Ask HN: Review my startup, CampaignBar | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Review my startup, CampaignBar

2 pointsmootothemax7 comments

This is my minimum viable product, CampaignBar: http://campaignbar.com

I wrote this after getting tired of maintaining an Excel spreadsheet of which sites I wanted to contact and their current contact status. There are two parts to it: a Firefox toolbar where you can save or ignore sites (along with their contact information); and a web front-end to the data.

The site supports multiple users, so if you outsource website marketing you can set your guys loose and they won't be able to duplicate the sites they've found. Currently, any users you add can only use the toolbar - they have no access to the admin area.

When I have some more time, I want to add the ability to change the status of sites, as well as let you add different types of user accounts, and add in some useful statistics as well.

I'd love to know what you think about the functionality of the site, whether it's obvious what it does, and if you give it a try how everything works for you :)

Thanks, Tom.

I would explain a bit better what it does and that it's targeted to advertisers and not publishers.

Maybe I'm retarded, but to me, it's not too clear that what it does is "helps you to track communication with webmasters to put ad campaigns on their sites".

Also, why don't you create a bookmarklet which shows a small popup (like instapaper or pinboard.in) for non firefox users and people who don't like installing bars? Shouldn't take much effort and it will lower a bit the barrier of entry.

Thanks, you've made me realise I really need to work on my wording :)

It's not targeted at advertisers per se. For example, I've been contacting bloggers about reviewing another web app that I run, and I've been finding it a real pain to keep track of the various websites. I know one guy who uses an Excel spreadsheet to track websites he's contacted about purchasing outright, and I think this could be useful for him as well.

So really - I guess I need to get some use cases on the site, right? :)

Also, just thought of something really cool. You could make it sort of like Google Webmaster Tools where a user can "verify" that they own the site. Then you can open it up so they can see who's maybe "tagged" their site and that allows the members to open up dialog with each other and communicate on the site.

Could turn it into a neat webmaster community where people can work together easier.

Just a thought.

This is pretty handy, I can see the need for this tool for quite a few use cases. Good job, haven't seen anything like it before either.

In 30 words or less, what does the site do? Does it solve a problem?

In 30 words or less, what does the site do? The site works in conjunction with a Firefox toolbar to save the details of websites you want to contact later on.

Does it solve a problem? Absolutely, yes! There are plenty of people I know using an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of potential contacts and for their marketing campaigns.

Clickable: http://campaignbar.com

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