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We put $200k into a site that sucks. Please destroy us with your criticism

listnerd.com

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Re: We put $200k into a site that sucks. Please destroy us with your criticism

#71

Post by kctess5 »

You seem to be resizing the footer in javascript (I haven't looked at the code so could be off base) and sometimes it seems to go a little crazy. When I first scrolled to the bottom there was a huge empty space below the "blog browse about... " stuff. About 800 pixels I would estimate. It seemed to go away when I refreshed and resized the page, but something caused it to happen at least one time, so under the same conditions it will happen again.

In general it looks nice, I agree with most of what other people are saying so I won't elaborate too much.

Re: We put $200k into a site that sucks. Please destroy us with your criticism

#73

Post by downandout »

I call BS. This appears to be a new take on "Show HN"...trying to get attention. The site works, looks OK, and you appear to have users, so it doesn't really suck. If you thought the concept sucked, then you wouldn't have done the site in the first place.

If this were a legit post, I would say this:

I think this is a relatively crowded niche you're in. I'm also sure that you dramatically overspent if you actually spent $200K getting this developed. But it appears that your developers did what you asked them to do...."make me a functional site that does X". So if the end result "sucks" to you (99.9% of your users don't know or care about CSS and other issues mentioned in these comments), then there is only one person to blame.

Re: We put $200k into a site that sucks. Please destroy us with your criticism

#74

Post by poopsintub »

krapp wrote: post #66
stormen wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Norway a dev starts at $100k a year; or you can pay roughly $250 an hour for freelancers. Labour laws in Norway are very strict, which means hiring someone is a big step. When we first started the project we didn't really foresee how big of a task it would end up as, so we went with outsourcing. If I had to do it again, I probably would have hired one in-house dev.

>In Norway a dev starts at $100k a year; or you can pay roughly $250 an hour for freelancers. I still think you paid more than the site is worth but... you can get that kind of rate for freelancing PHP? I think I need to move to Norway.

You can definitely get that amount for freelancing PHP in the states.

Re: We put $200k into a site that sucks. Please destroy us with your criticism

#76

Post by pairing »

Hey Eric,

I thought Listnerd sounded familiar. You helped me out with SEO last year with your Offer HN, so I'll try to give some useful advice back. Sorry to hear that Listnerd is struggling.

Listnerd doesn't really grab my attention upon first visit. Maybe I'm not the target market but upon opening it up I'm not interested in making a list. Making a list sounds like work. Why should I spend part of my weekend doing work on some random site? I think you haven't demonstrated a value to your visitors.

It also seems to bland to me. It doesn't really differentiate itself from the more established list sites like BuzzFeed. Why should I read ListNerd over BuzzFeed or Reddit? What features, angle, or value does ListNerd bring to the table that those sites do not?

Some nitpicks: You should update your copyright in the footer to 2014, and the gold/yellow color on some buttons doesn't seem to match the rest of the color scheme.

Positives: I like the name. I like the create list process from a ui and design perspective.

Edit: I like the video on the homepage but it is hidden away. Make it more prominent.

Re: We put $200k into a site that sucks. Please destroy us with your criticism

#78

Post by poopsintub »

I think it's hard to say why one thing takes off like Reddit, then something else, very similar doesn't. If you have SEO and decent organic traffic and it doesn't take off, look to sell it and move on to another good idea. You shouldn't continue wasting time and money unless you feel you're not wasting it.

A. Why would people post their own lists to your site? What benefit do they have for doing this? No karma, raffle for free...gas or video games, nothing.

B. 4 long steps to create a list? Ok, fair enough. . . but I guess that brings me back to A.

C. You don't provide anything different or beneficial than the current top 'list' sites like pinterest and reddit provide. I think you provide less.

Re: We put $200k into a site that sucks. Please destroy us with your criticism

#79

Post by adventured »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #58

Oh man, not another "11 sexy girls with star wars tattoos"... Normally I would follow "if you don't have anything nice to say" but since you literally asked for it: Your site tries to build a better mousetrap in one of the worst corners of the internet (better means 'worse' in this case). "List sharing" is a known cheap trick for internet marketers who are the bottom of the barrel, exploitative of both original conte…

I actually really like information / data lists. Obviously that's a far cry from the "11 sexy girls" lists.

I'd be happy to see a revolution in data lists. There are all sorts of occasions I'm looking for the top X in list format and would love to run across it as the top result, in a clean format that loads fast. One site that had a million of those (that are accurate) would earn my bookmark.

I suppose Wolfram Alpha does some of this well.

Re: We put $200k into a site that sucks. Please destroy us with your criticism

#80

Post by chillingeffect »

stormen wrote: post #32
gwintrob wrote: post #24

Why the self-deprecating title? You could've said "Show HN: List blogging with Listnerd". This makes me wonder how you spent $200k and why you're so unhappy with the result.

Well, a good site is supposed to grow, right? At the same time, our site isn't really growing - which makes me think there's something wrong with it, somewhere. I have tremendous respect for the people on Hacker News, and I think we need honest advice from intelligent people. Showing HN usually doesn't muster really, really tough criticism.

> from intelligent people

Dude, the intellectual level of the content on "listnerd" appears to be about 11 years old. I couldn't give a crap about any of that and I tried.

How about having an "old folks" section with lists about vitamins, exercises, home improvement tips and plots of long-forgotten stories that deal with emotional complexities...

...You know, stuff people with functioning brain lobes like.

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