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My 10 Year Side Project Story

dateful.com

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Re: My 10 Year Side Project Story

#11

Post by jonathanberger »

kristaps320 wrote: post #8

thanks for sharing! the story is very inspiring and i like your product especially the domain name you chose, could you share more about how you used google trends to decide the domain name to take?

My original domain was www.thetimezoneconverter.com. I can't remember what my original search was 10 years ago but I tried out a number of queries on Google Trends to see which variation of "time zone", "time zone calculator", "timezone converter", etc. (different spaces and such) were most popular. Then I named the site that and got that domain.

Many years later (and just a few months ago) I switched over to a new domain "Dateful" as I had accumulated a number of different features for the site that went beyond just timezone conversion. "Dateful" isn't based at all off Google Trends, I just like the name.

Re: My 10 Year Side Project Story

#12

Post by hbn »

I made a very small and simple scraper utility for a photo sharing website (it's one of those sites that doesn't let you download through the app or easily on the website, similar to Instagram). Grab the link, throw it in a box on my site, and it gives you the full-res image you can right click -> download.

It's doing pretty decent in traffic, ranking around number 4 in a fairly generic search for this utility, and gets about 1200-1400 invocations of the download functionality per day. I'd like to monetize it but I'm not really sure what I can do. I put some ads up from a small ad network that's slowly been building up a couple cents per day maybe (and Adsense isn't really interesting in my type of site -- I tried), but I'm not even really sure how valuable my traffic is anyway.

If someone has suggestions for a better way to monetize, I'd be willing to hear you out!

Re: My 10 Year Side Project Story

#13

Post by forgotmypw17 »

hbn wrote: post #12

I made a very small and simple scraper utility for a photo sharing website (it's one of those sites that doesn't let you download through the app or easily on the website, similar to Instagram). Grab the link, throw it in a box on my site, and it gives you the full-res image you can right click -> download. It's doing pretty decent in traffic, ranking around number 4 in a fairly generic search for this utility, and g…

Donation button in a visible but non-intrusive spot.

Share a little bit about yourself to humanize.

It will probably make you more than the ads.

Re: My 10 Year Side Project Story

#15

Post by xupybd »

"another said it should have taken an hour not a weekend to create."

I hate comments like that. Maybe someone could make it in less time but I suspect the commenter hadn't even tried. Why throw your estimate out there as better than someone's real effort? That level of arrogance is frustrating.

Re: My 10 Year Side Project Story

#16

Post by is_true »

xupybd wrote: post #15

"another said it should have taken an hour not a weekend to create." I hate comments like that. Maybe someone could make it in less time but I suspect the commenter hadn't even tried. Why throw your estimate out there as better than someone's real effort? That level of arrogance is frustrating.

I guess it could be either: Different constraints or ignorance.

Re: My 10 Year Side Project Story

#17

Post by jonathanberger »

sloreti wrote: post #14

As someone with a couple side projects kicking around, enjoy posts like this. Would you be willing to share what kind of ad revenue a tool like this can generate with 1M views per month?

I'm hesitant to share publicly but if you send me a message I always love to discuss side projects. :)

Re: My 10 Year Side Project Story

#19

Post by jonathanberger »

hbn wrote: post #12

I made a very small and simple scraper utility for a photo sharing website (it's one of those sites that doesn't let you download through the app or easily on the website, similar to Instagram). Grab the link, throw it in a box on my site, and it gives you the full-res image you can right click -> download. It's doing pretty decent in traffic, ranking around number 4 in a fairly generic search for this utility, and g…

I had trouble getting AdSense "interested" also. Depending on what Adsense is telling you I'd have varying suggestions if ads were still the way you wanted to go.

The best ways I know to monetize something for consumers: ads, app stores, donation buttons.

I tried an iPhone app to monetize the time zone converter but in my case the ad performed better. I tried a donation button for a few weeks and it brought in more than I expected.

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