13 ms·

I ran a collection of websites that I built (see bolted together) with PHP, MySQL, and nginx. Most of them were curated media sites which made income with adve

I ran a collection of websites that I built (see bolted together) with PHP, MySQL, and nginx. Most of them were curated media sites which made income with advertising revenue. A few services, most notably was a dating site I made for Mormons, which the church interestingly enough used a blind broker to buy and shut down within a year of going live. I mostly ran the websites in to the ground with my custom wannabe frameworks on $5 dollar VPS's and lost interest. 2021 I sold the remaining three income generating websites for just shy of 1mill US. I started the projects with a second person but ended up buying out their interest and running solo. I consider it success because I managed to last over a decade making on avg $400,000/year gross with that business "umbrella". Advertising and publishing changed and continues to change by leaps and bounds on a yearly schedule. A lot good a lot bad, but its the same business over the years.

b20000 4y ago
how were you able to get that type of traffic and revenue without spending serious money on ads?
schwifty1 4y ago
I'm really interested in what you did, because it sounds like what I'm trying to do! Are you able to help me with these questions? 1. How did you decide which services to start? Did you have any criteria on what types of services you did and didn't want to start? 2. Was all of the income from those services advertising? Or were you charging users directly for some? 3. After it was built, how did you market a service and attract users?
djbusby 4y ago
Lot of work to keep the ad money coming in or was that just a Google AdWords?
- jarebear6expepj 4y ago
  Ads were the easy part once I stopped trying to run the ad containers and servers myself. When I started it was long waterfall chains of terrible javascript loaders which ended at Google typically. When header bidding came out it made the advertising world orders of magnitude better for end users, ad buyers, AND publishers.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    > orders of magnitude better for end users, ad buyers, AND publishers. Well, not end users. They're getting ads. But I would assume that ad buyers and publishers have exclusive improvements. After all, it's not like the ad companies took a substantially smaller cut. It either lowers the cost to ad buyers or it increases the revenue to publishers. Since it's pretty much the same number, it doesn't seem both can be true.
    - jarebear6expepj 4y ago
      >Well, not end users. They're getting ads. I think advertising is a powerful way to support 'free'ish content and there are ways to use advertising tastefully. People who don't want to participate have options to opt out and are obviously welcome to not make server requests.
      - qup 4y ago
        I'm supposed to accurately predict whether a website will serve me ads or not, before I've ever connected to it? Right, not sure why we didn't think of that sooner.
        jarebear6expepj 4y ago
        Always wear a helmet when browsing the World Wide Web.
    - kljsclfdsklj 4y ago
      Lol what are you talking about? Any improvement in conversion rate is going to help the publisher, the network and the ad buyer. I’ll just ignore the part about what you said about end users other than to say it’s arguable.
      - jarebear6expepj 4y ago
        When I say 'end user' I guess I am talking about the sheer amount of Javascript loading and computation they no longer had to put up with jumping through waterfalls. Header bidding fixed that which meant that javascript based ads loaded in a significantly more efficient and sane way. Privacy, etc is obviously a different issue.
acegopher 4y ago
How did you sell? What was your multiple? Did you use a broker?
- jarebear6expepj 4y ago
  I was approached directly in both sales. I personally never used a broker-- just kept a lawyer and my accountant handy. The last sale was roughly 3x multiple.
patja 4y ago
is there anything preventing a continuous "rinse and repeat" cycle of creating Mormon dating sites for purchase and shutdown by the church?
- tyingq 4y ago
  Makes me wonder what other types of sites/apps the blind broker might have instructions to buy out.
- jasonm23 4y ago
  I was inspired to do the same, however, there are now at least 2 dating apps that cater specifically to Mormons. I think the time when the church thought they could buy out that market segment, has passed.
  - jarebear6expepj 4y ago
    There were other Mormon specific dating sites/apps while I started mine. I might have been the only one aggressively buying print ad space on BYU Provo campus with nice photography and taglines like "Meet Your Five Cow Wife Today On [...]" so I maybe added some visibility. And they saw my ad spends directly I would assume.
- operatingthetan 4y ago
  Heck just populate it with LLMs.
- jarebear6expepj 4y ago
  To the point, I offered them the .org of the .com they were buying, and they were not interested. I never did it, but wondered what would happen if I just... booted it up. Maybe I'll try it some day.
anyfactor 4y ago
Any tips on how to run a site on a 5 dollar vps? I built an MVP on a 5 dollar VPS. But I had to recently upgrade to a 12 dollar VPS as some of my analytics process were being stopped because of low memory. Aside from writing better code, I found out that using linux utils/app via system calls is the most effective solution as nothing I can write can ever be even remotely as performant as something like grep. I am following a similiar path to yours but my stack is a bit complicated. Python + SQLite on VPS Vue/Nuxt + Auth on Firebase The process is extremely hacky and experimental, so it might change. I am not planning to use a proper backend as the Python scripts communicates to the Firebase via its SDK. That is working for me at this moment and eliminates writing boilerplate API code.
- winrid 4y ago
  Sqlite is cool but you'll find Postgres will perform a lot better on average and not use much more resources (it only needs like 16mb of ram by default...).
  - solumunus 4y ago
    Nonsense. For read heavy content sites Sqlite will obviously perform better.
    - winrid 4y ago
      That depends on the read patterns. Sqlite doesn't even support some features that will make very simple aggregations much faster on postgres, even with the same indexes. For purely sequential reads of data from disk, sure.
  - anyfactor 4y ago
    > it only needs like 16mb of ram by default TIL. Thank you very much. I always wanted to invest more time in postgres, but I just find the Windows environment to be clunky when working with it. Like psql isn't supported in a windows environment (last time I check few months ago), and setting up the postgres environment on WSL was quite annoying as you have to figure out port forwarding. I know setting up a postgres on a local machine directly or even without docker may not be a mature decision, but that is the hacky reason, why I keep going back to sqlite, as it is the easiest solution to get started with a database.
randombits0 4y ago
> most notably was a dating site I made for Mormons, which the church interestingly enough used a blind broker to buy and shut down within a year of going live. That’s our Hitler!

b20000 4y ago

how were you able to get that type of traffic and revenue without spending serious money on ads?

schwifty1 4y ago

I'm really interested in what you did, because it sounds like what I'm trying to do! Are you able to help me with these questions? 1. How did you decide which services to start? Did you have any criteria on what types of services you did and didn't want to start? 2. Was all of the income from those services advertising? Or were you charging users directly for some? 3. After it was built, how did you market a service and attract users?

djbusby 4y ago

Lot of work to keep the ad money coming in or was that just a Google AdWords?

jarebear6expepj 4y ago
Ads were the easy part once I stopped trying to run the ad containers and servers myself. When I started it was long waterfall chains of terrible javascript loaders which ended at Google typically. When header bidding came out it made the advertising world orders of magnitude better for end users, ad buyers, AND publishers.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  > orders of magnitude better for end users, ad buyers, AND publishers. Well, not end users. They're getting ads. But I would assume that ad buyers and publishers have exclusive improvements. After all, it's not like the ad companies took a substantially smaller cut. It either lowers the cost to ad buyers or it increases the revenue to publishers. Since it's pretty much the same number, it doesn't seem both can be true.
  - jarebear6expepj 4y ago
    >Well, not end users. They're getting ads. I think advertising is a powerful way to support 'free'ish content and there are ways to use advertising tastefully. People who don't want to participate have options to opt out and are obviously welcome to not make server requests.
    - qup 4y ago
      I'm supposed to accurately predict whether a website will serve me ads or not, before I've ever connected to it? Right, not sure why we didn't think of that sooner.
      - jarebear6expepj 4y ago
        Always wear a helmet when browsing the World Wide Web.
  - kljsclfdsklj 4y ago
    Lol what are you talking about? Any improvement in conversion rate is going to help the publisher, the network and the ad buyer. I’ll just ignore the part about what you said about end users other than to say it’s arguable.
    - jarebear6expepj 4y ago
      When I say 'end user' I guess I am talking about the sheer amount of Javascript loading and computation they no longer had to put up with jumping through waterfalls. Header bidding fixed that which meant that javascript based ads loaded in a significantly more efficient and sane way. Privacy, etc is obviously a different issue.

acegopher 4y ago

How did you sell? What was your multiple? Did you use a broker?

jarebear6expepj 4y ago
I was approached directly in both sales. I personally never used a broker-- just kept a lawyer and my accountant handy. The last sale was roughly 3x multiple.

patja 4y ago

is there anything preventing a continuous "rinse and repeat" cycle of creating Mormon dating sites for purchase and shutdown by the church?

tyingq 4y ago
Makes me wonder what other types of sites/apps the blind broker might have instructions to buy out.
jasonm23 4y ago
I was inspired to do the same, however, there are now at least 2 dating apps that cater specifically to Mormons. I think the time when the church thought they could buy out that market segment, has passed.
- jarebear6expepj 4y ago
  There were other Mormon specific dating sites/apps while I started mine. I might have been the only one aggressively buying print ad space on BYU Provo campus with nice photography and taglines like "Meet Your Five Cow Wife Today On [...]" so I maybe added some visibility. And they saw my ad spends directly I would assume.
operatingthetan 4y ago
Heck just populate it with LLMs.
jarebear6expepj 4y ago
To the point, I offered them the .org of the .com they were buying, and they were not interested. I never did it, but wondered what would happen if I just... booted it up. Maybe I'll try it some day.

anyfactor 4y ago

Any tips on how to run a site on a 5 dollar vps? I built an MVP on a 5 dollar VPS. But I had to recently upgrade to a 12 dollar VPS as some of my analytics process were being stopped because of low memory. Aside from writing better code, I found out that using linux utils/app via system calls is the most effective solution as nothing I can write can ever be even remotely as performant as something like grep. I am following a similiar path to yours but my stack is a bit complicated. Python + SQLite on VPS Vue/Nuxt + Auth on Firebase The process is extremely hacky and experimental, so it might change. I am not planning to use a proper backend as the Python scripts communicates to the Firebase via its SDK. That is working for me at this moment and eliminates writing boilerplate API code.

winrid 4y ago
Sqlite is cool but you'll find Postgres will perform a lot better on average and not use much more resources (it only needs like 16mb of ram by default...).
- solumunus 4y ago
  Nonsense. For read heavy content sites Sqlite will obviously perform better.
  - winrid 4y ago
    That depends on the read patterns. Sqlite doesn't even support some features that will make very simple aggregations much faster on postgres, even with the same indexes. For purely sequential reads of data from disk, sure.
- anyfactor 4y ago
  > it only needs like 16mb of ram by default TIL. Thank you very much. I always wanted to invest more time in postgres, but I just find the Windows environment to be clunky when working with it. Like psql isn't supported in a windows environment (last time I check few months ago), and setting up the postgres environment on WSL was quite annoying as you have to figure out port forwarding. I know setting up a postgres on a local machine directly or even without docker may not be a mature decision, but that is the hacky reason, why I keep going back to sqlite, as it is the easiest solution to get started with a database.

randombits0 4y ago

> most notably was a dating site I made for Mormons, which the church interestingly enough used a blind broker to buy and shut down within a year of going live. That’s our Hitler!