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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?

#81

Post by Dylanlacey »

dholowiski wrote: post #70
justinchen wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish that people would remember that "it's made by people" when they email customer support. Sometimes people can be so harsh.

I worked in technical support for 12 years. Yeah it's amazing how people treat other people over the phone or email.

Working in tech and retail showed me this. I decided to make it up to the world in general, in a small way.

So now, every christmas, I find some of the services I use (like my bank, full of VERY helpful, friendly people) who have call centres active on Christmas day, and I ring them and say thanks and Merry Christmas.

The only downside is occasionally someone will cry because a random stranger wished them a Merry Christmas because they're at work.

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

#82

Post by AlexC04 »

benologist wrote: post #45

You might like to check out my distribution feed - loads of great games zipped up ready for distribution or embedding from a wide selection of the top devs and portals: http://playtomic.com/games/catalog You can pull it all in via script through the very customizable feed: http://playtomic.com/games/feed Portals are a lot of work though. You'll need a strategy - find keywords you want to target, optimize and build li…

OH MY GOD! :D thank you so much :)!

I mean that.

I've been working all day and have just uploaded a whack of improvements

- categories now implemented - adsense moved around (hopefully) optimized a bit for clickyness

I've actually taken some ads off the page - but I'm really interested in finding more content. At the moment, I've just been using http://addictinggames.com (bless him, plug plug)

But more sites and content will make my place much better. I'm especially in love with embeddable!

I've been going at it solid since my OP without a break - so I've got to step away for a little - but I'll definitely take advantage of this :)

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

#84

Post by AlexC04 »

tropin wrote: post #73

Does Google permit telling how much are you earning with Adsense?

yikes! thanks for this comment.

I'd actually just announced the earnings (as I wanted to share) - but my ignorance of their policy in this respect has given way to caution.

I've deleted the post where I say the exact $ value of the earnings and instead will just say that it's managed to buy a pizza dinner.

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

#85

Post by AlexC04 »

indiejade wrote: post #76

Please. Fix. Logo. It's the only part of your site that really looks outdated.

Thanks. In terms of everything else, I admit it's poor. I cranked it out quickly in fireworks and agree.

I like the colors - but the bevel is low quality. I'll have to make an effort on the logo in round 2. :)

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

#86

Post by nl »

palish wrote: post #79
nl wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was like you for a long time, until two things happened: 1) I met someone who is running a site that took him a few hours to build, cents to run (AppEngine) (plus $20 for two domain names) and makes over $1000/month (yeah, so he's spent more time since then, but not much.) 2) I build a site that cost me $15 to build ($10 domain hosting, $5 - refundable - to join an affiliate program), hours to build (it's basically…

But what part actually earns you money?

On that site I make $100-$180 month from affiliate sales, $5-$10 from AdSense.

If you are dealing with physical products then affiliate programs can work quite well.

Edit: On my friend's site is is all AdSense. His is non-physical product related.

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

#87

Post by nl »

3pt14159 wrote: post #80
palish wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what part actually earns you money?

I've had best responses with Amazon's affiliate program. Made about $130 bucks from something like 5 or 6 blog posts. Hourly rate worth it? Nope. Was it fun? Yep. Basically what I've learned is that Google's dynamic ad placement is the last thing you should try. Putting in an ad (or affiliate link, there are even services that will auto do this with Javascript, so you're users wont see and you don't have to be part o…

I've written a context sensitive affiliate adserver that serves relevant ads via Javascript. That works reasonably well, but I do need to optimize the ads themselves some.

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

#88

Post by AlexC04 »

user24 wrote: post #61

1.5% is really not bad at all! How much traffic do you get per day? I'd change the URL structure from numeric to keyword bases (happy to help with apache config if you like). I'd also provide a search box, powered by google search so you can still get ad clicks. Add an addthis.com button to each page to build backlinks and virality.

I'm on my third day of traffic so far. Waiting for analytics to arrive. I had about 50 visitors yesterday and think I might be approaching 1000 for today :)

I've upgraded to adding TAGS & Categories for links - but am still stuck with numbers on the games codes. I think you might be right though, in terms of SEO that will improve value.

Unfortunately, at the moment, I'm populating the game page via ajax so google won't really know what pages I've got on there until after I follow up with those recommendations of yours.

I think it's good advice though.

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

#89

Post by AlexC04 »

zecg wrote: post #46
maukdaddy wrote: post #5

Obligatory clickable: http://fstr.net

I'd lose the atrocious bevel on logo, looks positively amateurish. What's wrong with plain old outlined font? Also, you need the bare minimum of added value: let users rate games. Put the ratings in a database. There, you just add some value. Alternatively, a hand-picked selection of games is more value to me as a visitor, than if you had every flash game in the universe embedded on that page. No one has the time to…

Logo changed. I just dropped the bevel as advised. Better?

Ratings and comments "incoming" - on the list. There's a lot of feedback on here so It's going to take me a few days to prioritize everything.

Facebook comments are quick though. I've done that before.

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

#90

Post by ryanteo »

Hi Alex, nice work and congrats on your first step =) Have you ever thought of specializing in showcasing just educational games/ flash games? I think it would be very valuable and it would easily catch on among parents/young kids. You could also link it to educational resources like Khan Academy, etc..
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