My 10 Year Side Project Story
dateful.com
dateful.com
I hate comments like that. Maybe someone could make it in less time but I suspect the commenter hadn't even tried. Why throw your estimate out there as better than someone's real effort? That level of arrogance is frustrating.
If they were in the same boat, they might have not done it if they expected it to take a weekend.
Sure, you could probably whip something up in an hour that did a large part of of what it needed to do, but it would be kinda crappy and half-assed.
You almost always do 80% of the work in the first 20% of the time, the rest is a lot slower, but every bit as important.
People absolutely can tell when they are using something that has thought and effort put into it, and you can't fake that.
It means that's easy to talk about a finished work, it's faults, how it could've been done better and, if one were to replicate it, he would take a lot of less time.
Of course he would, someone else took the trouble to plan everything and fix the all the problems to reach a reasonable architecture/design. And obviously, that person will never do it because "it's trivial".
It's doing pretty decent in traffic, ranking around number 4 in a fairly generic search for this utility, and gets about 1200-1400 invocations of the download functionality per day. I'd like to monetize it but I'm not really sure what I can do. I put some ads up from a small ad network that's slowly been building up a couple cents per day maybe (and Adsense isn't really interesting in my type of site -- I tried), but I'm not even really sure how valuable my traffic is anyway.
If someone has suggestions for a better way to monetize, I'd be willing to hear you out!
Share a little bit about yourself to humanize.
It will probably make you more than the ads.
The best ways I know to monetize something for consumers: ads, app stores, donation buttons.
I tried an iPhone app to monetize the time zone converter but in my case the ad performed better. I tried a donation button for a few weeks and it brought in more than I expected.
> Google-served ads on screens without publisher-content
> We do not allow Google-served ads on screens:
> * without content or with low value content,
> * that are under construction,
> * that are used for alerts, navigation or other behavioral purposes
I'm thinking I'd probably fall into the first category. From the research I did, it seems like they want actual unique content, like a blog or something. Though if you managed to get a single-purpose-serving site onto Adsense, it gives me hope maybe I could as well. I might look into it again. The donation button seems worth a shot too. Thanks!
1. Have at least 3 ideally 5 text-heavy pages on your site. 500 words minimum each. Tell your backstory, explain the advantages of your product, create an FAQ, ...
2. Make sure the site has a navigation bar somewhere with links to the basics that most sites have: an About page, maybe a short privacy policy, a contact page.
3. The site can't look broken or have "coming soon" anywhere. It helps if the site has been given a "fresh coat of paint" from a designer.
I don't know for sure, but the feeling I get is some human at Google has a scorecard and they go and check your site. Google won't reveal the actual scorecard because it'd become too easy to game, but the things above are what I've learned through the process.
It turns out that adSense, will not touch any cannabis content with a 10ft pole so it pretty much ruled out getting any traffic via them. There were some more niche advertisers but for those you needed substantially more funds.
In the end, I found that SEO and content were a good alternative (and free!).
I figured I'd come back and update that I removed all the ads from the fairly sketchy-looking ad network I joined (which had accumulated something like $8 of unpaid payout over the past year or so) and added a donation section to my website, and just a couple days later I already got someone that tossed me $10.
Perhaps I underestimated the generosity of people! Thanks for the advice!
What library are you using for the client side compression? Or did you make your own?
So when it says that, what does that mean? It pays for hosting costs I assume. Are we talking enough to pay for a couple of meals out a month? Or enough to retire on?
I wonder actually if something like https://www.levels.fyi could be built or exists but for ad-supported websites (side project idea?). It'd be really useful for people to understand more broadly "if you create site of type x and it gets y amount of traffic you can expect this level of ad revenue".
One reason the amount involved in my case would only be so useful is that sites can wildly vary (by as much as 100x I'm told) in how much $ per visit is generated (the industry term is "RPM").
Is this because you don't want to reveal anything about your personal financial situation or is it because knowing the amount would somehow help someone compete and encroach on your "territory"?
Still not a lot of impressions though. it would be 1,000,000 / 1000 = 1000 * __ x.
Where X I might guess anywhere from $.5 cpm to maybe even $10 if it's super unique and high quality niche. banners are cheap for a reason.
Though someone like Axios where they do a more 'sponsored' big higher quality ad probably gets more. I think some jobs or industry email lists able to get sponsors to pay big. Video gets more.
It's all about niche & quality. I'd rather spend more on a higher quality ad than touch any open market banner crap.
Someone had to say it.
Many years later (and just a few months ago) I switched over to a new domain "Dateful" as I had accumulated a number of different features for the site that went beyond just timezone conversion. "Dateful" isn't based at all off Google Trends, I just like the name.
The site now has more than a million visitors a month and earns a nice side income from a small ad.