Rate my startup - 123LinkIt.com | Hacker News Reader

Rate my startup - 123LinkIt.com

123linkit.com

24 pointsmyasmine47 comments

Too much text on the landing page and the domain name (specially the 123) activated my anti-spam sense, which would have made me close the tab automatically if I hadn't remembered that it came from HN.

It must be the three boxes you're referring to - I tried to make them keyword-rich for SEO but maybe I went overboard. I'll work on it. The domain we're definitely sticking with but maybe if we change some other things - more white space, get rid of "make more money", it'll help with the spammy sense.

Thanks for the feedback.

SEO doesn't really work like that.

No, but part of it? Yes.

Like a crumb to a cake.

The crumbs together make up the cake.

Make sure to take HN's feedback in context. The average HN'er is NOT your target customer. So take their criticism of your site looking/reading too spammy with a giant grain of salt. In fact, I'm surprised you'd even ask them to rate your startup.

A better place to ask for feedback would be a forum for bloggers (your target demo) who would be interested in exploring other avenues for monetizing their blog/site besides adcents. I, for one, think that your design and copy are fine. Just split-test regularly and keep track of your conversions (which is what any self-respecting aff marketer should do anyway)

Do change your domain name though. It's pretty bad. There's plenty of good ones left, just be creative and use domai.nr to check their availability.

Also, check out your competitors - skimlinks, amazon affiliates etc - to get an idea of their design, strategy etc.

Looks awfully spammy.

Same here - just my first honest impression. Spammy words: 123, affiliate marketing, free, make MORE money, affiliate program.

I'm not entirely sure how they would avoid some of those words though. They are basically providing a way for every blogger to become an affiliate marketer without having to join the networks directly and they offer their own affiliate program. They could maybe come up with some generic descriptive terms, but enough people know what affiliate marketing is these days that it's probably fine given the target audience.

you do realize that the majority of affiliate marketing isn't associated with spam, right?

Can you please explain how? Thanks!

The color scheme, 'make money', the domain name, and so on. Just a first impression.

I don't know why you got downvoted on that. I totally agree, my first impression was also 'cheap & spammy' ... something those annoying social media marketing experts on twitter would hawk.

Here's a blurred screenshot to get that 'First Impression' feeling, judge for yourself: http://i.imgur.com/med1t.png

I've been working on this for a year so I'm wayyyy too close to it - this feedback is helpful.

We definitely need to get rid of the make money text. If there's anything specific that lends to the cheap and spammy impression, please lmk. Thanks!

You may also want to take feedback from HN in context of target market. I am guessing very few on HNers will qualify as your customer, rather this should be aimed at people who are actually interested in 'make money online' kind of products and for them site design might be OK. Better feedback from some other community too.

That's an excellent point and one we should all bear in mind when dealing with sites that appeal to audiences that are far from what we know best.

I'm not sure how the color scheme or domain is but the whole make money thing can be seen that away and we're staying aware of it. If you have any suggestions on how to improve it, I'd love to hear them. Thanks for clarifying.

It looks busy in general and instantly made me doubt the legality of your venture. I think you need to be less wordy, use less tech words, and use more whitespace and generally less cluttered. For a good similar layout, look up Github.com's plans and prices page.

Above example doesn't make me want to close the browser. Non suspicious layout counts.

edit: I really like your idea and it looks worth exploring further.

There seems to be a consensus around that. It's now one of my main priorities, thanks for the feedback.

I kinda see what he's saying. It has a template feel to it, but I think overall the site is deeper than a spam site.

This coming from someone who doesn't and has never used this type of service.

Template feel to it? I have to say that's the first time I've heard that - I usually get compliments on the design.

Thanks for the feedback neverthless!

That's the thing. My rational self says this is a nice design. But the first impression is "domain parking page".

It might just be too high pressure, buy now, etc. Might also be the numbers in the name. And then there's the "Breaking news" bar. Reminds me of the shopping channel :)

But it is still a nicely made page, and it is clear that quite a lot of work went into it.

Yeah, I see what you mean now...

It's funny how you can be happy with something for so long and then...BOOM! You see it in a completely different way. HN is definitely good for that :)

transforming relevant keywords on a blog to affiliate links is a practice that I would find to be irritating. edit: depends on how it is executed ofcourse

Yep, I just answered this question via another comment. It looks like we should elaborate more on this on the homepage.

Thanks for the feedback!

I doubt that many successful bloggers would go back and add links to advertisers in their text as an after thought. They would probably lose most of their readership if they did. Perhaps your company can suggest links to other blogs instead? I'm not sure how you'd make money by doing this, but perhaps there is a way.

You're obviously terrific at what you do, and you have an open mind and good attention for detail. I think that you'll ultimately be very successful. Good luck!

Wait, was that a compliment? I forgot what they felt like for a second! ;-)

Regardless, thanks for the feedback and kind words. We're targeting mid-tier bloggers who are already advertising but don't know how to leverage it or don't have the time to spend on affiliate marketing. We're already making money so it's been working so far. Re: suggesting links to other blogs, it's actually a crowded space and not what we went to get into.

Thanks again.

While it does have that "make money fast" vibe, be sure to A/B test any way that you modify it. Around here, we love minimalist, careful designs which may not appeal to the "make money fast" crowd who are your primary customers.

So not only take our advice with a grain of salt, but A/B test it. I assume people wouldn't have so many sites that look roughly like yours if it didn't work, at least sometimes. Find out if you're part of that "sometimes".

I love the idea and with wordpress integration and less work for user, that is great. I'm not a fan of those links though whenever I'm browsing the internet, but they work.

As said before, the domain name is not the greatest. Find something catchy, more unique, that makes sense and people will automatically associate to this type of linking and ads. The front page is really confusing and took me a long time to figure out what you were doing. Everything below the navigation bar is all cluttered. There should definitely be controls for your slideshow presentation.

I went through 4 domain changes already...haha, got any ideas? :)

A more simplistic homepage sounds necessary. Thanks for the feedback!

First impressions:

1 - I should be able click around the steps on your carousel animation (above the learn more and sign up buttons). 2 - Bottom right, tweet is bleeding out of the box 3 - Will your plugin annoy users of your clients' blogs? (e.g. are there obnoxious rollover popups, etc) 4 - As others mentioned, the design has an air of cheap template. It's mostly because it makes excessive use of bright color and it's too busy. Instead of packing things like "breaking news" onto the homepage, space things out more and give widgets more breathing room.

Thanks for the feedback. Noted on points one and two. Re: 3 - I'm not sure what you mean. No, we don't do rollover popups. 4 - will run some A/B tests.

re 3: what I meant was "do your links disrupt the user experience unexpectedly?". I'm sure you've seen sites where you rollover a word with a double green underline (often keywords sniffed from search engine Referer headers) and some annoying ad popup appears, convering the content. That sort of stuff.

If you don't that, kudos to you.

One thing that jumped out at me is there's no clear single call to action button. You have both 'Learn More' and 'Sign Up', which downplayed the importance of each of them since they're the same size.

I'd make it clear to the user you want them to click Sign Up, and make Learn More smaller or just a link below it. Also the 'Free' sticker almost looks like a call to action button too, and IMO slightly spammy.

Good luck with all the feedback.

Hey Brain, long time no see!

Thanks for commenting and the feedback. A/B testing the points you mentioned is on top of the list. Hope all is well.

Best,

Yasmine

There was so much going on visually that by the time my eyes made it to the animated tour graphic, it was already on step 2. Being forced to move through an animation at your pace was uncomfortable, it should be manual.

I like the idea.

I'd remove too tech words like WordPress, plugin from landing page to "supported plaforms" or something, you are going to support other platform, right?

Screenshots for 1-2-3 steps arent so nice.

Thanks for the feedback. Yep, we'll make the content more general when we launch other platforms.

The 1-2-3 steps were supposed to reinforce the name but making the connection can be hard. I'll work on it.

I like the idea. Only a small styling issue jumped out at me. For your Twitter feed in the lower right hand corner, long-ish Tweets seem to be overflowing out of the quote bubble (in Chrome at least).

I see that, thanks for the heads-up!

how does it work? normal words "with high potential" in a post get automatically linked to a merchant's offerings? If so, no thanks (at least not for me).

Good question.

Nope. The blogger is getting 3 choices in their Settings pages where they specify the keywords they want to link to:

1) Brand names like Apple, Best Buy, etc. 2) Product names like Dell Laptop, etc. 3) Generic names like Indian flights.

Linking is going to occur automatically depending on the selection (this is an upcoming feature). We don't have keywords that are too generic to avoid the spammy look.

This is taking some time but we're also working on relating the keywords to the overall context of the post so only the relevant keywords are linked.

so, if I write "apple", no link, and if I write "Apple"... what do you link? Apple.com, the homepage?

And what about "Dell laptop", where will that take to? A page on Dell's site where they talk about all their laptops (and not other products they sell)? Not an easy task.

It would have to be Apple.com and for Dell laptop, it'd take them to search results showing the dell computers in stock or the specific model if specified. It's not easy but increases conversions and we're almost ready to roll it out.

I like the look. The colors are rich and warm. I instantly signed up, and will do so with many of my blogs.

However, that said, it doesn't seem like something a quality longform content blog would use. It's more for an auxiliary lower ranking blog. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since there are many more of the latter than of the former.

Thanks Jason. The plugin is, well...just okay right now to be honest. It does the job, but it's not near the level it's going to be in the upcoming weeks.

It's going through a major overhaul that is going to make it easier to use and that will also include more intelligence features - I hope you'll stick around until then.

And you're right, it's more for bloggers who have content. We plan to branch out to other types of advertising in the future that would be a better fit for the latter.

Thanks again.

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