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Ask HN: Is an affiliate directory a viable business?
I have an idea for a web app that I want to build – a supplement search that allows to search every supplement on the market based on their active ingredients, allergens, price, etc. I figured out that I can aggregate most of the data, publish it as a spreadsheet, and try to promote it on Reddit and other social networks. My thinking is that people who are trying to find supplements and want to compare different supplements would use my web app to discover which supplements work the best for them. However, is there is a business in this?
- tomcam 2y agoHow many directories do you frequent that you discovered via “promotion“ on Reddit and other social networks? Do users of Reddit and other social networks enjoy being promoted to?
- lilouartz 2y agoSo, not quite the answer to your question, but the idea came because I saw people create spreadsheets of supplement comparisons on Reddit with each other. and I thought "wow, that's actually very useful, why isn't there an app for this"
- solardev 2y agoI think the value of such a thing is precisely because it's organic (or at least astroturfed, i.e. fake grassroots). If you try to make profit off it, you risk compromising that with ads, sponsored listings, etc... the spreadsheet equivalent of modern Google's SEO spam.
- lilouartz 2y agoWell, not quiet. At the end of the day, the value that it would provide is a comparison. The links would be to Amazon affiliate program, i.e. I am indifferent which product you end up buying. The end result would be a website that provides a comparison similar to how this spreadsheet does it for Omega 3 supplement https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vQcLEAPk5lcg-4YR_dwDMO1HwrulBimjNfH4vra2e80/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vQcLEAPk5lcg-4YR_dwD... This is to say that ads and sponsored listings would play little role in something that effectively allows to compare supplements based on their ingredients. I have no doubt that it would be useful to some people... My bigger concern is if there is a business here worth pursuing. Not exactly cheap to run (would require a lot of manual input and/or AI). Not a lot of defensibility (could be scraped by someone).
- solardev 2y agoI mean, affiliate marketing is the basic business model behind sites like Wirecutter, AlternativeTo.net, RTINGS, right? It's not a new idea, but it's hard to build up enough user trust because there ARE so many of these sites and a lot of them are SEO spam. For the users it's hard to tell which ones are trustworthy and which ones just regurgitate, well, reddit, but add a bunch of ads and paid rankings. If you do this, I hope you can maintain a clear editorial separation and not be tempted to alter the listings if a manufacturer offers you $10k to move their product up the rankings, for example.
- lilouartz 2y agoI am giving this a shot. I have been hacking together the initial prototype. I am going to start by just aggregating the data and at first distributing it as Google Sheets document. I figured, this will be good enough experiment to understand whether people even want this as a service.
- solardev 2y agoCool, good luck! I run a similar (in concept, not topic) "awesome list" that I'm also in the process of turning into searchable/filterable website... very slowly. In my case I'm not sure about monetization (it's important to me that it remain a good and fair community resource, but if it can buy a beer or two a month, that'd be cool). Anyway, if you're thinking of going the easy-to-make route for this initial pass, might I suggest giving Airtable a look? It creates better UIs than GSheets does, while being almost as easy (and in some cases easier) to use. Some examples: https://www.airtable.com/templates/restaurant-field-guide/expt4dCCpeInMwc4J https://www.airtable.com/templates/restaurant-field-guide/ex... https://www.airtable.com/templates/apartment-hunting/expPfTzGnfpwjgWlS https://www.airtable.com/templates/apartment-hunting/expPfTz... https://www.airtable.com/templates/hiking-trip-bucket-list/exppbdYWBVZyk2wA0 https://www.airtable.com/templates/hiking-trip-bucket-list/e...
- lilouartz 2y agoThanks so much for the tip! Do you happen to know if Airtable documents rank on Google? One of the reasons for preferring Google Sheets is because I know from experience that I come across many public Google Sheets through Google. I don't recall coming across Airtable documents, but it might be just because there are fewer of them.