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Is there a particular reason why you chose not to pass the torch? Too few users at this point? Most of the torrents having no seeders? In any case, your stor
by ravenstine 4y ago
Is there a particular reason why you chose not to pass the torch? Too few users at this point? Most of the torrents having no seeders?
In any case, your story reminds me of the good ol' days of the web. Back in high school, being able to just put up a cool site and have people magically find it through Google felt like god mode. I never ran anything big like your torrent site (which I'm pretty sure I've visited), but I imagine you got a lot of satisfaction out of having thousands of users.
I miss the days when the web was this simple. Now I constantly question the time investment of creating a website because the (im)material condition has changed so much; the search algorithm is completely different and so many people use a small handful of platforms. Unless you generate eye candy and it goes viral, or it competes with major internet companies, I'm under the impression that you can just forget it.
- scarface74 4y ago> I miss the days when the web was this simple You mean before AdSense and SEO or exactly what the site’s author does for living?
- en3r0 4y agoYa, I am a part of the "problem" so to speak, though I do my best to create content that not only ranks well in a search engine, but is genuinely helpful for the reader. I suppose it was inevitable in the drive of the commercialization of everything in life?
- freedomben 4y agoJust my two cents, but IMHO SEO for useful information is itself a great good. The evil are the people who have low-value content and eclipse the higher value content through gaming.
- scarface74 4y agoThere isn’t a such thing as “SEO for great content”. The search algorithms don’t reward “great content”. The only way you win is by not playing the game. You have to find other ways to market and have an “unfair advantage”. How many times have you seen “useful content” buried by paragraphs of word salad to juice SEO?
- freedomben 4y agoI'm not sure I understand your argument. "SEO for great content" to me just means you have great content, and you Optimize it for Search Engines so people can fine it easier/higher.
- scarface74 4y agoI’m saying simply that what the algorithm cares about and what causes it to rank high is completely orthogonal to “good content”. Search for any subject where you consider yourself a subject matter expert. Are the top results what you would consider good? This is excluding first party vendor content.
- progmetaldev 4y agoDon't beat yourself up if you were doing SEO the proper way, making content that genuinely appealed to the proper audience, and/or made the content more accessible. I think there are enough people here on HN that understand proper SEO versus trying to game the system.
- ravenstine 4y agoWell, clearly not before AdSense or SEO. By simple, I meant in the sense that some kid in high school could put up a site that's not rich in JavaScript, have people find it organically, not need to worry so much about scaling or DDOS, not need to worry about GDPR, not have the expectation of accessibility, and not need to have an iOS and Android app for people to actually use it. This isn't to say that the same technology used in say 2005 can't be used today. But it's a time investment with not nearly as much of a likelihood of seeing a meaningful return.
- ipaddr 4y agoGDPR wouldn't apply unless you have business in Europe
- nonethewiser 4y agoHow much has the EU enforced it against small overseas businesses?
- BlueTemplar 4y agoMuch more relevantly, there laws are much more lax if you aren't a business.
- en3r0 4y agoGood question. I don't have any idea who I would pass it to. If you do, it could be considered! I also miss the good old days. It all felt smaller looking back, but still huge back then in a lot of ways. Being found on Google and starting a community off that alone does seem like a pipe dream now, but I think mostly because of how people interact with the web and the platforms they are siloed into by default.
- em-bee 4y agowhat was the monthly running cost? and how much did you earn from ads? (i am guessing it was not that much because it doesn't sound like loosing adsense caused a lot of pain)
- en3r0 4y agoThe VPS was like $60 a year. At the end it was like $100 a year from ads. At one point in the early 2010's there were a few $1,000 months when there was a car model released with torrent in the name!
- jandrese 4y agoLOL I can only imagine how many people discovered the world of underground file sharing because they were interested in a Pontiac.
- cornhole34 4y ago[dead]
- em-bee 4y agodamn, it must have been frustrating to realize that this rise in income was a fluke and wouldn't happen again.
- e12e 4y ago> At one point in the early 2010's there were a few $1,000 months when there was a car model released with torrent in the name! "You wouldn't download a car!"
- bbarn 4y agoThe author opens up the article saying it was a null routed server issue and he didn't have time or resources to fix it. Maybe that's a new edit from after you read it.
- Aeolun 4y agoHow does a null routed server break you site/server though? It seems it’s one “undo that!” Support request away from being revived?
- cortesoft 4y agoBack when I was in high school, you had to submit your website to Yahoo, and choose which "neighborhood" it belonged in.