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I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900

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Re: I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900

#81

Post by dangerface »

JohnBooty wrote: post #43

This is hilarious. Ten weeks. Ten weeks? To build a community? To build a base of dedicated users and begin to reap the network effect that keeps existing users on the site, and draws in new years? In the early 2000s, I launched something like an early "social networking" site for geek dating. We built a strong community and actually were pretty profitable with direct subscriber revenue, though it was never quite eno…

To go from nothing to a self sustaining community in 3 years is good going.

I had a project that I worked on with a friend, we already had a small audience that we where bringing over from a previous project so we weren't starting from scratch. Even with all this help it took at least a year before there was a decent community of regulars.

Re: I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900

#82

Post by ineedasername »

danilocesar wrote: post #50

People are discussing the very short amount of time he spent, but what about the money? A service that he created (I assume direct cost zero) without a big community (so server costs should be very low) and VK's advertisement with no engagement rate. Did he spend almost 1900 in advertisement? Jeez...

And in the begining the advertising was pointless. No one was going to stick around when there was no content yet. They should have been grateful for the minimum amount of free traffic and engagement, covered server costs for 6 month or a year while it gradually built. Only then pay for advertising, when that traffic will find at least a minimal community to engage with. Yeah it's still hard and might fail, but you don't get a social community over night, or in the 3-4 weeks they spent on each attempt.

Re: I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900

#83

Post by losvedir »

tluyben2 wrote: post #36
anjc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I spent stupid money throwing shit at a non-stick wall, realized the wall was non-stick, so started spending money throwing shit at a different non-stick wall instead". This is the worst possible interpretation of OP's venture, and must be written by a 12 year old if $1900 is "stupid money" Edit: I'm not saying that $1900 is not a significant amount of money to many people in the world. But it is NOT a lot of mone…

> must be written by a 12 year old if $1900 is "stupid money" Well, many people cannot get their hands on $2k readily to just burn away. I mean there are many articles like [0] and that is only the US, this is ofcourse far far worse in poorer countries so for a lot (majority?) of people in this world $2k is in fact "stupid money". And these people are not 12. [0] https://money.cnn.com/2018/01/18/pf/lack-of-savings-co…

I don't think that's really relevant to the question of "how much" $1900 is, really.

I'd say most people "choose not to" save $1k than "cannot". I saved up a reasonable amount of money on $14/hr in Boston after graduation by living with roommates, not having a car, living frugally, etc. And conversely, I know plenty of people (developers even, who make lots of money!) who don't have that much saved.

Re: I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900

#84

Post by HelloFellowDevs »

tkifnn wrote: post #65
alex_young wrote: post #57

This post talks a lot about the chicken and egg problem, and the inventors of Reddit faced the same problem - no one will come to your homepage for the internet if it doesn't look like the homepage for the internet. Do you know what they did? They didn't focus on one community - they faked it. Thousands of fake posts with fake comments. All scripted. Then one day they started seeing posts they didn't write and it too…

Are there any archives to see what their fake content looked like?

The subreddit r/MuseumOfReddit is basically an archive of most reddit posts. This is the very first reddit post apparently.[0]

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/MuseumOfReddit/comments/1hrzax/the_...

Re: I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900

#85

Post by tluyben2 »

losvedir wrote: post #83
tluyben2 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> must be written by a 12 year old if $1900 is "stupid money" Well, many people cannot get their hands on $2k readily to just burn away. I mean there are many articles like [0] and that is only the US, this is ofcourse far far worse in poorer countries so for a lot (majority?) of people in this world $2k is in fact "stupid money". And these people are not 12. [0] https://money.cnn.com/2018/01/18/pf/lack-of-savings-co…

I don't think that's really relevant to the question of "how much" $1900 is, really. I'd say most people "choose not to" save $1k than "cannot". I saved up a reasonable amount of money on $14/hr in Boston after graduation by living with roommates, not having a car, living frugally, etc. And conversely, I know plenty of people (developers even, who make lots of money!) who don't have that much saved.

Well, if you google the 'issue' about people being able to get $1000 if they really need it is pretty dismal reading. When you check reddit groups about finance as well; savings or not, most people cannot get $1000 today if they really needed to. People who make lots of money theoretically (developers etc) in western countries can get to $1000 any time even without savings. Other jobs, not so much. Also in non western countries (where developer wages average $500/mo for instance) this is very different. I work with a Russian devs daily and they simply don't make so much, especially in certain parts of Russia. With kids and mortgage having the luxury to pull 2k$ out while not working for money is a big issue for many people.

I agree with you having savings or not might not be relevant of how much $1900 is, but that article was only one example and to me it seems relevant because if you don't have it in savings, how would you risk quitting your job? The tone of the reddit post shows that this person considers this actually to be a lot of money and from what I see I would say most people on earth would consider it a lot of money. The fact that you or I don't consider it to be a lot is kind of the echo chamber of HN we are in.

Re: I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900

#86

Post by Kaiyou »

adventured wrote: post #74
agota wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to point out that OP is from Russia. I wonder if he still lives in Russia? In 2018, the minimum wage in Russia was 11163 rubles per month, which is $174.6 per month. So, it would take a person working for a minimum wage 10.8 months to earn $1900. For comparison, the minimum wage in California is $11/hour, so assuming a 40 hour work week, in 10.8 months a minimum wage worker in California would make $19,008.…

You correctly point out the non-trivial nature of $1,900, including for many millions of Americans, based on duration just to earn the $1,900 in terms of income. It's even more dramatic than that however. The person earning minimum wage in Russia will never possess $1,900 in loose capital to spend on such a venture, as they don't have enough buffer beyond expenses to accumulate it. At $174 per month, saving 20% of th…

Which isn't saying much. For the majority of the people in the world $100 would tick the same box.

Re: I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900

#87

Post by brushfoot »

teddyuk wrote: post #60
herewego wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for this. The only waste of time here was a result of this individual’s lack of commitment (sorry, but it’s true) and misinformed understanding of the efforts involved in the launch process of any business, let alone his. I hope he sees this and realizes all hope is not lost if he sticks with it, evolves it, and plans for the ramp period accordingly. Success is never guaranteed, but you have to give it a ch…

Just to clarify, are you saying that if you build a copy of reddit I won't become a millionaire overnight? Bloody hell, I wasted 11 weeks and $2600 so far.

Only because it was Russian. If they'd pivoted to Albania -- boom, instant billionaires.

Re: I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900

#88

Post by bemmu »

theNJR wrote: post #80

I built a forum around 2001 for people in the state of Maine who loved cars. I seeded it with friends, I put fliers on interesting cars I found around the state, hosted meet ups, etc. It took a ton of effort to get that fly wheel to spin, but I made a few hundred dollars a month in ads from local business (car dealers, mechanics). Tons of fun, met great people and set me on a course that has served me to this day. I…

What was your $100k bet on VR?

Re: I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900

#90

Post by theNJR »

bemmu wrote: post #88
theNJR wrote: post #80

I built a forum around 2001 for people in the state of Maine who loved cars. I seeded it with friends, I put fliers on interesting cars I found around the state, hosted meet ups, etc. It took a ton of effort to get that fly wheel to spin, but I made a few hundred dollars a month in ads from local business (car dealers, mechanics). Tons of fun, met great people and set me on a course that has served me to this day. I…

What was your $100k bet on VR?

I co-founded, and bootstrapped, a VR company [1] back in 2016. We launched three games, got some funding by HTC, but weren't able to raise venture. I keep meaning to do one of those "10 things I learned" sort of posts.

[1]https://www.RLTYCHK.co

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