I quit my job to make free web tools
nslookup.io
I quit my job to make free web tools
1–10 of 105 posts
Re: I quit my job to make free web tools
#2Hi HN!
Ruurtjan here, from NsLookup.io. I've read plenty of these kinds of blog posts, and they've been a big motivator for me to take the jump. So I thought I'd share my story here as well. Thanks everyone, for giving me the confidence to give entrepreneurship a try.
I'll hang around today to answer any questions, so ask me anything :)
Re: I quit my job to make free web tools
#3Hi HN! Ruurtjan here, from NsLookup.io. I've read plenty of these kinds of blog posts, and they've been a big motivator for me to take the jump. So I thought I'd share my story here as well. Thanks everyone, for giving me the confidence to give entrepreneurship a try. I'll hang around today to answer any questions, so ask me anything :)
Thanks and good for you! Keep going.
Re: I quit my job to make free web tools
#4Someone on Reddit asked how I make a living. Might be interesting for folks here too.
Right now, we're living off our savings and my wife's salary. Both sites are already profitable, though. I've recently launched an API for NsLookup, which now generates around 100 USD / month, and both sites have ads that generate income. Not enough to replace my salary yet, but I'm confident I can increase it over time.
Ads have a bad connotation, mainly because they often track users across the web. Mine don't. For WhoIsMyISP.org, I've partnered with NordVPN, and have their ads with plain ``. And for NsLookup.io, I've joined the Carbon network, which also doesn't have tracking.
Re: I quit my job to make free web tools
#5I hope that you make more than your salary, how did you attract users to website? Its very hard to get users to visit your site.
I have posted my site (https://text2db.com/) on hackernews, product hunt and reddit for getting reviews but got very few views (guess the idea is bad?), please do recommend me tips on how to increase traffic for site.
Thanks.
Re: I quit my job to make free web tools
#6I hope that you make more than your salary, how did you attract users to website? Its very hard to get users to visit your site. I have posted my site ( https://text2db.com/ ) on hackernews, product hunt and reddit for getting reviews but got very few views (guess the idea is bad?), please do recommend me tips on how to increase traffic for site. Thanks.
> I hope that you make more than your salary
Not yet by a large margin, but it's going up slowly :)
> how did you attract users to website?
Currently, mainly through SEO. My stats are open [1], so you can see the percentage that comes in through search engines. In my case, there's a large search volume for 'nslookup', which is currently the largest chunk of traffic. An 'exact match domain' helped for sure. But in the end, Google will be able to gauge how well you're able to solve the problem that made people search for something. So an excellent product * the search volume * backlink profile * how well Google can understand what you're solving will approximate the number of users that visit your site.
You can use tools like ahrefs [2] (which also has a free tools) to get a sense of the search volume and competition on those keywords.
Hope that helps!
[1]: https://plausible.io/nslookup.io
[2]: https://ahrefs.com/
Re: I quit my job to make free web tools
#7I hope that you make more than your salary, how did you attract users to website? Its very hard to get users to visit your site. I have posted my site ( https://text2db.com/ ) on hackernews, product hunt and reddit for getting reviews but got very few views (guess the idea is bad?), please do recommend me tips on how to increase traffic for site. Thanks.
> I hope that you make more than your salary Not yet by a large margin, but it's going up slowly :) > how did you attract users to website? Currently, mainly through SEO. My stats are open [1], so you can see the percentage that comes in through search engines. In my case, there's a large search volume for 'nslookup', which is currently the largest chunk of traffic. An 'exact match domain' helped for sure. But in the…
Awesome, thanks alot. :)
Re: I quit my job to make free web tools
#8Someone on Reddit asked how I make a living. Might be interesting for folks here too. Right now, we're living off our savings and my wife's salary. Both sites are already profitable, though. I've recently launched an API for NsLookup, which now generates around 100 USD / month, and both sites have ads that generate income. Not enough to replace my salary yet, but I'm confident I can increase it over time. Ads have a…
I hope the ad images are also hosted on your server, or they still can be tracking.
Not criticism. I applaud your approach. I just point out that running non-tracking ads is harder than you would believe.
Re: I quit my job to make free web tools
#9Someone on Reddit asked how I make a living. Might be interesting for folks here too. Right now, we're living off our savings and my wife's salary. Both sites are already profitable, though. I've recently launched an API for NsLookup, which now generates around 100 USD / month, and both sites have ads that generate income. Not enough to replace my salary yet, but I'm confident I can increase it over time. Ads have a…
I hope the ad images are also hosted on your server, or they still can be tracking. Not criticism. I applaud your approach. I just point out that running non-tracking ads is harder than you would believe.
Hmm, not that I've taken a second look, I noticed that I added a hidden image hosted on their servers when I implemented the ads. It's used for counting the ad impressions, but it looks like it drops a 1-day valid cookie as well :/
Re: I quit my job to make free web tools
#10I like the simplicity and cleanliness of the designs on both sites. Nice job.