Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part II

tbbuck.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 50 posts

Re: Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part II

#21

Post by mootothemax »

guynamedloren wrote: post #12

mootothemax - thanks so much for this series. I loved the first post and was anxiously awaiting this one. It met and exceeded my expectations, packed with great advice and insight. That being said - the language seemed a bit rushed at times. Please run through it and fix grammatical errors - just a nit-picky thing :) Oh, and I have a few quick questions on gaining initial users. Other than mass-mailing bloggers and s…

Thanks for your thanks! :-)

Other than mass-mailing bloggers and submitting to twitter directories, what have you done to bring traffic to your site?

That's been about the limit of it - attempting to get relevant users visiting the site, as there's no point in getting millions of visitors who have no interest in Twitter tools :-)

Also, I'm interested to know unique visitors vs. free users vs. paid users, as I'm sure many others here are wondering as well.

Hrm, I'll have a think about that and maybe write a small post about it :)

Also, how have you handled existing customers when experimenting with price changes?

Probably the wrong way. Customers stay on the plan they're on, so the lucky subscribers who are on $20/year stay on $20/year until they cancel their subscription.

I had two customers complain when they were paying $9.99/month and they say the new $19.99/year price. I explained that I was experimenting with pricing, that it was likely to change in future, but if it didn't then I'd be happy to offer them the new rate. It turns out that they've also done well now, so I think in the end everyone's happy :)

Re: Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part II

#22

Post by mootothemax »

balac wrote: post #13
mootothemax wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your most important sources of traffic? Google and various Twitter application directories. Do you spend any money on getting users? None so far, but am looking to change that in the summer. I'm getting married in a couple of weeks, and then honeymoonining, so things are getting a bit hectic, but once those have calmed down I'm thinking of experimenting with Adwords :)

Congratulations, and thanks for the inspiring article. I have had an idea on the go on and off for a while now and this is inspiring me to get off my butt and finish it.

Awesome! I'm properly happy that my post has inspired you :-D Please do one thing in return - let me know how you get on :-)

Re: Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part II

#24

Post by nborgo »

patio11 wrote: post #5

Congratulations. That's a nice milestone to hit, and I'm sure bigger and better things are in your future. Mind if I give some advice (take with a grain of salt)? 1) Welcome to TweetingMachine Discover the Twitter & Facebook tool that's packed with features and free for 10 days! Get More Customers With Less Work Manage your Twitter/Facebook campaigns faster. Try free for 10 days! 2) http://tweetingmachine.com/feature…

Be sure to test the "Try for free" button in magenta, too. It'll really pop with complimentary colors, which could be a good or bad thing.

Re: Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part II

#25

Post by treo »

mootothemax wrote: post #18
wbhart wrote: post #11

OK, here is my experience with the main page. I'm not a marketing expert, but maybe my comments might still be useful. * Oh, nice professional looking website * First look to left middle "Tweeting machine" * Read the catch line about it being a FB/Twitter tool * Hmm, yeah, but what does it actually do? * Look to right pane. Bleh, looks like an FTP login shell. Oh wait, "Time to send", oh yeah, I think I remember this…

Anyhow, wishing you the best of luck with it. And again, I'm not an expert in any sense of the word. The above is just my honest reaction as I checked it out. Hehe, it's fair and honest opinion so fair enough really :) Regarding spammers, honestly you'd be surprised about the spread of customers that use TweetingMachine legitimately. This year though - I guess a sign of success - I've had quite a few problems with pr…

Then you might want to read the following links: http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html http://www.paulgraham.com/better.html

They describe how bayesian filtering works and how to use it to detect spam automatically.

Re: Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part II

#27

Post by follower »

ohyes wrote: post #14

I have a comment about your site: (full disclosure: I don't have any expertise about marketing, or entrepreneurship or anything at all really) This may be my stupid showing through but on the front page, it looks like a piece of software that simply schedules tweets. That is a useful tool, but not something i'd pay $20 a month for considering I would probably just do it myself. It would be good if there were a little…

> but not something i'd pay $20 a month for considering I would probably just do it myself.

Keep in mind that if you're reading HN you're quite likely not to be in the target market for the site.

Coders are probably notorious for doing everything themselves to not spend money & get the chance to write something themselves.

There's a whole bunch of people who use Twitter for marketing and promotion who wouldn't think twice about $20 a month given the time saving and flexibility it provides--especially considering their alternative isn't a 5 line shell script but a minimum wage underling (or intern).

Re: Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part II

#28

Post by patja »

It says it is a twitter and facebook tool, but none of the items on the "features" page (or anywhere else that I could find) describe what exactly it brings to the table with respect to facebook, other than the ability to authenticate with a facebook account.

Re: Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part II

#29

Post by jhack »

Excellent series of articles, really enjoyed reading them.

I think the problem for a lot of people is coming up with that initial idea, that spark to get things moving. It's really difficult, I find, to come up with something that hasn't already been done before or is already better than what's in my head. I hope to reach your point some day, heh.

Re: Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part II

#30

Post by mootothemax »

jhack wrote: post #29

Excellent series of articles, really enjoyed reading them. I think the problem for a lot of people is coming up with that initial idea, that spark to get things moving. It's really difficult, I find, to come up with something that hasn't already been done before or is already better than what's in my head. I hope to reach your point some day, heh.

It's really difficult, I find, to come up with something that hasn't already been done before

There were plenty of Twitter tools that'd let you schedule tweets before TweetingMachine was developed. If you have competition, it means there's money in that space :)

Post reply on HN