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Scott's Cheap Flights: Growing a small side project into a booming business

indiehackers.com

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Re: Scott's Cheap Flights: Growing a small side project into a booming business

#81

Post by sanj »

jwong_ wrote: post #78

One thing I'd like to vent about is that Scott seems to be making a lot of money selling e-mail addresses. I signed up for a couple different contests using unique e-mail addresses generated specifically for the contest (Yes, they were separate e-mails for separate contests; No, I did not double-dip my entrees). I was then signed up for 2-3 e-mail lists for 3rd party companies over the course of a couple weeks. These…

Another data point: I haven't seen any email indicating that Scott's selling the addresses.

Re: Scott's Cheap Flights: Growing a small side project into a booming business

#82

Post by sfbay »

jmarbach wrote: post #72

Disclosure: I built a competing tool for finding cheap flights, https://concorde.io . I think the secret of Scott's success is his incredible writing ability. Finding the cheap flights is the easy part. Communicating with users in a way that consistently wins over their hearts and minds takes a high level of consideration and creativity. This writing ability combined with his co-founder's understanding and applicatio…

Nice website. Fix this issue: 1) When I search with a date, it loses the depart and return dates every time. Save the dates and remember them. 2) After I select a depart date calender as Month September, it should open September when I select Return calendar.

Re: Scott's Cheap Flights: Growing a small side project into a booming business

#83

Post by jakub_g »

chrisballinger wrote: post #64

Something I've noticed that's lacking from most aggregators like Kayak and SkyScanner (my current fave), is the ability to increase the price of the ultra-budget carriers by adding their carry-on baggage fees and whatnot. I don't care about checked bag fees, but some of the carry-on fees are ridiculous ($60 per overhead item?). These budget carriers are cheating the system by looking like the cheapest option, when in…

Out of curiosity, which airlines charge $60 for cabin bag?

The most passenger-squeezing-until-recently airline in Europe (Ryanair) now allows two cabin bags for free (one standard ~55cm bag and one small bag).

Apparently Wizzair charges 10-20€ for "large" (aka regular) cabin bag though, only small ~42 cm bag is allowed for free.

Re: Scott's Cheap Flights: Growing a small side project into a booming business

#85

Post by jwong_ »

sanj wrote: post #81
jwong_ wrote: post #78

One thing I'd like to vent about is that Scott seems to be making a lot of money selling e-mail addresses. I signed up for a couple different contests using unique e-mail addresses generated specifically for the contest (Yes, they were separate e-mails for separate contests; No, I did not double-dip my entrees). I was then signed up for 2-3 e-mail lists for 3rd party companies over the course of a couple weeks. These…

Another data point: I haven't seen any email indicating that Scott's selling the addresses.

Have you signed up for any of the contests? I think it specifically targets people who entered contests.

Re: Scott's Cheap Flights: Growing a small side project into a booming business

#86

Post by bkidwell »

jwong_ wrote: post #78

One thing I'd like to vent about is that Scott seems to be making a lot of money selling e-mail addresses. I signed up for a couple different contests using unique e-mail addresses generated specifically for the contest (Yes, they were separate e-mails for separate contests; No, I did not double-dip my entrees). I was then signed up for 2-3 e-mail lists for 3rd party companies over the course of a couple weeks. These…

Hey, I'm just going to post the same response I used in the IndieHackers comment section for someone with a similar concern. Here's what I said:

"Our subscribers are too important to us to ever sell their information to someone else. We never have and never will sell users information like that. Our only source of income is subscriptions and occasional advertisements in the free emails. Ruining our reputation to make a few extra bucks would be an extremely stupid decision on our end. With that said, we do run promotions with partners where we give away awesome vacation packages (Mexico and Tokyo recently). If anyone signs up for one of these promotions they are agreeing to the terms and conditions, which clearly state that by signing up for the giveaway the email address will be distributed to all of the partners involved in the giveaway (typically 4-5 other companies)."

And their response:

"Thanks for the reply! I looked through my emails and found that the emails started right after I entered a giveaway from you. So that explains it! You're right, it does say for the giveaway offer that you're signing up for emails. Sorry that I jumped to conclusions. It's just that I get a lot of spam and it's very annoying. Also, your partner emails provided no value to me at all."

--

With that said, it looks like we could do a better job making it even more explicit (which we try to do in the emails announcing the giveaway). We'll work on this on our end and never intended to mislead anyone.

Re: Scott's Cheap Flights: Growing a small side project into a booming business

#87

Post by ludicast »

bkidwell wrote: post #46
natch wrote: post #37

Ouch, their site triggers one of my pet peeves about travel sites, listing prices without clarity whether the deal is one-way or round trip. NYC to Paris: $260 Normal Roundtrip Price: $900 So did people who got that deal save $380? Or did they save $640? Which is it? As feedback to Scott and Brian, this actually makes me hesitate to sign up for premium, because I don't know what level of discount we're talking about…

Wow, thanks for the feedback! Almost every single deal we send out is roundtrip. This is actually why we put "normal roundtrip price" instead of just "normal price" to help clarify this. Maybe instead we should do "Roundtrip NYC to Paris: $260" and then put "Normal Price: $900" to help clear this up. Thoughts?

Agree with putting roundtrip on both. Always my biggest annoyance.

Even though I always assume it's RT, I still need to keep that state in my brain.

I'm a Kidwell too btw :).

Re: Scott's Cheap Flights: Growing a small side project into a booming business

#88

Post by cbhl »

throwahey wrote: post #75
chrisballinger wrote: post #64

Something I've noticed that's lacking from most aggregators like Kayak and SkyScanner (my current fave), is the ability to increase the price of the ultra-budget carriers by adding their carry-on baggage fees and whatnot. I don't care about checked bag fees, but some of the carry-on fees are ridiculous ($60 per overhead item?). These budget carriers are cheating the system by looking like the cheapest option, when in…

Hate to piggyback but I noticed that whenever this service gets posted on Reddit there are dozens of accounts that reply addressing Scott by name and have little to say. Upon checking their comment history, I saw that most users hadn't posted anything for months, or even ever. It was clear that there was some kind of voting manipulation going on, and as reddit goes, if something gains traction it's bound to get upvot…

I used Candy Japan for a bit, and I still rather like the articles that they post. I stopped subscribing because I didn't actually eat the candy; now I buy Bento boxes at my local Japanese grocery store, and I have a "Prime Surprise Sweets" Dash Button in my house. But I'd never have been open to the idea of subscription boxes (like the Pusheen Box) if it wasn't for their articles.

Native advertising (where the content is an ad) is increasingly common; just look on YouTube, Instagram, Buzzfeed, or the average newspaper. Done well, it's win-win -- the customer learns about or feels good about a brand or business; the business gets better brand recall or a new customer or whatever. But the root cause is that people are having trouble making money online (banner ads, pre-roll ads, and text ads don't pay what they used to).

Re: Scott's Cheap Flights: Growing a small side project into a booming business

#89

Post by jwong_ »

bkidwell wrote: post #86
jwong_ wrote: post #78

One thing I'd like to vent about is that Scott seems to be making a lot of money selling e-mail addresses. I signed up for a couple different contests using unique e-mail addresses generated specifically for the contest (Yes, they were separate e-mails for separate contests; No, I did not double-dip my entrees). I was then signed up for 2-3 e-mail lists for 3rd party companies over the course of a couple weeks. These…

Hey, I'm just going to post the same response I used in the IndieHackers comment section for someone with a similar concern. Here's what I said: "Our subscribers are too important to us to ever sell their information to someone else. We never have and never will sell users information like that. Our only source of income is subscriptions and occasional advertisements in the free emails. Ruining our reputation to make…

I don't know if you've looked at what gets sent out, but the e-mails sent for the Giveaways are extremely spammy.

I get that you probably added it somewhere in the giveaway text, but from a post somewhere, it was indicated the giveaways were more to garner attention, not as a profit-making venture. It turned me off completely when I started getting those. It gave me a negative impression on both Scott's Cheap Flights and on any companies that started sending me cold emails.

Maybe you can be more selective in your partners, or perhaps work with the partners in what gets sent out. I'm very judicious in what I let get my attention, and seeing these kinds of random sales pitches with no actual value proposition was annoying.

I went back to the giveaway and found the e-mail consent in the tiny text under the consent checkmark for signing up, so I can give you that for having the warning there now. It was not noticed when I signed up, however.

Re: Scott's Cheap Flights: Growing a small side project into a booming business

#90

Post by mattfrommars »

jmarbach wrote: post #72

Disclosure: I built a competing tool for finding cheap flights, https://concorde.io . I think the secret of Scott's success is his incredible writing ability. Finding the cheap flights is the easy part. Communicating with users in a way that consistently wins over their hearts and minds takes a high level of consideration and creativity. This writing ability combined with his co-founder's understanding and applicatio…

Love the simplistic design of the website to give the information right away! Can you where are you sourcing the data from? I've playing with Flask and Scrapy yesterday and love to build something like it. What I have in mind, [Complete disclosure - I'm a total novice right now] Scrapy to get the data and Flask to integrate it on the web with a Boostrap front end.
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