Building a Prettier Goodreads? Meet Bookclub
Hey IH!
A few friends (Alex, Henry, Ben) and I are excited to be working on Bookclub - the best way for people to log and share the books they read.
We noticed that too many of our friends were using ugly combinations of google docs or other note-taking apps to save their book lists. We've effectively built a beautiful "digital bookshelf" builder that people can use to track what they read.
I'd love your thoughts this monetization idea:
1 - By default, every book link added to each user's profile will have the "bookclub" Amazon affiliate link. We earn a commission of sales generated as a byproduct of the site.
2 - Influencers (or perhaps even all users) will have the ability to input their own custom Amazon affiliate link and monetize themselves. This will encourage people to share their profiles with people.
What are your thoughts? Thanks for the help!
Be sure to check it out and get early VIP access: https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/bookclub
I have about 350 read books in my goodreads profile. 400+ on my shelves.
I honestly mostly just use it these days for the book challenges. My biggest problem with good reads and what has stopped me from using it more is that the recommendations suck.
For example I have a dozen or so poker books I've read >5 years ago and today when I go click on recommendations "From your bookshelf" is a full list of old poker books.
If you can get recommendations right I'd switch in a heart beat but I'd need a way to migrate my books automatically too.
One other suggestion is let me add series to a wish list or something. So I can go check it and see which series have new books I haven't read. It's not uncommon for it to take me >1 year to read a new book in a series I really enjoy just because I forget to buy it when the Amazon alert comes through.
For monetization:
Maybe give authors a way to get a pretty home page through your platform where they can add their amazon links to attract them to use your site which might attract readers who want to interact with them?
Good idea re: internationalization.
2 - What if we let influencers monetize themselves? (use their own affiliate link)
This comment was deleted 7 years ago
Hi Jordan,
Launching question here: how did you get Ryan Hoover and PH top users on board?
hey! what do you mean? I sent him it!
How? I mean, I know he's running PH, but he doesn't upvote everything.
So did you send him a personal email? Or maybe he caught that as it's an upcoming item.
Very nice; signed up. Have you gotten into the affiliate program? If not, I might have some tips there. In general, relying primarily on affiliate revenue tells me that you are going the high-page-impressions route. Accurate assumption? Either way, happy to chat since we are in the same space.
not yet - but yes that is the plan! any tips?
While I love the idea behind your product (including the business model), one of the issues that I foresee is that
Goodreadsis part of the Amazon family and a lot of your probable customers who use Kindle, wouldn't want to enter the data manually on your web app.That said though, I am curious how you guys go about building this product, hence I signed up on PH. Good luck !!
ah, i see. interesting perspective. one thing we are playing with is having the ability for users to import goodreads' exports! (aka upload a csv to import).