Throwaway90283

I should clarify, I think they should be strictly following web standards, and by doing so, they help to force those sites not following standards to update their code, or die. I don't want my browser using extra resources, and having extra features and menus to improve compatibility with someone's sloppy, hacked together website from the 90s. I'd rather that site appear broken because it's not following standards, and by doing so, it's encouraged to update, or be replaced by someone else.

I believe this would allow for a smaller browser footprint, and we'd see better coded websites in the long run, instead of carrying them through.

For example, we get a new IE browser, that follows standards to the T. If your site doesn't work in IE, it's not because "it's IE, use a real browser", it's because you didn't code your site properly. In the video they talk about how they would previously look at the top 10k websites and ensure compatibility, and now they're looking at millions and billions. They shouldn't look at anything. If Reddit doesn't work in the new version of IE, because they're not following standards, then so be it. Don't look at methods of relaxing those standards and bending the rules to get Reddit working. Leave it broken, and let the users apply pressure to Reddit because the site isn't working in IE. As I said above, they can't laugh off IE anymore, because it's not some dumb, outdated browser. Instead, it's following standards, so Reddit is broken, not IE. It would be the gold standard... in standards. You check to make sure your site works in IE, because if it does, then you coded it right. If your site displays fine in Firefox and Chrome, you don't really know if it's coded properly, or if they just held your hand to make it display correctly.

I'd like to see some competition as well, but in my perspective, they're taking the wrong approach.

This entire project seems to be about improving compatibility with older websites, by adding more algorithms and layers to the rendering process. I don't believe everyone is using Firefox and Chrome because they have better compatibility than IE.

I think they should focus on cutting the fat, and making the lightest weight, fastest and standards compliant browser possible, with some popular third-party add-ons available, such as ad block. Or, leave IE11 as the default now for compatibility, and spin off a new browser called IE Lightning.

If people start to switch over, then more sites will be developed to work in IE Lightning.

In short, create a faster browser with a smaller memory footprint and ad block, get users, watch compatibility fix itself, then make this ship as the default browser in 5 years.

I think the idea is average. If you search on Google, you'll likely find a code snippet for most questions. StackOverflow has the advantage of comments and opinions, which add more value, instead of just a block of code. Right now, you have no content, and the idea looks like an afterthought added to your existing site. If you want to give this a try, then...

1. Get a catchy name, like Snippr.com.

2. Setup categories for different programming languages.

3. Write code snippets for the most common functions people are looking to find. For example, visit Google and type... 'PHP how to', and you'll see frequent search terms, people wondering how to connect to a MySQL database, how to send an e-mail, how to upload a file, how to get the current URL, how to redirect to another page. People are looking for these answers, and they're easy to write. You can write hundreds of these snippets in a day and start building content.

4. SEO. Right now your links are http://volatileread.com/UtilityLibrary?id=1084. They should be http://snippr.com/php/how-to-get-the-current-url.

With that being said, I don't think it'll work. People don't open their browser and visit a site of code snippets. Instead, they have a problem, and they search Google for the answer. Showing up on the first page of Google for these common terms is not an easy task. You're competing with successful sites that have existed for the better part of a decade. I honestly don't think you'll be able to outrank them, and therefore you'll receive little to no organic traffic, and that's the traffic your site will rely on.

Surely it would be easier to kidnap a passenger at their hotel, or to hijack their taxi, then to steal an entire airplane, take control of hundreds of passengers, make it disappear from radar, spoof the location, fly it across national borders, land it in Kazakhstan, and hide it underground.

It's completely absurd. If the president of the United States was on that flight, I'd give it more credibility. However, which passenger on that flight was so valuable, and surrounded by so much security, that hijacking the flight made sense?

The same goes for cargo, it must be easier to make friends in the right places, or pay people off to have that cargo "misplaced".

Keep in mind the Google CDN is blocked in countries such as China, so your web fonts are not going to render for those visitors, and if you rely on jQuery from the Google CDN, those visitors will experience a broken site. If you have a global reach, this is one reason to self host.

I don't see anything wrong with that quote. They're simply saying it's no longer being developed, and therefore security issues could arise in the future and go unfixed.

However, I still use TrueCrypt because I'm familiar with it, don't believe it has been compromised, and I trust a random pickpocket will be unable to break it.

The good news is that you're dealing with high priced items, so you can charge higher rates. Your number one selling point is going to be whether or not being listed in your featured section offers a better chance of generating a sale.

You'll want to track clicks for featured vs non-featured items. Also, you'll want to follow-up by visiting the forums for your featured items, and then compare those to the average non-featured item. Are the items you're featuring ending in a sale more often, or faster? If someone is selling a $50k car, and you can prove they have a 20% higher chance of selling by featuring on your site, then paying $50 to get featured is a deal. However, I don't know if you have the current traffic numbers to have that sort of benefit.

You can try the above before you have a single paying customer. Choose 4 products at random, feature them, watch the results and increase in clicks.

When it comes to AdSense, don't expect to get rich. I'd say your site would pull in $3-10/day.

For an ad manager, I do a 50/50 split for direct advertising campaigns. The number is high because the individual managing my advertisements previously ran one of the largest companies in my industry, and they regularly meet with the large billion dollar companies that I would struggle to get time with. An equivalent for you would be someone that has great connections at Ford, GM, Chrysler, etc, so when Ford releases a new car and is running an advertising campaign, the related category on your site is a part of that advertising deal. How you find that person, I don't know. In my case, they contacted me because of my user base. Figure out the CPM rates you can earn on your own, then you can pay someone commission for anything higher. For example, you might earn $0.25CPM through ad networks, and then you can sell direct advertising or $2.00CPM, or find someone to sell it for you.

It's a really tough business, I can't stress this enough. AdSense is the best ad network for general fill, so give them a test first. Try the affiliate offers through CJ as well, they might work better in your industry than mine. For a while I was earning $20k a year through CJ on the side, but it went downhill in my business.

You might also want to try accepting posts on your site. Allow users to upload a photo, title, description, and contact information, then mix those with the results you're scraping. Over time, you could possibly phase out the scraped content and focus on user submitted content, and adding additional categories. Then you'll have a little more control over the content, users, and charging fees. A site with original content is going to be more valuable than a site aggregating content from other sources. However, aggregating content is a smart method of starting such a site, so you might be in a good place to make that transition. Definitely consider this option, it might help your site grow into something much larger.

Edit: One last point. Visit your competitors, or other classified sites. They've been down this road before, so see what ad networks they're using, what ad sizes and placements, what offers they're pushing, and how they're charging users, etc. They've likely spent years trying to find the perfect solution for them, so use their knowledge as a starting point.

When it comes to ad sizes, you'll want to run 300x250 on your site using AdSense. It has the highest stock available, so it'll generate the most bids and profit.

You might want to consider randomizing the ad locations in your results. I viewed a few pages, and I already know where the eBay ads are listed, so I'm skipping over them. You could randomize an eBay (if they pay well) or 300x250 AdSense advertisement in every other row.

The best option is always selling the ads directly on your own or through an ad manager that takes a large commission. For example, I earn 20x or more on my direct ads, compared to AdSense. Of course, I don't always have a direct advertising campaign, so AdSense runs as backup when one isn't available.

Browse Commission Junction and try some offers, although I have low expectations. I usually send them a few hundred clicks for every sale, which only earns a few dollars.

Your FAQ says people are interesting in selling items on your site, but that's not available, you just scrap sales from forums. Why not allow people to promote their forum sales on your site? For example, on the top of every page, you have a featured row with 4 random sales in that category, currently being promoted. So, I'm selling a watch on WatchUSeek, I visit your site, pay $20 to get listed in the featured row on the watches category for a week. For example, here's a quick Photoshop...

http://i.imgur.com/uRBXAdD.jpg

Good luck, advertising is an uphill battle, and you need to spend a lot of time trying out different strategies and carefully monitoring the results.

I was looking into this a little bit more, and Amazon SES seems incredibly cost effective at $50 for 500,000 e-mails. I'll just have to write some simple code to batch e-mails through the Amazon API, which works on my end because I'm looking for a one-time, no frills e-mail, and don't need all the contact list and management software that goes with it. Also, tracking is easy enough, and I can query my database to find the percentage of users that returned to the site and logged in. Any experiences with Amazon SES?

Strip the project down to the basics and get a working prototype online. Don't try to develop a fully featured project by waiting until step 10 is finished before launching. Instead, spend a weekend on step 1 and launch the site, then develop step 2, step 3, etc.

This way you and others can use the project as it develops. It's a lot more fun when you can play with a working prototype of your project at any given time, and you have users enjoying the service and requesting features. It's great motivation. Also, if you notice at step 3 or 4 that no one cares about your project, you can toss it in the garbage, move onto the next idea, and be glad you didn't wait until step 10 to launch and waste all that time.

When you bite off too much, the finish line is so far in the distance that you lose all motivation.

I remember seeing a post on HN from a user that developed one (although I think it was for the web and not mobile). It's the first thing that popped into my head, and I assume there must be similar mobile applications, but I never looked into it. I think it's an interesting concept though, it's nice to choose your best photos when representing yourself online, and in the past I've thought certain photos were great, but friends or family had a completely different perspective.

A nice addition would be to sort the votes by gender and age, so you could see women voted for this particular image, men voted for this one, etc. It might help you find which photos appeal to the audience and age group you're trying to target. This way if you're a 30 something man, you don't have 15 year old girls choosing your clothes and hairstyle.

Well, the money can be used to grow. If you launch a hit app, like Flappy Bird, you might think money is rolling in, you have few expenses, so investors are a waste of time. However, your Flappy Bird game is going to come and go within the year, and you'll watch that daily income fade to zero and end up back to square one.

So, you want to strike when the iron's hot, and take advantage of that brand. You want to get Flappy Bird sequels coming out, you want Flappy Bird stuffed animals for children, Flappy Bird backpacks, etc. You want these things happening when the game is in its peak, and if you try to do everything on your own, you won't make that deadline, and Flappy Bird will be quickly forgotten. So, you get investors, bring in millions, hire staff, and start pumping out Flappy Bird everything to keep it in the spotlight and to grow the business. Or you start doing spinoffs, Wiggle Frog, etc. Either way, you need money to get things moving... fast.

Secondly, you need to fight off competition. This isn't a huge concern with Flappy Bird, but let's say you make a simple app that let's you post a few photos of yourself, and others vote on your best picture. You launch, it's a huge success, and you have practically zero expenses. Now, you're going to have a dozen competitors fire up overnight, and some of them will have more talented developers, some of them will have more free time, and some of them will have huge budgets. They want to take your crown, so you need to stay one step ahead of them. This is where investors come in. The money goes into polishing the app further, turning out new features, or related apps.

I'm not sure if you're serious, but I agree that random would be a better approach. For example, the page could generate 10 random logos, then you choose the one you prefer. Then, it generates 10 random logos based on that one, and repeat. This way, you literally just click three times, and you decided on the best logo for you out of 1,000 randomly generated ones.

Right now it's kind of clunky, and it takes a little while just to setup one concept. I think the target audience is looking for instant here, not a lot of customization.

If there's a market for this, why doesn't it already exist? You could take your smartphone under your car, and video chat with a mechanic anywhere in the world. The mechanic could even draw arrows or highlight areas on your video in real-time as it's looped back to your display.