il

53 ms·

511.
by il 16y ago
You know, most modern capchas are not solved by bots, but by people in third world countries solving them for pennies. The current going rate is about $1/1000 and there are easy to use captcha solving APIs for any platform. capcha has long
512.
by il 16y ago
My college roommates were obsessed with playing Final Destination in Smash without items and spamming cheap attacks to win. Guess that practice is more common than I thought.
513.
by il 16y ago
There are actually several groupon clones out there. Some are growing, most are failing to get any traction.
514.
by il 16y ago
Best answer here. I used to run traffic to Groupon clones so I know all about their affiliate program. The secret is building high converting landing pages and a strong backend. Then push the offer out to affiliates who can drive lots of tr
515.
by il 16y ago
No, but I'm sure they can make introductions, get a company into consideration, or at least make Google aware of the startup and the value it can bring as an acquisition.
516.
by il 16y ago
I've seen your posts on WF- price of weed is probably the most legitimate/least sketchy project discussed on there. So it depends on the industry and company. If,as I assume, you're looking for a job in the performance marketing space, nobo
517.
by il 16y ago
I guess that kind of "screw the rat race" attitude doesn't play well on Hacker News.
518.
by il 16y ago
I'm not on twitter but I sent you an email. Although judging from the number of upvotes for your comment it might be a pretty competitive car to get into.
519.
by il 16y ago
More fodder for his "Hacker News hates me" complaints, but this, whatever it is, seems to be nothing new or out of character for him. I don't think this behavior is unique to Calacanis either. It seems that many other incredibly visionary,
520.
by il 16y ago
I just moved to San Francisco, almost on a whim, to work on my startup and get involved in the startup scene. I didn't realize how big(geographically) the Bay Area/Silicon Valley actually is, turns out Mountain View is pretty far away, and
521.
by il 16y ago
Maybe. I should go into design. Does a paragraph of text a text box and a button really go for $75?
522.
by il 16y ago
Technically, it's 80% of the 70% Google leaves publishers after taking its cut.
523.
by il 16y ago
If you had done only one of those things, providing eyeballs, 20% would be a very reasonable cut. The problem is that you were unprepared and unable to deliver those eyeballs, which is probably the main reason the site failed.
524.
by il 16y ago
I'm surprised YC funded something like this. The only reason someone would give up a significant chunk of ad revenue to a middleman vs starting their own blog/site is if that middleman was an established site and can deliver lots of eyeball
525.
by il 16y ago
"Getting traffic is really really difficult. We completely underestimated how difficult it would be, largely because I’d never had a problem with it in the past." For anyone else building a startup without a concrete plan to get traffic, re
526.
by il 16y ago
Not sure about Groupon but FYI a well-targeted list usually goes for about $60-$80 CPM for a single mailing. Yeah, they're that valuable.
527.
by il 16y ago
I don't think you know much about copywriting if you say that. I've studied their landing pages and emails. Groupon has fantastic clear,benefit-driven copy and landing page design, and they split test everything fanatically. That's the real
528.
by il 16y ago
Affiliate marketing/PPC arbitrage is by far the easiest way to build passive income, especially the amount you without high time commitment or too much risk. Find some offers to promote, make some PPC ads for them, test, rinse, repeat.
529.
by il 16y ago
With CSS positioning and using lots of images it's theoretically possible to code any photoshop design. Hell, even the mess of tables Photoshop outputs with "save for web" can be an adequate design for a simple site, no coding required. I t
530.
by il 16y ago
I've sold several SaaS web sites with $10-$20k in revenue, not one of them for more than $50k. If you know anyone willing to give me a million dollars for the next one, PLEASE let me know.
531.
by il 16y ago
Nope...as long as 1. There is little competition, no quality score, and low click prices and 2. Traffic remains high quality and there is solid fraud detection I could probably monetize a good percentage of searches on ddg with affiliate of
532.
by il 16y ago
Heh, I thought I could find a niche search engine I could advertise on that isn't saturated with competitors but it looks like I'll have to wait for ddg to start accepting ads. Search.com: google Ask.com: google Aol: google altavista: yahoo
533.
by il 16y ago
They certainly built a great product, but it's easier to gain market share when you have a $300 million marketing budget. Aside from heavy branding, they also built an absolutely brilliant, perfectly executed long-tail SEM campaign. Accordi
534.
by il 16y ago
I'm curious to know who "small fry" is. DuckDuckGo? ISPs? That's significant traffic share even if it's split between several second tier search engines. How many of them are powered by Google/Yahoo?
535.
by il 16y ago
Haha, let's interview each other's candidates. I can easily determine whether someone is talented at marketing or just BSing but I have trouble identifying the truly excellent programmers vs talentless hacks who are just regurgitating what
536.
by il 16y ago
Interesting example, as the creator of that site, dangrossman, posted in this thread. You can ask him about the sale. In that case, any smart buyer will instantly see that there is a sharp downward trend in revenue. Maybe the site is fallin
537.
by il 16y ago
I'm in a similar position. I know enough about coding to hack together basic scripts and manage a tech project, but my main interests and skills lie in marketing and business stuff. If I were you, I would focus completely on marketing/sales
538.
by il 16y ago
Unfortunately companies only exit for 50 times earnings in Web 2.0 fantasy land. In the real world, it's closer to 2 or 3 times EBITDA(not revenue). If I could build a business to $20K in revenue and flip it for a million I, and many, many
539.
by il 16y ago
I'm in the exact same situation, bootstrapped a business from nothing to low six figures in the first year. My company is growing steadily and profitable, but it's not really YC material and will never be a multimillion dollar breakout hit.
540.
by il 16y ago
What's to stop people from signing up for several free trials in a row if you don't authenticate them via a credit card? If you want to see any money from your web service, get the credit card before, but make it very easy to cancel(i.e. a

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