares »

I run Flipmeme (http://www.flipmeme.com). Just hit 30k uniques this month, mostly from Reddit and people posting our pages to Facebook. My biggest surprise is Google which sends the most traffic organically. Unfortunately, I've learned that web traffic doesn't happen overnight, it's a LONG hustle and requires time and patience.

Re: Ask HN: How do you drive web traffic to your successful side projects?

#78

Post by Zaheer »

udfalkso wrote: post #47

I get 750k+ visitors per month. Nearly all of it from organic search (aka Google). It took years to build up this traffic organically to User Generated Content. http://isitnormal.com Great Ask HN. Thanks for posting.

What are you using to power your site in terms of stack if you don't mind me asking?

Re: Ask HN: How do you drive web traffic to your successful side projects?

#79

Post by ams6110 »

fapi1974 wrote: post #73
LukeHoersten wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the feedback. That's exactly my goal. I currently have it so you can create a race w/o signing up. Shoot me an email (link on the bottom of the website) if you don't mind chatting a bit more? Thanks!

I've used Active.com before - wondering how this compares to that?

The worst thing about active.com is that they will spam you forever once they have your email address. There seems to be absolutely no working way to unsubscribe from their mailings.

Re: Ask HN: How do you drive web traffic to your successful side projects?

#80

Post by LukeHoersten »

fapi1974 wrote: post #73
LukeHoersten wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the feedback. That's exactly my goal. I currently have it so you can create a race w/o signing up. Shoot me an email (link on the bottom of the website) if you don't mind chatting a bit more? Thanks!

I've used Active.com before - wondering how this compares to that?

Active was one of the products that drove me to create Racemetric. Same market.
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