Show IH: launched my latest project
I'm not overly happy with it, (still lots of functionality needed) but I've launched my latest project: http://www.classjems.com .It started as a shared google sheet that some other teachers and I were using to keep track of useful resources.
I'm afraid I may have made the same mistake as every previous project: I started coding before I had properly validated the idea. In hindsight, I should have just built it using one of the open source reddit clones that are available, and focused on marketing.
In any case, I intend to spend the next few weeks doing content marketing and trying to drive traffic to the site.
It's a nice looking website, but how are you planning to make money out of it?
Ads? You would need monster amount of traffic to make even a little bit from AdSense.
And why would people go to your website instead of starting a sub-reddit?
Also, you're running a product review site like news site. News: new stuff matters. Product review: the best stuff matters.
When it comes to recommendations around products, you should learn from Site Builder Report (https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/site-builder-report) or WireCutter.
Do the hard work to review the products, compare them and recommend the best. Make money from affiliate fees.
It's still a risky business (Site Builder Report is unique in the sense that affiliate fees are big, which usually doesn't apply) but there's just no way to make any money from amounts to a forum where users are supposed to do all the work.
Thanks for the reply. I perhaps wasn't clear in my post - I have no immediate plan to monetize this site.I want to use it to teach myself various marketing methods because I don't currently have a business idea to work on.
I get what you're saying about news/reviews, but I think something can be a mix of both and still be successful e.g. ProductHunt
Cool project and nice looking site! I think you might eventually be able to monetize it by offering promoted content slots in your feed or some other affiliate arrangement.
I personally really like these niche HN site and frequent a lot of them e.g. http://www.datatau.com/ or https://lobste.rs/
Thanks for the encouragement! I too like niche sites/communities. I have heard of lobste.rs before but not datatau
Don't forget https://barnacl.es/ -- It uses the same code as lobste.rs but it's news for bootstrappers, a perfect aggregator for everyone on this site
I had never heard of barnacl.es before, thanks!
nice,
I think you mean telescope? http://www.telescopeapp.org/ (open source reddit / hacker news )
I don't have any advice but I do have couple question :D
so, basically it's a bunch of educational tool link user can vote at?
do you have plan on how to monetize?
you say you build it yourself, what front & back-end tech you use? rails + react? how long it take you to build this?
what website / place you plan to do marketing? Hacker News? Reddit /r/teacher or something?
do you have any other side project?
Good Luck!
and thanks for posting project on IH, I am always happy to see people build new stuff.
Telescope would have worked!
I built the site using rails for the whole stack, front and back end. I've been using the trailblazer framework for rails which takes some getting used to but is a great way to organise the code.
I don't really have plans to monetize the site. I built it mostly to teach myself about SEO and marketing. Also, I don't currently have a business idea to work on and this was something I did to keep me making and launching :)
Thanks!