6 ms·

David, could you give me a sense of your customer acquisition strategy for sleepytime? For instance, I googled "when should i wake up" and sleepytime didn't co

by smalter 16y ago

David, could you give me a sense of your customer acquisition strategy for sleepytime? For instance, I googled "when should i wake up" and sleepytime didn't come up. But I see you have a ton of facebook likes. I'm trying to build an ad-based source of passive income so i'd be very interested to hear your methods.

david_shaw 16y ago
Sure. I built Sleepyti.me as a free app, and did not expect to make money from it. As such, I am not interested in acquiring subscribers (I don't offer a service), or paying for traffic via AdWords. Startups with a product (for example WakeMate, which has received considerable HN coverage this week) have saturated this advertising space, and it's not really an area in which I'd want to throw money. In my case, the profit comes from sheer traffic. The more traffic I get, the more people will click relevant ads in the single banner AdSense unit I display after the information has been given to the user. Since my profit comes from traffic, it does not make sense to pay for traffic via AdWords in the traditional sense: the money would just go in a circle. It's repeated a lot, but the best way to drive traffic to your website is to solve a problem. Sleepyti.me is one way to solve the problem of waking up tired (a common problem, I might add), but there are obviously infinitely many problems to choose from. Once the tool/site is written, it must be tested to provide an elegant experience. Critique from other developers (some here at HN, but also over at [Proggit](http://reddit.com/r/programming) http://reddit.com/r/programming)) helped me a lot. Once the site launches, it's imperative to provide users an outlet to express their interest and show it to other people. Lucky for us, this no longer entails "enter a friend's email address here to tell them about us!" A simple Facebook like button allows the site to spread organically. Each time a user "likes" the page on Facebook, his or her friends will see the notification and have the opportunity to like it his/herself. Theoretically, this could spread through all of Facebook's ridiculous userbase, which would provide more than enough traffic. HN, Reddit, and more recently StumbleUpon have provided great outlets for traffic, and social media like Twitter and Facebook have allowed it to grow quite nicely. I'm (ambitiously) trying to launch similar sites at a rate of one project per month, given leniency for interesting bugs or project changes. Sorry if this post was a little exhaustive, but I wanted to make sure I included the necessary background information to answer your question :)
- smalter 16y ago
  Awesome, that's very helpful. Thanks, David. Can you give me a sense of how much you're profiting?
  - david_shaw 16y ago
    Sure. My most profitable day so far brought in about $30; I've had a few such days. Average is somewhere around $14/day. My goal is to earn $10/day or $300/month per site, which I think is both achievable and a nice goal. December, being my first month with a payout from Google, is on track with this goal (granted, with some residual from November): I have $344.77 in unpaid earnings that will be sent to me at the end of the month. As I briefly noted in my earlier post, I'm trying to do one of these projects per month--if my goals can hold, 300 * 12 sites is equal to a residual income of 3600 per month or $43,200/year. Lofty goals, but that's not a bad salary for residual income! I'm still very new at this, with a lot to learn, but I'd love to write up my experience in a HN post. I know a lot of people are interested in making money this way, and although I'm certainly not an expert, I'd love to lend any insight.
    - smalter 16y ago
      Thanks, David. I think an HN post would be cool. I'm probably the only one benefiting from your knowledge what with these comments buried deep in the bowels of HN. You've got a plan -- my only concern would be the upkeep of 12 sites. But who knows, one of those sites could turn out to be a home run. Thanks for writing.

by smalter 16y ago

david_shaw 16y ago

Sure. I built Sleepyti.me as a free app, and did not expect to make money from it. As such, I am not interested in acquiring subscribers (I don't offer a service), or paying for traffic via AdWords. Startups with a product (for example WakeMate, which has received considerable HN coverage this week) have saturated this advertising space, and it's not really an area in which I'd want to throw money. In my case, the profit comes from sheer traffic. The more traffic I get, the more people will click relevant ads in the single banner AdSense unit I display after the information has been given to the user. Since my profit comes from traffic, it does not make sense to pay for traffic via AdWords in the traditional sense: the money would just go in a circle. It's repeated a lot, but the best way to drive traffic to your website is to solve a problem. Sleepyti.me is one way to solve the problem of waking up tired (a common problem, I might add), but there are obviously infinitely many problems to choose from. Once the tool/site is written, it must be tested to provide an elegant experience. Critique from other developers (some here at HN, but also over at [Proggit](http://reddit.com/r/programming) http://reddit.com/r/programming)) helped me a lot. Once the site launches, it's imperative to provide users an outlet to express their interest and show it to other people. Lucky for us, this no longer entails "enter a friend's email address here to tell them about us!" A simple Facebook like button allows the site to spread organically. Each time a user "likes" the page on Facebook, his or her friends will see the notification and have the opportunity to like it his/herself. Theoretically, this could spread through all of Facebook's ridiculous userbase, which would provide more than enough traffic. HN, Reddit, and more recently StumbleUpon have provided great outlets for traffic, and social media like Twitter and Facebook have allowed it to grow quite nicely. I'm (ambitiously) trying to launch similar sites at a rate of one project per month, given leniency for interesting bugs or project changes. Sorry if this post was a little exhaustive, but I wanted to make sure I included the necessary background information to answer your question :)

smalter 16y ago
Awesome, that's very helpful. Thanks, David. Can you give me a sense of how much you're profiting?
- david_shaw 16y ago
  Sure. My most profitable day so far brought in about $30; I've had a few such days. Average is somewhere around $14/day. My goal is to earn $10/day or $300/month per site, which I think is both achievable and a nice goal. December, being my first month with a payout from Google, is on track with this goal (granted, with some residual from November): I have $344.77 in unpaid earnings that will be sent to me at the end of the month. As I briefly noted in my earlier post, I'm trying to do one of these projects per month--if my goals can hold, 300 * 12 sites is equal to a residual income of 3600 per month or $43,200/year. Lofty goals, but that's not a bad salary for residual income! I'm still very new at this, with a lot to learn, but I'd love to write up my experience in a HN post. I know a lot of people are interested in making money this way, and although I'm certainly not an expert, I'd love to lend any insight.
  - smalter 16y ago
    Thanks, David. I think an HN post would be cool. I'm probably the only one benefiting from your knowledge what with these comments buried deep in the bowels of HN. You've got a plan -- my only concern would be the upkeep of 12 sites. But who knows, one of those sites could turn out to be a home run. Thanks for writing.