acoyfellow

Thanks for checking it out -- and more importantly the great feedback :)

The page is definitely geared towards people who are already interested in this type of tool, so showcasing some of the functionality that they came for has improved conversions for me. It's also not a tool for every business to use.

A nearly cold-click (like yours was - you're in a thread about solo founders - not on the hunt for tools to help you improve website conversions) experience is something that can be drastically improved - it's just a matter of matching the expectations to the experience.

I've taken off the Drift automated message, which was overlaying and adding to confusion - sorry about that. I'm not sure what call-to-action close button got your goat, but I don't particularly like the snarky tones in popups myself, and they've never tested to improve conversions for me or clients. I'd be glad to work on the messaging if I knew which CTA you were talking about.

Seriously, thanks for taking your time to check it out and reply. Means a lot :)

I've been running https://OptKit.com for about 3 years.

Launched it to almost immediate ramen profitability, but haven't focused full time on it yet. Bills get paid through consulting. On schedule to re-launch within 1-2 months with a stricter focus, better defined use-cases, and stronger differentiation from competition.

Hi hn.

I had an itch and scratched it with FormSync. I see lots of ways to improve, but I thought this was a good place to start open-sourcing the idea.

Idea is that sometimes people who start filling out an online form, and something happens (real life, tech issues, whatever)... what happens to the info that was being added? Poof. It disappears. That's why I made FormSync.

Example: https://jsfiddle.net/acoyfellow/2se2rLq2/

Hi HN- looking for feedback and crit of this initial product and service. If you have any questions or comments, I'd be glad to field them.

PS: here's a 3min read on Medium on why I built Dist: https://medium.com/@distHQ/why-i-built-di-st-dfff0f1ba3de#.r...

This is pretty cool. I can imagine this being very useful. Do you have an intended use case / audience?

I run OptKit (https://OptKit.com) -- it's been ramen profitable for almost 2.5 years now.. I built it from a need I had in my other business- a small web agency. I'm phasing out of the agency work, and full-time into OptKit soon.

If you have any feedback, I'd be glad to discuss anything with you here :)

This looks like a great opportunity for someone who is looking to get a gig for tech copywriting, which can be very lucrative.

Somebody who has experience writing persuasive and informative copy, and can do a PR, you could have yourself a good resume piece :)

I sure hope you landed a better gig than what they could have offered you. Thanks for the free education-- I'd be kicking myself if I was the dude who didn't hire you!

Congrats PH team.. The PH Philly Meetup was a great time, and I love the direction you guys are moving in. Looking forward to seeing the next evolution!

What is there to be afraid of? I don't think anyone should call themselves a "freelancer". It just devalues you. And, when starting your own business: you don't need permission from anyone else to "call yourself something".

Call yourself a "Wordpress Consultant" for example, if you are a WP dev.

You guys need to have your expectations outlined up front. You shouldn't be hitting them with a bill they don't understand. That is your opportunity to explain (because your the expert they hired) to educate them as to why your hours needed to be more than two on a task.

If you do explain this and you soothe their minds out, they will thank you and respect you even more. If they don't then fire them.

Biggest tip ever you can take away? Stop calling yourself a freelancer. Step up to a tech consultant. People treat freelancers and consultants differently, even if the work is exactly the same. Act accordingly, and use this to your advantage. There is no teacher or boss to tell you must be a freelancer.

Bramm-

thanks a lot for the comment! Right now I see SumoMe as a great way to get things up and running, and pick and choose the pieces you feel you want. Super great service, fantastic team, products that just work.

OptKit has a different trajectory. It might look quite similar now, but soon things will take a more powerful and customizable turn. We won't be offering more "widgets" per-say, but we will be constantly building for a very specific goal..

This may sound a little drastic, but soon after a few more big pieces get into place, the next phase is going to be introducing real-time trained machine learning models, in hopes of finding some predictable patterns. This would mean we could potentially predict the conversion rates of a visitor, in real time.. In theory we can possibly achieve a 100% opt-in rate, if this is actually feasible ;)

I see OptKit becoming more of an automated personalization tool, as opposed to a simple widget. With a lot more emphasis on the segmentation, personalization, behavioral triggers, actionable analytics.

I want OptKit to become the data driven marketer's dream tool.. Their swiss army knife. For example, our reports will tell you simple mean/median/mode of the temperature of your converted traffic. This might make it easy to extrapolate some really great tests at a glance at a graph.

Have a hunch? Run a test! Have a doubting boss? Run a test!

This is the vision as of now, at least :)

Thanks for the comment feel free to ask me anything else :)

If anyone from the HN community has any feedback (I like it raw) please let me have it. Things are very far from perfect, but this is just the beginning. :)

Are any startups using DataRobot for any interesting features? I would love to hear about some real world examples :)

Built on memes? You mean because he used memes as images within the tutorial / blog post? I'm not quite understanding what you mean. I'd encourage you to read it, regardless if you don't like the memes.

I found this article to be really awesome, as I've been thirsty for good Erlang resources.

It's a communication platform that the younger generations are using as their primary form of communication. That is big.. not saying it's $10B big, but SnapChat has the chance to become something larger than just stupid selfies.

I think Genius and DigitalOcean = a match made in heaven. The quality would go from "the best" to "untouchable", if the comments were value adding. Imagine being able to dive deeper into any piece of the tutorial you wanted.

This post is great.. but its from April 2013. I wonder how their architecture has changed since then?

So when should we use each?

Tested on Chrome 34.0 on Windows, works as expected for me. Again, sorry it's not working for you. Thanks for getting back to me

I will get to the bottom of this. Bugs are to be expected, right? At least I survived 45 minutes on the front page :)

1. No, it doesn't. I will refine this soon to make it more clear that you can place it other places as well. I have yet to run into any place where it won't work.. (yet!)

2. The JSON is pretty standard, I just use jQuery serialize on the forms to POST on your URL. MailChimp won't work right now with our Form Builder, but you can easily embed your own MailChimp forms by selecting "Use My Form Code" on section 2) Form Content. Several users already using OptKit with MailChimp.

3. I say enterprise grade because of the amount of segmentation you can do, already. Just with timing + geolocation limiting, you can segment messages. More features coming soon to strengthen this claim as well.

4. Yup :) You will be able to test any setting with a split test.

5. You can use your own code in both sections 1 and 2, so there is a hack-y way to get some GA codes in there.

That popup experience is obviously not ideal.. And not how its working for me.. Can you tell me what browser you are on?

Thanks for checking it out, sorry it didn't work as expected. Can you tell me what browser you were on when you couldn't input the fields?

eranation- doh! You should have been hit with the popup when you tried to leave the page. I also have some things coming that will be a fallback, to ensure that it gets seen more.

Sorry for the initial confusion, and thanks for the second chance. Email me if you have any issues or questions Coeyman@gmail.com

sutterbomb- thanks for checking it out.

Right now you can either trigger via exit intention (uses mouse detection) or a timer.

Once you have been "hit" with the campaign once, you are cookied (if enabled), so you will not be hit with it again, untill the Kit cycle's through. This setting is customizable as well.

Once you are "cookied" you should see a small tab on the bottom left of your screen, that gives you an opportunity to re-engage with the campaign. Did you see this? http://i.imgur.com/9keLK6h.png

This makes it so you don't annoy the crap out of people :)

I totally agree, "it depends". Facebook advertising can be much more useful than the OP and many others are suggesting. One tiny little thing that 99% of people are completely overlooking:

-Page owners have the ability to restrict access by country.

This means it's literally just a couple clicks, and you can completely disable the "click-farm" countries from seeing your page (+ advertisements).

http://sendgrowth.com/blog/simple-defense-facebook-click-far... (short post about it, shameless plug) http://i.imgur.com/snkv77Q.png (screenshot of facebook settings page)

Max, thanks for the heads up. Didn't realize that at all :)

I did delete it once, and repost it once. My server had gone down for a few minutes, I deleted the thread until I had gotten it back up.

It takes 5 seconds to fix the problem. http://sendgrowth.com/blog/simple-defense-facebook-click-far...

I'm baffled that no one has realized a simple solution to the "click farms".

Simply exclude the countries that are known to be click farms from seeing your page at all.

On your page settings, you'll see a "Country Restrictions" section. http://i.imgur.com/snkv77Q.png

When your page is not visible to a certain area, Facebook will not serve ads to people in that country.

Bam?