Ask HN: review my site, afterthepinkslip.com | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: review my site, afterthepinkslip.com

12 pointsnonrecursive26 comments

I've been working on afterthepinkslip.com, and I think it's ready for other people to use. The site's a tool for helping people stay organized when they're looking for jobs.

The site is simple (I hope), and I'd love to see what the Hacker news community thinks!

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Don't have the video auto-reply/loop. Just play once.

Also I would tweak the demo video so that you're explaining what problems the product solves and how the product helps rather than explain how to use the product. There are some lines such as "Notice when you view this page your cursor is in the first form field automatically. You can just start typing" that I don't think really help to sell the product. I say just use the product while you explain how the product helps the user and why the user should use it.

TC has two pretty good articles on how to demo a product:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/09/how-to-demo-your-startu...

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/01/how-to-demo-your-startu...

Joel also has a pretty good article:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/11/16.html

PS/OT - For future reference, what did you use the create the demo video?

Thanks for those articles, they'll definitely help me create a better demo video. I definitely approached it from a "weeeee I finally feel like I can show this to other people look what I did" standpoint whether than a more marketing standpoint.

Here's what I used: Samson CO1U mic: http://www.amazon.com/Samson-C01U-Recording-Podcasting-Pak/d...

Screenflow: http://www.flip4mac.com/screenflow.htm

VisualHub: http://www.techspansion.com/

Flow Player: http://flowplayer.org/

why limit this to only people who got laid off? this can be helpful for all job-seekers.

so instead of keeping http://afterthepinkslip.com/ as a domain name, keeping generic domain name will help more.

i think people who did not get laid-off and simply looking for job search may find that this tool is not useful for them.

my $0.02s! overall, it's a nice utility.

I wouldn't say it's limited to only people who have gotten laid off, though it does seem to target them.

The site was born out of my own experience with getting laid off twice in three months. I feel like I know that specific pain, so I'm decently equipped to build a site for people who are also dealing with having lost a job.

It probably makes sense to expand the site to apply to anyone who's looking for a job, and I'll probably do that. The site is actually pretty young - I put most of it together in 14 hours over last weekend.

Looks good and quite useful (my wife was recently laid off).

My only question is whether you intend to run it as a business or not? It seems that the recently laid-off won't be the most generous with their cash and neither (hopefully) will they be long-time customers.

Thanks hopeless! If your wife ends up using it I'd love to hear her thoughts too (my email is daniel at flyingmachinestudios.com)

I've considered charging for it eventually - something like $8 for an account, for life. I agree that it needs to an amount the recently laid-off are willing to part with, and definitely agree that it hopefully won't be used for a long time. So charging a monthly fee definitely wouldn't work, because it would be too much of a hassle for a user to come back and cancel the account.

You could also do $5 for 3 months, no auto-renewal.

It doesn't necessarily have to be a pink slip:

* www.afterembezzlement.com

* www.aftergettingcaughtwithyourbossesdaughter.com

* www.neverhadajob.com

* www.lostmillionsandnowhavetowork.com

* www.afterbeingbeatenupbyaspikyhairedguywhonevertalksandhishotfriendalongwithsomeguyyouturnedintoafrog.com

* www.republicansenator.com

i'm not sure that afterbeingbeatenupbyaspikyhairedguywhonevertalksandhishotfriendalongwithsomeguyyouturnedintoafrog.com would really communicate that the site is for people looking for a job

Why else do you think Magus joined up with the bastards who invaded his home, beat up his friends, and nearly killed him? He was out of work and looking for something to do.

Maybe you could call it postpinkslip.com It's a bit shorter and (IMO) sounds better. It's also available.

Yeah, I'm not sure what to use for the name. As other folks have mentioned it might be a good idea to have a name applicable to all job searches (though I haven't found a good name to use for that). I've also tried "after pink", which is rubbish. In a way, though, I like how "after the pink slip" sounds.

Maybe I should drop a vowel : aftrthepinkslip.com

  "Maybe I should drop a vowel : aftrthepinkslip.com"

Please don't do this.

maybe "aftrthpnkslp"

though maybe now that the 2.0 bubble has burst, I should look ahead to web 3.0 and consider dropping consonants

Simple words that are spelled properly are almost always best. If you're in doubt, buy a few domains and test them.

Screw the web 2.0 horseshit.

Yeah, I was being facetious. "aeii" wouldn't really be very descriptive as a name. I'm thinking something like "worksearchtool.com" might work (just got it). Not sure when I'll have the time to test out domains, but that's a good suggestion.

Ironically, once you find a good domain you'll most likely have to buy its misspellings :).

http://instantdomainsearch.com is pretty good

I've got timerichmoneypoor.com if you want it you can have it at cost. As for income sources have a look at SnapTalent and JobSyndicate. I'm also currently working on a recruitment startup so if you want to chat about stuff feel free to send me an email.

I expected this to be a job posting site a la monster, hotjobs, etc. I was glad to see it was different. This is more of a job-hunt-organization tool. But you could maybe have the name suggest that. "after the pink slip" - why wouldn't this be just as useful for someone who wasn't fired, but was just looking for a better job?

Also it seems like a pain to type things in. It seems like it would be simpler just to bookmark job listings than to use this site. Maybe you could have ways to import or connect with common job sites, or with a generic bookmark. A bookmarklet to import a job listing might make this easier.

Thanks for the feedback. Seems like there's a consensus that it could use a better name :)

I agree that having a bookmarklet would be helpful. Another possibility is to have the user add RSS feeds, and automatically add those job items.

It's an interesting idea, although for me personally I much prefer using a general tool that can hold that data and connect it with other data, rather than a myriad of applications each with a separate reservoir of data.

My only specific complaint is that I found the video player to be a bit wack on WebKit nightly.

Have you ever heard of XSS? I didn't fcked it up though.

Thanks for pointing that out.

I like the name.

this is a fantastic name.

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