[HN Gopher] Inside a viral website ___________________________________________________________________ Inside a viral website Author : panic Score : 623 points Date : 2021-03-31 11:16 UTC (11 hours ago) (HTM) web link (notfunatparties.substack.com) (TXT) w3m dump (notfunatparties.substack.com) | runj__ wrote: | So THATS why I was Rickrolled the other day... | SamBam wrote: | I'm a little confused about this point. The website had a | random timer, and was then opening a tab in the background? | | I thought that modern browsers required a direct user- | interaction to cause a new tab to appear, such as a click. I | thought this was how we got out of the pop-up hell of the 90s? | corobo wrote: | The page just refreshed. No new tabs. | ejones wrote: | It just navigated the page itself by assigning | window.location.href, which isn't subject to the same | restrictions as popups. | [deleted] | whizzter wrote: | Reading some of these I think that many people have the same | usage-pattern as I do, ie go to some aggregator site like HN | and open a bunch of articles in one sweep and then read them. | | So what happened was that the site opened in a tab, people | didn't get to it immediately so when they got around to it | the timer had fired and they were rickrolled. | SamBam wrote: | Ah, got it, yes re-reading the tweets I see that this is | what happened. | crazypython wrote: | This is terribly overengineered. He just needs a static CDN host- | such as Surge.sh, Netlify, AWS CloudFront, or Cloudflare. | Everything can be calculated clientside. | | > It's worth pointing out that for all the criticism, the Next.js | + Vercel combination meant that I didn't have to worry about | scaling the site at any point. There were millions of hits, and | sometimes thousands per second, and it all just worked. The basic | page continued to load in less than half a second under all that | load. | | Static sites have that too. | jackdh wrote: | S3 + Cloudfront would have worked like a charm. | tomjohnneill wrote: | The point is that NextJS does create a static site. And Vercel | can be just a static CDN, as it was for this. | migueloller wrote: | It was a static site. That's what Vercel and Next.js does by | default. If you don't use `getServerSideProps`, Next.js will | generate static pages at build time and Vercel will serve them | from their CDN. | ape4 wrote: | We need a website for the Mars helicopter: | isthemarshelicopterflyingyet.com | josefresco wrote: | ...or maybe havetheyfoundlifeonotherplanetsyet.com | sixQuarks wrote: | Running a viral site by yourself is one of the most enjoyable | feelings, like you have this big laboratory to play and test out | things out with. | | And it was quite easy to do back in the early days of the | Internet. I ran one such site in the early 2000s, which attracted | 30 million page views per month at its peak. | | Like the author, I kept trying all kinds of things to monetize | it, at the end affiliate programs and google Adsense worked the | best. | TeMPOraL wrote: | One thing I don't understand about monetizing on the Internet. | | I see the author considered ads, tried an affiliate scheme and | even did an NFT. But what about plain old, honest to God payment? | Couldn't they just put a paragraph of text on the site, "Hey | folks, I'm worried about hosting costs, if you find this page | useful, please [Donate]", with a button redirecting to Paypal or | Stripe or whatever, collect the money and declare it as donations | on the IRS form? Why try all these convoluted schemes, instead of | giving a straightforward way for people to tip? | | They had 50 million views. If 0.01% of these visitors left a | dollar, the author would've still come up way ahead over all the | crazy schemes, even post-tax. | weird-eye-issue wrote: | This never works. People just don't donate. Only developers | think donations are a viable form of monetization. | bkanber wrote: | For the last 10 years or so I've been running a free-to-use | Morse Code online radio thing. It has cost me about $1000 to | host so far, and has a couple of hundred DAUs. | | The users are not shy about feature requests, and they're not | shy about complaining that I haven't implemented their feature | requests. | | So I made a pledge to the userbase that if they collectively | donate $1000 to the site, I'll start working on v2. | | I posted that pledge to the site a year ago. Total donations: | $80. | | There are a couple of hundred people who use the site for | _hours per day_ and post on the forums that they love it, but | haven 't donated a fiver. | | Asking for donations doesn't work. | kbenson wrote: | So, a couple months ago, I started using a site for a game I | play that provides maps, info on items in the game, current | prices for the global market that players can trade on, etc. | You can link it to your Patreon account, and if you're a | patron for $5/mo, the site gives you historical data on the | market, and a few other useful features for the game. There's | also a Discord for updates, features requests, general dev | stuff, etc, and that's gated (or some channels are at least) | behind Patreon as well because Patreon integrates well with | Discord, so support and feature requests (through Discord) | come from subscribers that are paying. | | I mention this because at the current moment, he has 4,757 | patrons, and that $5/mo is the only official tier offered. | That's $19k/mo, minus Patreon fees. This is the first time | I've used a Patreon subscription to power a site account, | which I wasn't aware could be done (I subscribe to a few web | authors though, so I'm not new to Patreon). I think this is a | really interesting way to provide gated site access, and it's | fairly low fiction for a lot of people, because they either | already use Patreon, or have at least heard of it so it's not | some random site charging you or that you are paying. There's | lots of benefits I see to this model, and I think if I have a | project that fits it in the near future I'll try it myself. | Maybe it's something that would work for you (you'd have to | set the monthly price at something you think appropriate). $1 | from 100 people would get you that $1000 in less than a year, | and you might also get better targeted info on what features | the people that are willing to pay think are more important. | | I agree asking for donations doesn't work. I don't like | donating like that. I _am_ willing to allocate a bit of | monthly money to people if I feel like I 'm getting something | worthwhile in return though (it's a limited amount, I try to | keep total Patreon expenditure at or below ~$50/mo). | zeropoint46 wrote: | what game? | kbenson wrote: | Escape From Tarkov. It's a real interesting mix of | shooter, stealth, and looting/management that I haven't | really seen anywhere else. It's on the realism side of | the spectrum, which I like. It's also extremely | unforgiving, which is good for those that are a bit | masochistic in their gaming, which apparently I am. | | There's _lots_ to unpack there that make it different | than most other games I 've played, but you can get a | good idea from watching some Twitch streams. | cstrat wrote: | I also pay for tarkov-market :D | | It is almost a must if you're a casual player. It is too | hard to keep up with the barters, flea market rates and | even just the quests and items for quests. | ZephyrBlu wrote: | I understand your point, but this is just a plain old | subscription. | kbenson wrote: | Yes. It's a plain old subscription in the same way that | using a card linked to your iPhone or Android phone to | pay for a subscription through their app stores is a | plain old subscription. | | That is, it comes with lots of advantages through being | part of an ecosystem that people may already be part of | or at least have some trust in because it is well known. | Additionally it's already associated with helping people | and projects in a way that _may_ not be purely | transactional, which fits how some people feel about | their projects (thus the option to donate as discussed | here). | | Just because two models can be boiled down to essentially | the same thing doesn't always mean they will perform | equally as well. Sometimes the small distinctions and | details are very important. | dayvid wrote: | Makes me think of Wikipedia who have probably A/B tested | donation requests to death and have them take up half the | page. | zepearl wrote: | Wikipedia is in my opinion unluckily a complex example | because the donations are actually for Wikimedia. | | In my case I donated only once to them and I understood | only later that (apparently?) most of the $ isn't being | used for Wikipedia, therefore as I'm not interested in | their other projects I never donated anything anymore to | them - they can make that banner as big&flashy as they want | but the fact remains that I don't want my $ used for non- | Wikipedia-related activities. | laverya wrote: | Not to mention WP:CANCER [0], though it's less of an | exponential curve today than 5 years ago. | | 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia | _has_C... | input_sh wrote: | I don't know, I always feel like there has to be _some_ | reward to incentivize people, even if it 's dead simple. | | Like, you can choose to have your name publicly displayed on | a thank you page (this would work well with BMAC, since | donations can be both anonymous and not), or have your | username be of different colour or have some badge next to | it. | | But then again, I don't know how I would fit that into this | meme page, and I'm definitely not an expert having earned a | total of two euros of donations (yet to implement some reward | system). | thrashh wrote: | I've run a few donation schemes and those things don't do | much. People just don't donate. | | Subscriptions are the best, but obv that won't work for a | meme page. | iamacyborg wrote: | So how does Wikipedia manage to get donations? Is it just | a scale problem where you needs hundreds of millions of | pageviews a day to generate any meaningful number of | donations? | jowsie wrote: | Wikipedia has a lot more utility than a website about a | current event you're gonna visit 2 or 3 times before the | issue is resolved. It's a lot easier to justify that | donation. | bkanber wrote: | Each time Wikipedia does a donation drive they have a | thing that says "If everyone who used Wikipedia donated | $1, we'd be done in 10 minutes!" (or similar). Yet these | drives go on for _months_. The problem is that only a | vanishingly small percentage of users donate. | MisterBiggs wrote: | I run a telegram bot that has a pretty large user base | completely for free. I have a buy me a coffee setup for it | and it gets almost zero views, except for when a feature | breaks. When a feature breaks all the sudden buy me a coffee | gets traffic and I start getting donations. | | Really odd to think that if everything worked perfectly all | the time I wouldn't have made any money on this project. | ajayyy wrote: | Similar experience with my browser extension. A kind of | weird mal-incentive. | ryantgtg wrote: | Have you tried Patreon? I had the same experience with a | donation button. But a Patreon button magically gave us | steady money to support infrastructure. | zepearl wrote: | Yeah, as a (small/tiny) donator for 3 projects so far I | personally liked Patreon - neat, simple, it works. | | There are 3 other projects to which I'd like as well to | donate something but they're all using different services ( | https://donorbox.org , https://ko-fi.com , | https://liberapay.com ) => I don't want to lose control | over my donations and creating accounts there as well would | have that effect on me. | | Therefore, I think that somebody that would like to receive | donations should try make multiple options available - | hoping for the opposite (that whoever donates will use the | specific service that you chose) won't work. | kbenson wrote: | Yeah, I'm a patron of multiple people, from Authors to | people running a website providing info on a game, that are | making $10k-$20k a month in Patreon from those projects | through $5-$10 monthly payments. It's amazing how much | money you can make, but I think you really do have to offer | something to get people to bite. | cl0ckt0wer wrote: | Do you show the user how much time they've used? That may | motivate them to be more "generous". | jawns wrote: | Have you considered some sort of conditional pledging system? | | That was part of the original allure of Kickstarter: | participants agreed to contribute money -- but they only had | to pay it if the total pledged amount reached a certain | threshold. That way, contributors got some assurance that | they're not wasting their money and that any project they | fund has some level of viability. | | So maybe, in your case, you could ask the users to donate | some amount of money -- but they wouldn't have to actually | pay it unless you reached your $1,000 funding goal. | rapnie wrote: | Snowdrift has a scheme like this, but even better: | Crowdmatching, where your donation increases as more people | jump in (and you can set a max donation). | | https://snowdrift.coop/ | yummybear wrote: | Make the v2 require membership? | sjs382 wrote: | Another datapoint: | | Three years ago, I built an offline/online paper wallet | generator[0] for what was one of the top cryptocurrencies by | market cap (Stellar Lumens - XLM). I included a donation | address in the footer of the page. | | I've received 9 donations in those three years[1], amounting | to about 12 XLM (currently $4.87). While not much, I get a | kick out of the idea that 9 people liked it enough to donate. | | Note, my costs are negligible and I've _never_ received a | single feature request or had to do any maintenance. The code | is hosted at GitHub Pages (free) with Cloudflare (free) in | front of it. The only cost to me is the domain name. | | [0] https://stellarpaperwallet.com | | [1] Cloudflare only gives me analytics for the last month but | last month it had 1,348 unique visitors. | DoreenMichele wrote: | You are correct that asking for _donations_ doesn 't work. | | If you think of it as donations and you talk about it like | donations, people view you as a "charity case" begging for | money. Good luck with that. | | If you position it as tips and payment for the value you | deliver, you can turn it into money. It's not easy, it's not | consistent and it's probably not a way to get rich quick. | | But there are people who are successfully supporting their | work with Patreon and tips as at least part of the scheme. | | It takes work to get money out of people. You probably didn't | do anywhere near enough to promote the idea that "We need X | more money to release version 2." And you probably positioned | the request for money very poorly. | | Just because you didn't pull it off doesn't mean it cannot be | done. | JeremyNT wrote: | Most successful Patreon projects do provide extra value to | the people who subscribe, though. | | In this case you might decide to provide early access to | new features for subscribers, for example. | DoreenMichele wrote: | This is true. | | But some of them just seem to very creatively thank you | for your support. I recall reading one that waxed | eloquent about how supporting them at the one dollar | level would buy you a guilt-free conscience with regards | to consuming their content or something like that. | z3t4 wrote: | What it comes down to is what similar services charge. | Study the _business model_ of the other /exchangeable | services that are actually profitable. | kyawzazaw wrote: | Has that been your experience? | DoreenMichele wrote: | Yes. | ticviking wrote: | Are you aware of any case studies for this kind of | product? I'm very curious about it as a model | DoreenMichele wrote: | No, sorry. | dmos62 wrote: | Not to criticize you in any way, but I've found that asking | me for financial support works in some cases and those are | because I felt the "humanness" of the creator. I remember | this author that put up a video of her unboxing first batch | of her newly released book (and being excited about it). The | person went from a name on a webpage or face in a video to a | human being immediately (in my mind). I don't really have the | words to precisely describe what I mean. | skrebbel wrote: | That's all true but it means that you need to market your | person, become an "internet personality" just to collect | donations on something technical that you built | | It works, true, eg Andrew Kelley is funding his Zig work | that way and it's pretty amazing to see him ace it. But | damn you gotta be a particular kind of person to not get | extremely stressed out about that prospect. | ducttapelogic wrote: | Ah, you've beet me to it skrebbel. :) I actually wanted | to write something like this. It's really hard to be what | you are (in my case - a very introverted and private | person), give something valuable to the world and | actually live from that. That would be a beautiful life, | really. | | p.s. Not saying there are no people who didn't manage to | pull it off, but I'm pretty sure those people are | exceptions rather than the rule. | dmos62 wrote: | I don't think it's mandatory to become a different kind | of person or to market yourself in extroverted ways. I | think you could get that effect with subtler things. I | guess we often treat our works and online presence (as in | open source or open access projects) as functional non- | human items. Maybe if we saw them more as extensions of | the author... | whimsicalism wrote: | I bet you that this is a space where there is a reverse | gender pay gap. | selestify wrote: | And also a space where nobody's going to crusade for | fixing up the reverse gender pay gap. | tehjoker wrote: | Maybe your work would be better positioned for a grant of | some kind. Is there a membership organization that many radio | people belong to and pay dues? They'd possibly have the funds | to make improvements to the ecosystem. | LockAndLol wrote: | Don't call them donations. Look at what reddit did: people | can "give gold" to people for comments that they think were | great. All it does is add some icon to a comment and put the | person in a "gold club". | | In games, people will buy so many visual improvements that | add nothing but glam to their character. | | Discord does... something, I can't remember what exactly, | with their "turbo" and IIRC it costs discord cents, but the | user pays dollars. | | People will pay for the dumbest things. Give them a reason to | sign up, add some kind of paid interaction that changes | something visual or makes a dumb sound, add some tier system | with context relevant names, and people might really pay. | giantrobot wrote: | Back in the stone ages Slashdot gave subscribers a comment | bonus and an indication the user was a subscriber. An icon | in the forums or some small benefit for "subscribing" goes | a long way to get people to fork over a few dollars for | something. | freedomben wrote: | I think part of the problem may be that you're still far from | the goal. If I were a heavy user, I might consider donating | $50. But there's a huge risk that you won't get to $1,000 and | my money will be "wasted" (not wasted, but not bringing about | the desired effect either). Because of that, I'm inclined not | to do it. It seems to me like you've got a chicken and egg | problem here. | dgritsko wrote: | Isn't this the problem that Kickstarter was designed to | solve? | pengwing wrote: | I agree with your assessment that donations do not work. Now | let me solve your problem: Instead of running into the | tragedy of the commons by asking your userbase collectively | to donate 1k, you can announce that you will start working on | v2 now and let users pay to prioritize individual feature | requests in each new release. Start with a small release | adding only a feature that you want but nobody else requested | to prove that the project is active again. Create scarcity by | only doing 1 release / timeframe and only include the feature | with the most money pledged. Hope for a bidding war. | LeonB wrote: | This was my experience too, with a useful online page I | built. People loved it but wouldn't donate to help it. | | Someone suggested I productise it but I thought, based on the | donations, that it wouldn't have many purchasers. But they | were right: it earned orders of magnitude more when some | features required a one time payment to be unlocked, versus | donation. | jasondigitized wrote: | First 1000 words are free. After that, pay up Morse Coders!!! | worik wrote: | "Asking for donations doesn't work" | | Depends. I have paid for things I could have gotten for free, | and raised money for political organisations (not in the USA, | so we could not sell laws the way the Americans do). | | The best way to get money is to ask. There is a lot of | research into the best ways to ask, and what gives best | results. | | But just asking thoughtlessly (not accusing you, no idea how | you asked) does not work | PedroBatista wrote: | > If 0.01% of these visitors left a dollar, | | You're correct, but reality doesn't agree. It has been proven | time and time again that 0.01% almost always DON'T leave a | dollar for anything. | jefftk wrote: | For Bucket Brigade I ask for donations [1] which has covered | about 50% of my costs so far [2]. I think how well this works | depends a lot on how useful people find your site vs what your | costs are? | | [1] https://echo.jefftk.com/#About | | [2] https://www.jefftk.com/bucket-brigade-payments | draw_down wrote: | Do you think people just haven't tried this, or something? They | didn't think of it? | | People try other things because this doesn't work, in general. | codingdave wrote: | Reverse that - how many websites do you visit, and look for a | way to give them a dollar? | | It just isn't how web audiences operate. I'm not saying that it | is a bad idea - paying for good content could solve many | problems. It just isn't where we are today. | brentm wrote: | The best path probably would of been getting in touch with | Flexport and getting them to sponsor it for a couple grand + | hosting. | twox2 wrote: | Who would pay $1 for getting a chuckle out of a meme? Also 50 | million views is not 50 million visitors. If he had a normal ad | monetization channel in place, he should have easily been able | to garnish a minimum of a 10 cent CPM and walked away with at | least $5k from his 15 minutes of fame. The problem is that | learning as you go makes it a little too late to monetize the | peak. There are companies whose entire business is in pumping | out viral sites like this. Some explode for a a little while | and others never make a penny. You can bet your butt that in | the hands of someone who does this professionally these 50 | million views would have been thousands and thousands of | dollars. | iamacyborg wrote: | > Who would pay $1 for getting a chuckle out of a meme? | | That sort of feels like the core issue. Why even try to | monetise a page like this? | VBprogrammer wrote: | In the article he mentioned this; he was worried about the | hosting costs. Thankfully his host got a laugh out of it | and donated the hosting cost and he has in turn donated any | proceeds. | iamacyborg wrote: | Right, but if you're incurring significant hosting costs | for a static site in 2021 then you're doing something | wrong. | tomjohnneill wrote: | In hindsight, you're right. And obviously I didn't. | However at the time, it was the uncertainty as a result | of never having done something like this that made me | worried. | FalconSensei wrote: | unless you have images? | filoleg wrote: | Cloudflare Pages[0] claims to have unlimited bandwidth, | even for their free tier. | | 0. https://pages.cloudflare.com/#plans | rchaud wrote: | Hosting costs money. Although for someone who's go-to stack | for a meme website is NextJS + React could probably afford | to fork over $70 for 15 minutes of Internet fame. | iamacyborg wrote: | Hosting costs pennies (if even that) if you're just | serving static html content. | ampdepolymerase wrote: | If you can build a PaaS around it like Giphy and sell user | data, sure. | iamacyborg wrote: | Yeah but Giphy's a full on product, not just a static | single page site. | rebelde wrote: | > he should have easily been able to garnish a minimum of a | 10 cent CPM | | Uh, not in my experience. I haven't tried to monetize a site | like this, but I would expect a CPM around 1 cent. Still, | times 50 million, it isn't nothing. | at_a_remove wrote: | In the grim future of 2050, we have finally implemented | micropayments on the Internet, down to amounts as tiny as a | thousandth of one cent and trending downward as we account | for hyperinflation of other currencies. Advanced | technologies, ubiquitous computing, brilliant algorithms, | and near-sentient fraud watchdog programs have combined to | make this dream at last possible. | | Only then we will have proved that the vast majority of | people will not pay a dime for content on the web. | troydavis wrote: | > I would expect a CPM around 1 cent. Still, times 50 | million, it isn't nothing. | | CPM is cost per mille, AKA cost per thousand impressions. | Revenue from 50,000,000 impressions would be CPM * 50,000. | twox2 wrote: | It's tough as an individual that's just dipping their toes | into the water, but if you have some experience, then you | typically have an optimized setup with partners in place, | etc. | dillondoyle wrote: | Reddit gold seems to fit here. It makes no sense to me but it | seems to be working. I find it funny the threads complaining | about Reddit's recent horrible hiring an mod decisions all | had TONS of gold lol | T-hawk wrote: | Reddit gold makes tons of sense. People can pay money to | amplify the opinions they want amplified. Reddit actually | monetized internet arguing. | rchaud wrote: | > Reddit actually monetized internet arguing. | | I never thought about it like this. I always just thought | of Reddit Gold as just another weird Internet quirk I | will never understand. | | I kind of wonder if NFTs for artwork will become the same | thing. Like amplifying comments, maybe high NFT prices | will be a way to amplify one artist over another in what | is a very crowded marketplace. | TeMPOraL wrote: | I would, particularly if the blurb was very honest (or very | creative). I have no trouble throwing someone even a one-time | $5 if the website is funny enough. | pjc50 wrote: | How often do you do this per month? | | How many webpages do you read per month? | | Now divide one by the other. | rchaud wrote: | IMO this wouldn't be a bad thing. There would be a | stronger market mechanism at play here. It could cut down | on the amount of garbage internet we consume, while | incentivizing producers to create higher-value content | that people will pay for, and that won't be forgotten | immediately like this Suez website. | bfgoodrich wrote: | Zero times. They never have. | | When people give the "oh yeah I'd be generous" spiel, | they're lying. Indeed, they're usually the _cheapest_ of | all (in the same way that the people who tell you how | generous they are with tips are usually the ones who | stiff wait staff). | colpabar wrote: | Unfortunately you are in the extreme minority. I was | watching a stream on youtube that has an optional patreon | subscription and people were complaining that $0.99 per | MONTH was too much because the stream was too quiet for a | bit. | | Paying directly for things you like on the internet doesn't | seem like a big deal to us here on HN, but the overwhelming | majority of people will never even consider it. Everything | else is free, why should anyone have to pay for anything? | rchaud wrote: | IMO the pricing itself signals that the product isn't | worth paying for. $0.99 per month? For what I'm sure | includes hours of streaming? It's close enough to $0 that | I don't even think about whether an additional buck is | going to make a difference. | danparsonson wrote: | I suspect 0.01% is highly optimistic, especially for a meme- | related site that's essentially a drive-by laugh for most | people. | oefrha wrote: | If my developer tool with thousands of stars on GitHub | generates $15/yr in donations, I would say 0.01% of visitors | each donating $1 to a website they on average spend 1 minute or | less on (seems a reasonable assumption?) is far too optimistic. | TeMPOraL wrote: | Can you give any other metric for its popularity? Stars | aren't a good one - Github stars are _bookmarks_ , not a | reflection of whether one actually uses a given repository. | Personally, I have 301 starred repositories, of which I maybe | use... 5? | oefrha wrote: | I'd say a repo needs more than 150k views to get ~5k stars. | I can confidently say the number of users who derive actual | value from it is measured in the hundreds at least | (compared to none on a viral meme site). If those views | aren't generating 0.01% * $1, I can bet the house on viral | meme site not generating that much, unless they happen to | land very generous donors. | | Edit: Just checked Homebrew analytics. >10k recorded | installs in the past year (low single digit number of | releases during that period, no major publicity event). I | don't have readily available analytics for other | installation channels on macOS, or analytics for Linux and | Windows which are pretty fractured. Point is the user base | is sizable. | spijdar wrote: | I think regardless of how good a metric stars are, it's | still more likely to receive donations than a meme site | about a recent event. | | I can't remember ever hearing someone talk about how | successful their donation button was. I can remember plenty | of people describing how few people ever click it, | though... | WJW wrote: | Stars are even worse than bookmarks, they're more like | likes on social media. Costs nothing and worth nothing, | literally imaginary internet validation points. "Oh this is | a cool thing, I'll star it why not." | Kalium wrote: | The conventional wisdom on the internet, often backed by common | experience, is that significantly less than 0.01% of visitors | leave a dollar. Internet donation plates are not known for | producing consistent revenue. | rchaud wrote: | > They had 50 million views. If 0.01% of these visitors left a | dollar | | If it wasn't a simple meme website to spend 5 seconds on and | never visit again, it would not have gotten 50 million views. | Trying to monetize that is like squeezing blood from a stone. | | I imagine that's one reason why he's posting this from a | Substack domain. | mrtksn wrote: | >They had 50 million views. If 0.01% of these visitors left a | dollar, the author would've still come up way ahead over all | the crazy schemes, even post-tax. | | IMHO that is a fallacy. Although %0.01 looks like a really | small number there's no reason for it for not being %0.001 or | %0.000001. When people do napkin math , it's a common theme to | say that "If we only capture %1 of the market we would be | $$$rich$$$" and they proceed to find out that there are smaller | percentiles than %1. | | To receive donations people need to be sympathetic to you or | your cause. You need to actively sell it, making it a | considerable part of the user experience. | | It's really hard to build that relationship with just one | visit. Maybe there are visitors deeply invested in the | situation and they may actually obsess with your product but | you need to look into the analytics to see if it's the case. If | there are visitors that appear to be visiting extremely | frequently, you need to explore ways to ask for the money and | for that you will need data(profiles of the visitors) to | develop your message however the OP doesn't do detailed | analytics and profiling. It could be possible to monetise it | and even catch a few whales but chances are that you can also | alienate those people with the wrong messaging, so you probably | will need to do personalisation which requires data and cookies | and what not, which means data collection and sharing | permission popups. | | Of course you can try your chances and pick a group of people | that you believe are using your product and proceed with A/B | testing etc instead of profiling. If you happen to choose the | privacy nerds as a target you will find out how much the | privacy nerds like donating. | WaitWaitWha wrote: | >IMHO that is a fallacy. | | Email spam works exactly this way. I think what you are | pointing out correctly, is that the _percentage_ might be | incorrect; the principle is not. | tshaddox wrote: | The "principle" is just multiplication, and yes, if you | multiply your number of visitors by a number that you make | up, you can get any number you want as a result. | mrtksn wrote: | I don't think that spam is a fair comparison. Spammers send | out offer for stuff that people want. It's completely | different than first giving out what people want and then | asking for a gratitude payment. | | Spam's success rate would be dictated by the percentage of | the people who want the product in the general population | after passing through the spam delivery funnel. | | With the donations it's completely different mechanism. | | Nevertheless, the fallacy is that small looking number of | market share is the smallest possible market share. | tjs8rj wrote: | The fallacy comes from forgetting these are people. "Surely | theres 1 in 10,000 who want this" is wishful thinking, | "There exists a type of person who wants this, and I can | point to them, but they happen to be a small segment of the | population - 1 in 10,000" is actionable and valid. | | There's nearly 8,000,000,000 humans, so there's a ton of | variety that one can't even imagine, but probably none of | them want to eat a bar of soap for breakfast each day even | if you think there must be some rare 1 in 1,000,000 out | there. | | Putting 1 in BIG NUMBER is just a way we abstract away hard | and intimidating questions. | TeMPOraL wrote: | > _The fallacy comes from forgetting these are people._ | | Perhaps. But at least that's just on paper. Resorting to | advertising means _actually_ forgetting your visitors are | people. | jahewson wrote: | Hey, if it was a $10 donation they'd only need 0.001% of users | and for $100 just 0.0001%. | | /s | jahewson wrote: | Hmm, if was a $10 donation they'd only need 0.001% of users and | for $100 just 0.0001%. Boom!! | | But yeah 1/1000 people are not going to randomly pay for | something with a market price of $0. | carabiner wrote: | > If 0.01% of these visitors left a dollar... | | 0.01% is a fantasy, massively high conversion rate, just so you | know. | davedx wrote: | > Couldn't they just [...] | | :D | TeMPOraL wrote: | Yes :). But otherwise, the question is serious. | passivate wrote: | >Why try all these convoluted schemes, instead of giving a | straightforward way for people to tip? | | >They had 50 million views. If 0.01% of these visitors left a | dollar, the author would've still come up way ahead over all | the crazy schemes, even post-tax. | | Currently ads are the easiest way to monetize a not-well-known | web property in the short-term. Long-term you can build a | brand/trust/community/etc and leverage that into | patreon/donations. | rikroots wrote: | > Instead of ads, I thought I would try and sell an NFT of the | page [...] In the end it was successful, selling for just over | $200 | | ... It was at this point in the read that I got very excited and | broke away from the article to research "NFTs"[1] - because I've | been known to create digital art[2] and I've even written a JS | library to help people create digital art[3] (kinda). Luckily I | got interrupted during my research and, once the interruption | completed, I returned to the article rather than my research tabs | - which were closed pretty quickly after the read completed. | | > Most of the things I've posted [to Twitter] are liked | exclusively by my colleagues, my Mum and my ex-flatmate. It's | screaming into the void. | | My Mother doesn't do social media. I doubt she'd approve of the | words I choose to scream. | | [1] https://www.creativebloq.com/features/what-are-nfts - "NFTs | use a monster amount of energy in their creation. So much so that | many protesters are worried about the very real impact the craze | could have on the environment" ... this is seriously scary; it | puts me off the whole idea of trying to monetise my creative work | in this way. | | [2] https://codepen.io/collection/DmgxKv - my collection of | generative art on CodePen | | [3] https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/ | tambourine_man wrote: | > I found this exchange very fun | | This guy is such a good sport. Unsolicited and impolite random | critics of your tech stack on Twitter: fun. | IG_Semmelweiss wrote: | It is fascinating how our online behavior deviates from our | physical world behavior. | | This whole thread is about how asking for donations is a big fail | online. | | Yet, there's no lack of street performers in most major metros. | Whether that is people in superhero costumes on Hollywood Blvd, | or street dancers in times square, they all seem to be doing fine | off donations. | | There is something about the online "free duplicate copy" concept | that just makes value dissappear | elevaet wrote: | Maybe it's not the "free duplicate copy" making the value | disappear, but that the social context makes us feel anonymous | and less obliged to reciprocate on the web. | | We're a social species that evolved in tribes. Street | performers probably do a better job of stimulating that sense | of tribe than abstract interactions on a web page do. | lotsofpulp wrote: | >Whether that is people in superhero costumes on Hollywood | Blvd, or street dancers in times square, they all seem to be | doing fine off donations. | | All websites are not comparable to Times Square or Hollywood | Blvd, in terms of how much attention they get. You also don't | see performers in 99.99% of cities, even in other areas of the | same city like NYC and LA. | bemmu wrote: | Donations seem to work for livecasters though. Maybe the | donation button needs to give some response like that from the | creator to work? | vulcan01 wrote: | > they all seem to be doing fine off donations. | | They may be doing fine, but I bet that, for most, donations | aren't their only source of income and they probably have | another job. | paxys wrote: | Yup, people are just wired to think of physical vs digital | goods or experiences very differently. Cliche comparison by | now, but I know so many people who will spend $4 on a Starbucks | latte every day, but the thought of spending $4 _a month_ on a | web app that they use for hours every day is unimaginable. | ducharmdev wrote: | I'd argue that people have been taught to expect it to be | free. When fundamental services like search, email, chat, | etc. are provided to consumers for free, why shouldn't other | services be free too? | | Of course we know these services aren't really free; Google | and Facebook still run their services on physical servers | that have hosting costs. But by making their apps free and | finding alternative revenue streams (i.e. selling data), they | can set norms that harm competitors with less capital while | making it easier to adopt new users (and collect more data). | worik wrote: | Well done! | | Almost perfect. | migueloller wrote: | I know the HN comments section is notorious for criticizing | solutions they don't like because they seem too complex or | unnecessary for them [1] but I'm honestly surprised that's | happening with Next.js/Vercel here. | | So many are saying that this could've been a static site | distributed by a CDN. That's what a Next.js app on Vercel does by | default! Unless you use `getServerSideProps`, Next.js will create | a static site at build time and when deployed to Vercel it will | be hosted on their CDN. Spending just a bit of time to understand | why Next.js is so popular would've made that clear to most people | here. But I guess that's not as easy as just criticizing it for | bloat without knowing how it works and moving on? | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 | sneak wrote: | Javascript aside, more things can and should be static sites. | | (More things should render their basic, static-site content | without having to exec js, too.) | | The web would be a lot better if this were the case. | migueloller wrote: | I believe you can still do this in Next.js with some extra | work to exclude the JS bundle. For example, you can use a | custom `_document` page and exclude the `NextScript` | component [1]. It would be nice if this was supported as a | first-class concept, though. | | [1] https://nextjs.org/docs/advanced-features/custom-document | simias wrote: | >Instead of ads, I thought I would try and sell an NFT of the | page. I'd read a fair amount about NFTs (both good and bad), and | I was a mix of sceptical and curious. I thought this would be an | interesting and weird opportunity to try it out myself. Added to | this, it could be a fun meta-meme. I thought it would be fun to | be the first meme website to sell itself as an NFT. | | I don't quite understand, what was sold here exactly? You can't | sell the DNS since ".com" doesn't exist on the blockchain (you | could for a NameCoin domain, but who uses that). So is it like a | capture of the source code? Or is it really just a token saying | "istheshipstillstuck.com"? | | I can sort of get NFTs when it's about selling digital artwork | since it's a way for the artist to generate artificial scarcity | for something that's technically endlessly copiable and it | creates a notion of what's "the original". After all, IP laws and | regulations are full of that stuff (cue the "what colour are your | bits" essay). | | But here there's already a digital token that's unique and can be | auctioned: the domain name itself. It's pretty obvious to me that | the "true" istheshipstillstuck.com will be whoever owns the DNS, | not some random person with an NFT token. | jrochkind1 wrote: | Yes, NFT's are one of the weirdest blockchain related | scams/pyramid schemes yet. | Sebb767 wrote: | > pyramid scheme | | Could this be a pyramid scheme? From my (very limited) | understanding of the technology, it is basically a single- | sell item - so the value you get out of it does not depend on | whether they take off or cease to exists post-buy. A pyramid | doesn't really fit to this. Or am I missing something? | jrochkind1 wrote: | good point. | | I'm used to applying "pyramid scheme" to "i buy this thing | not cause I want it but just hoping I can sell it to | someone else for more money later, and they're going to be | doing the same thing as me." Cause that is likely to leave | someone holding the bag. But I guess that is an overlapping | phenomenon that may not be the same as a pyramid scheme. | | What do we call that phenomenon? Just "capitalism"? | erik_seaberg wrote: | A pyramid scheme pays out fake returns that were actually | new investments, which requires unsustainable geometric | growth. An asset bubble doesn't depend on fraud or | growth, it just keeps going until speculators' confidence | is shaken. | redisman wrote: | A pyramid is a more psychologically powerful scam as many | people actually get big returns and become true | believers. Made up assets are more akin to the tulip | mania and such. | redisman wrote: | Well since "ICO"s seem to be dead you gotta come up with | something new to split the fools from their money. | paulpauper wrote: | I think he was hoping for a Beeple-like windfall such as from | Elon Musk or an early crypto adopter...a huge right-tail in | terms of potential profit. No dice though. | xyzelement wrote: | I think he's just playing around/being cheeky with all this | stuff, so I don't think it was ever meant to stand up to robust | scrutiny :> | simias wrote: | I completely get that, but I was thinking from the point of | view of the person who decided to put $200 into the joke. | platz wrote: | even with art, an NFT doesn't confer copyright rights, so you | don't even own the art. | | > a way for the artist to generate artificial scarcity | | The art isn't stored on-chain, so it's not scarce either. | | All the NFT is is a pointer that has some text about who | created it and what it points to. Not sure why why that | _pointer itself_ is valuable except as a status of "i am the | only one that owns this unique pointer". | | Of course there's nothing stopping anyone from creating another | pointer that points to the same thing as the one you just | bought and selling that. | | So unless you find some value in pointers, intrinsically in | themselves, NFT's are useless. | gumby wrote: | It's valuable because someone felt it was. | | It's the pet rock of 2021. | platz wrote: | https://opensea.io/assets/0x495f947276749ce646f68ac8c248420 | 0... | | > Link to a print-ready high-resolution image file will be | unlocked on purchase (2048 x 2048 pixels). | | LOL | martin_a wrote: | As somebody working in the printing industry, I would not | call that "printable", but okay... | | (Except you don't want your art to be printed in a | reasonable size.) | tyrust wrote: | It's like a signed baseball card, where it is signed by whoever | is selling the NFT. The cardboard and ink is worthless, but add | the signature and you have something. | | When the signer matches the creator (e.g. beeple selling NFTs | of his art, this guy selling an NFT of his site), the | interesting part isn't really the thing, but the signature. | joosters wrote: | _I don 't quite understand, what was sold here exactly?_ | | This question applies to all NFTs! All you 'own' is a smart | contract on a blockchain. That contract might contain a URL, | and that URL _might_ have some content on it. Or it could be a | broken link. But you definitely do _not_ own the thing that the | URL points to. Nor do you have any guarantee that there are no | other NFTs on the blockchain using that same URL. | | Luckily enough for the scammers/sellers, the buyers don't seem | to care about these details! | simias wrote: | Oh, so normally NFTs don't actually contain the digital | artwork, just a reference to it? | | I assumed that the art itself would be stored into the | blockchain, which would give it some form of permanence. | WJW wrote: | That only works for digital things, for obvious reasons. | PavleMiha wrote: | The vast majority of NFT's sell art that is not on the | blockchain, is hosted somewhere else. There are some pixel | art-y small things that people have put on the actual | blockchain but it's rare. | another_sock wrote: | Yeah, most NFTs are just references to a database hosting a | file somewhere. There are exceptions, but this is the case | with sites like Rarible as far as I know. The exceptions | are less popular and less well known because they aren't | scams and are actually interesting technology-wise, and | thus aren't doing a ton of marketing or promotion or being | used for money laundering or tax scams like most NFTs | currently are. | henvic wrote: | NFT is just a joke went too far. | | I'm starting to consider creating a NFT to sell NFTs of NFTs | emitted elsewhere. Or one for people who doesn't "own an asset" | to sell it. | mkr-hn wrote: | NFT-backed securities are both inevitable and worrying. | kamel3d wrote: | That's why I still think NFTs are scam | ihuman wrote: | How is it a scam if you get exactly what you paid for? | austhrow743 wrote: | Was wondering just yesterday how much those book affiliate links | made. Before reading my guess would have been way higher. | dx034 wrote: | Interestingly, according to [1] there were only ~11k visitors | from Hackernews for a post on the front page that had ~1k | comments. I would've estimated the visitor/comment ratio to be | much, much higher. | | [1] | https://simpleanalytics.com/istheshipstillstuck.com?utm_sour... | DoreenMichele wrote: | Every post is different. | | Viral or click bait stuff on "hot" topics can foster a lot of | insubstantive and often fighty comments. That's a known | phenomenon on the site. | [deleted] | tomjohnneill wrote: | I only put simple analytics on the site the day after it was at | the top of Hacker News (unfortunately) | tomjohnneill wrote: | For what it's worth (and I know this is getting extremely | meta), but as it stands this writeup has had 21,963 visitors | from Hacker News. (205 comments as I write this). | mtberatwork wrote: | Users tend to overwhelmingly read headlines and skip articles. | HN is not any different than the rest of the Web. Something to | keep in mind here and elsewhere. | Cthulhu_ wrote: | Besides the analytics being added later (as mentioned), | personally I see a headline sometimes and think "yeah I know | enough, show me the comments". | | Does HN show viewing stats for comments? Might be nice for the | sites featured on it to know. | themanmaran wrote: | I had a HN frontpage post a couple months ago. | | The results: | | - 250 upvotes | | - 101 comments | | - 6,675 site views (over the 1.5 days it was frontpage) | underdeserver wrote: | This is a glowing recommendation for Vercel. I might use it for | my next side project. | zepearl wrote: | Great article - funny & interesting :) | | Question about "Ads/advertisements" (I'm totally clueless about | how they work): | | Does anybody have a link pointing to some kind of overview from | the point of view of a website owner? (e.g. list of different | providers, amounts paid by views/clicks, which informations | are/can be exchanged with them to provide for example an ad in | the same context of what the website is showing, etc...?) | | Personally as a user, I would not be against ads if they would be | normal ones like in a newspaper/magazine, but many show full- | fledged small&big animations => I get angry when I see my CPU | usage at 100%/my fan spinning up/my battery depleting while | reading on such a page, which is the main if not the only reason | why I block them (I might even be interested in them, but they | screw up my PC/notebook) => as a website owner do you have | control on what kind of ads you want to show (technically | speaking - like "animated" vs. "static", with how many fps, | etc...)? | pbrw wrote: | I wonder why almost the same website didn't go viral at such | scale. Even though it was published earlier. | l00sed wrote: | I'd love if someone could point me in the direction of WHY this | Next.js setup "just works". This was a great article, and the | author described the sensation of getting traffic very well. I've | been on the other side of the coin where my apache server crashed | or 50* error'd out. It would be interesting to know more about | what makes this stack or this server architecture "just work" | under the hug of death. | dopeboy wrote: | I'm very new to it and one thing I really like about building | in it is that there is no react-router. It bakes in routing and | I've found that to be such a more pleasant experience than | chasing around how react-router has changed. | quicksnap wrote: | I've been working with Next for a couple of weeks, here's my | take: | | - Next.js aims for "pit of success" in building sites with | React that are optimized for CDNs and small builds | | - Deploying said sites to Vercel takes advantage of the CDNs, | so most of the users are getting cached data. | | So, for this site, I would assume: | | - There is no backend - All the HTML is cached and contains a | static generation of the page(s) | | - The javascript is also cached | | - Vercel CDN is fast. | | That's it! | gherkinnn wrote: | Adding to quicksnap's points: | | - Next.js makes it dead-easy to statically generate your pages | using various strategies. And static pages take few resources | to serve. [0] | | - It also gives you lots of info on bundle sizes, performance, | and provides you with the tools to manage these. | | - Vercel is optimised to serve these static pages on their CDN. | [1] And your project quite literally a single terminal command | away from being live. | | - Both are very easy to get started with and a joy to use. | | - I am in no way affiliated with Vercel. I just like their | products. | | [0] https://nextjs.org/docs/basic-features/data-fetching | | [1] https://vercel.com/docs/edge-network/overview | mromanuk wrote: | > As was pointed out in a quote tweet by the Vercel CEO, the | problem wasn't Next.js at all, but the Vesselfinder embedded map | taking a while to load (because everyone wanted to check the Ever | Given's status) | | That was an opportunity, to cache the map as an image, and switch | it later to the proper map. | DangerousPie wrote: | But is it worth the trouble for a meme site that won't be | relevant in a week? There are probably more fun things to do | with your time. | rainonmoon wrote: | He minted the site as an NFT. Dude had time. | oefrha wrote: | > These reports aren't just limited to the products you recommend | -- if someone buys anything within a 24 hour period of clicking | your link, you can see, and you get commission. | | Anyone else find this a pretty gross violation of privacy on | Amazon's part? Why should your unrelated purchases be disclosed | to affiliates just because you clicked an affiliate link for | whatever reason? Let's say the affiliate website use accounts or | know the identities of users through another channel, and track | outbound clicks. With few enough clicks, they can exactly | correlate your unrelated purchases with you, if I understand this | correctly. In fact it seems you can easily prank unsuspecting | acquaintances this way. | | To be clear, I have no problem with affiliates getting commission | on random stuff. | | Edit: I can also see why the data could be valuable to marketers. | Jorge1o1 wrote: | Heh, if you think that's bad... there's a certain popular "#1 | Money Saving Hack", coupon-clipping browser extension (wink | wink) that sees everything you buy on practically every major | e-commerce site even when you didn't use one of their coupon | codes. | | And then said browser extension, which promised to never ever | sell your data to a third party, got bought out by PayPal for 4 | billion USD. | | Really makes you think. | TeMPOraL wrote: | > _And then said browser extension, which promised to never | ever sell your data to a third party, got bought out by | PayPal for 4 billion USD._ | | I guess selling the whole company owning the data isn't | technically selling data to third parties... | skeeter2020 wrote: | Check out any privacy policy that says they will never | share or sell your data; the two boilerplate exceptions are | law enforcement and transfering ownership of the parent | entity. Two pretty big loopholes. | mustacheemperor wrote: | This led me to look up Honey's own privacy policy and I | do not see such a disclaimer regarding change of | ownership, in fact it specifically references what they | can share with PayPal. [0] | | >We know how important your personal data is to you, so | we will never sell it. We'll only share it with your | consent or in ways you'd expect (as we explain here). | That means we will share your data if needed to complete | your purchase, with businesses who help us operate Honey, | or if we are legally required to do so. | | >We may also share information in the following | cases:...with our parent company, PayPal, Inc. and | affiliates and subsidiaries it controls, but only for | purposes allowed by this Privacy Policy; | | So that sounds like commercial use of personal data is | specifically protected with regards to the new parent. | The policy does specify they can share your data in an | "aggregate or anonymized format" without any caveats, | though. | | Sure does still raise the question of what PayPal spent | $4bn on. From what I can read online, online retailers | see a lot of benefit from the way Honey incentivizes | users to complete a purchase instead of abandon the cart. | | [0]https://www.joinhoney.com/privacy | akiselev wrote: | That is the privacy policy that users agree to if they | joined post acquisition (probably because Paypal doesn't | expect to sell it at this time), which is different than | the policy that users agreed to when they joined pre- | acquisition. They may have been forced to accept the new | policy post acquisition anyway. | | I think the weasel is this nibble here: | | _> but only for purposes allowed by this Privacy | Policy;_ | | The privacy policy is between the user and Honey, not the | user and PayPal, which implies they are still legally | separate entities ("parent company"). Unless Honey has an | agreement with Paypal that it can audit and enforce - | which as a subsidiary, why would it want to - then once | PayPal has the data, its actual use of it is governed by | the privacy policy between the user and PayPal if there | is an existing relationship or ??? | | It sounds like all Honey and Paypal need to do is find a | half plausible justification from the PP for the data | transfer; once it's handed over, Paypal is basically free | to do whatever it wants. | woofcat wrote: | Uhh those seem like two really small loopholes. Buying | the whole company makes sense. What is the alternative, | the purchasing company has to accept that they'll purge | all user accounts? | | Law enforcement.. What do you want them to do? Turn down | a legal court order and say "naaa"? | TeMPOraL wrote: | > _Uhh those seem like two really small loopholes. Buying | the whole company makes sense. What is the alternative, | the purchasing company has to accept that they 'll purge | all user accounts?_ | | Why not? The alternative is to allow a business model, in | which you start a company with the sole purpose of | vacuuming up data and delivering it to highest bidder by | getting acquired. | [deleted] | joekrill wrote: | You can't match up the product with an actual user or person in | any way. | inetknght wrote: | Oh, no definitely not. Nope. There's no way that a company | can see that you've purchased Some Things within the past 24 | hours and definitely can't correlate those purchases with | receipts. Nope that's not a thing. Definitely not. No way at | all. Especially since companies aren't owned by parent | companies. That would totally be impossible. | | /s | jordansmith wrote: | Correct. As the affiliate blog you see nothing involving | receipts or personal info for purchasers. It's just a | jumble of all your referral purchases | egfx wrote: | Unrelated but on Amazon is it possible to get order | details if you have an order ID? You used to be able to | scrape email for details but now you just get the ID | itself. | oefrha wrote: | Create a web page of various recommendations, send it to a | specific friend whose household regularly makes purchases on | Amazon. Unsuspecting friend clicks on affiliate link, now you | know all things they buy in the next 24 hours. | | Works anywhere else where the audience can be identified, and | click frequency is low. | KMnO4 wrote: | I think seeing all the random items is collateral damage. It | can possibly be fixed (only show purchases in the category that | you referred?). | | As the affiliate, the insights are invaluable. Imagine you | hosted a sleep blog and directed people to a particular memory | foam pillow. If you saw they ended up purchasing a different | pillow, you could change the link to better serve your readers. | | Or if you saw that they ended up purchasing essential oils, | perhaps you'd want to write a post about using oil diffusers to | fall asleep. | | The affiliate link tracking is supposed to give you a better | picture of your audience. Usually it works, but getting 50M | views from every source on the internet is obviously a case | where there's no common "audience". | inetknght wrote: | > * Imagine you hosted a sleep blog and directed people to a | particular memory foam pillow. If you saw they ended up | purchasing a different pillow, you could change the link to | better serve your readers.* | | If I buy a memory foam pillow from company B instead of | company A then I don't want company A to know at all. If I | wanted company A to know then I would tell company A why I | didn't purchase its product. | | Maybe it _was_ that I didn 't see company A's product. Or | maybe it's because company A is a piece of garbage. Maybe | it's because company A employs deceptive practices and I | don't want to give company A my money. | jordansmith wrote: | In that example company A isn't the one who sees it or gets | money. It's the third party sleep blog who you just clicked | a link on for "top 5 memory foam pillows". Now they see | which one people buy most and can give that the favorable | rating | rideontime wrote: | Shouldn't the blog be giving the favorable rating to the | pillow they think is the best, not the one that's most | likely to sell through? | SamBam wrote: | No one doubts that it's useful for the people standing to | make money off of this. I think the question was whether it | was an invasion of the reader's privacy, who probably don't | realize that the blog owner can now track their buying | habits. | LordAtlas wrote: | Only in the aggregate. The site owner doesn't know who | purchased what. Only Amazon (obviously) knows. | | The site owner only sees that 35 people bought book X while | 24 people bought book Y. | SamBam wrote: | Anonymous data can easily become identifiable when it's | small enough, as GP was saying. | | If someone runs a tiny blog that they attempt to monetize | with affiliate links, and one of their only readers at | the moment is their mother, I don't think they'd be happy | seeing that one of their readers purchased a sex toy. | lancesells wrote: | And then what does that say about the written article? It's | just metrics driven for what is the "best". It's truly a | terrible system that's taken place over the last 20 years or | so. | vharuck wrote: | Why not ask people for this kind of stuff in an honest[1] | way? If that doesn't work well because people rarely want to | share that information, collecting _without_ asking doesn 't | seem right. | | [1] By "honest", I mean like a pop-up with a question or two | and a clear "Not now" button. Not another cookie banners or | passive collection. | artembugara wrote: | I think it's simply because you do forward someone on a | website. | | Also, imagine it's not Amazon but a much smaller website. Just | bringing a client (someone who actually paid) is already a good | deal. | | So, I believe it's a totally fair commission rule. | oefrha wrote: | I made it very clear that I have no problem with the | commission paid: | | > To be clear, I have no problem with affiliates getting | commission on random stuff. | | The problem is disclosing random purchases. You can pay a | commission without that disclosure. | artembugara wrote: | Ah damn. I somehow misread your initial message. My bad. | frakkingcylons wrote: | Regarding the Amazon affiliate marketing bit: I am surprised he | didn't make at least an order of magnitude more money from the | clicks. | | I ran a site that was popular on a niche subreddit in 2013-2014 | which had Amazon affiliate links. On the very first day when the | site was the top post, the resulting affiliate commissions were | over $500. And most of them were not for products that were | linked to on the site. The lifetime commissions earned was about | $11K from a total of maybe 100K unique visitors. The biggest | contributor to the commissions were unrelated expensive purchases | that visitors made later on Amazon. I'm curious if the affiliate | program changed in the 8 years since. | alexey2020 wrote: | So much enjoyed the reading! I like that kind of stuff - nothing | serious and lots of fun. Well done! | artembugara wrote: | Neat. Could anyone give me some ideas how else the author could | monetize this without normal ads? | | Also, what would be the gain if he did normal ads? | kevinstubbs wrote: | Hey, I run an ad tech company. Our targets for US traffic are | about $10 USD per thousand page views. This is multiples more | than what you would get from AdSense, plus we help with | strategy and integration. | | Besides that, the author did mention several things he tried | besides ad monetization. I think the most effective thing would | have been to either find an opportunistic brand that wants to | advertise here (like a maritime company or something) for like | $25 CPM+, or to quickly find somebody to sell it to if you have | those kinds of connections that trust you already. Lots of | people trying to build businesses based off of a network of | "micro sites". | tomjohnneill wrote: | Damn I wish you hadn't posted. Ah well. | kevinstubbs wrote: | LOL, interesting response. Well feel free to reach out to | me (check my profile) and let me know why. I'm very curious | :) | artembugara wrote: | I think it's because he is the creator of that website. | And he missed all that value. | soared wrote: | $10 rpm, lol what do you only accept finance and law blogs? | rcar1046 wrote: | $10 PAGE RPM is the key here people. Not a great metric to | go by. Ad impression RPM is the number to compare. I'd be | interested to know the average number of ads/page you need | to display to achieve a $10 rpm. At any rate, you can get | that on AdSense no problem with very little hassle and net | 30 payments. | kevinstubbs wrote: | Ah I wish, those would get far far higher. No this is what | we see at typical online newspapers from purely remnant | advertising (not taking into account direct sales). | redisman wrote: | I think some merchandise or some other memento would've maybe | worked? A t-shirt or a hat | tomjohnneill wrote: | So I did in the end apply to Google AdSense just to find out. | Turns out the site didn't get approved because it didn't have | enough content on it. So I think you would be hard pushed to | monetise it quickly by going down the normal display ads route. | | I didn't mention in the post, but I had a couple of random ad | offers, but they were for things that I didn't really agree | with so didn't take up any of the offers. | artembugara wrote: | Thx. | | How is it possible that it's not you again who posted this on | HN? | tomjohnneill wrote: | Ha. I came on here to post it myself this time. Turns out I | was beaten to it. | brianmorris10 wrote: | Swag. Set up some shitty designs on one of those dropshipping | sites and a storefront. Mugs, hoodies, etc. | Cthulhu_ wrote: | Yup, viral content and events are great for 'commemorative' | swag, and there's plenty of companies that offer print-on- | demand for things like that. | | One time I experienced a "trending topic" first (or | second)hand; the app we were building accidentally sent a | pair of test notifications to 2-3 million people, first the | test message, then a second saying "zodat Hajo het ook | gelooft" (so that Hajo (name) believes it too). That took the | daytime internet by storm; news articles, radio segments, | twitter trending topic, etc. | | I mainly followed the topic on Twitter, and before long there | were adverts on there selling swag related to the trending | topic. There's companies (or even bots?) scanning Twitter, | making swag-on-demand for trending topics. | iamacyborg wrote: | And sell what exactly? It's not like he owns the copyright on | the maritime map or on photographs of the ever given. | redisman wrote: | Commission some basic art about it? | [deleted] | dave_sullivan wrote: | I appreciated the breakdown of steps involved in selling an NFT. | Cool writeup. | ehsankia wrote: | It was especially funny right after admitting the hosting cost | was 70$, but he then spent 70$ x 2 to get 200$ in unusable NFT | credits. | iamacyborg wrote: | Yeah, except for entirely glossing over the environmental | aspect of that process. | lancesells wrote: | While I agree on there being environmental costs and NFTs | seemingly terribly wasteful (since it's a digital file) have | you considered the costs of what people buy in their day to | day? I would love to see what the environmental comparison of | an NBA NFT is compared to producing a souvenir basketball. My | guess would be that it's lower and more renewable but I could | be wrong. | iamacyborg wrote: | > have you considered the costs of what people buy in their | day to day? | | Yes. It's not relevant to this discussion. The author did | not _need_ to mint an NFT and there was clearly no real | demand for one. | | Creating an NBA NFT and then managing the ongoing bids will | produce orders of magnitude more CO2 than selling a | souvenir ball. | | Quartz recently published a good breakdown comparing | selling and shipping a print vs selling an NFT | https://qz.com/1987590/the-carbon-footprint-of-creating- | and-... | gjs278 wrote: | yawn. stop wasting electrons with your posts. | Sebb767 wrote: | > My guess would be that it's lower and more renewable but | I could be wrong. | | That'll really boil down on a discussion of power sources | (there were a few threads on this last week). Basically, | how much power does it use, is this power to spare, what's | the percentage of renewable energy etc.. | DangerousPie wrote: | Yeah, that was actually really interesting to me. | brabel wrote: | To me, that just showed how ridiculously cumbersome and | expensive it is to sell or buy stuff using cryptocurrencies. | ldbooth wrote: | 250k rickrolled. That is hilarious. Wish I checked the site | during that period. | devops000 wrote: | Instead of wasting time with NFT you should have contacted | Flexport for a partnership | nickjj wrote: | This reminds me of the toilet paper site from last year. | | From no traffic to 10+ million visitors and being featured on | late night talk shows. It was 6 lines of JavaScript and took 20 | minutes to build but peaked at making $5,000 a day from ads. | | I ended up chatting with its creator on how he built and hosted | it at https://runninginproduction.com/podcast/35-determine-what- | yo.... | | But since then it looks like he transferred the site to someone | else because now it's an e-commerce shop instead of a toilet | paper calculator like it once was. | camillomiller wrote: | The main takeaway for me: | | > In my day job, we use Next.js for almost everything we build. | It's a framework built on top of React that just strips out | almost all the complexity of building fairly complicated | websites. Obviously, this wasn't a complicated website, but I | went with what I'm most familiar with. | | When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail :D | | Edit to say that I think it's an amazing little wholesome project | and the author's very funny. Didn't want my comment to sound too | harsh. :) | _wldu wrote: | Going with what you know is not always bad. It is the fastest | way to get something done (if not the most efficient). And, he | did not have time to learn something new. | MetaWhirledPeas wrote: | Honest question for someone who is not a web developer: why | _not_ use Next.js? | deckard1 wrote: | if you need a static site, there are a thousand generators | out there much easier to use than React+nextjs. Some of these | are easy enough that a non-developer can use and update. | | Using code to generate static sites is not new or | particularly interesting. We have been caching PHP and Perl | sites so that they are "static" since the dawn of the web. | CDNs are really really old now. It feels like a new batch of | developers don't know that caching is a thing and "static" is | a hot buzzword. | camillomiller wrote: | A lot of developers are also so caught into framework | thinking that they seem to forget that writing html5, with | CSS and some lightweight JavaScript library if you need any | is an absolutely elegant way to build a modern static | website. It seems to me that too many web devs can't | conceive anymore that a static website can be WRITTEN | easily and fast and does NOT always have to be generated by | a generator or a framework. | BrandoElFollito wrote: | From someone who codes for pleasure: there are simpler | frameworks (my favorite is Quasar and Vue - I needed an | afternoon to learn that coming with a crude HTML/CSS/JS basic | knowledge) | herbertl wrote: | One part of me is a _huge_ proponent of learning, but the other | part of me is learning (lol) that a huge part of earning | involves figuring out what you already know or have invested | energy /time/cost into learning, and finding ways to create | value for others from it. This was a nice way of doing that, | and this posts squeezes the extra value from that experience by | sharing insights on going viral. | | In no way am I saying the only reason for learning is business | --there's plenty of intrinsic value. But all that learning has | to subsidized with something... | | From a business perspective, there's a good chance there's more | than a handful of earning opportunities right under each of our | very noses every day. The key is to find the ones that align | with our strengths, personalities, skillsets, etc... | DAE_JS_BAD wrote: | Your comment doesn't sound harsh, it sounds stupid :) | soneca wrote: | Well, in my view this was actually a very fitting nail for the | hammer he had. | camillomiller wrote: | I disagree, most of what the website does wouldn't | necessarily need all the next.js superstructure. It's a very | simple and modular page. That said, mine definitely wasn't a | strong criticism. | | I also think the process explanation was very enjoyable. | soneca wrote: | In this sense, I see Nextjs more like a Swiss Army knife | than a hammer. And the author (and the Vercel CEO tweets) | explained that he used the exact right tools of it. | | In the end, _it was_ a static page that handled an | incredible amount of traffic. | redisman wrote: | This is a news event related meme site. Of course you | should use what you have muscle memory for so you can ship | it in one day. Who cares if some other framework the author | doesn't know would have done the job | camillomiller wrote: | This comment is gold. Big news: There's intelligent life | outside frameworks. | BrandoElFollito wrote: | I am an amateur dev and since I more or less learned Vue and | the Quasar framework, every web site looks like a Vue&Quasar | nail to me. | | It works - i can pop out sites that work in a mall amount of | time. They will never be istheshipstillstuck.com-famous or | cnn.com-loaded, or never be used in some countries where | loading 10 MB of JS is a problem. | | they are used by me, on my 1000/400 Mbps connection, or by my | children on a LAN. | | So having a hammer that works-sort-of-always-but-not-optimal is | better than having a stupendous ultra-refined tool that is the | exact fit for the work - but requires 100 hours to learn and | 430 pages of docs translated by Google from Swahili to French. | camillomiller wrote: | This is the point. Why do you all think just in damn | frameworks!? There's a thing called HTML5+CSS+JS. You could | have built that static page in no time with that, that's my | surprisingly misunderstood point here. | BrandoElFollito wrote: | quasar create hello | | cd hello | | quasar dev | | - I have a page and a dev server | | After adding a few lines I have the components all in the | right place. | | quasar build | | - I have my static page | | One line changed, I have a PWA | | I will not do a PhD in development, I need to have simple | reactive apps quickly. | | Of course I could have use HTML/CSS/JS and write everything | from scratch (been there, done that). Of course they will | load 2 x faster, so I will not have to wait the 200 ms I do | now. | | Development today is so much easier. When I started 30 | years ago it was truly an adventure. Today my children are | coding simple stuff after one afternoon of showing them. | | So yay to the frameworks, modules and others things that | help people who just wish to build something fast. | | Have you ever bought furniture or do you start by taking | your axe and visiting the nearest forest? | dragonwriter wrote: | > There's a thing called HTML5+CSS+JS. You could have built | that static page | | The web platform itself is a framework that consumes static | HTML and CSS and calls into your JS. Preferring a higher- | level framework for web apps when that is available is no | different than preferring a higher level language even | though ASM is available for local apps. | F_J_H wrote: | Thank goodness for creative people who think of new and | ingenious ways to use tools differently than originally | intended. It's the heart of innovation. | cyberlab wrote: | > A single-purpose website | | The more fashionable term is Single Serving Site[0], and is a | phrase originally coined by Jason Kottke. | | You can find more of these types of sites here: | https://www.reddit.com/r/InternetIsBeautiful/ | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-serving_site | pjmorris wrote: | I first saw 'single serving friend' in Fight Club [0], do you | think the idea was lifted from there? | | [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1iQp8g9SQo | kamel3d wrote: | in 2016 I made a single serving website it's only purpose is | to copy emojis to your clipboard, it is kinda popular now it | gets 6K users a day but moste of the visits are from Russia | so it is a bit hard to monetise www.emojilo.com | StavrosK wrote: | I have needed that often, thanks for making an easy site! | iamacyborg wrote: | Windows + ; is the shortcut you want if you're on | Windows. | cyberlab wrote: | Kottke's article[0] is in 2008, after Fight Club's release in | 1999, so you may be right, he probably lifted it from Fight | Club. You can always email him to confirm! | | [0] https://kottke.org/08/02/single-serving-sites | meibo wrote: | I really don't want to sound elitist, but building something like | this with a big JS framework and immediately jumping to monetize | it?(NFTs are gross and undermine any message or intention, even | just to be "funny") | | This could have been a 20kb html page on a CDN or on GitHub. But | I don't work in web dev so maybe my mind just doesn't go to these | lengths immediately. | jrochkind1 wrote: | In the OP he explains he used next.js cause he was familiar | with it so could quickly implement it, and he made like maybe | $300 from the whole thing thing, only like $40 from the NFT the | rest from affiliate links (not enough to cover the time he | spent on it at any reasonable rate were you working for someone | else; would have been $70 less if his hosting company hadn't | given him an unexpected freebie). | | In the OP he comes off pretty well, just a guy looking to | experiment and do something fun, see what happened, try | different things. (If he had been serious about revenue | generation and prepared, I am pretty sure he could have made a | lot more money from this with that many impressions; that | wasn't his focus). | | You can experiment and do something fun irresponsibly | (trolling) or responsibly (caring about the user experience and | accuracy, not trying to rip anyone off), it sounds like he did | it pretty responsibly. (I guess the rickroll is a bit grey | area!) I also appreciate him sharing the details transparently. | Assuming his story in the OP is truthful, which I think it | probably is. | | [I think NFT's are really dumb, I think it was kind of a funny | joke to have an NFT there, and interesting to see his report- | back about the process of issuing an NFT. There aren't a lot of | people being transparent about their experience with NFTs!] | isakkeyten wrote: | This is actually a well done web app in my opinion. You can | disable javascript and the app loads just fine. JS is used as a | progressive enhancement to hydrate. Probably uses something | like NextJS in the background. The HTML with inlined critical | styles load in ~40ms on my internet. Sure it could be "better" | in terms of TTI from the JS side but at what cost? | antoinec wrote: | Looks like he wanted to experiment different things, which | becomes a lot more interesting when thousands of people are | coming to your app. And he knew it was only going to be the | case for a limited amount of time, so enjoying as much as | possible having an audience was probably the best thing to do! | srmarm wrote: | It's a bit of a time limited joke and not a business. If it was | done as a business and ad heavy it wouldn't be shared so much. | | Seems to me the best monetisation he could do is selling himself. | Even a couple hours work off the back of it would have been | beating any ad's etc. | | I had a minor web hit in the 90s, tried to do affiliate links etc | but nothing really worked but I did get a little bit of work from | it that has been indirectly the launch pad for a few side | projects. None made me rich but they've all been a step forward. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-03-31 23:00 UTC)