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This is the type of stuff us HN folks need to focus on.. POF is your classic "started in the garage" success story. No fancy trendy offices, no upfront VC inves

This is the type of stuff us HN folks need to focus on.. POF is your classic "started in the garage" success story. No fancy trendy offices, no upfront VC investments, no trendy website with no product etc. This is true entrepreneurship. POF is the Google of dating sites, it came in to fill a need already being filled by "big money" and simply did it better, and gave it away free with revenue from advertising. Personally I love seeing something like that work.

nekopa 12y ago
I agree with everything you said except I would love to see more success stories that aren't based on the ad revenue business model. So many great new ideas come out, and then they slap ads on them to make money. It'd be nice to see some other experiments on how to extract cash from a business.
- 001sky 12y ago
  Compare that his first 12 clicks earned > 15,000 song downloads. 12 clicks->ca$7.60 [1] 15,000 downloads->us$4.20 [2] _______________ [1] June 2003 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7725657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7725657
  - s9ix 12y ago
    Just to clarify, the linked article refers to plays, not downloads - changes the dynamic a bit, but still a crazy stat nonetheless.
  - User9821 12y ago
    I wish I had his click-through rates. I earn about $50/day from AdSense, sending them a million impressions. POF earned $2,500 for that same number.
    - iancarroll 12y ago
      You should consider switching to a network like BuySellAds.
      - User9821 12y ago
        I gave up on BuySellAds, they turned me down three times without reason. My site gets more traffic then any other sites they have in that same niche, it follows all of their rules (nothing adult related or inappropriate), and it's better designed than the majority of their sites. So, I sell my own ads directly now. I can get some of the biggest names in the tech industry excited about running ad campaigns on my site for $10k a week, but apparently that wasn't good enough for BuySellAds. Their loss, they're not going to get my business at this point.
- eevilspock 12y ago
  [EDIT: Two immediate downvotes and neither has the courage to explain why. Wow. Is the inconvenient truth hitting to close to home?] Relying on ad revenue is a moral failing. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. – Tyler Durden, Fight Club Anyone who is truly honest with themselves will admit that 90 to 99% of ads deceive and manipulate people into consuming a product[1]. The rationalization that allowing ads allows you to give your product free to users is a self-serving shame-allaying delusion[2]. [1] Even an ad that tells no outright lie is lying if it is selectively tells a partial truth. The moral test is whether you sell that product with the same pitch to a friend who does not have money to blow. Would you leave out the cons of your product and the pros of a competing one? Would you use psychological tricks to convince your friend she needs it, even though in honesty you know she doesn't? [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773
  - thatthatis 12y ago
    "All ads are manipulation" is one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is: ads are a mechanism to overcome information shortages. Let's say you invent a shoe that makes back pain go away. How do you get information out about it? - you can tell everyone you know and hope they tell others (word of mouth) - you can pursue PR stories Or - you can advertise Let's assume these are the greatest shoes in the world and that everyone who tries them loves them. Word of mouth will work eventually, but it'll take 5-50 years for everyone who wants the shoes to hear about them. The reason you're getting downvoted is that "ads are manipulation" requires a "consumer as victim" view of the world. Your view sounds nice to angsty teens, and has a kernel of truth, but fails to hold up to the "anyone who is honest" and 90-99% claims. Remember that government programs to provide health insurance to poor children spend a significant amount of money on advertising to make sure people who are benefited by the program know it exists. I drive past CHIP billboards all the time.
    - toomuchtodo 12y ago
      In keeping with your shoe analogy, Vibram was just sued for $3.75 million in lying regarding this finger shoes: http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Saving-Money/2014/0512/FiveFinger-shoes-owner-Come-get-your-refund http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Saving-Money/2014/0512/Fiv...
- markuspof 12y ago
  We make a lot of money from subscriptions today. But when you are first starting out making money from advertising is super easy, taking all of several minutes to add to your site. Getting set up for payments and running a subscription business is very complicated and takes a lot of time people and money. Time better spent perfecting your product early on.
  - thatthatis 12y ago
    It isn't as complicated as it used to be, getting subscriptions set up now takes on the order of several hours to a few days.
    - sudhirj 12y ago
      Assuming you're in the United States or one of the few countries blessed by Stripe.
      - kalleboo 12y ago
        PayPal works fine when you're starting out, despite all the hate they get here
        thatthatis 12y ago
        That's said like a true "pre freeze" user. If paypal had a mechanism to pre-validate, to avoid having 10's of 1000's of dollars frozen, then they'd be fine. They get hate because their approach to post-hoc fraud limiting has fucked over thousands of people. Don't dismiss the hate, they earned that hate one customer at a time.
ryanjshaw 12y ago
Every now and then I'll read something on HN that tempts me to experiment with the latest hot technology or platform on my little side project. Then I remind myself it's not just a little side project, it's meant to be a business and I think of an article[1] I read about how Markus built POF with just plain old ASP.NET - it's not ideal, but the important thing is it works and the business success speaks for itself. [1] http://highscalability.com/plentyoffish-architecture http://highscalability.com/plentyoffish-architecture
- UweSchmidt 12y ago
  May I ask how plain old ASP.NET is not ideal? What are the main scalability problems you've encountered? Your link shows some things they decided to do to make it work; which of these problems would have been avoided using other tools? Which of these problems could not have been solved by using a more suitable architecture (using ASP.NET techniques)? Thanks for any insight.
  - markuspof 12y ago
    asp had a ton of memory leaks and IIS needed to be constantly restated, it also couldn't support a lot of concurrent users.
    - us0r 12y ago
      Are you still on the same set up or running with newer stuff now?
- danielh 12y ago
  Keep in mind that ASP.NET 1.0 was published in January 2002 and PoF was launched in 2003. It was actually a side project to learn the latest hot technology.
kayoone 12y ago
There is a place for businesses like POF, but there also is a place for businesses with huge VC investments, fancy offices and many employees. Totally opposing strategies though, the first being pretty risk averse and starting out slowly and climbing a long way to the top, the other being all-in from day one with huge expectations and potential in a short timeframe. Both mostly don't work out, but as i personally already went through the latter and failed (no VC, just a 2 year accelerator adventure with some moderate funding), i'll not do it that way again.

nekopa 12y ago

I agree with everything you said except I would love to see more success stories that aren't based on the ad revenue business model. So many great new ideas come out, and then they slap ads on them to make money. It'd be nice to see some other experiments on how to extract cash from a business.

001sky 12y ago
Compare that his first 12 clicks earned > 15,000 song downloads. 12 clicks->ca$7.60 [1] 15,000 downloads->us$4.20 [2] _______________ [1] June 2003 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7725657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7725657
- s9ix 12y ago
  Just to clarify, the linked article refers to plays, not downloads - changes the dynamic a bit, but still a crazy stat nonetheless.
- User9821 12y ago
  I wish I had his click-through rates. I earn about $50/day from AdSense, sending them a million impressions. POF earned $2,500 for that same number.
  - iancarroll 12y ago
    You should consider switching to a network like BuySellAds.
    - User9821 12y ago
      I gave up on BuySellAds, they turned me down three times without reason. My site gets more traffic then any other sites they have in that same niche, it follows all of their rules (nothing adult related or inappropriate), and it's better designed than the majority of their sites. So, I sell my own ads directly now. I can get some of the biggest names in the tech industry excited about running ad campaigns on my site for $10k a week, but apparently that wasn't good enough for BuySellAds. Their loss, they're not going to get my business at this point.
eevilspock 12y ago
[EDIT: Two immediate downvotes and neither has the courage to explain why. Wow. Is the inconvenient truth hitting to close to home?] Relying on ad revenue is a moral failing. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. – Tyler Durden, Fight Club Anyone who is truly honest with themselves will admit that 90 to 99% of ads deceive and manipulate people into consuming a product[1]. The rationalization that allowing ads allows you to give your product free to users is a self-serving shame-allaying delusion[2]. [1] Even an ad that tells no outright lie is lying if it is selectively tells a partial truth. The moral test is whether you sell that product with the same pitch to a friend who does not have money to blow. Would you leave out the cons of your product and the pros of a competing one? Would you use psychological tricks to convince your friend she needs it, even though in honesty you know she doesn't? [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773
- thatthatis 12y ago
  "All ads are manipulation" is one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is: ads are a mechanism to overcome information shortages. Let's say you invent a shoe that makes back pain go away. How do you get information out about it? - you can tell everyone you know and hope they tell others (word of mouth) - you can pursue PR stories Or - you can advertise Let's assume these are the greatest shoes in the world and that everyone who tries them loves them. Word of mouth will work eventually, but it'll take 5-50 years for everyone who wants the shoes to hear about them. The reason you're getting downvoted is that "ads are manipulation" requires a "consumer as victim" view of the world. Your view sounds nice to angsty teens, and has a kernel of truth, but fails to hold up to the "anyone who is honest" and 90-99% claims. Remember that government programs to provide health insurance to poor children spend a significant amount of money on advertising to make sure people who are benefited by the program know it exists. I drive past CHIP billboards all the time.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    In keeping with your shoe analogy, Vibram was just sued for $3.75 million in lying regarding this finger shoes: http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Saving-Money/2014/0512/FiveFinger-shoes-owner-Come-get-your-refund http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Saving-Money/2014/0512/Fiv...
markuspof 12y ago
We make a lot of money from subscriptions today. But when you are first starting out making money from advertising is super easy, taking all of several minutes to add to your site. Getting set up for payments and running a subscription business is very complicated and takes a lot of time people and money. Time better spent perfecting your product early on.
- thatthatis 12y ago
  It isn't as complicated as it used to be, getting subscriptions set up now takes on the order of several hours to a few days.
  - sudhirj 12y ago
    Assuming you're in the United States or one of the few countries blessed by Stripe.
    - kalleboo 12y ago
      PayPal works fine when you're starting out, despite all the hate they get here
      - thatthatis 12y ago
        That's said like a true "pre freeze" user. If paypal had a mechanism to pre-validate, to avoid having 10's of 1000's of dollars frozen, then they'd be fine. They get hate because their approach to post-hoc fraud limiting has fucked over thousands of people. Don't dismiss the hate, they earned that hate one customer at a time.

ryanjshaw 12y ago

Every now and then I'll read something on HN that tempts me to experiment with the latest hot technology or platform on my little side project. Then I remind myself it's not just a little side project, it's meant to be a business and I think of an article[1] I read about how Markus built POF with just plain old ASP.NET - it's not ideal, but the important thing is it works and the business success speaks for itself. [1] http://highscalability.com/plentyoffish-architecture http://highscalability.com/plentyoffish-architecture

UweSchmidt 12y ago
May I ask how plain old ASP.NET is not ideal? What are the main scalability problems you've encountered? Your link shows some things they decided to do to make it work; which of these problems would have been avoided using other tools? Which of these problems could not have been solved by using a more suitable architecture (using ASP.NET techniques)? Thanks for any insight.
- markuspof 12y ago
  asp had a ton of memory leaks and IIS needed to be constantly restated, it also couldn't support a lot of concurrent users.
  - us0r 12y ago
    Are you still on the same set up or running with newer stuff now?
danielh 12y ago
Keep in mind that ASP.NET 1.0 was published in January 2002 and PoF was launched in 2003. It was actually a side project to learn the latest hot technology.

kayoone 12y ago

There is a place for businesses like POF, but there also is a place for businesses with huge VC investments, fancy offices and many employees. Totally opposing strategies though, the first being pretty risk averse and starting out slowly and climbing a long way to the top, the other being all-in from day one with huge expectations and potential in a short timeframe. Both mostly don't work out, but as i personally already went through the latter and failed (no VC, just a 2 year accelerator adventure with some moderate funding), i'll not do it that way again.