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Ask HN: I made $1.01 yesterday. What next?

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Re: Ask HN: I made $1.01 yesterday. What next?

#11

Post by carbocation »

eru wrote: post #10
TamDenholm wrote: post #3

This isnt answering your question but i've got a quick suggestion for you dev wise. Cache those images on your front page, then stitch them together into a big sprite and then use CSS to display the specific image from the sprite. It'll greatly decrease the load time on that page. Ref: http://css-tricks.com/css-sprites/

Wouldn't you want to decrease load times? Or do you think people are more likely to click on an ad, if they have to wait longer?

Doing that would decrease load times for repeat visitors.

Re: Ask HN: I made $1.01 yesterday. What next?

#12

Post by ddemchuk »

Start promoting it to get traffic. Leverage stumbleupon, reddit, facebook/twitter, and possibly organic.

Adsense pubs who make good money have sites that get a veritable shit ton of traffic every day, or have sites with ads with incredibly high CPC amounts

Re: Ask HN: I made $1.01 yesterday. What next?

#13

Post by TamDenholm »

eru wrote: post #10
TamDenholm wrote: post #3

This isnt answering your question but i've got a quick suggestion for you dev wise. Cache those images on your front page, then stitch them together into a big sprite and then use CSS to display the specific image from the sprite. It'll greatly decrease the load time on that page. Ref: http://css-tricks.com/css-sprites/

Wouldn't you want to decrease load times? Or do you think people are more likely to click on an ad, if they have to wait longer?

My bad, i meant decrease, i've fixed it.

Re: Ask HN: I made $1.01 yesterday. What next?

#15

Post by eru »

TamDenholm wrote: post #3

This isnt answering your question but i've got a quick suggestion for you dev wise. Cache those images on your front page, then stitch them together into a big sprite and then use CSS to display the specific image from the sprite. It'll greatly decrease the load time on that page. Ref: http://css-tricks.com/css-sprites/

Inline images with data URIs might perform equally well with less hackery.

Re: Ask HN: I made $1.01 yesterday. What next?

#16

Post by AlexC04 »

points wrote: post #6

Don't believe the notion that making 100 websites that earn $1 a day is easier than making 1 website that makes $100 a day. It's not. Create value, make users want to stick around, iterate, grow.

Oh no! I definitely want to look into making sure that this one is good enough before I look to make a second. I do have a million more projects I'd like to take on - but each of them has to play out to their maximum potential before I switch to the next.

If this can make $1 in 1 day on an evening's work, how far can I get if it's actually a GOOD site?

Feedback from where people see the areas of concern is useful. I've already read "Load time" in the comments as well as "game quality" and "exclusive content"

Load time is one thing I'd not considered. I think the images must load quickly for me because I've got them all in my browser cache.

I've changed the default sort order of the games so you're much less likely to get 'crap' on your first click than you were when they were random - but I'm working on adding categories as we speak, that way people will be able to find their genre quickly.

Thanks for the feedback :)

Re: Ask HN: I made $1.01 yesterday. What next?

#18

Post by AlexC04 »

chipsy wrote: post #8

Product differentiation would be an obvious next step: - Start growing a player community(which is how Kongregate works) - Place more extreme filters on quality or genre(this is the basis of sites like physicsgames.net). - Invest in some exclusive content. This is expensive and probably a bad idea at the early stage, but the fastest way to get started is to go onto FlashGameLicense and browse the stuff that's up for…

Yeah - driving traffic via sponsored games would be in the long term plan. I'm still not certain if the traffic is sustainable.

After all, after friends and family finish checking it out, who do I have left? Everything gets a 'blip' at the start with your first facebook post "he friends, check it out" then trickle until search engines find you.

I wrote a game for KONG once. I like how it works there. (http://www.kongregate.com/games/lythrdskynrd/dizzy-ship)

There is a question of the value of sponsored game traffic VS a good PPC campaign. What point do you decide it's worth throwing a few hundred down on a sponsorship? I'm not sure :)

Re: Ask HN: I made $1.01 yesterday. What next?

#20

Post by AlexC04 »

TamDenholm wrote: post #3

This isnt answering your question but i've got a quick suggestion for you dev wise. Cache those images on your front page, then stitch them together into a big sprite and then use CSS to display the specific image from the sprite. It'll greatly decrease the load time on that page. Ref: http://css-tricks.com/css-sprites/

Thank you very much! I hadn't taken the time to think about load times... but you're absolutely right.

I'm going to put it on the list as one of my priorities. I think improving / creating a navigation system where players can find a game by category, tag or genre is a higher priority (though I could be wrong)

I'm also hoping to add a game description and * star rating to the mouse over tooltip.

I think if users can find the game they want to play - they might forgive load time (though I could very well be wrong).

Maybe I should put fewer games on the front page? (I do like having a lot of squares to look at, it makes it seem more fun to me)

but you're absoloutely right. load time with a star beside it - right there on my TODO list :)

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