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Inside a viral website

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Re: Inside a viral website

#21

Post by jrochkind1 »

meibo wrote: post #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.

In the OP he explains he used next.js cause he was familiar with it so could quickly implement it, and he made like maybe $300 from the whole thing thing, only like $40 from the NFT the rest from affiliate links (not enough to cover the time he spent on it at any reasonable rate were you working for someone else; would have been $70 less if his hosting company hadn't given him an unexpected freebie).

In the OP he comes off pretty well, just a guy looking to experiment and do something fun, see what happened, try different things. (If he had been serious about revenue generation and prepared, I am pretty sure he could have made a lot more money from this with that many impressions; that wasn't his focus).

You can experiment and do something fun irresponsibly (trolling) or responsibly (caring about the user experience and accuracy, not trying to rip anyone off), it sounds like he did it pretty responsibly. (I guess the rickroll is a bit grey area!) I also appreciate him sharing the details transparently. Assuming his story in the OP is truthful, which I think it probably is.

[I think NFT's are really dumb, I think it was kind of a funny joke to have an NFT there, and interesting to see his report-back about the process of issuing an NFT. There aren't a lot of people being transparent about their experience with NFTs!]

Re: Inside a viral website

#22

Post by tomjohnneill »

kevinstubbs wrote: post #18
artembugara wrote: post #6

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 mari…

Damn I wish you hadn't posted. Ah well.

Re: Inside a viral website

#23

Post by [deleted] »

dx034 wrote: 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...

[deleted]

Re: Inside a viral website

#24

Post by isakkeyten »

meibo wrote: post #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.

This is actually a well done web app in my opinion. You can disable javascript and the app loads just fine. JS is used as a progressive enhancement to hydrate. Probably uses something like NextJS in the background. The HTML with inlined critical styles load in ~40ms on my internet. Sure it could be "better" in terms of TTI from the JS side but at what cost?

Re: Inside a viral website

#25

Post by joekrill »

oefrha wrote: post #4

> These reports aren’t just limited to the products you recommend — if someone buys anything within a 24 hour period of clicking your link, you can see, and you get commission. Anyone else find this a pretty gross violation of privacy on Amazon’s part? Why should your unrelated purchases be disclosed to affiliates just because you clicked an affiliate link for whatever reason? Let’s say the affiliate website use acco…

You can't match up the product with an actual user or person in any way.

Re: Inside a viral website

#27

Post by KMnO4 »

oefrha wrote: post #4

> These reports aren’t just limited to the products you recommend — if someone buys anything within a 24 hour period of clicking your link, you can see, and you get commission. Anyone else find this a pretty gross violation of privacy on Amazon’s part? Why should your unrelated purchases be disclosed to affiliates just because you clicked an affiliate link for whatever reason? Let’s say the affiliate website use acco…

I think seeing all the random items is collateral damage. It can possibly be fixed (only show purchases in the category that you referred?).

As the affiliate, the insights are invaluable. Imagine you hosted a sleep blog and directed people to a particular memory foam pillow. If you saw they ended up purchasing a different pillow, you could change the link to better serve your readers.

Or if you saw that they ended up purchasing essential oils, perhaps you’d want to write a post about using oil diffusers to fall asleep.

The affiliate link tracking is supposed to give you a better picture of your audience. Usually it works, but getting 50M views from every source on the internet is obviously a case where there’s no common “audience”.

Re: Inside a viral website

#28

Post by antoinec »

meibo wrote: post #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.

Looks like he wanted to experiment different things, which becomes a lot more interesting when thousands of people are coming to your app. And he knew it was only going to be the case for a limited amount of time, so enjoying as much as possible having an audience was probably the best thing to do!

Re: Inside a viral website

#29

Post by SamBam »

KMnO4 wrote: post #27
oefrha wrote: post #4

> These reports aren’t just limited to the products you recommend — if someone buys anything within a 24 hour period of clicking your link, you can see, and you get commission. Anyone else find this a pretty gross violation of privacy on Amazon’s part? Why should your unrelated purchases be disclosed to affiliates just because you clicked an affiliate link for whatever reason? Let’s say the affiliate website use acco…

I think seeing all the random items is collateral damage. It can possibly be fixed (only show purchases in the category that you referred?). As the affiliate, the insights are invaluable. Imagine you hosted a sleep blog and directed people to a particular memory foam pillow. If you saw they ended up purchasing a different pillow, you could change the link to better serve your readers. Or if you saw that they ended up…

No one doubts that it's useful for the people standing to make money off of this. I think the question was whether it was an invasion of the reader's privacy, who probably don't realize that the blog owner can now track their buying habits.

Re: Inside a viral website

#30

Post by cyberlab »

pjmorris wrote: post #15
cyberlab wrote: 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

Kottke's article[0] is in 2008, after Fight Club's release in 1999, so you may be right, he probably lifted it from Fight Club. You can always email him to confirm!

[0] https://kottke.org/08/02/single-serving-sites

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