8 ms·

Side Project: 1 Month, $10,000

• dglassan 15y ago
  Good read, congrats and thanks for sharing! Did you guys come up with all of those resume designs yourself? Or did you have any outside help?
  • dcaldwell 15y ago
    Emory, my cofounder, designed the website and a few of the resumes. We contracted with some really talented designers regionally and around the country for the rest of the resumes. We didn't want to have the same look and feel for all of them so we plan to continue to use a variety of great designers.
    • toumhi 15y ago
      How did you go about finding these designers? I've had some success finding correct designers on odesk, but it can be quite hard and time-consuming to find a good fit (and it really depends on your budget, in your case you can afford to hire expensive top-notch designers I guess).
• wheelerwj 15y ago
  hey, congrats. That's like the perfect step by step for a launch. Good Luck.
• andre 15y ago
  Are you producing the resumes manually? or do you have software that handles it?
  • vaksel 15y ago
    i'd say manually, since part of their job is to put the resumes together.
    • toyg 15y ago
      So it's basically just a specialized design agency.
  • dcaldwell 15y ago
    We have graphic artists that custom typeset the resumes manually. There are 2 revision rounds included in each purchase (additional revisions/edits/versions can be purchased) so there's back and forth with our artists.
    • underwater 15y ago
      You should mention his on your homepage. I assumed that the $99 got me a fill-in-the-blank Word template. Having a designer do the heavy lifting and polish sounds much more appealing. You could also easily upsell to editing and review too.
• MitziMoto 15y ago
  Love the idea, and your products look amazing. I've definitely got the site bookmarked if (when?) I ever need to hit the job market again. My only concern with these types of resumes is that I've heard stuff like this can't be read by automated resume parsers used by some companies. I don't know how true that really is, does anyone know?
  • toyg 15y ago
    Do you really want to work for a company that uses automated resume parsers? I would understand if they asked for one of the various specialized XML dialects out there (HR-XML, XMLResume etc), but in my (limited) experience, nobody does.
  • dcaldwell 15y ago
    That's certainly been brought up to us before. We've run our resumes through parsing software and they've actually performed well. We don't advertise that because we haven't run every resume through every parser, so we can't say that they perform as well as Text files. Our advice for folks who are submitting to places where resume parsing software may be used is that they have a text version of their resume on hand as well and then use the Loft Resume for interviews and emails. Most statistics show that 70% of jobs are found through personal networking, while 30% are found through career boards (like Monster.com.) We feel like we fit well with those 70%. However, even within the 30% of jobs that are found through career boards, most of those end in an email and an interview. We think a Loft Resume is a great way to stand out when job candidates do land that interview.
• davmar 15y ago
  cool idea. and the layouts are gorgeous! good luck!
• Ew7Yb0zx33GC9JJ 15y ago
  Great idea. Glad it's working out. Best of luck!
• unoti 15y ago
  Those are the most beautiful and amazing resume layouts I've ever seen. You have yourself a serious winner here!
  • bemmu 15y ago
    The site design itself is really beautiful too. Loft Resumes isn't the only case where I've heard projects getting a lot of useful traffic from CSS galleries. While in my case (Candy Japan) I'm not sure if the possible improvement in conversions would justify spending money on the design, I wonder if the side benefit of getting listed in CSS galleries would make it worth it.
    • dcaldwell 15y ago
      We actually haven't gotten many orders directly from the CSS galleries. While some designers do order our resumes, they aren't our primary target market (many of them will design their own.) From our standpoint, it helps out with getting some solid back links for SEO purposes in the beginning and also helps from a referral standpoint. We also just like seeing and spreading great design. We're kind of passionate about that. Some designers will send the link to their non-designer friends because they don't feel like doing it pro-bono for their friend and the money their friend can pay just isn't worth it to create something from scratch. However, if you have a product or service whose direct customer is designers, then you might be able to get some conversions from the CSS galleries. Your's could be this case.
• adamio 15y ago
  Any feedback from users on how effective these are?
  • dcaldwell 15y ago
    We just launched about a month ago and have been doing our best to keep up with orders so haven't had time to do proper surveys. That's certainly something that we want to do in the near future. I think it would really help from a marketing perspective - having some great success stories. I actually got the idea for the business because a friend of mine hired a graphic artist to design his resume and he ended up getting a ton of call and interest - many of them saying that they were impressed with his designed resume.
• joeld42 15y ago
  Hey just a free idea if anyone want to build it, I think a web app that generated stylish resumes automatically from your LinkedIn profile would be great. It could make watermarked ones for free preview and then charge you a few bucks if you wanted to download a real one. I can't tell you how many times I've heard "Well, my resume's a bit out of date, but here's my linkedin.." Also, if you are LinkedIn, you could do this.
  • GuiA 15y ago
    >Also, if you are LinkedIn, you could do this. I think they already do?
    • zschallz 15y ago
      Not stylish ones. You can generate a PDF resume off of your linked in profile, but really it's not very good.
  • ryanglasgow 15y ago
    I had this exact same idea few months ago but LinkedIn already has a nice resume generator: http://resume.linkedinlabs.com http://resume.linkedinlabs.com
    • readme 15y ago
      If I had a quarter for every time I had an idea that was already done...
      • jh3 15y ago
        You, me, and everyone else on HN would be a millionaire.
      • sctechie 15y ago
        Just because someone has an idea before you doesn't mean your idea is not worth pursuing. Execution is sometimes more important than being big or first.
• davidwparker 15y ago
  Congrats! I think your designs are beautiful, and you're definitely fulfilling a need. I'll be sending a link to those who I know are looking for a job.
• dominikb 15y ago
  Make it automated and mobile: build a beautiful CV from an iPhone app, pay via in-app purchase and get 5 physical printouts delivered (also PDF in email and HTML version hosted for sharing). Your sales will jump from $10,000 to $100,000.
  • peter_l_downs 15y ago
    Why mobile? I'd much rather edit my résumé on a computer with a full keyboard.
    • dominikb 15y ago
      1. You're a geek, you prefer computers. Random people who need help with CVs don't see it that way. They take whatever they find. 2. They find the app because it's cool to try and use. Websites are boring and obstruct. Apps generate huge traction way faster. The in-app payments are also easier for users, no credit card forms. 3. Smartphones outsell computers by 20% every day. 4. Once you find a way to make the interface great on a phone, you can deliver to tablets easily. Build future now. Change the pain to fun.
      • ErrantX 15y ago
        I think a CV is something you have more investment in; I don't think as many people would be searching on their phones for an app... especially as writing a CV generally happens on a PC. You're more likely to be sitting in front of a word processor bleakly wondering how to prep it up - and go do some Googling for CV tips...
        • dominikb 15y ago
          What's more likely - that you go to a resume builder website when your mate recommends, or download an app? What would you recommend - a cool app, or a website? Apps are physical and cool. CVs should be fun to do. That's the future. Assuming that the desktop is a primary device for people in 2012 is just wrong. Also, CVs don't need to contain huge amounts of text; better keep it simple.
• LiveTheDream 15y ago
  The templates look great, congrats on the success. How did you arrive at the $99 price point? Also: the submission title implies the project earned $10k in a month, but I didn't see that in the blog post itself. Where did that number come from? Is it accurate?
  • dcaldwell 15y ago
    Yes, we actually did better than that. I had tweeted about that so that's where the number came from.
• acabal 15y ago
  Congratulations, great design and execution. I'd be really interested to see how you phrased the emails you sent out to the bloggers to get them to write about you, and what your success rate was.
  • dcaldwell 15y ago
    I'm thinking about doing another blog post about this specifically - how I research and contact bloggers.
    • spung 15y ago
      Please do, this would be very helpful for myself and I'm sure others as well!
      • poopooface 15y ago
        Yes. This.
• justauser 15y ago
  Congratulations on the launch and the beautiful work you're producing. I'd love to hear your feedback on the very popular discussion from a few days ago here (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3804134 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3804134) on Raganwald's blog, "I don't hire unlucky people" (http://raganwald.posterous.com/i-dont-hire-unlucky-people http://raganwald.posterous.com/i-dont-hire-unlucky-people) . Specifically, I'm curious as to how much you as the creator of this service think making a resume standout really helps an applicant compared to a bland resume from a measurably more qualified candidate? Thanks! A snippet from the blog... --- “First, I stopped caring so much about little things like how 'professionally' a resume was formatted or whether the cover email had spelling mistakes. I realized that throwing people away because of a spelling mistakes was really another way of discarding half the resumés because you don’t want to work with unlucky people.” “Wait,” said Oscar, “but surely all things being equal, the person who takes the time to get the email right is better than the person who doesn’t?” “Sure,” agreed Ernestine, “But all other things aren’t equal. What if the email with the spelling mistake came from someone who’s really busy because they’re talented and have a lot to do in their current position?” ---
  • dcaldwell 15y ago
    I read that post on Raganwald's blog the other day. I think there's a difference in having a "professional" resume format in standard Word document black and white and having a resume that's been designed by an artist. My guess is that in that story, Ernestine would at least give a Loft Resume a good look - sometimes that little bit is enough - you've stood out and gotten noticed. That can be half the battle if an employer is looking through hundreds of resumes.
• ErrantX 15y ago
  They look nice. In my experience clean/light CV's are by far the best for almost every job - particularly engineering jobs. The exception being designers. What sort of CV's are you seeing come in? I know quite a few HR types who will find a snazzy looking CV and instantly demote it, on the basis that the sizzle is probably hiding some inadequacy (this is not necessarily a bad marker in my experience). It would be interesting to see if the investment in this pays off for the candidate - whether the really high quality of the design flips it over that danger marker.
  • dcaldwell 15y ago
    We've been surprised at the variety of professions coming in. There haven't been any real trends yet - we've had everything from CFOs to college students to marketers to folks in the legal field. We originally thought we'd see mostly careers that had an appreciation for design but where the job seeker wasn't necessarily a designer (like photographers or people in the music industry) as well as marketers. I guess that goes to show you don't always know your customer until you start selling
    • underwater 15y ago
      I'm not surprised you aren't seeing design types. A prebuilt template for that kind of position would be and instant red flag. Not to mention a merely "pretty" resume template would look bland amongst bespoke, polished portfolios and resumes.
  • underwater 15y ago
    Interestingy filtering results like that is the complete opposite of what the recent "I don't hire unlucky people." post suggested (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3804134 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3804134). This is also the stuff that gives job seekers nightmares. The whole process is already a black box and knowing that some (or all?) employers penalize resumes that are trying too hard just adds more noise to the many conflicting pieces of information candidates have to consider.
    • 15y ago
• zeroonetwothree 15y ago
  The resumes are very attractive. However, in my experience looking at resumes I put 0-1% of the weight on attractiveness. Maybe it's more useful for other fields, however.
  • refurb 15y ago
    I could see such a resume getting a positive response in design related professions, but in my field (biotech), it would get a negative response. The immediate thought would be "why??"
• RyOnLife 15y ago
  At Uber, we got a resume.txt from an engineering candidate once and thought it was pretty awesome. It's the only resume that still sticks in my mind.
• mgkimsal 15y ago
  Congrats on the launch. I remember you telling me about this over pizza a few months ago (november? january? can't remember!) Great job on execution!
  • dcaldwell 15y ago
    Thanks Michael. I remember that conversation and getting your feedback. Great to hear from you!
• Katelyn 15y ago
  - I can really see this type of service blowing up, once you find the right product/market/fit. - The slider above-the-fold on the 'shop' tab distracts me from the rest of the page. It wasn't intuitive to me that I could scroll down to begin shopping. - A simple filter would be a great addition to the 'shop' page. It'd be nice to filter by type (e.g business, creative, etc.), price or design (rustic, elegant) - I wonder if you would see more sales if you tried a/b testing your pricing model a bit. Is there a reason why you charge the extra $5.00 for edits? If the shopper pays $99 to own the theme, shouldn't he be entitled to edit it as much as he pleases? - You're looking for resume writers. Have you connected with Hagan Blount? I believe he designs Infographic resumes. (http://haganblount.com/resume http://haganblount.com/resume). Some of your designs require users to highlight a quote, etc., and I wonder if they could use help writing out these areas.
  • deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  • dcaldwell 15y ago
    Thanks for the advice. - Any suggestions on how to make it intuitive to scroll down? - We've thought about filtering but we've honestly seen no trends in which professions pick which designs - it's been all over the board. - The shopper doesn't own the theme. Due to the copyright agreements that we have with the designers who created the resumes and the font foundries who created the typefaces, we aren't able to release the source files to be edited. Also, most folks don't have or can't use inDesign, which is what we use to typeset the resumes. We've tried to keep the price of edits low at $5 as a service to our customers because in early testing, we came across this as an objection. People need to revise their resumes or have different versions. We wanted to reduce friction there. We obviously don't make money on this but we just think it makes good business sense and is good customer service. - We don't want to get into writing resumes. Instead, we'd rather partner with resume writers. They have a captive audience that's shown they're willing to pay for resume services. We'd rather get referrals from them than compete with them.
    • Katelyn 15y ago
• joshmlewis 15y ago
  I'll comment with another note, I love that this is coming out of Greenville. I live here and have traveled to Boston, SF, Seattle, DC and others but Greenville is up and coming. It's not too big but not too small. It's still small enough to have a piece of the intimate south, but big enough to feel a great part of the vibrant city. It's also dirt cheap to live here compared to somewhere else. A 2-3 bedroom apartment for downtown in the heart of everything will run less than 2k if you find a good spot. Also access to CoWork is awesome like the OP was saying. You can find out more about Greenville here, http://thenextbig.co/ http://thenextbig.co/. All this to say, if you want to kind of step out of the norm a bit and experience something different but not leaving great talent Greenville is an awesome place to be.
  • dcaldwell 15y ago
    Another great site to learn about Greenville is: http://lifeingreenville.com/ http://lifeingreenville.com/
    • tricolon 15y ago
      Wow. That is a very well done website for a town I hadn't heard of before. I almost want to move there!
  • adgar 15y ago
    > It's also dirt cheap to live here compared to somewhere else. A 2-3 bedroom apartment for downtown in the heart of everything will run less than 2k if you find a good spot. As an NYC resident who lives in Chelsea, I wept when I read this.
    • dcaldwell 15y ago
      Haha, my place in Greenville is well under this price and is 1 block off Main St. You should check Greenville out!
    • larrys 15y ago
      I have nothing against Greenville but the opportunity in NYC is well worth the increase in rent and/or loss of space.
• bobidden 15y ago
  Can I ask how you're doing the shadow background on the menu elements? It looks gorgeous.
• Radzell 15y ago
  I think the idea is great, but what really stands out is the execution. The style the way it just works is why this idea could be huge congratz guys.
• sgdesign 15y ago
  I've got to say I'm amazed at the number of templates you have. It must've taken quite a lot of total designer hours to create all these. Any plans to code them and let people generate mini-sites from them? I could see that doing pretty well too. In any case the service and site looks great, congratulations!
  • ricardobeat 15y ago
    http://zerp.ly http://zerp.ly already covered that one :)
• reilly3000 15y ago
  It would have been great to have some retargeting advertising going the whole time. It can be very cheap and makes people on average 70% more likely to convert.
• gtaylor 15y ago
  Congrats, Dodd. It's been a good few months for Co-Work.
• vgurgov 15y ago
  congrats, great service! if you are considering video promotion, i'd suggest to compare google tv with my service virool.com We are better and cheaper. ping me and i will make you discount and give you some free credits. i can also recommend few production companies in case you want to create nice and inexpensive clip about your service.
  • vgurgov 15y ago
    also you should check out my friend's service ResumUp.com
• InfinityX0 15y ago
  I just e-mailed this to them, but how they get regular sales leads is through the Universities. The universities want to get their students jobs, and if you have a real value-add service that will do that, they should have no problem posting your link and being aware of you in their offices. Your startup should be the first thing mentioned by their Career Development offices and resume courses when students ask "how do I get a job?". It won't be easy to get in front of all of them, but I bet you can get the ball rolling really fast with this exceptional product.
  • macspoofing 15y ago
    I wouldn't recommend students pay $100 for a resume printing service.
    • dcaldwell 15y ago
      We actually don't print the resumes. We do the visual design.
      • jnbiche 15y ago
        Why is this getting downvoted? He's only describing what they do: the visual design. Presumably, the customer prints the résumé. Is that correct, dcaldwell?
        • dcaldwell 15y ago
          That's correct. Some people think we do the printing but we actually provide the visual design service. We're considering adding a printing service down the road. Even in doing our photo shoots for the site, we learned a lot about what makes resumes look great in the printed format. Right now, we send out 2 hi-resolution PDF files - 1 is for full bleed and 1 is for normal printouts on an office or home printer. That way the customer has the option of how they wan to print out the resume.
          • jcc80 15y ago
• adambard 15y ago
  Whenever I see a story like this, I have my hopes dashed when it turns out that the guy with the side project is just extremely talented. Well done.
  • patio11 15y ago
    The psychology at work here is not unfamiliar to me. I once came up with lots and lots of reasons why I could not ship things. Then I stopped and shipped things. I suggest you ship things. Life has brought me into contact with many folks who have side projects, for many values of "side project" and many levels of success. "Raw talent" explains very little of their difference from other people.
    • larrys 15y ago
      "for many values of "side project" and many levels of success. "Raw talent" explains very little" Agree. Same reason why many pretty girls (or handsome men) aren't married but others with less obvious attributes are (and happily).
• ktizo 15y ago
  Surely a resume should just consist of a screed of roughly formatted plaintext. Or is that just not enough for Catbert in the current economic climate?
  • jQueryIsAwesome 15y ago
    This tendency will keep growing and eventually an average resume will include a 20 minute video with music and interviews with all your previous bosses and co-workers; ending with fireworks that create the company logo and a bunch of cheer leaders screaming your name.... and eventually companies will get tired of it and just ask everyone to send _only_ a plain text version.
    • minikomi 15y ago
      Suddenly I see where LG is going with this technology: http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/124229-lg-begins-mass-production-of-flexible-plastic-e-ink-displays http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/124229-lg-begins-mass...
    • ktizo 15y ago
      I have a friend who remarks that in his case career is only ever a verb. Personally I suspect that his approach to the world of work will result in a hell of a lot more personal fulfillment for him throughout his life than any amount of sucking up to corporate toss will ever do.
• phzbOx 15y ago
  Few questions: 1. How did you manage to get all these awesome resume templates?! That's fairly impressive for a one month project.. I could have had only one of them and I would be proud! 2. There's no talk about the 10,000$ in the blog.. where does it come from? Is it 100 sales? Is it less but with more urgent need (For instance, clicking "1 day" or "custom color"). 3. About the process of converting the html template to a pdf.. how does it work and how good is it? For instance, is it a simple html->pdf which could give ugly conversion or end-of-page text to be displayed wrongly on the next page? And as a suggestion, it'd be interesting to give a demo of the cv. For instance, I'd enter my data, it'd show me the resume but with a clear "Demo" written on each page of the pdf.. or something similar.
  • deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  • dcaldwell 15y ago
    1) The project wasn't 1 month. This is just what we did in the roughly 1 month since we launched. 2) Yes, if you multiply the over 100 sales by our purchase price, we did over $10,000. 3) We don't convert html to PDF. Customers pick a resume design, upload their resume content (in Word or TXT or whatever,) and then we custom typeset it and send them a PDF as a digital file. Our graphic artists are great at making multiple pages look outstanding. There's also a revision process to make sure it pleases the customer. 4) The demos are really the designs you see on the site. Since all of our resumes are custom-typeset in inDesign by a graphic artist, we can't demo a customer's actual resume until we go through the entire process.
    • beza1e1 15y ago
      I think you should market your manual process more aggressively. Generating from templates is easy and cheap, but that a professional graphic artist is doing it, makes quite a difference.
      • phzbOx 15y ago
        I agree. I had no idea it was custom made by a graphic designer.. that would explain a lot more the 100$ cost and the fact that there's no demo.
• bill-nordwall 15y ago
  How about testimonials? The designs are fantastic, but I want to hear the story of someone catching a recruiter's eye from one of these. Figure out away to demonstrate social proof that your resumes are giving job-seekers the edge they desperately need.
  • dcaldwell 15y ago
    We're working on that. We've just been live for a little over a month and are still doing it as a side project. But, that's something we have planned.
• alain94040 15y ago
  As a former hiring manager, I looked at your 100 first templates, and I must say that I don't like them. Yes, they look amazing and I would hire you to design my site's CSS, but for a job seeker, they are distracting. I want to see the job experience. I don't need special effects around "job experience", I don't need fancy backgrounds which make it harder to read the information. Sorry to be negative. Again, the designs are very cute, but not "professional". My experience is limited to high-tech hiring.
  • dcaldwell 15y ago
    It's not everybody's cup of tea. We understand that and that's fair. We've gotten a lot of positive feedback from both hiring managers and job seekers who actually have responded the opposite of what you're feeling. So, I guess it just depends.
  • azov 15y ago
    I do my fair share of hiring and interviewing, and I agree with alain94040. I have very hard time imagining that the rock star developer I'm trying to hire will spend $100 (or hours of their time) to add fancy styling to their resume. Why would they? It just seems like trying too hard. Of course I won't reject anyone because their resume looks "too pretty", but those templates make the resume stand out, and not necessarily in a good way.
    • buro9 15y ago
      I also want to third this, for tech hiring anyway. I have far more time for a plain text resume that fits on one side of A4/Legal, than I do for anything else. It's all about how quick I can scan the document and extract information from it that might tell me what experience a candidate might have. For me, the quickest way I can scan something is to have it feel like something I work with every day: logically laid out text, in fixed width, with related chunks fitting on the same screen. Give me a plain text resume any day. If you deeply feel the need, add syntax highlighting in the form of very subtle highlights and lowlights to make the most pertinent sections and key facts stand out. But if you do that, bear in mind that such highlights and lowlights should be the minority of your document. Do I practise what I preach? Yes: http://www.buro9.com/cv.txt http://www.buro9.com/cv.txt
• sctechie 15y ago
  Nice article. I live right near greenville. Loved the link to coworkgreenville, will check it out. =)
  • dcaldwell 15y ago
    Please do.
• adamtmca 15y ago
  I noticed you were using Shopify. You could probably add a lot to that $10,000 by selling a varient of your store's design on the Shopify theme store. It looks awesome.
• guynamedloren 15y ago
  I am amazed that this business works. I'm not saying it's a bad product, but rather that there doesn't appear to be much of a product market fit. Here's why: the fields that would see value in creative resumes like these are creativity driven fields - specifically graphic design, web development, visual design, print design, frontend, etc. Creative resumes can be valuable in these fields because they are a means to showcase relavent skills. If I'm applying for a job as a graphic designer, I would be stupid not to take advantage of the blank canvas that is a resume. Concurrently, non design related fields likely do not see much value in a well designed resume, simply because it is unimportant and irrelevant. Yeah, the resume stands out from the pack, but surely this does not influence hiring decisions? Surely whoever is reading these resumes is not impressed by a bit of color and typography? Though I am probably being naive here - every little bit helps, especially when there are hundreds or thousands of other resumes to compete against. So with that, if one assumes the highest demand for creative resumes is in creative fields, then this is like selling ice to eskimos. Designers can - and should - design their own creative resumes to market themselves. But clearly I am wrong. So I wonder how well these resumes will convert? Somebody should A/B test and report back :)
  • csytan 15y ago
    Just because someone is in a non-design field doesn't mean they don't appreciate design. Even though two resumes might say the same thing in text, the better designed one will convey important information more efficiently. By standing out, you show your potential employer that you cared enough to spent some time (or money) on trying to impress them.
    • guynamedloren 15y ago
      I agree. But you should be trying to impress them with relevant skills. If a well designed resume is relevant to the job at hand, then so be it.
    • lusr 15y ago
      While I completely agree with your point that a good design is important, I hope there's nobody on a tight budget reading this and thinking "damn now I have to spend $100 to keep up with the market". My CV consistently receives praise. My secret? A standard Microsoft Word template that I have never seen anybody else use despite reviewing plenty of CVs myself :)
• dendory 15y ago
  I'm not sure why the focus here is that they gained that amount of revenue inside of a month. Looking at their traffic chart it seems like the site was never very popular until one specific date when they suddenly jumped to 20,000 users thanks to one highly successful promotion they did. So if anything this is more about how fab.com was really good for them.
  • dpritchett 15y ago
    Because many of us would like to imagine we are five weeks away from being part owners in a business pulling in over $100,000 a year.
• Tycho 15y ago
  Great stuff. I hope you earn more advertising/publicity from that blog post than you earn copycats. May I suggest that you add more single column resumes. Having multiple columns and boxes etc. is something I associate with newsletters and magazine articles. If I was shopping, I probably wouldn't buy one like that.
• sirwitti 15y ago
  thanks for the article. one thing that i didn't understand when coming to the website was what to do. choosing a design for example: i think many people won't understand that you have to choose a design below the featured block. a headline like "choose a design:" or something could increase your conversion rates i guess. nice project btw. have fun, witti
• dcaldwell 15y ago
  OP here. I wrote this blog post to help the community - to share what I've learned and have done to get some traffic and have a fairly successful launch of a side project. Most of the discussion on this thread has been around resumes themselves and the business itself - which wasn't what my post was about. This really drives home one of the points that I made in my original post: Loft Resumes is polarizing. People seem to either love it or hate it. For some reason people seem to be passionate about resumes. All that said, I'm really appreciative of the suggestions that people have shared both here and by email. I've learned a great deal from commenters on HN in general (a few have inspired another venture I'm looking at starting...) and appreciate the community, even though it can get a little harsh!
• readme 15y ago
  Looks like a beautiful site. However I was disappointed to see that nothing about the 10k figure in the link title was mentioned in the article. I would be very interested in another article if you'd be willing to detail your revenue, expenses, profits, conversion rate, and such. I understand that is sensitive data and you may not want to, but it can't hurt to ask. Best of luck, and your resumes look beautiful.