

 Rate my startup - 123LinkIt.com - myasmine
http://123LinkIt.com

======
maushu
Too much text on the landing page and the domain name (specially the 123)
activated my anti-spam sense, which would have made me close the tab
automatically if I hadn't remembered that it came from HN.

~~~
myasmine
It must be the three boxes you're referring to - I tried to make them keyword-
rich for SEO but maybe I went overboard. I'll work on it. The domain we're
definitely sticking with but maybe if we change some other things - more white
space, get rid of "make more money", it'll help with the spammy sense.

Thanks for the feedback.

~~~
andrewljohnson
SEO doesn't really work like that.

~~~
myasmine
No, but part of it? Yes.

~~~
andrewljohnson
Like a crumb to a cake.

~~~
myasmine
The crumbs together make up the cake.

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rumpelstiltskin
Make sure to take HN's feedback in context. The average HN'er is NOT your
target customer. So take their criticism of your site looking/reading too
spammy with a giant grain of salt. In fact, I'm surprised you'd even ask them
to rate your startup.

A better place to ask for feedback would be a forum for bloggers (your target
demo) who would be interested in exploring other avenues for monetizing their
blog/site besides adcents. I, for one, think that your design and copy are
fine. Just split-test regularly and keep track of your conversions (which is
what any self-respecting aff marketer should do anyway)

Do change your domain name though. It's pretty bad. There's plenty of good
ones left, just be creative and use domai.nr to check their availability.

Also, check out your competitors - skimlinks, amazon affiliates etc - to get
an idea of their design, strategy etc.

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davidw
Looks awfully spammy.

~~~
myasmine
Can you please explain how? Thanks!

~~~
davidw
The color scheme, 'make money', the domain name, and so on. Just a first
impression.

~~~
c1sc0
I don't know why you got downvoted on that. I totally agree, my first
impression was also 'cheap & spammy' ... something those annoying social media
marketing experts on twitter would hawk.

Here's a blurred screenshot to get that 'First Impression' feeling, judge for
yourself: <http://i.imgur.com/med1t.png>

~~~
myasmine
I've been working on this for a year so I'm wayyyy too close to it - this
feedback is helpful.

We definitely need to get rid of the make money text. If there's anything
specific that lends to the cheap and spammy impression, please lmk. Thanks!

~~~
paraschopra
You may also want to take feedback from HN in context of target market. I am
guessing very few on HNers will qualify as your customer, rather this should
be aimed at people who are actually interested in 'make money online' kind of
products and for them site design might be OK. Better feedback from some other
community too.

~~~
davidw
That's an excellent point and one we should all bear in mind when dealing with
sites that appeal to audiences that are far from what we know best.

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kevinskii
I doubt that many successful bloggers would go back and add links to
advertisers in their text as an after thought. They would probably lose most
of their readership if they did. Perhaps your company can suggest links to
other blogs instead? I'm not sure how you'd make money by doing this, but
perhaps there is a way.

You're obviously terrific at what you do, and you have an open mind and good
attention for detail. I think that you'll ultimately be very successful. Good
luck!

~~~
myasmine
Wait, was that a compliment? I forgot what they felt like for a second! ;-)

Regardless, thanks for the feedback and kind words. We're targeting mid-tier
bloggers who are already advertising but don't know how to leverage it or
don't have the time to spend on affiliate marketing. We're already making
money so it's been working so far. Re: suggesting links to other blogs, it's
actually a crowded space and not what we went to get into.

Thanks again.

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angelbob
While it does have that "make money fast" vibe, be sure to A/B test any way
that you modify it. Around here, we love minimalist, careful designs which may
not appeal to the "make money fast" crowd who are your primary customers.

So not only take our advice with a grain of salt, but A/B test it. I assume
people wouldn't have so many sites that look roughly like yours if it didn't
work, at least sometimes. Find out if you're part of that "sometimes".

------
kingkao
I love the idea and with wordpress integration and less work for user, that is
great. I'm not a fan of those links though whenever I'm browsing the internet,
but they work.

As said before, the domain name is not the greatest. Find something catchy,
more unique, that makes sense and people will automatically associate to this
type of linking and ads. The front page is really confusing and took me a long
time to figure out what you were doing. Everything below the navigation bar is
all cluttered. There should definitely be controls for your slideshow
presentation.

~~~
myasmine
I went through 4 domain changes already...haha, got any ideas? :)

A more simplistic homepage sounds necessary. Thanks for the feedback!

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lhorie
First impressions:

1 - I should be able click around the steps on your carousel animation (above
the learn more and sign up buttons). 2 - Bottom right, tweet is bleeding out
of the box 3 - Will your plugin annoy users of your clients' blogs? (e.g. are
there obnoxious rollover popups, etc) 4 - As others mentioned, the design has
an air of cheap template. It's mostly because it makes excessive use of bright
color and it's too busy. Instead of packing things like "breaking news" onto
the homepage, space things out more and give widgets more breathing room.

~~~
myasmine
Thanks for the feedback. Noted on points one and two. Re: 3 - I'm not sure
what you mean. No, we don't do rollover popups. 4 - will run some A/B tests.

~~~
lhorie
re 3: what I meant was "do your links disrupt the user experience
unexpectedly?". I'm sure you've seen sites where you rollover a word with a
double green underline (often keywords sniffed from search engine Referer
headers) and some annoying ad popup appears, convering the content. That sort
of stuff.

If you don't that, kudos to you.

------
bsstoner
One thing that jumped out at me is there's no clear single call to action
button. You have both 'Learn More' and 'Sign Up', which downplayed the
importance of each of them since they're the same size.

I'd make it clear to the user you want them to click Sign Up, and make Learn
More smaller or just a link below it. Also the 'Free' sticker almost looks
like a call to action button too, and IMO slightly spammy.

Good luck with all the feedback.

~~~
myasmine
Hey Brain, long time no see!

Thanks for commenting and the feedback. A/B testing the points you mentioned
is on top of the list. Hope all is well.

Best,

Yasmine

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huntero
There was so much going on visually that by the time my eyes made it to the
animated tour graphic, it was already on step 2. Being forced to move through
an animation at your pace was uncomfortable, it should be manual.

------
vgurgov
I like the idea.

I'd remove too tech words like WordPress, plugin from landing page to
"supported plaforms" or something, you are going to support other platform,
right?

Screenshots for 1-2-3 steps arent so nice.

~~~
myasmine
Thanks for the feedback. Yep, we'll make the content more general when we
launch other platforms.

The 1-2-3 steps were supposed to reinforce the name but making the connection
can be hard. I'll work on it.

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vital101
I like the idea. Only a small styling issue jumped out at me. For your Twitter
feed in the lower right hand corner, long-ish Tweets seem to be overflowing
out of the quote bubble (in Chrome at least).

~~~
myasmine
I see that, thanks for the heads-up!

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dotcoma
how does it work? normal words "with high potential" in a post get
automatically linked to a merchant's offerings? If so, no thanks (at least not
for me).

~~~
myasmine
Good question.

Nope. The blogger is getting 3 choices in their Settings pages where they
specify the keywords they want to link to:

1) Brand names like Apple, Best Buy, etc. 2) Product names like Dell Laptop,
etc. 3) Generic names like Indian flights.

Linking is going to occur automatically depending on the selection (this is an
upcoming feature). We don't have keywords that are too generic to avoid the
spammy look.

This is taking some time but we're also working on relating the keywords to
the overall context of the post so only the relevant keywords are linked.

~~~
dotcoma
so, if I write "apple", no link, and if I write "Apple"... what do you link?
Apple.com, the homepage?

And what about "Dell laptop", where will that take to? A page on Dell's site
where they talk about all their laptops (and not other products they sell)?
Not an easy task.

~~~
myasmine
It would have to be Apple.com and for Dell laptop, it'd take them to search
results showing the dell computers in stock or the specific model if
specified. It's not easy but increases conversions and we're almost ready to
roll it out.

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hotmind
I like the look. The colors are rich and warm. I instantly signed up, and will
do so with many of my blogs.

However, that said, it doesn't seem like something a quality longform content
blog would use. It's more for an auxiliary lower ranking blog. This is not
necessarily a bad thing, since there are many more of the latter than of the
former.

~~~
myasmine
Thanks Jason. The plugin is, well...just okay right now to be honest. It does
the job, but it's not near the level it's going to be in the upcoming weeks.

It's going through a major overhaul that is going to make it easier to use and
that will also include more intelligence features - I hope you'll stick around
until then.

And you're right, it's more for bloggers who have content. We plan to branch
out to other types of advertising in the future that would be a better fit for
the latter.

Thanks again.

