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Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://www.ezyzip.com/
Are all those formats for decompression and compression done purely client side? What library are you using for the client side compression? Or did you make your own?
Can relate. I built a little web utility back in 2009. Did practically nothing with it (occasional updates every 2/3 years) and it slowly accumulated inbound links and google ranking. Then finally in 2019 I decided to put a bit more effort into it. Now I make my living from it! :-)
Someone had to say it.
Just wanted to say this was super inspiring, practical, unpretentious and to the point. My favorite HN read in a long time.
"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.
Sure, you could probably whip something up in an hour that did a large part of of what it needed to do, but it would be kinda crappy and half-assed.
You almost always do 80% of the work in the first 20% of the time, the rest is a lot slower, but every bit as important.
People absolutely can tell when they are using something that has thought and effort put into it, and you can't fake that.
"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.
It means that's easy to talk about a finished work, it's faults, how it could've been done better and, if one were to replicate it, he would take a lot of less time.
Of course he would, someone else took the trouble to plan everything and fix the all the problems to reach a reasonable architecture/design. And obviously, that person will never do it because "it's trivial".
> The site now has more than a million visitors a month and earns a nice side income from a small ad. So when it says that, what does that mean? It pays for hosting costs I assume. Are we talking enough to pay for a couple of meals out a month? Or enough to retire on?
It means I didn't want to get too specific about the amount involved. But I can see there's lots of interest in this question. I wonder actually if something like https://www.levels.fyi could be built or exists but for ad-supported websites (side project idea?). It'd be really useful for people to understand more broadly "if you create site of type x and it gets y amount of traffic you can expect this level of ad rev…
The site now has more than a million visitors a month and earns a nice side income from a small ad.
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 t…
I figured I'd come back and update that I removed all the ads from the fairly sketchy-looking ad network I joined (which had accumulated something like $8 of unpaid payout over the past year or so) and added a donation section to my website, and just a couple days later I already got someone that tossed me $10.
Perhaps I underestimated the generosity of people! Thanks for the advice!