Comment by jbenz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jbenz | Hacker News Reader

Thanks so much for posting this. Very cool.

RSS Talker is sweet. Matt, if you're reading this, and if you don't mind, here are a couple critiques:

The title of this page should really be the info in that bubble: "Track Amazon Price Changes With an RSS Feed". This should be the biggest, boldest font on the page.

I don't think the average web user is very familiar with the terms ASIN and ISBN. It could be as simple as "Enter your email to track a specific product on Amazon." The How It Works section can explain more.

Can you make it just an email service for people without RSS feeds?

This site has a ton of potential. It's a shame that Amazon's commission rate is so low. It would be awesome to open it up to any web retailer that is signed up through a service like Commission Junction. Some of them offer 15% commission. I'm sure you've thought through all of this.

Good luck!

Hey jbenx, Thanks for the critiques. I will definitely take it into consideration.

RE: ASIN and ISBN - I was torn on whether to include those, since I agree with you that it can be confusing. I also have the option of dropping the entire url in there and it will pick the ASIN out automatically. I figured that would be easiest for users.

RE: email - I didn't want to do the email thing because then I'd have to deal w/ unsubscribe and spam issues. I like making services that don't require a signup.

> ASIN and ISBN

You could headline the box with "URL for the product or wishlist you want to follow", and then, in a smaller and greyer font below put "(you can also just put the ISBN or ASIN in there)".

I use a similar site right now: http://camelcamelcamel.com/

I think their interface is a bit cleaner than RSSTalker and probably more developed right now.

Thanks, I have put quite a lot of work into it since January 2008. The site has been very profitable since launching in April! Here's hoping that continues in 2009...

Suggestions, feature requests, and bug reports are all welcome =)

I agree about changing the headline. It took a minute to figure out what the site was for, and that's bad. For music.rsstalker.com, I was really confused.

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