
How I Made $350 In Two Days With Three Pages and Some Payment Code - dshipper
http://dshipper.posterous.com/how-i-made-350-in-two-days-with-three-pages-a
======
econgeeker
I've noticed a recent trend of self-promotion that I don't understand. I'm not
writing to criticize, I just want to know why you say some of the things you
do.

For instance, you call yourself a "rising sophomore". What does this mean? How
is it different from any other sophomore? Can you explain why you chose that
word and what the impression you intended to convey is?

Also, I love that you made a product like this quickly. In reading your story
I noticed something you did right that I totally would have done wrong, and I
appreciate being reminded of it. I applaud your gumption.

But then I clicked thru to the website and saw: "Our team of web usability
experts has put together a comprehensive survey". So, do you have a team of
web usability experts behind domain polish? I'm assuming it is your solo
project. Why not say "Our carefully crafted, comprehensive survey" instead? Do
you think that would really kill your sales that much? Do you have any qualms
about saying you have a "team" of "experts"?

Notice, I'm not passing judgement... I'm asking questions because I want to
understand your thinking, and also I find this alien culture of the "kids
today" baffling and mystifying. :-)

~~~
OstiaAntica
"Rising" sophomore (or junior or senior) is a common U.S. expression. It just
means he'll be a sophomore when school resumes this fall. There's no self-
promotion, it is just used by students during the summer break.

~~~
yock
It's common? Where? I'm from the US and I was put off by the statement as
well.

~~~
OstiaAntica
Google rising sophomore, "rising senior" etc. Millions of results, common
usage, neutral meaning.

~~~
Troll_Whisperer
I googled "rising senior" and got under a million results. Even more telling,
the very first result was title "What is a rising senior?"

It's also worth pointing out that I'm US born and bred, spent 7 years at
universities and was unfamiliar with the term. It sounded pretentious to me.

------
ColinWright
That was a great read, very interesting.

I have to take issue with one point. It says:

    
    
        I've made $350 to date. All from three pages
        and some payment code.
    

Sounds brilliant, and it's the title here. Earlier, however, it says:

    
    
        I was scrambling to fill orders. I had a huge TextEdit
        file open with customer names, site URLs, and email
        addresses. I sent every email, and set up every survey
        by hand.
    

So, the three pages and the payment code were the structure, and in truth, you
were doing the work.

    
    
        By 6 am I had completed processing every order and went
        to bed. I got up an hour later for work at 7 am. 
    
        ... 
    
        So now I’m sitting here writing this blog post with a
        bunch of orders to fill, features to build, and
        customers to help.
    

So this is a continuing requirement, that you service the requests from your
customers via your web site.

It's a service, and it's making you money, and it's successful. For those
things alone you deserve to feel happy and a little smug. But I felt misled by
the title.

But having said that - all power to your elbow, and well done.

~~~
tzuptzup
Give the guy a break, come on! He's so happy to have made this money, he
doesn't count the work he has to do in order to provide that service.

It's a good story :)

~~~
pekk
If you are bragging on your efficiency, then it is relevant when more time and
effort is required than was represented. Good for him and all, but reality is
reality

~~~
dshipper
Thanks for the feedback! Although my hourly rate might be coming to below
minimum wage right now - the idea is that once I've put the work in at the
beginning to develop customer relationships, develop a brand, and add more
features like automation, the amount of effort I will have output after that
will be very minimal. It's like working for minimum wage for a few weeks with
the expectation of making way more for the next year after that.

~~~
tzuptzup
It beats flipping burgers anytime :)

------
ig1
Feedback Army (which was actually built by HN user raffi when he was inspired
by a comment on HN) has been doing this for a while.

The comment that inspired it:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=362459>

Various other HN discussions about it:

[http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=feedback%2Barmy%2Bsite%3Ane...](http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=feedback%2Barmy%2Bsite%3Anews.ycombinator.com)

------
jamesgagan
CrowdPicker has been doing this for awhile: <http://www.crowdpicker.com/>

~~~
angryasian
other sites doing very similar things

pickfu.com

usertesting.com

feedbackarmy.com

~~~
jcc80
I've used pickfu a few times - usually get results in 24 hours. I'm bad with
colors so it's nice to be able to ask 50 people for $5 which look they like
better of a site. It's great because I want real feedback - great when people
really tell you if they hate something instead of getting the real world "Oh,
nice" responses.

Also used it to ask about domain names.

Edit: I like the site - good layout & like the KISS approach. Good luck.

------
jfi
Great post, Dan. It reminds me of the article the Buffer App guy wrote on his
experience getting everything up and running. very smart and disciplined to
root out the demand before committing dev. keep up the good work

~~~
dshipper
Thanks a lot! It took me a while to learn that lesson. My instinct was always
to code first and ask questions later. I would recommend 4 Steps to The
Epiphany - it was a big eye-opener for me about the development process.

------
simonista
I'm curious how you got into the stripe beta? Had you used them before with
other projects?

~~~
dshipper
I just sent them an email...they're great guys. I just got some invites to it
so send me an email (address is in my profile) and I'll give you one.

~~~
dshipper
NOTE: Sorry guys - all out of invites :(

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pulak
Nice job, Dan. Always rooting for fellow Penn guys :)

Do you expect to automate this any time soon?

~~~
dshipper
This weekend haha I'm not that much of a masochist to do it by hand forever :)

~~~
markbao
<https://github.com/mdp/rturk>

happy birthday!

~~~
dshipper
thanks Mark I saw that it's definitely going to make my life a lot easier

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orenjacob
I just logged in to check out this site, and Dan was there, chatting live with
folks. So cool. Go Dan Go! You got a customer in me... and I'll be back
tomorrow with an order.

~~~
eurokc98
This was the same thing that caught my eye as well. I said congrats on the
launch, and Dan was right there with a quick friendly comment. This alone
convinced me to try it as I was on the fence.

The signup/interview through checkout process took about 30 seconds. Curiously
awaiting the results. Thanks again Dan.

------
mtogo
That was a great read!

I hate to nitpick, but this part caught my eye: _I needed to fix about the
site – SSL (even though all of the payments are secured through Stripe)_. If
the checkout page isn't loaded over SSL, my credit card number isn't secure
since the page is still vulnerable to a MITM attack completely removing the
Stripe code.

~~~
dshipper
Thanks! Yes there is a chance for a MITM attack but as far as I understand
from talking to Stripe that risk is very, very low. I'm going to be adding SSL
this week anyway however. Thanks for your comment!

~~~
nodata
It doesn't matter if the risk is low, the impact is high. Your customers will
see you don't want to shell out 12 bucks for an SSL certificate to protect
them.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Which provider do you recommend for a such a cheap cert that is accepted by a
large percentage of browsers?

~~~
nodata
<http://www.gandi.net/ssl/grid>

------
talmand
Well, if I understood correctly he didn't really make $350 in the end. He had
his upfront costs, his processing costs and his turk costs. I'd be curious how
much return he's getting after all that and figuring in something for his
time. If he can automate some of his tasks to eliminate some overhead then he
may have something. But if in the end he's making minimum wage after factoring
in costs then, well, it is what it is.

------
redguava
You have too much drop shadow on your buttons, it makes the text blurry. (Yes,
I find reviewing your website ironic when your service is website reviews)

~~~
dshipper
It's very meta. I'll look into that thanks :)

------
ThisIBereave
How I Advertised All My Websites To YCombinator

~~~
dshipper
I'm sorry you didn't like the post. I'm really trying to share what I thought
was a worthwhile experience with the community. I appreciate the feedback
though :)

~~~
ThisIBereave
Hah, don't mind my snarky comment. Just get these kids off my lawn.

------
dtwwtd
Great article. It's a good reminder that you don't need funding and a huge
idea to get a side project going.

Thanks for writing this!

~~~
jeromeparadis
I agree. I really liked the thought process and the history/experience that
made you think of using MTurk for this project. It shows that we sometime
stumble on ideas that aren't just useful for just ourselves.

------
plasma
You may want to check out the MTurk command line tools to help automate order
processing: <http://aws.amazon.com/developertools/694>

Never used MTurk personally, there may be better things available.

~~~
dshipper
Thanks! Believe there are MTurk API bindings for Ruby (the site is built in
Rails.) Appreciate the comment!

~~~
jc4p
The API is actually very nice to use, you create a template for your HIT
(which I'm assuming you already have done for what you're making), and then
you just make a single REST call with a list of questions!

------
khangtoh
So you worked presumably 35 hrs over the period of 3 days or so and what you
did actually was created a job that paid you $10/hr. Correct?

~~~
dshipper
Well the point is that now I'm set up to continue making money with minimal
effort for a long period of time. So in the short run yes I was making very
little money per hour, but eventually the work put in vs money taken out
becomes much greater.

------
jheriko
So, if I understand this is essentially reselling Mechanical Turk services
with a little work in hiding the details from the customer? I'm not quite sure
if this is a scam or not...

...but I can think of plenty of cases where people sell "expertise" which
boils down to the same thing... normally its a bit more complicated than this
though. I wonder if the customers would pay if they knew of Amazon's service?
My guess is they just don't know about it, or at least didn't think it would
be any good for them...

~~~
patio11
You're wrapping Turk in a human. That provides value. +

Have you ever dealt with Turkers? I did for a client once. Here's the task,
simplified: "I give you job title, you give me degree title. For example, if I
say 'elementary school teacher' you say she has a Bachelors degree in
Education and so your answer is Education."

Input (to turker): Car technician Output (from turker): BACHELORS DEGREE IN
CAR TECHNICIAN

I rejected that: sorry, I will not pay you two cents for that work. The Turker
got into a running email argument with me: "WHY U NO PAY?" "Because the answer
is in all capital letters, does not follow formatting instructions, and is
wrong." "U NO SAY WRITE SMALL LETTERS!!"

Regardless, though: reselling labor is not skeezy.

+: You might think Amazon Turk pays for human intelligence. No, it pays for
human intelligence _that finds it economically viable to work on Amazon Turk_.
Y U NO GET DIFRENCE.

------
imcqueen
So thrilled for you Dan. Congrats again. Swiperoo loves your service.

~~~
dshipper
DomainPolish loves you right back. Keep in touch!

------
mponizil
you are the definition of hustling badass. gumption was a good adjective used
here. cheers to your work and may one day we meet at the top ;)

