10 ms·

Ask HN: My side project is ramen-profitable. What do I do now?

• edent 11y ago
  My personal opinion... * It's pretty bare bones at the moment. Work on making it visually appealing, letting people know what the site does, language detection, mobile friendly etc. * Concentrate on your home market - for now. Do coffee-shop testing with new users to understand how they expect the site to work. * Expand into other Amazon countries. You have .com - so why not .co.uk, .it, etc? Should be a simple way to test the markets. * Perhaps look at recommend accessories / peripherals / laptops. Might be a useful way to drive revenue upwards. * Talk to an accountant to make sure you're paying the right amount of tax :-) Best of luck.
  • onli 11y ago
    Thanks for the remarks! > Expand into other Amazon countries. You have .com - so why not .co.uk, .it, etc? Should be a simple way to test the markets. I'll give the other points more time to think through before reacting, but this got repeated below – I don't want to seem lazy, but it is actually not that easy. Amazon does not share its products api between countries. Every new country means putting work in a totally new product database, with its own serials and prices, meaning other products should be picked. Still something that can be done, but something that amounts in expanding to a new country.
    • liotier 11y ago
      And to second another comment, the more countries you have to support, the more expensive any modifications becomes... Right now you have the luxury of a malleable project that you can evolve fast - which is a necessary thing because you don't yet quite know where you are going. So defer internationalization for when you have validated the business model and technical architecture on the current couple of countries.
    • guruz 11y ago
      Might not help you directly, but I've implemented a GeoIP-based redirector for the different Amazon countries -> http://a-fwd.com http://a-fwd.com In general I agree, it's a bit annoying that the same product might have different ASINs in different Amazon countries. Or even a different ASIN in the same Amazon :) Otherwise (in addition to what others mentioned): * You should also show the price split in VAT and price (for business users). * Change the display to make it more "intuitive" by showing the casing in the middle and the components around it? * If I pick 300 EUR I get a casing "Sharkoon VS4-V" without link?
      • onli 11y ago
        Thanks. Yes, your GeoIP based redirector does not help me directly, as the problem is less that the ASIN is different and more that the prices vary. A 800€ pc won't have the same components in the US as in Germany. > If I pick 300 EUR I get a casing "Sharkoon VS4-V" without link? That's the maintenance work I mentioned, sometimes amazon's api search just stops finding stuff. I fixed this one, thanks for the hint.
        • purerandomness 11y ago
          Have you tried to outsource this kind of work through crowdworking sites like Amazon's Mechanical Turk, or Fiverr.com?
          • onli 11y ago
            No. Didn't even think of that option. The last time I wanted to automate via a service like that I found it to be quite difficult, because for example Mechanical Turk was blocked for european users. And there are pretty much always decisions to be made that are not easy to outsource. Still, the idea to consider it is good, thank you.
  • corecoder 11y ago
    I second that: as long as you have ~0% of your own home market, going to other markets will probably cost more than trying to grow on the one you are already in.
  • onli 11y ago
    Home-market, accessories, taxes – I'll do that. Thanks a lot. Visually appealing proved to be very difficult. This is already many iterations in. I'd need to look at the whole UI with fresh eyes.
• ape-box 11y ago
  I would go with adding a bit of diversification: from simple peripherals suggestions (keyboards with different switches, mouses, headphones, etc) to a more complex configurator based on games genre, and an "upgrade" picker based on your current setup ... this way you keep your current maintenance efforts but amplify you marketable value.
  • onli 11y ago
    Sounds good to me. Thanks. I'll have to see how I can add this into to Ui without just making it bigger and bigger.
• aavotins 11y ago
  First of all - kudos for starting a pet project that's actually ramen profitable! At least it's not collecting dust and slowly syphoning out your money, which is the case with many "toys" that we all love to create. I also think that you should make the site more visually appealing, it looks like what it is - a tool, but what you need is to create a product. Give users some eye candy and maybe decide what's best for them if they can't do it themselves. They came for advice after all, right?
  • onli 11y ago
    I note the suggestion to get a nicer design, and that this gets repeated. You should've seen it in the beginning ;) > They came for advice after all, right? Exactly. And that's the idea of the site, the recommendation for a giving budget is that advice. You'd expand on that?
• bflesch 11y ago
  Some suggestions for you: - Style it up a bit using twitter bootstrap. The main button looks awkward. - Found a small company (UG) with 500EUR capital to hold rights on the site if you want to further professionalize this project. - Add caching for search queries (it took ~ 10sec to calculate 800€ and 100€ which might be some of the most requested price points) - Add large buttons at the top which show the most sensible price points - As the others have said, this is easily expandible to other european countries. Add a French / Italian / Swedish version. - Add some social stuff so people can comment etc - Take some inspiration from PC parts picker If you want to talk feel free to shoot me an email.
  • cruppstahl 11y ago
    "Found a small company (UG) with 500EUR capital to hold rights on the site if you want to further professionalize this project." Can you elaborate a bit? I have the same problem as the original poster. But founding a company requires IHK membership fees and tax consultant fees. From what I hear this amounts to ~ 1500 €/year.
    • jakobegger 11y ago
      I'd recommend against that. You'll probably be fine as a sole proprietor (Einzelunternehmen). A separate legal entity (UG / GmbH / Limited / whatever) is mainly useful for three things: - avoiding personal liability - shared ownership - tax optimisation For a website like this, there is practically no liability to worry about. And if you don't have a partner, you don't need to worry about shared ownership. For tax purposes, the overhead of a legal entity only pays off if you already have a lot of revenue (in Austria, more than 200k€ per year)
      • cruppstahl 11y ago
        Agree for a website. I'm selling software licenses, avoiding personal liability would be interesting (if it was affordable).
        • 11y ago
• amelius 11y ago
  I'm wondering how your site can come up with good deals when the cheapest combinations provided by the hardware stores are often fixed. I.e., the stores determine the discount on combinations, so picking your own combinations will only make everything more expensive (?) (Yes, combinations often include software, but certainly not always).
  • onli 11y ago
    Thankfully those deals are a US-specific things. They exist in germany but are very rare. In 99% of all cases to ignore that does not harm the result. For the US, pcpartpicker uses them, which means they are either coding that manually (they have a staff of several people) or are using API capabilities to get that info.
• jakobegger 11y ago
  Here's my advise: * Don't worry too much about crazy contracts / terms of service. If you run a business you will end up signing all kinds of ridiculous contracts. If you are worried about the consequences, get a normal job instead. * Don't expand to other markets before you've managed to crack one market. Right now you can experiment easily with the site, if you expand to many countries making changes will get a lot harder. * Who are your customers? Who is using your website? This is the most important question, and further development of your website should start from here. Are you targeting hard core gamers who want to get the highest frame rate for a budget? Or are you targeting parents who want to find out how much they have to spend on a PC that runs Minecraft for their kids? * What are you doing to promote your website? How do people find out about your website? I see you have this bbcode widget, so I assume you are hoping that forum users use your site to share configurations. Are you doing anything so people can share configurations on Facebook / WhatsApp / whatever people use to communicate today?
  • onli 11y ago
    Thank you for your advice. I understand that I should take them and think further about them, that the questions are not necessarily for the here and now. I'll anyway give you my initial thoughts. * I really disagree on the contract thing. That attitude can't work in my country, and always needs a big personal finance and security net. * To not expand seems to be the consensus, and I'm convinced * The people I can reach (via forums and reddit) are mainly gamers. It is also where the idea of the site is coming from: to get the best possible performance, which for an office or minecraft pc is not really important. My impression so far is that the people who build their custom PCs are gamers, with some workstation for programmers (that often want to game on them as well) in the mix. * You assume correctly. Though currently it is the markdown code used on reddit that is mainly used (to a big part by myself when going to the user asking there for builds). In the share widget there are also buttons for facebook, twitter and g+ that are supposed to enable sharing configurations, from my stats facebook and twitter are used a tiny little bit. A big problem with going into forums and having the site used there: Every forum has their own standards of what is a good PC (and some are ridiculous faithful to their ways), and the big german forums have a cooperation with geizhals, a price search engine. I think that the last point is the core point, to improve the answer "how do people find the site".
• nitrogen 11y ago
  From experience: do not under any circumstances start living on ramen.
  • onli 11y ago
    Hey, a joke on HN ;) Of course not. It's a nod to the discussion in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11615639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11615639, from their reference to the idea to get a startup to ramen-profatibility fast I got the idea to ask here.
• hutzlibu 11y ago
  I also would improve your site, first, before expanding. Also, if I search for a PC at 460 € ... I get a CPU recommendation for 120,90 € But when I inrease the limit to 660, I get a worse CPU for EUR 58,32 ... but with a much better GPU. But I think the great GPU won't be of much use with that slow CPU ..
  • onli 11y ago
    Thanks. Working further on the core of the site is a valid option. To balance those properly, that's the hard problem. The first was a FX-8320E with a R7 370, the second a Pentium G4400 with a GTX 970. The first is okay in my eyes. The second would be better with an i3-6100 instead of the Pentium.
    • ivl 11y ago
      Just as a suggestions for the balance there, why not set a price ratio between the two? It would be a little odd to have a CPU that's 20% the cost of the GPU, so why not target something above that point?
      • onli 11y ago
        It currently has a benchmark ratio. That works well in many cases, but to add a price ratio could really help. I'll play with that and look whether it works. Thanks!
      • onli 11y ago
        I just implemented that, as an additional small factor to find the recommendation. It seems to work very well. Thanks!
        • ivl 10y ago
          Awesome! Glad to hear it helped.
• sokoloff 11y ago
  I wouldn't sweat the Newegg terms if you're playing the game "straight". Those terms are for things like browser-hijackers and other underhanded means of generating false affiliate referrals. (Yes, it's great that you're reading the full terms of agreements. Too many people don't. But at the same time, you can't let ambiguous worst-case what-ifs paralyze you in business, or you'll never get anywhere. You can't steal second base while keeping your foot safely on first and all that.)
  • onli 11y ago
    It's too easy to be in non-compliance with those terms by accident. I absolutely intend to use them in a honest way, but just think of terms like having prices up to date, which can collide with caching, and easy stuff like that. Or a wrong formulated notice in the impressum that is than counted as wrong representation. I'm not willing to risk my personal existence by accepting draconian terms that would be illegal in europe. But I'll reconsider if I manage to get a proper barrier between the finances of the site and my own.
    • beachstartup 11y ago
      first of all, to echo the gp, companies don't go after their own biz dev partners unless something has seriously gone wrong, most likely some kind of theft. second, call them up and talk to someone. it's called 'business development'. you can negotiate anything. just say this part really scares you, and that you want to edit it, and that it may even be illegal in europe. business protip: send them a european-legal version of their own contract that you feel comfortable signing. they might just say "sure, let's use this." -- it really can be that simple. you might find out they're planning an expansion into europe and you're their first partner. and yes, form a limited liability company or a corporation, don't put your own money at risk. there's way, way scarier things in the world than newegg's marketing department, i assure you.
  • oneloop 11y ago
    Newegg is on Commission Junction, you don't have to put anything up front. Initiate a business relationship through there and in a few months ask to get off CJ and propose your own terms.
• fdghnbkxzf 11y ago
  I'd like to see a "I don't play computer games" button, as I need a beefy CPU, but have no need for anything faster than a R7 250. Good luck with your project!
  • onli 11y ago
    Thanks! My current response for that feature request (you are not alone with that wish) is to customise a recommendation with the arrow buttons at the side of each component box. It's mainly an UI problem – I don't see how to do it properly.
    • guda 11y ago
      You could have the user to make a choice at start with buttons like office and gaming.
      • onli 11y ago
        You mean a bit like https://choosemypc.net/ https://choosemypc.net/ does? I'll be frank, I don't see it fitting in. For one, every complication of the UI of the site makes it more difficult to use (and I'm a big fan of keeping it as simple as possible). Second, I'm not sure you can reliably recommend a good office PC. Does that mean only going with an integrated gpu? Or do you even just need a slow cpu? A SSD certainly is not needed, is it, and what about a big HDD? My impression is that while the initial reflex is to say yes to all of the above, in many cases at least one of the responses is no. When there is a lots of space needed, or when browsing needs a real fast processor (it indeed does for many pages and current browsers), or the R7 250 requested before (which is still a lot more than the integrated graphics of an haswell i3), and so on. I still appreciate the suggestion, and if I see a way to built it in I'll certainly do it.
        • jsmith0295 11y ago
          It might be nice to just have sliders to add a 'weight' to different components, maybe hidden behind an 'advanced' option .
• akavel 11y ago
  I see this is now getting off the front page without input from some of the most notorious HNers, but some of them have explicitly stated they like to be contacted by email and to give free advice. I'd suggest you try emailing some of them. Unfortunately I don't remember now who else advertised as such, but I'm certain at least about patio11: http://www.kalzumeus.com/standing-invitation/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/standing-invitation/
  • onli 11y ago
    I think that's great advice. Thanks. I have enough to think about and act upon for a day (that thread here worked so much better than I hoped!), but that is still a good thing to do.
• greenspot 11y ago
  Great site and even better idea but looking at your public traffic data I am wondering what you mean by 'ramen-profitable', https://www.similarweb.com/website/pc-kombo.de https://www.similarweb.com/website/pc-kombo.de However, let's not look into how much you make now but instead how much growth potential this idea has: + One opportunity is to further internationalize the product with more languages and vendors to other countries. Then you should be able to 5x to 10x your revs (but quite some work is involved) I rather see some limitations in the chosen business model (if we talk about making this thing really huge): - Strong dependency to Google and hard to buy traffic since the CAC will be always higher than the affiliate revs - Most affiliate merchants fool you on the affiliate commission (except Amazon and ebay), so prepare for tough negotiations without any possibility to prove generated sales - Low LTV and customer loyalty if any because people configure a PC once every one or two years and in that time they might forget about your site and not using it the next time - In general the market is limited, 10-20yrs ago everybody did configure a desktop/tower, now with all the notebooks, ultrabooks and iPad the demand is way smaller - Content generation and maintenance should be small but it's still there (costs for one content manager should be considered) - And do not forget: this browsing and choosing of the best components is an important piece when building a PC yourself, it's fun, don't know if people would give this away => I would keep it as a pet project which brings some revenue but look for new business models where you can adapt what you learned in this process and improve on mentioned points
  • onli 11y ago
    I see no real traffic data on that page ;) But yes, this is very far from a high traffic website, and the main profit comes from using it as a tool to build recommendations for user asking for them on other sites, like reddit. I agree with all your limitations, even the potential problem with affiliate programs – while the one I work with is generally trustworthy, I indeed observed sales that they never registered. I learned a lot from the site and it was worth it even if that were the end now, lessons I'd take to the next project, but I feel there is still a lot that can be done without going all in and counting on it getting huge.
    • noauth 11y ago
• bert2002 11y ago
  What would be nice is when you ramp up one component that it reduces another one to stay in the price range.
  • onli 11y ago
    I played with that in the beginning, it does not feel good in practice. You have not enough control what he should reduce next.
• za_creature 11y ago
  Hello brother from another mother. I did a similar thing for my bachelor thesis ( source available at https://github.com/za-creature/puls https://github.com/za-creature/puls ). Mind going into the details of how you designed yours? Mine is extracting equations from benchmarks of the form ax = b where a and b are components, picking a random "unit" component and fixing it to 1, and then solving the overdetermined system in a least-squares sense. I designed it that way to take all equations into account (e.g. multiple benchmarks can and should include the same components with a potential different "factor") and to handle like a graph (as long as there's a benchmark-path between any two components, they are directly comparable) Edit: to ensure the graph is always connected, an additional low-weight "metadata" benchmark is generated from the technical specs (e.g. amount of ram, cpu speed) and the total score of a computer is calculated as the weighted sum of all components, using target-specific weight factors (e.g. a gaming pc will want a fast cpu / gpu whereas a multimedia pc will want more capacity)
  • onli 11y ago
    Sure. I can give you a high level overview, but I fear that will be disappointing for you. It is not solving equations directly, thinking in graphs or doing anything fancy, but iteratively goes through the options and compares them. O(n²) and all. First the benchmarks. I also added had to add a factor, because a benchmark where the fastest processor (in the following, all that is said about processors also counts for gpus) is not the fastest processor the recommender knows (that happens often, as not many benchmarks include Intels 5960X) would otherwise move its processors too much to the top. That happens by using the one benchmark that contains all existing processors as a reference point in that case. There is still the problem that many benchmarks are sparse, to counteract that there is logic in there to prevent illogical results (stuff like: assert that the 4690 is faster than the 4590). The benchmarks then compute a normalized result from 0 to 10. When a recommendation is requested, he first picks the peripherals based on the budget. With the remaining money he then goes through all gpus and mainboard and picks the best possible combinations, with a factor favoring the gpu, and minimizing the difference between them. The value in doing it like that is how the results are tuneable by code, and that it is possible to pretty exactly say which configurations to build for which price point.
• kodfodrasz 11y ago
  Really nice! There are many good suggestions in the comments. I'd actually put out some roadmap to the site, and suggest that it is "beta" and is under development, and maybe create an uservoice page and link that from the roadmap, noting that new ideas are welcome, and can be voted on. People like to feel involved in something they like. If they stayed for this long, they may like this, and you may get a hang of what people are missing from the site. (but don't implement every suggestion, just read them)
• tedmiston 11y ago
  First off, this is a neat project. I don't buy hardware often, but I think your idea creates value here (and could be applied to other industries too). I think sharing some of your metrics with us should influence the advice. There is a lot of advice in this thread, but I don't know that it's good advice. - How long are your users staying on the site for a typical session? - How many (monthly) actively users do you have? Do users return or really just come once? - Where do your users come from? (traffic source) - What are the typical price ranges your users search for? - What kind of parts bring in the most revenue? - etc. Essentially I think you should put together the answers to the most common questions an investor would ask for a seed stage pitch deck.
• gramakri 11y ago
  I don't have specific advice but if you are considering incorporating as in germany, I am happy to talk with you about our experience. We recently incorporated as a UG (cloudron.io). Feel free to send me an email!
  • onli 11y ago
    Thank you. Ill try to find out whether UG is the right thing to do, or whether I should for example take a french alternative. If I try to go with the UG I'll ask if anything comes up. Thanks for the offer!
• asimuvPR 11y ago
  What are your plans for the next five years? Do you: - Want to keep this as a side-project and hope to make enough to pay the rent? - Want to turn it into something bigger that will bring in an equal amount of money as your job? - Want to turn it into a business that is your sole income source? - Want to turn it into a business and then keep a part-time job? The answer to this question will point you in the right direction. Think in terms of five years and work back from there.
• tmaly 11y ago
  I would improve the look a little more and try to find ways to get more visitors to the site. Perhaps making the social buttons a little bit more prominent? I was going to suggest using Google tag manager if you were using Google analytics to get an idea of how well visitors are performing certain goals, but I see you are using piwik. I am not sure if piwik has these same types of features. I do not speak German, but I did like I could switch to English. However, I noticed the hover menus still display in German.
• WA 11y ago
  Here's what I'd do: - I'd stay in the German market, because adding additional providers and keeping up with their terms, API etc. sounds pretty annoying. - Make it more accessible through small design improvements - Try to find new audiences who'd benefit from this tool. Say right now, it's gamers. But what about bitcoin miners maybe? Or small businesses that need a calculator like that? The next step is to find where those audiences are and tap into these traffic sources. - Show your tool to "influencers" (meaning: people with a small audience of 100 or more). Maybe gamers on Twitch, in hardware forums, games magazine forums, in Steam guides (or write a Steam guide) - Maybe write more blog posts. Could even be semi-automatically. Say: Picks of the month under 100€ / under 500€ etc. Try to distribute your blog posts (see points above) - Keep a sane mindset. Enjoy the fruits of your labor, but only do the stuff that you enjoy doing. No point in wasting time with integration some US service, if you hate that idea. - Use it to position yourself in a specific way. Maybe it's good for your resume (creator of the popular tool pc-kombo.de + proof of popularity -> shows you know how to execute and "finish" side projects and think about customer outcomes).
• bitJericho 11y ago
  You could use amazon associates to sell parts. Anybody who's anybody in America uses Amazon.
• tamersalama 11y ago
  Also worth investigation the Intellectual Property rights of your work. I remember that some universities own the right to work produced by their PhD candidates, be it on or off premises.
• eps 11y ago
  What you have a little more than a proof of concept and it's a long way to being able to stack up to established sites like https://pcpartpicker.com https://pcpartpicker.com. If you do something that they don't, then either they may just copy the idea or they might've already done and discarded it. That is, you must understand your competitive edge and what it would cost to obtain and maintain it. And if you don't have anything unique to offer, then you must know how it is that you are planning to grow, because once you think it through there's a good chance it either won't be viable, interesting or both.
• aharonovich 11y ago
  I'm an affiliate marketer. I would recommend that you either partner with an expert, or do the following yourself (that's what I would do if I was hired to monetize you) 1. Germany is a lean poc. You made your point. Move on to the real market- u.s. 2. Hire a cheap designer from fiverr/similar service. 3. Apply to all major related affiliate programs (eg amazon, cj etc) 4. Start making money. 5. Use profits to: 5.1 improve design 5.2 improve conversion 5.3 improve user value using a/b testing with different programs. 5.4 retarget your visitors with all said programs. If you wish to speak to me further about this I'm at aharonovich@gmail Best of luck
• yompers888 11y ago
  As a small thing, the site returns a server error if you enter >=$1350. It may be that there are very few people searching in that range, and you're not really worried about it. If it were me, I'd link to your most expensive build (the one for $1350) and then give a small message suggesting where extra money can be spend (SLI, crazy case, more HDD, RAM disk, etc.) Edit: Now that I see the 'improve' and 'cheaper' buttons, and that they let you exceed $1340 if you manually 'improve' components, I'd be more concerned about the server error. Also, to make the 'improve' and 'cheaper' buttons more obvious, I'd put a prominent banner right above the build you return, where you point that function out to the user.
  • onli 11y ago
    That's a bug. I have a limit at 4000€, the german site is working fine. I wonder what is breaking there… thanks for reporting it :)
• 3eto 11y ago
  Hey dude, nice project, congrats. ended up messing about quickly with it, probably not the direction you want to take it, but have a look anyways. best of luck. http://imgur.com/vEI6OED http://imgur.com/vEI6OED
  • onli 11y ago
    Thanks man :) It's not the visual style I want to have, but I like the idea for the modified structure
    • 3eto 11y ago
      cool, it's fun to play with the arrows, might be something in there...this one is a bit convoluted but gives you another idea. http://imgur.com/O2JnMUH http://imgur.com/O2JnMUH
• alixaxel 11y ago
  Do you know about https://pangoly.com/en/ https://pangoly.com/en/?
  • onli 11y ago
    No, I did not know that site. Thanks!