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I use your site, I'm a fulltime Rails developer, and I would think all your traffic would be from Rails developers or at least the Rails-curious. You might be

I use your site, I'm a fulltime Rails developer, and I would think all your traffic would be from Rails developers or at least the Rails-curious. You might be able to get some money (I have no way of estimating how much) by just adding the same sponsors that railscasts.com has. That could be a short time investment up front for a passive income. In that model, you don't need to redesign. The design is fine.

rmoriz 16y ago
I've never done that "fund raising" thingy. I once had an offer to embed a pay per lead banner but considered the low traffic it seemed not be a good idea. It's a very specific app and probably the database is more valueable than the visitor number…
- hundredwatt 16y ago
  Roland, This may be a completely useless suggestions as I'm not sure if it's even possible, but perhaps you could port IsItRails to other open-source projects (e.g., IsItDjango). The site could then be a useful way for recognizing open-source projects/devs. As the database grows, I may start using it show non-technical people that these projects are not just fringe, non-scalable technologies. Great work! One last note, as far as fundraising, what's the worst thing that could happen if you sent an email to all the sponsors of RailsCasts asking if they'd be interested in promoting on your site?
  - rmoriz 16y ago
    As gtani pointed out that there's a opensource project that probably does this already: http://sourceforge.net/projects/blindelephant/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/blindelephant/
  - dillydally 16y ago
    Or, rather, you just enter a URL and it tells you what frameworks the app is using.
- bradleyland 16y ago
  Specificity is a blessing and a curse. For someone who is interested in specific things, like Rails developers and Rails hosting, your site is a perfect place to sponsor. Someone looking to determine if a site is running Rails is very likely to also need Rails hosting or Rails information. I'd look for a few select Rails related referral programs and integrate them. Avoid cluttering up the page. Developers understand the need to monetize traffic, so if done tastefully, advertising can be effective in this scenario. Keeping your expectations realistic is important, however. I don't think this is the kind of site that you could support yourself on.

rmoriz 16y ago

I've never done that "fund raising" thingy. I once had an offer to embed a pay per lead banner but considered the low traffic it seemed not be a good idea. It's a very specific app and probably the database is more valueable than the visitor number…

hundredwatt 16y ago
Roland, This may be a completely useless suggestions as I'm not sure if it's even possible, but perhaps you could port IsItRails to other open-source projects (e.g., IsItDjango). The site could then be a useful way for recognizing open-source projects/devs. As the database grows, I may start using it show non-technical people that these projects are not just fringe, non-scalable technologies. Great work! One last note, as far as fundraising, what's the worst thing that could happen if you sent an email to all the sponsors of RailsCasts asking if they'd be interested in promoting on your site?
- rmoriz 16y ago
  As gtani pointed out that there's a opensource project that probably does this already: http://sourceforge.net/projects/blindelephant/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/blindelephant/
- dillydally 16y ago
  Or, rather, you just enter a URL and it tells you what frameworks the app is using.
bradleyland 16y ago
Specificity is a blessing and a curse. For someone who is interested in specific things, like Rails developers and Rails hosting, your site is a perfect place to sponsor. Someone looking to determine if a site is running Rails is very likely to also need Rails hosting or Rails information. I'd look for a few select Rails related referral programs and integrate them. Avoid cluttering up the page. Developers understand the need to monetize traffic, so if done tastefully, advertising can be effective in this scenario. Keeping your expectations realistic is important, however. I don't think this is the kind of site that you could support yourself on.