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Inside a viral website

notfunatparties.substack.com

11–20 of 305 posts

Re: Inside a viral website

#11

Neat. Could anyone give me some ideas how else the author could monetize this without normal ads? Also, what would be the gain if he did normal ads?

So I did in the end apply to Google AdSense just to find out. Turns out the site didn't get approved because it didn't have enough content on it. So I think you would be hard pushed to monetise it quickly by going down the normal display ads route. I didn't mention in the post, but I had a couple of random ad offers, but they were for things that I didn't really agree with so didn't take up any of the offers.

Thx.

How is it possible that it's not you again who posted this on HN?

Re: Inside a viral website

#13
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's simply because you do forward someone on a website. Also, imagine it's not Amazon but a much smaller website. Just bringing a client (someone who actually paid) is already a good deal. So, I believe it's a totally fair commission rule.

I made it very clear that I have no problem with the commission paid: > To be clear, I have no problem with affiliates getting commission on random stuff. The problem is disclosing random purchases. You can pay a commission without that disclosure.

Ah damn. I somehow misread your initial message. My bad.

Re: Inside a viral website

#14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I did in the end apply to Google AdSense just to find out. Turns out the site didn't get approved because it didn't have enough content on it. So I think you would be hard pushed to monetise it quickly by going down the normal display ads route. I didn't mention in the post, but I had a couple of random ad offers, but they were for things that I didn't really agree with so didn't take up any of the offers.

Thx. How is it possible that it's not you again who posted this on HN?

Ha. I came on here to post it myself this time. Turns out I was beaten to it.

Re: Inside a viral website

#15
post #9

> A single-purpose website The more fashionable term is Single Serving Site[0], and is a phrase originally coined by Jason Kottke. You can find more of these types of sites here: https://www.reddit.com/r/InternetIsBeautiful/ [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-serving_site

I first saw 'single serving friend' in Fight Club [0], do you think the idea was lifted from there?

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1iQp8g9SQo

Re: Inside a viral website

#16
post #2

Interestingly, according to [1] there were only ~11k visitors from Hackernews for a post on the front page that had ~1k comments. I would've estimated the visitor/comment ratio to be much, much higher. [1] https://simpleanalytics.com/istheshipstillstuck.com?utm_sour...

Besides the analytics being added later (as mentioned), personally I see a headline sometimes and think "yeah I know enough, show me the comments".

Does HN show viewing stats for comments? Might be nice for the sites featured on it to know.

Re: Inside a viral website

#17
I really don't want to sound elitist, but building something like this with a big JS framework and immediately jumping to monetize it?(NFTs are gross and undermine any message or intention, even just to be "funny")

This could have been a 20kb html page on a CDN or on GitHub. But I don't work in web dev so maybe my mind just doesn't go to these lengths immediately.

Re: Inside a viral website

#18

Neat. Could anyone give me some ideas how else the author could monetize this without normal ads? Also, what would be the gain if he did normal ads?

Hey, I run an ad tech company. Our targets for US traffic are about $10 USD per thousand page views. This is multiples more than what you would get from AdSense, plus we help with strategy and integration.

Besides that, the author did mention several things he tried besides ad monetization. I think the most effective thing would have been to either find an opportunistic brand that wants to advertise here (like a maritime company or something) for like $25 CPM+, or to quickly find somebody to sell it to if you have those kinds of connections that trust you already. Lots of people trying to build businesses based off of a network of "micro sites".

Re: Inside a viral website

#20

Neat. Could anyone give me some ideas how else the author could monetize this without normal ads? Also, what would be the gain if he did normal ads?

Swag. Set up some shitty designs on one of those dropshipping sites and a storefront. Mugs, hoodies, etc.

Yup, viral content and events are great for 'commemorative' swag, and there's plenty of companies that offer print-on-demand for things like that.

One time I experienced a "trending topic" first (or second)hand; the app we were building accidentally sent a pair of test notifications to 2-3 million people, first the test message, then a second saying "zodat Hajo het ook gelooft" (so that Hajo (name) believes it too). That took the daytime internet by storm; news articles, radio segments, twitter trending topic, etc.

I mainly followed the topic on Twitter, and before long there were adverts on there selling swag related to the trending topic. There's companies (or even bots?) scanning Twitter, making swag-on-demand for trending topics.

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