

Ask HN: What do you do with a finished product? - giantfuzzypanda

I'm ready to start getting some users on my site (http://debate-zone.com), but I'm unsure of how to do it. Buy ads? SEO stuff? Spam? Thanks if have advice!
======
proexploit
How you get users depends on what your goal is. It looks like your site offers
a free service and has advertising (AdWords and selling ads directly [hint:
telling users to name a price is not a good idea.]) as it's only income
source. This pretty much rules out paying for users unless it can be done very
cheaply as you aren't going to make much per new user.

SEO is good. A properly configured site can work wonders, but beyond that, a
good product will "SEO itself". Spending time on linkbuilding campaigns or
blackhat SEO will not be efficient in the long run.

Buying ads could be expensive and wouldn't be worth it to me. That would
depend on where you can advertise and the cost, but I wouldn't do it.

Spam is an obvious no.

So what can you do? Well, this post right here will more then likely get some
visitors to check out your site (if that was your intent, +1 sneaky). I'd
focus on creating the best product you can, including a better design,
alternative monetization methods, and asking HN or current users for
suggestions on improvement and implementing them. [sidenote: I don't have many
projects I consider finished, only paused if I'm not working on them. Stay
open to future development. If you aren't adapting and improving, you're
falling behind.]

You could contribute to debate forums or other relevant websites, posting
genuinely helpful comments relevant to your site and harmlessly introducing
it. I personally like to only use advertising methods that I would not be
annoyed with, but if your only goal is to make money, just spam your site all
over the place. You might make a little cash, but you'll get a bad reputation
doing it.

~~~
giantfuzzypanda
Thanks for the great feedback. I'm looking mostly to have an active community,
but one that generates some small revenue on the side. I'm just looking to pay
back hosting etc. costs. I agree with the idea that a project should never be
finished, and that's what I used to think, but then I read a few hacker news
articles about fail early etc., and I realized I was spending way too much
time on little features. I went through a bunch of layout changes, and while
this one is boring, I think it works.

I just added anonymous arguing, so that will help the site get some activity,
I think. I don't want to do blackhat stuff/actively SEO it, but only if
nothing else works.

I bought a Reddit self-serve ad, and I guess I'll see how that works, and I'll
start making small comments on political forums or something.

------
Scott_MacGregor
Bug Report: At 7pm Austin time (April 10th, 2010), I cannot load your site in
IE 7.0.5730.11 on Win XP Pro SP2.

Before the site fully loads it freezes the browser then leaves an empty
(blank) broswer outline.

I tried twice and it happened both times. I had to use the task manager to
kill the browser both times.

IE 7 is still in service for many users, thats why I used it to look at your
site.

~~~
giantfuzzypanda
Whoops, thanks for telling me. It seems I forgot to test the site in any IE -
in IE8 it's completely messed up, and I can only assume it's worse in IE7.
I'll try to fix it soon.

------
adrianwaj
Create a feature matrix of your site versus other debate sites. Show why yours
is better. Do a screencast and show how easy it is to use.

Have you seen <http://www.whitehouse2.org/> or <http://www.allrise.com/> \--
at least there is a focus. Yours has none.

~~~
giantfuzzypanda
Good ideas, thanks. I haven't seen whitehouse2, which is really good, or
allrise. Mine doesn't have a focus, it's basically a site where you can debate
about anything, and tag it so it stays a bit organized. Or do you mean
something else by focus? I'll add a quick feature matrix now.

~~~
adrianwaj
I meant a theme. With a matrix, you can use what you find on other sites to
guide the development of your own.

~~~
giantfuzzypanda
A visual theme, or a content theme?

------
seanmcdonnell
gold mines:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1247292>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=267639>

~~~
giantfuzzypanda
These are amazing, thanks.

