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You know how many bingo activities I've ever written? SQL query Eight, out of the 1,000 or so on the site. I strongly, strongly suggest you spend one week wri

by patio11 15y ago

You know how many bingo activities I've ever written? SQL query Eight, out of the 1,000 or so on the site. I strongly, strongly suggest you spend one week writing a custom CMS which hooks into your certificate generation backend and then pay somebody $10 to $15 an hour to write boring copy about [pet care gift certificate], [massage therapy gift certificate], etc etc etc. All you need is an underemployed American recent graduate. They exist in spades and many of them are trivially reachable online. This will 10x your business.

toumhi 15y ago
Hey Patrick, thanks for the comment. I've already got a backend for a designer to create new certificates, but not for creating new articles. I had postponed doing additional work on this website because at the time it was doing very little revenue. Now that traffic is up and I tweaked the ads, it might be worth it to spend some time as you suggest.
tptacek 15y ago
As someone who had to have this explained to me several times in person before it clicked and I said "Holy Sh%t": You seriously do not understand what Patrick did with BCC until you understand where the bingo activities came from.
- patio11 15y ago
  Story in a nutshell: I wrote CMS to make pages about bingo cards, got a teacher to use CMS to create pages and attendant bingo cards, used this as bait for long tail searches. They look for very specific things, I generally have exactly what they are looking for. This is my Rumpelstiltskin machine: in goes straw, out comes gold, or at least a modestly successful business selling niche software to a few hundred thousand visitors a year. Close variations of this technique have worked for businesses with diverse interests not limited to elementary education. (Their stories are not generally mine to tell, but Thomas has shared on HN that this was a win for Matasano.) The reason this is motivational for non-toy businesses is that a one-time software investment plus minimal management overhead plus money equals scalable customer acquisition, and money to scalable customer acquisition is a very motivational formula.

by patio11 15y ago

toumhi 15y ago

Hey Patrick, thanks for the comment. I've already got a backend for a designer to create new certificates, but not for creating new articles. I had postponed doing additional work on this website because at the time it was doing very little revenue. Now that traffic is up and I tweaked the ads, it might be worth it to spend some time as you suggest.

tptacek 15y ago

As someone who had to have this explained to me several times in person before it clicked and I said "Holy Sh%t": You seriously do not understand what Patrick did with BCC until you understand where the bingo activities came from.

patio11 15y ago
Story in a nutshell: I wrote CMS to make pages about bingo cards, got a teacher to use CMS to create pages and attendant bingo cards, used this as bait for long tail searches. They look for very specific things, I generally have exactly what they are looking for. This is my Rumpelstiltskin machine: in goes straw, out comes gold, or at least a modestly successful business selling niche software to a few hundred thousand visitors a year. Close variations of this technique have worked for businesses with diverse interests not limited to elementary education. (Their stories are not generally mine to tell, but Thomas has shared on HN that this was a win for Matasano.) The reason this is motivational for non-toy businesses is that a one-time software investment plus minimal management overhead plus money equals scalable customer acquisition, and money to scalable customer acquisition is a very motivational formula.