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Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website

howacarworks.com

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Re: Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website

#51

Post by orangethirty »

antidoh wrote: post #22
JonnieCache wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>approach Haynes pitching the idea and showing this as an example? This is the correct answer. At least try and get a friend to do it, and take a cut. The idea of being able to flick through all the haynes manuals on an ipad is brilliant. And I don't even like cars.

Question to motorheads: Would you use a shop manual exclusively on an ( your ) ipad? Or would you prefer to have a paper copy, so that you don't get your ipad greasy and scratched while you're working on a car? Question to everyone: when are we going to have devices that are cheap and rugged enough that my first question doesn't matter? Edit: If that ever happens, they won't be sold by Apple, the company that made un…

No. I need a paper manual. I can write notes on it with grease, and not care about. It doesn't get scratched, need updates, or charging. Plus I can throw it in the trunk of my car and not worry about it.

Re: Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website

#52

Post by jarifikwa »

AlexMuir wrote: post #2

I'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.

Not sure if Google T&Cs preclude you from using alternate advertising methods. If not, one approach may be to solicit ads from mechanics, car shops, car maintenance training schools, etc. and build in some geo-awareness so you serve up ads local to the site visitor. Could be a very high conversion/CTR and be able to charge a nice fee.

Re: Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website

#53

Post by ErikRogneby »

JonnieCache wrote: post #9
TamDenholm wrote: post #8

I've always wanted to see the entire library of haynes manuals put online or even in an ipad/iphone app. This looks a bit like a proof of concept to it. Perhaps the OP could approach Haynes pitching the idea and showing this as an example?

>approach Haynes pitching the idea and showing this as an example? This is the correct answer. At least try and get a friend to do it, and take a cut. The idea of being able to flick through all the haynes manuals on an ipad is brilliant. And I don't even like cars.

Haynes has manuals online already. http://www.haynes.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=n...

It's not exactly flipboard, but the info is certainly there. The pricing seems a bit obscene, but if the alternative is taking it to a mechanic then I guess it's a cost savings.

Re: Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website

#54

Post by pitchups »

Those images on the right side of each page are great; They could be used to good effect to make the site more appealing visually as well as unique, if you displayed one or more of them in full size interleaved with the text: maybe one on top of each page; and one on the sidebar. They may also help with SEO (use alt-image tags), and ad Click-thru-rates, if placed close to or next to the ads.

Re: Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website

#55

Post by nollidge »

AlexMuir wrote: post #28
citricsquid wrote: post #6

Questions: 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 put in the comments because I thought it'd be an easy way of adding some content for free as people add to the information already there, and also to let people moan about errors so that I can then go in and fix them. Comments are a fairly low-maintenance feedback system, especially with Disqus dealing with the spam filtering for me. An eBook is a great idea. I just worry that the information is slightly out of dat…

Yeah but comments will add load time and clutter to the page. Also I'll bet if this picks up any steam, the comments will devolve quickly without technically being spam.

Re: Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website

#56

Post by ragmondo »

I would

1) Make the pages editable by trusted individuals but with your validation before any change goes live. Allow the authors to be credited (with links to their blogs, pages etc etc).

2) Why stop at cars? Find a domain "howdoesa???work" and subdir it off that - offer written credit to anybody who wants to add any large-ish content.

3) Put in some clever links to amazon etc so that if someone wants to buy a new car battery you might be able to nail som e affliate fees. Especially if they are on your page, have identified that they need a battery - why go back to the search bar when you have "click here for battery offers". I am suggesting keeping it "neat" though. Please don't start adding horrid looking ads disguised as CTA buttons.

4) Cut your mate into a %age so he's a good posterboy for digitising other content.

Re: Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website

#57

Post by brightghost »

I'm surprised no-one has mentioned how badly in need of proofing this content is. I just looked through a handful of sections but the ones I saw were littered with missing words, out-of-place headings, and poorly-cropped illustrations. It seems like great content, and the idea of charging for it has merit, but you're not going to be able to do so without proofing the content; it doesn't seem to me that even a cursory scan-through of all the pages has been done.

Re: Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website

#58

Post by aw3c2 »

AlexMuir wrote: post #37
aw3c2 wrote: post #20

what 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?

Hosting is on a $20/month Linode along with a bunch of other projects/sites/bits of code fluff. The actual bandwidth used by this site will be virtually nothing I imagine. I haven't valued my time at all. In that respect it is already earning me around $40 a month - a meal out.

That is really nice. Congrats!

Re: Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website

#59

Post by pretoriusB »

JonnieCache wrote: post #3
AlexMuir wrote: post #2

I'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.

>I'd load it up with all the "semantic web" style things I could find. http://schema.org type of stuff.

Why though? I think the manual "semantic web markup" is a failed promise, more than anything.

The idea was flawed from the start for general web use (for one, you cannot trust content providers to add relevant semantic info, either because it's in their interest NOT to do so --e.g SEO spam--, or because they are not competent or lazy). Plus, the tools never materialised.

It's another case of "worse is better".

Re: Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website

#60

Post by ChuckMcM »

"I can only imagine that going up as Google starts to recognise this as quality content and not just content farm rubbish."

Uh, no. It will go up as a function of traffic volume, so as your site starts to rank higher organically you'll see more revenue but the amount paid isn't a function of the 'quality' of the web site, its a function of what people bid to be there and what they pay per click.

Note that if it goes up really suddenly your likely as not to have your AdSense account suspended/cancelled, which after a lengthy review process they may re-instate but Google may not (according to web reports) ever replaced the ad-revenue you lost while you were in this process.

That said, it is great you are making this information available again. If such efforts create a modest return then perhaps the archivists job is once again secure.

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