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Ask HN: who started something in 2012 that didn't or won't become profitable?

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Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 that didn't or won't become profitable?

#71

Post by phaemon »

white_devil wrote: post #64
phaemon wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry to say this, but your website is awful. You spell "conversion" incorrectly in two different ways and your grammar is poor ("Why noone..."). If I were you I'd get the site redesigned, preferably by a professional web designer. Maybe slim the main page down to your banner, a tag-line saying what the product is and a "Try It Now" button. I don't want to sign up for anything; why not let me demo it on your site…

> I'm sorry to say this, but your website is awful. I agree about "noone", but I don't think the website can be called awful . It's certainly quite pretty.

Fair enough, I was talking about the content more than the look. The top half is certainly nice enough. The lower half is too noisy with an excess of that "writing" stuff. I didn't get where I am today by reading! I want cool stuff I can click on! ;)

Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 that didn't or won't become profitable?

#72

Post by zschallz »

iSloth wrote: post #4

Only project I have done this year ( http://route.im ), makes $xx/pm however doubt that it would ever cover the server costs, especially when more locations are added. Although it was done more for me, than generating revenue, so that's not too bad.

You could do an Ookla like thing and create a mini version people can host. My server seems to be in the same place as yours, otherwise I wouldn't have minded hosting one.

Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 that didn't or won't become profitable?

#73

Post by garethsprice »

iSloth wrote: post #23
garethsprice wrote: post #11

I built http://www.giftstrong.com/ that pulls the 100 top rated products from Amazon. It was built over a weekend to experiment with the Yii PHP framework and because I wanted to see what the list looked like (wasn't disappointed, there's some surprising stuff on there - like how Braveheart on DVD is mankind's greatest accomplishment according to Amazon). I was considering promoting it as a quick way to find gifts fo…

Great website, would be even better if it noticed I was from the UK, and then showed UK Amazon results :)

Thanks for the suggestion! If it generates profit in the current version I'd love to expand it to other countries.

Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 that didn't or won't become profitable?

#75

Post by phaemon »

m4xt3r wrote: post #67
phaemon wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry to say this, but your website is awful. You spell "conversion" incorrectly in two different ways and your grammar is poor ("Why noone..."). If I were you I'd get the site redesigned, preferably by a professional web designer. Maybe slim the main page down to your banner, a tag-line saying what the product is and a "Try It Now" button. I don't want to sign up for anything; why not let me demo it on your site…

Thanks for the feedback. We really thought of at as an MVP from the beginning and put up a website in one day and spent the rest of the time on the backend. Maybe you're right and that's the reason why we're not seeing any demand.

Well, perhaps I was too negative. As I mention below, and as the others have said, the look is pretty good. The heatmap image is pretty cool which is why I wanted to click on it and see it change. So let me do that!

Also, I did want to see how it actually worked, but I don't want to sign up and install stuff for that...so that's why I wanted a live demo.

I think you should drop the "completing with Google Analytics" angle too. Even if it's true that you're better, no-one will believe it. Why not show how you integrate with it instead? If people are using both and realise themselves that they only need your product, then that's good enough.

Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 that didn't or won't become profitable?

#76

Post by adrinavarro »

white_devil wrote: post #64
phaemon wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry to say this, but your website is awful. You spell "conversion" incorrectly in two different ways and your grammar is poor ("Why noone..."). If I were you I'd get the site redesigned, preferably by a professional web designer. Maybe slim the main page down to your banner, a tag-line saying what the product is and a "Try It Now" button. I don't want to sign up for anything; why not let me demo it on your site…

> I'm sorry to say this, but your website is awful. I agree about "noone", but I don't think the website can be called awful . It's certainly quite pretty.

Awful or not, it doesn't make me wanna go try it.

Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 that didn't or won't become profitable?

#77

Post by m4xt3r »

phaemon wrote: post #75
m4xt3r wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the feedback. We really thought of at as an MVP from the beginning and put up a website in one day and spent the rest of the time on the backend. Maybe you're right and that's the reason why we're not seeing any demand.

Well, perhaps I was too negative. As I mention below, and as the others have said, the look is pretty good. The heatmap image is pretty cool which is why I wanted to click on it and see it change. So let me do that! Also, I did want to see how it actually worked, but I don't want to sign up and install stuff for that...so that's why I wanted a live demo. I think you should drop the "completing with Google Analytics"…

Yes, maybe we didn't have enough motivation because of lack of feedback. In fact we did have the live demo planed, but it seemed like an unimportant feature.

We really should put a little more effort into this project.

Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 that didn't or won't become profitable?

#78

Post by xpressyoo »

I've released Gmelius (http://gmelius.com) a few months ago, a cross-browser extension that proposes a better and cleaner Gmail™ inbox.

Gmelius made the first page of HN (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3878153) and has been featured on TechCrunch, Lifehacker and other tech related news sites since then.

The idea was and still is to propose some enhancements to the new Gmail UI. Donations are welcome and are currently just sufficient to pay the coffee/beer intake necessary to adapt the code to constant Gmail changes and provide some new features ;)

Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 that didn't or won't become profitable?

#79

Post by prezjordan »

kamens wrote: post #27

Launched an app to get your congress reps on the phone w/ a single button - http://www.airshipsoftware.com/contact-congress Meant to be free for all, included a silly in-app purchase. Generated lots of calls to congress, got some press, currently losing $2.10/week on hosting.

Is it tacky to place a donate button on your homepage? I'd love to contribute - I think this is a really neat tool.

Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 that didn't or won't become profitable?

#80

Post by teebs »

kamens wrote: post #27

Launched an app to get your congress reps on the phone w/ a single button - http://www.airshipsoftware.com/contact-congress Meant to be free for all, included a silly in-app purchase. Generated lots of calls to congress, got some press, currently losing $2.10/week on hosting.

This is exactly the sort of thing I'm interested in--software for civic engagement.

A few friends and I are working on an app and website that lists corporations' political contributions. The mobile feature that makes it interesting is that you can scan barcodes to find out the political contributions from those products right away--inspired by Boycott SOPA https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.boycottsop...

I'd really appreciate it if we could talk some time about publishing an iPhone app. I'm still in college, so I don't have much experience with iPhone App publishing and would really appreciate some advice, especially for a non-profit app dealing with politics.

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