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Comment by allanderek | Hacker News Reader

You cannot seem to view any of the 'dreams' without creating an account. You are going to lose a lot of potential users this way.

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Hi, yes you have to create an account to view. I've accepted that I will lose many potential users by choosing to avoid the typical VC-funded, unethical approach to the internet. I don't have any advertising, tracking, or selling of user data. The way I pay for the site is by having people purchase DreamCoins. Hopefully, I can attract people who respect this approach and are thankful to not have their information tracked and sold, although I'm not sure many people care about that.

That's a very noble approach, but I don't understand how it relates to not showing non-users current dreams? Is it that you have to pay to even view dreams? I didn't get that from the home page. I think at the very least you need to demonstrate to potential users what the product does, otherwise (I think) few people will sign-up for something they don't really understand.

Yes, to view a dream, users pay the price shown on the left. I thought I explained how the site works well enough in the "How This Works" section, but it seems like that approach isn't working. Do you have any suggestions on how I could better explain this to people? Might it be a good idea to have the "How This Works" section pop up automatically when people visit the site?

Is the interface confusing to you? If so, what would make it more intuitive?

I'm willing to pay anyone (in DreamCoins) who helps to develop an effective explanation. You can cash out DreamCoins, so there's real value if you want to help me out.

I'm afraid I have no real expertise in user-experience so I cannot really say. I definitely think you want, as you suggest, a "How it works" at the very top, centre of the landing page. Preferably in graphic form.

I also still think you want example dreams to be viewable by anyone. I believe that few people sign-up without a good idea of the kind of thing they are signing-up for.

OK thanks for the suggestions.

One comment I would share; I completely missed the "How This Works" link because it's in the part of the page where people usually put the name of the site, and doesn't look like a link. I might be the only person who ignores the upper left hand corner of a page but it is one data point.

Interesting, thanks. Do you recommend changing where everything is laid out in the header / footer? Do you initially look toward the upper right?

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