the_bear

13 ms·

61.
by the_bear 14y ago
This is just one data point, but my mom and I run a cooking blog that makes a decent amount of money from the Amazon affiliate program, and people from Pinterest definitely come to her site with an intent to buy. Given how much money we mak
62.
by the_bear 14y ago
The honors and AP classes were generally pretty good (in math and science anyway) but those weren't always options. For example, in 10th grade, there wasn't an honors world history class, so I had to take the normal class. That's where I wa
63.
by the_bear 14y ago
I went to the University City School District in St. Louis. It was actually a pretty strange place because it's the main district that Wash U (Washington University in St. Louis) is in, so about 10% of the students are children of (mostly w
64.
by the_bear 14y ago
It's common for people who received good educations to say that test scores aren't an acceptable indication of learning. It's probably true that if you already have an acceptable level of education, test scores shouldn't be too important, b
65.
by the_bear 14y ago
I tried signing up for Simple, and the entire experience was pretty terrible. I realize that they're a new company trying to tackle a big problem so I wanted to cut them some slack, but the ways in which they messed up are hard to forgive.
66.
by the_bear 14y ago
Your last point is a huge problem with the Google+ Android app. I like the normal g+ website, but on the mobile app it assumes that every single post is just a pretty picture. That app is a usability nightmare because they failed to grasp h
67.
by the_bear 14y ago
This seems like a pretty common mistake among designers. As a matter of fact, Facebook made this same mistake themselves not too long ago. When they release the "cover photo" feature, they showed off how great it looked when applied to a bu
68.
by the_bear 14y ago
This is great. I've never actually had a customer dispute a charge through Stripe, but if it happened, I wouldn't be able to challenge it before (I only charge $10 at a time, so it would have been cheaper to just accept it). This always con
69.
by the_bear 14y ago
I don't agree that their experience is equally as statistically insignificant as yours. To me, a company should be providing an acceptable level of service to all of their customers, and they must have systems in place to make sure that h
70.
by the_bear 14y ago
If I worked less, I'd want to spend the extra free time doing something important. The problem is, I don't think there's anything I could spend my time on that would be (a) more important than my normal work and (b) at least as likely to su
71.
by the_bear 14y ago
Every time I sign up for a service and receive an email from recurly (or similar services), my first thought is, "this company doesn't care about user experience if they're trusting recurly to send me important communications." The email co
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Ask HN: Has anyone noticed a dramatic decrease in Amazon affiliate revenue?
3 points by the_bear 14y ago|2 comments
73.
by the_bear 14y ago
The guide itself was definitely being read. I built it directly into the app, so users could only advance the guide by completing the step described (like, they'd have to actually create a new contact before the guide would advance). A surp
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by the_bear 14y ago
I used to use a system like this for my software, and unfortunately I found that it did a terrible job of educating users. People would work through the entire tutorial (~5 minutes), get to the end, and then email/call me with questions tha
75.
by the_bear 14y ago
I've got to give you credit for not being at all defensive. I have a hard time with that, and it's something that I need to get better at. When someone gives you feedback, you need to take it graciously. Either they're right, or you didn't
76.
by the_bear 14y ago
I had the exact same experience, but I was paying for their VPS service. I believe it was over $30/month, and it went down all the time with very little traffic. Dreamhost is a tempting host for a new site because it's so easy to set up, bu
77.
by the_bear 14y ago
I rated a few beers, but my recommendation screen is empty. I get that it's a new site, so I can accept that it might be tough to get recommendations right away, but it would be really helpful to explain why there aren't any results. Is i
78.
by the_bear 14y ago
It wouldn't surprise me if this benefits Coke by making consumers more interested, but hurts Coke by pissing off store owners. Most stores that sell soda are set up for the consumer to take the soda from the front of a long row, and then th
79.
by the_bear 14y ago
These seem like good improvements, although I'm still not really clear on the benefits of using Stripe's recurring billing system rather than building your own. Given that you still have to send out your own emails and handle adjustments to
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by the_bear 14y ago
Wow, that's awesome! My mom's going to be thrilled. I don't have an iPad, but you just got a new web user. Thanks.
81.
by the_bear 14y ago
Thanks! Yes, she takes all the pictures herself. It's incredibly time consuming, but pictures are such an important part of any food blog that it's definitely worth it. One of her friends is a professional photographer and gave her some poi
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by the_bear 14y ago
The blog is entirely custom. Several years ago I made my own blogging software just as a fun side-project, and I decided to use that code as the base for The Yummy Life. It sucks missing out on all the great WordPress plugins, but it's real
83.
by the_bear 14y ago
Honestly, we're not doing a great job of user acquisition right now, which is exciting because it means that 100 users/month is just the tip of the iceberg. When we started we spent ~$3,000/month on AdWords to get our initial customer base.
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by the_bear 14y ago
There's an internal debate right now about whether or not it makes sense to release specific numbers, but if I have my way, there will be a post on HackerNews in the future explaining exactly how much money we're making, and how we got wher
85.
by the_bear 14y ago
Thanks! Yes, I handle everything except writing the actual content. That includes PPC, SEO, and making it easy for my mom to promote posts via Pinterest and Facebook (Pinterest is responsible for our success by the way). Most of the revenue
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by the_bear 14y ago
A couple of years ago I started a food blog with my mom (www.theyummylife.com). She does all the writing, and I do programming, design, and monetization. I spent a lot of time setting it up originally, but now it only takes a few hours each
87.
by the_bear 14y ago
There's a big difference between saying something with a positive spin (vanity metrics, unfounded optimism, etc.) and photoshopping a fake picture of yourself with celebrities. Most of your examples of lying are just about interpreting thin
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by the_bear 14y ago
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, no one can argue with the idea that it takes a ton of work in many different areas to create a successful business. However, this doesn't mean that there's no such thing as a tipping point.
89.
by the_bear 14y ago
Pricing is obviously a complicated issue, and I know there will never be a "right" or "wrong" way to price a product. I guess all I can say is that I don't agree that plan-based pricing is good for the consumer. One of my main objections is
90.
by the_bear 14y ago
Agreed. I don't doubt that being ruthless about A/B testing pricing increases revenue, but I'm not wild about the implied attitude that customers only exist so that we can extract as much money as possible from them. The user experience sho

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