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Comment by matt1 | Hacker News Reader

Hey all - author and longtime HackerNews user here. It's a nice surprise coming back from an evening away from the computer and finding this at the top of front page. Whatever success I've had with Lean Domain Search is due in large part to what I've learned from this community.

Here's the original HackerNews launch post from 4 years back for context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3470977.

I'm happy to answer any questions about Lean Domain Search, the deployment, etc.

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How did you managed to switch context so cleanly between working about your side project and on your day job? I would imagine that you day job would be quite stressful, and getting 45mins may not be possible every day.

To the downvoter, this is a genuine question as I am truly interested to get an insight on how to easily switch the mind between projects.

Single downvotes don't really mean much - the voting buttons are hard to hit on mobile, and it could have been someone trying to vote you up. Don't take it too much to heart.

Great question - I think the more well-defined your next task is, the easier it's going to be for you to context switch because you don't have to take time to figure out what to work on next. One thing to experiment with is when you're done working for the day, jot down a note of specifically what you want to work on the next time you sit down at your computer. The clearer it is and the less amount of problem solving it requires, the easier it's going to be for you to get back into the flow.

Thanks for the great answer. Is that how it panned out for you? Love to hear your experience about this.

Typically, I would find it difficult for get into the zone to get work done within 45min period.

Huge congrats to you for being pulling this off in such difficult circumstances.

I suspect that if you had a hard limit of 45 minutes after which time you could no longer work on your task, you'd adapt and find yourself able to get in the zone much more quickly.

It also becomes easier the more you do it. I've been doing side projects for many years.

I guess that phrase "adapt or die" is apt here. Thanks for the answers.

Hey Matt, so you launched the site 4 years ago and very top comment on that old HN thread was: .."There are no margins in the domain industry.".. So, years passed by :) how much income the site generates monthly?

At the time of the acquisition the site made money in two ways:

1. Affiliate sales: when you click on a domain and register it through GoDaddy, Namecheap, etc, I get a % of the purchase price.

2. Premium accounts: Lean Domain Search only showed the top 150 results for free. You could pay $79 once for two months of access or $199/year for access to all 5,000 results.

Each was bringing in around $1,000-$1,500/month with the premium accounts growing quickly.

After the acquisition, we made the site free but left the affiliate links in place. The site has grown a lot since then [1] but the affiliate revenue still brings in the same $1,000 - $1,500/month because GoDaddy (the main driver of affiliate revenue) made some changes to its affiliate program that led to lower payouts.

[1] http://mattmazur.com/2015/07/03/lean-domain-search-at-3%C2%B...

Thank you for your service!

Well done...the UI looks great...

And thanks for your service...!

To the downvoter...you do realize that the article includes several screenshots of his work...?

His work looks clean to me...I'll leave it at that...

> thanks for your service

People are probably downvoting for this. These type of comments are more suited for reddit etc.

P.S. I didn't downvote you BTW

I have friends in military who really hate this. Because they consider themselves just doing a job like anyone else. And the fact its mostly used by politicians for political point scoring.

Thanks for the great write up. I found it to be both interesting and inspirational.

Now that you are working full time as a developer, how much time do you spend on your side projects usually?

I really liked the quality of your tool. The best I have used.

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