Hacker News Reader

Comment by critke | Hacker News Reader

online with http://uploadthingy.com - not totally passive - new users sometimes need some help - but once they're subscribed - well, they're subscribed.

View on HN

Great idea, mate. Enabling people to embed the upload form into their site is awesome.

I have one suggestion. I watched the "How It Works" video, which was informative, though a bit slow-paced. However, the soundtrack could really be improved. That looping Windows chime forced me to mute the video =P

I like how you brand yourself; reminds me of something like http://wufoo.com/.

ha, yeah. gotta love a 'thingy'. Already working on new thingys - too bad the building part isn't passive.

There are a billion and a half different "upload" sites out there. How do you market?

very slooowly. lots of patience. adwords to be exact. and yes, there are a million upload sites - but hardly any embeddable ones. a niche within a niche. and people love it.

Is the revenue substantial for something semi-passive?

Well, let me say that it's profitable. Can't live off of it 100% yet, but it looks like I will be able to soon. And I'm already building the next thingy. So again - it sure as heck isn't passive while you're building it - and only semi-passive while acquiring new users - but the churn is surprisingly low - so even though it probably wont ever turn into something that's 100% passive (gotta make sure those servers are happy!) - I'm pretty sure it'll get darn close.

This is one of the single best examples of "make something people want" I've seen in a while. A problem real people have, that they are willing to pay money to make it go away. It doesn't get any simpler than that (not that it was simple to build it and make it simple for your users, but that it is simple for them).

Good work!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com