kylebragger

(Answered the first half of that here: http://hackerne.ws/item?id=4229632)

On the second half, it's a fair point. It's too early to say, but certainly worth keeping an eye on.

> since every month is different, it may just take one cycle to get them happy again

That's one thing I'm also interested in exploring: What can we do to buy us one more month to help them find real value in the service.

That's awesome. What's interesting though is that (in my experience at least) you get a fair amount of "cancel my account ASAP and delete all the data" users. I wonder if there's any data on how Step 2 plays out in that situation.

We'll see! I have a hunch we'll have to tune this offering quite a bit based on the user's usage history, account age, and anything else we feel can help make things better for them and keep them around. There's also a good amount we're measuring that would alert us to an unusual number of cancels that involve that discount, etc.

Thank you. You're very right -- it's so easy to get discouraged at the apparent lack of activity in any early product, no matter how jazzed you might be about it. It's also easy to get caught up in the "if you build it they will come" mindset. Sadly, this seems to be rarely the case, even for the best of products. (Though as adamtmca notes, it's certainly possible!)

The first few 100 users of Forrst were all my friends and colleagues, and theirs as well. I invited folks I trusted would give me raw, honest feedback, and I trusted them to invite similarly-minded people. The next ~1,500 users came from this post: http://thinkvitamin.com/design/forrst-finds-designers-who-co...

Appreciate that, Alex. I think you're probably right.

Initially I was thinking no more than a dollar or two, maybe with a free/preview version which would include a few selected chapters. On the other hand, I think this hopefully will be highly valuable to a lot of folks, so it may end up being higher. (And thanks to Alex for helping me see the light on that.)

Off the top of my head I'm not sure if this is part of Markdown proper (or maybe GitHub's "flavor") but you can do fenced code blocks, like so:

~~~

// your code // goes here // and here

~~~

Yeah, we admittedly don't do this very well right now.

Thanks!

Thanks! Yeah, sad to see good products disappearing like that.

Here's our (my) take on it: http://blog.forrst.com/post/19956380482/big-news-forrst-has-...

Much appreciated. Email is queued up, so expect it shortly. FWIW noone is automatically moved over; it's your choice to opt-in, but we are providing a "skip the line" feature for all Tinyproj users who do want to transition.

Thanks a bunch. Love what you're doing with Gun.io. For me, just came down to not having the time to really devote to Tinyproj. Glad it's found a good home though.

Appreciate that! I couldn't think of a better service to take the wheel than these guys. It just came down to not having enough time/momentum to really make sure that great projects were coming in consistently. I'm happy to report that that won't be an issue any longer.

Creator of Tinyproj here. Would love to chat: email is in my profile.

Not sure how far off the mark this is, but Paperlex[1] could be interesting to check out.

1. https://paperlex.com/

The good thing is, I don't wake up in a cold sweat not knowing if I'll get Techcrunch coverage today. I wake up knowing I've built a profitable business that can be big (probably not enormous) and more than provide for myself, my team, and our investors. The "lifestyle" business has somehow gotten a bad rap, but there's honestly nothing wrong with creating a sustainable company that makes everyone involved (users included) very happy.

Sorry for the silence, here's the scoop:

Over the past few weeks, the number of quality inbound projects has dropped substantially. I have a few theories as to why, but as MattBearman mentions, an email mentioning the lack of projects probably would be a good move.

The biggest challenge now is getting quality stuff coming in on a regular basis. I'm also working on fixing a few of the more painful interactions on both sides (talent and project owner).

Admittedly, my weakness is figuring out how to spark growth while at the bottom of the "shark fin" (http://www.longevitas.co.uk/site/images/Shark.png) -- the initial buzz has died down (though, interestingly, we're getting double digit signups a day still), so organic inbound projects aren't happening much anymore, and the ones that are have been disappointing generally.

I hope to have more updates soon.

You're totally right - I actually didn't want to bother folks with an email, but I think it's warranted at this point.

Clickable: https://forrst.com/hire

Sorry about that. Just went out. Had some urgent fixes I needed to get done before the send.

Shameless plug, but if you're looking for freelancers for short-term projects, perhaps give Tinyproj a shot? Averaging 70+ intros per project.

Mention HN for 25% off.

If you are a freelance developer/designer/hybrid, we send emails full of interesting, paid projects every Saturday (you still have time for today's, too).

https://tinyproj.com

Been using them for a while now on Forrst and Tinyproj and they're downright awesome. Smart folks, super developer friendly product.

This has been an interesting issue -- I want to encourage small stuff like that (perhaps a quick icon/UX analysis or whatever) that's only a few hours of work. Though, I found when I had the min. budget at $100, I got a -lot- of low quality stuff. Setting the min to $500 has staved that off somewhat.

I hear you. I'm going to leave it as is for the next send and watch what happens. I think it's still sufficiently simple right now, since it only adds one click (which I think could be called a confirmation click) to the intro experience on the talent side. Time will tell, though.

Actually yes. Working on this over the next few weeks. If it works as expected it will be a few clicks and out comes a contract.

You're right -- it was a big issue for folks, which is why I ended up scrapping it in lieu of the new process:

- you get the project email and click "learn more" - that takes you to a page w/ details and an "i'm interested" button - clicking that button tells the project owner - the project owner then chooses to initiate contact further (which is why it's helpful to have a URL on your account.) - that is what sends the first email

It was intended to both cut down on project owner email overload as well as fix the confusion around what exactly happens.

Also, I plan to let folks attach a blurb of text as to -why- they're interested in a project. Should be an interesting experiment.

I'm thrilled to hear that. It's been really interesting to watch, and even though I only have a week of data to play with, I'm fairly certain there's something bigger at play here. Just a matter of tuning the product, continuing to grow on both sides, and start to figure out how to solve the biggest issue right now, which is helping people make sense of the tons of intros they get.

Thanks a bunch. I'm amazed that the intros/project is averaging so high, too. I'm actually thinking of trying out some kind of VIP thing, where you could pay a few bucks a month to get the email a few hours early.