And no mention of using Twitter Bootstrap?
I like how the site looks/works, you did an awesome job, but some credit in the "how I ..." should go to the Bootstrap team.
Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website
11–20 of 109 posts
Re: Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website
#12Cool experiment. I thought about doing something like this myself. Maybe a remix of classic books under the public domain to create a new work with a contemporary message. Maybe then publish it online and monetize it via Adsense (although I'm not a big fan of that business model).
Instead, I decided to share a personal finance hack I developed called the No Budget Budget: https://leanpub.com/nobudgetbudget/ and sell it as an affordable ebook.
Again, the monetization isn't great, but it means more people can read it and hopefully benefit from it.
The point is ideas are everywhere. I like pursuing ideas that will have the greatest positive impact. Then, like the legendary NFL coach Bill Walsh used to say, "the score takes care of itself".
Re: Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website
#13Isn't just posting content from old books... stealing content?
Re: Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website
#14And no mention of using Twitter Bootstrap? I like how the site looks/works, you did an awesome job, but some credit in the "how I ..." should go to the Bootstrap team.
Because they need it...
Re: Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website
#15Scope creep suggestion: It may be cheesy but I believe a rotating little GIF animation on the home page/header of how a small part of a car works would draw in people. As it is now, it is static.
Think more http://www.brainpop.com, less Encyclopedia Brittanica
Re: Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website
#16Questions: Why are there comments on the page? How difficult would it be to compile it into an ebook and make it available on kindle/itunes/wherever else? Seems like you'd only need to make a couple of sales for it to compete with the adsense income. Maybe have it so if the visitor has read 3 or more consecutive pages it shows up with an ebook splash page, "advert free and easy to read blah blah blah"
I would buy this as an epub.
Re: Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website
#17I'd welcome any suggestions on where to go next - it's a bit of a fire-and-forget side project, but I'd still like to get it as good as possible before I leave it to stew for 2013.
I'd load it up with all the "semantic web" style things I could find. http://schema.org type of stuff. You could also see if it would be good as a source for citations in the relevant wikipedia articles, but that's a whole project in itself probably.
Is there any evidence that this actually affects SEO or rankings?
Re: Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website
#18Looks like your site is already number 3 on my google search for "how a car works". The homepage is a bit boring. You have a lot of pretty pictures, you should some how use them on your homepage. Perhaps include a relevant picture with every chapter heading. And for good measure, include all the social share buttons junk. Google+, FB, Twitter, etc... Especially for if you get popular on HN. You'll want those sharing…
> And for good measure, include all the social share buttons junk. Google+, FB, Twitter, etc... Especially for if you get popular on HN. You'll want those sharing karmas
Ugh, no, for crap's sake, don't do this. People will share things if they want to.
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/media-lab/social-media/14...
http://www.business2community.com/social-media/a-hot-button-...
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/too-many-social-media-sha...
etc.
Re: Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website
#19The obvious next step to me would be for you to repeat this process with another out of print book now that you've established a market and proven its viability.
Offer the copyright holder some share of the profit and scale like mad.
Great stuff!
Re: Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website
#20what did/do you count as your expenses? surely you do not pay 60$/month for hosting. did you add the work you had to do?