Reminds me of: www.holidaypirates.com
With special websites for most bigger European countries. Its more or less doing the same, with lots of affiliations, an app, Whatapp group, etc.
Scott's Cheap Flights: Growing a small side project into a booming business
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Re: Scott's Cheap Flights: Growing a small side project into a booming business
#12This is amazing but is it the kind of business that can last for more than a few hundred thousand users? At a certain point people get none of the free deals, because too many are trying to book at once, right?
Even if it caps out right where it is... they're retired after not too long
Yeah, if they're pulling $5/mo from each premium subscriber, that's... well, some pretty easy math. They could put a cap on the userbase if they wanted and still be pulling millions per month just off subscriptions, not even accounting for ad revenue.
Re: Scott's Cheap Flights: Growing a small side project into a booming business
#13Interesting that they have been able to raise prices over time - a fixed number of cheap seats available at any moment means the more users on the email list, the less likely an individual user will be able to extract value from the list - hence list growth actually reduces the value it delivers.
I guess fear of missing out is a strong sales tool!
Re: Scott's Cheap Flights: Growing a small side project into a booming business
#14Amazing how much they did without too much technology or upstart cost!
Re: Scott's Cheap Flights: Growing a small side project into a booming business
#15Just wondering if the guys can automate the scraping part, seems unlikely this is usually information that needs to be handpicked or "moderated" by one or more humans.
Speculation: it's possible that the source sites are actively hostile to scraping and intentionally mess with the layout regularly, or may even have ruled out any kind of automation in their ToS - so if you don't want to get sued or blacklisted, you can do no kind of (detectable) scraping.
Re: Scott's Cheap Flights: Growing a small side project into a booming business
#16Reminds me of: www.holidaypirates.com With special websites for most bigger European countries. Its more or less doing the same, with lots of affiliations, an app, Whatapp group, etc.
Wow these deals look too good to be true! But I guess I'm in the US lol
Re: Scott's Cheap Flights: Growing a small side project into a booming business
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if it caps out right where it is... they're retired after not too long
Yeah, if they're pulling $5/mo from each premium subscriber, that's... well, some pretty easy math. They could put a cap on the userbase if they wanted and still be pulling millions per month just off subscriptions, not even accounting for ad revenue.
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Re: Scott's Cheap Flights: Growing a small side project into a booming business
#18Just wondering if the guys can automate the scraping part, seems unlikely this is usually information that needs to be handpicked or "moderated" by one or more humans.
Speculation: it's possible that the source sites are actively hostile to scraping and intentionally mess with the layout regularly, or may even have ruled out any kind of automation in their ToS - so if you don't want to get sued or blacklisted, you can do no kind of (detectable) scraping.
Maybe you're in a better position to negotiate this if you're them though?
Skyscanner scrape to keep their partner's honest (which has always sounded pretty hostile to me but I guess they're approaching a pretty user hostile marketplace) and with their market share they're able to force their partners to comply with reasonable demands.
Re: Scott's Cheap Flights: Growing a small side project into a booming business
#19>We actually don't do a ton of A/B testing or worry much about open and click rates, and here's why: Our revenue model is subscription based. We don't take any commissions or have any ads in the premium emails. Our only incentive is to keep premium subscribers happy.
I find this a surprising statement -- aren't the emails the primary channel for trying to convince a free user to upgrade to paid? Why not try A/B testing to try and boost that percentage from the ~10% to something higher?
Re: Scott's Cheap Flights: Growing a small side project into a booming business
#20>We actually don't do a ton of A/B testing or worry much about open and click rates, and here's why: Our revenue model is subscription based. We don't take any commissions or have any ads in the premium emails. Our only incentive is to keep premium subscribers happy. I find this a surprising statement -- aren't the emails the primary channel for trying to convince a free user to upgrade to paid? Why not try A/B testi…
In most cases, A/B testing will actually do negative damage than if you didn't test it at all.