Sourced Adventures – Adventure Travel Startup generating $125K/month
indiehackers.com
indiehackers.com
I really appreciate the kind words and thanks for the Adventure Cafe shout out. It means a lot!
I really like this! Lots of people I talk to think: I will put this on the internet and people will find me. Hustling to get to your crowd is a great way to make sure you get consistent traffic. Kudos on this
I don't know his sector, but in mine, for a maximally automated service, that would be very high, and leaves exposure to undercutting from similar new entrants.
In other words, sales directly through sourcedadventures.com (not counting revenue through OTA's or third party channels)
Google made quite a bit of changes to the algorithm and hurt almost every travel product in favor of it's own products.
I wonder if you were effected by this at all and what did you do to deal with it?
Google also gives a lot of credit to how a business is reviewed in travel and because we have hundreds of 5-star reviews between TripAdvisor, Yelp and Google+ and many more internal reviews on our site we've only seen our rankings rise recently. We focus on having the best reviewed product in each of our categories and it seems Google has rewarded us for that.
It's something we're definitely on the look out for though, absolutely
https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/livingsocial-buys-ur...
I came on board shortly after the Urban Escapes acquisition as part of the team that was scaling the UE model for LS in NYC.
Urban Escapes was rebranded as "LivingSocial Adventures"
HN users are usually a very poor demographic to optimize for. It's a small demographic, for starters, and it's a very sensitive one (as evidenced by your comment). On the other hand my girlfriend, parents and probably all friends not working in tech wouldn't even notice it (where notice means "perceptibly annoying enough to have an explicit thought about it").
A lot of people honestly just don't care if the website is bloated or has numerous prompts to subscribe or chat. The users of this site evidently put up with it because it provides them with enough utility that they're not going to nitpick. The creators of the site have likely researched the market and business model enough to know that this is close to the ideal for maximizing profit without sacrificing utility. The website has hit market equilibrium.
That website makes someone a whole bunch of money. That doesn't mean that website isn't awful.
This is like bikeshedding the definitions of privacy, DRM, net neutrality, etc. Most people just don't give a shit, no matter how loud the minority is that demonizes things like throwing a newsletter subscription popup on a website.
I think you need a new word to describe your (valid, in a way) opinion.
Thinking others should change their opinion because you don't understand subjectivity is absurd.
Most people would care if they knew the difference, they do not. It is up to those who know to tell them, to make a stance and denounce the shit.
Would they?
> they do not. It is up to those who know to tell them, to make a stance and denounce the shit.
Counterpoint: How do you differentiate people who have made a choice through inadvertent ignorance vs those who have made a different choice than you because they value different things?
E.g. not caring if they harm their hearing, liking the frequency response of Bose over more neutral speakers, having other things they'd rather be doing than read audiophile forums, or rather save $500+ and use an inferior speaker
Usually people regret this later in life. I guess we fundamentally disagree on the ability of people to make good decisions that they won't regret later and whether or not we should help people avoid doing things they will surely regret.
> or rather save $500+ and use an inferior speaker
This is hyperbole, I'm talking about the difference between a $3 set of earbuds and $20. I'm not saying everyone should have the highest quality gear available.
$125k/month in gross booked travel may not be a whole bunch of money. Typically, only portions of the travel have commissions, and not huge percentages either.
It could grow of course.
- Say what you will about performance and UX, the fact is that it has (dramatically) increased conversions and bookings.
- If we were optimizing for HN, the site would look and perform much differently. The target audience - as others have mentioned - aren't repulsed by the popups.
Go read through Kyle's interview on IH - a lot of what he does with SA is grounded in quick iteration and "moving fast." I can't tell you how how many different techniques/widgets/plugins/etc we've implemented (and subsequently canned) over the past few years.
This is what really irks me about the design industry of late. It's become an overly self-critical echo chamber of people pushing this idea of what user experience "should be", yet totally miss the critical business decisioning behind it and ignore the fact that it drives conversions.
You are visiting this site with a dispassionate eye of an observer. The usual demographic visiting a travel site is a lot more invested in actually finding a travel deal that works for them.
Let's take an extreme example - say you were thirsty for water right now. Would you take a "cold enough" bottle of water or would you wait for the perfectly ice-cold bottle of flavored water with brain boosting ions? The average visitor who goes to a website to transact is like the thirsty you. They are willing to overlook the "cold enough-ness" of the water as it were because they need their thirst sated.
We aren't special because we are users of Hacker News. We are special because we are seeing the website from the vantage point of a bystander.
This is really common practice and I hated every bit of it.
Everyone is looking at the big guys like Expedia and Booking.com and those are really pushy. You can see them popping up every thing in a popup.
You're looking at a room and you see "1500 people are looking @ this room now", everything, just to get you to book.
This case is a bit extreme, even in those standards, but not the first time I see something like it.
What you have here is a crusade based upon your personal feelings, not the objective utility of the website. And the result is that we now have a discussion going centered around common marketing strategies instead of the website itself and its service.
As a counterpoint, I don't particularly find this website egregious. If you feel strongly about things like this, don't use those websites, or build your own alternative (though a lack of popups will not be a competitive advantage).
Note that I'm not saying this to insult you. I'm saying this because your comment comes across to me as myopic and lacking in self-awareness. You're not the target demographic if these things put you off, but that doesn't mean it's productive for you to call them "bad." HN users frequently wonder how people build profitable advertising, product or consulting-driven profitable businesses, and the answer is (in part) that those people were okay with doing things that others find disagreeble. That's an inevitability when you have outspoken groups like e.g. those who believe all software should be free and open source.
If ever there were a statement that encapsulated AOL in a nutshell...
Maybe we'd find that the market is inefficient, which is why this website thrives despite its user interface (if we take as axiomatic that the user interface is really unenjoyable for most users). However, I'd happily bet that this is actually not the case, and that most users not only put up with it, they don't notice it.
I'll note (as a purely dialectic matter) that I do not agree with the idea that people can simultaneously dislike something and not be willing to spend money to enjoy it more, given that there are more enjoyable alternatives of the same utility and the users can afford it.
It's something we've discussed internally quite a bit. I wish it were as simple as, hey we have this great product and that's all we need to have, but alas these tools are necessary to help us grow the business.
Another important thing to consider -- You have to look at our site through the lens of the travel industry. Deciding you're going to book an all day excursion or 5-day vacation is a big commitment and people have a lot of questions. They tend to revisit the site again and again before converting because there is a lot to consider. That's why we have pre-triggered chats, which BTW only trigger if you meet certain parameters. For example, if you spend more than a certain amount of time on a product page, visit specific pages where we see a lot of drop-off, or on your 2nd or 3rd session. We don't bug people at random, we bug them in a very carefully and meticulously measured way :) If we were a SaaS business for example we would optimize differently. I might even go as far as to say some (maybe not all) of what appears to be annoying to an outsider can help assist the end user.
All of that being said, I totally understand where everyone is coming from here and to be honest I don't think there is a single comment here that I disagree with. Ultimately, we have to test things and keep what works. If it doesn't work we always get rid of it, eventually.
If you owned the business what would you optimize for? Warm and Fuzzies? Or possibly profit?
Here's the famous Drew Houston post about Dropbox: