
My really successful, unfundable, piece of shit startup I hate to love - dumbfounder
http://twicsy.tumblr.com/post/65725559098/the-10th-year-anniversary-of-my-really-successful
======
SandersAK
I get that people are trying to be helpful, and think that's great.

But this blog post was awesome, raw, and captured something that so few of us
can really relate to.

Dude grinds for 10 years, keeps grinding, doesn't know where to go but will
probably keep grinding.

"Twicsy, you son of a bitch. You frustrate me so. I love you, but oh how I
hate to love you."

Shine on, buddy. Best of luck!

~~~
moot
I know this man's feels.

4chan is only one month older. It's like we're cousins.

~~~
dumbfounder
Yes but you are an Internet god and nobody has heard of me :)

But, I am happy to be considered your cuz, even if it's the one you always
beat up and lock in the shed.

------
patio11
My general anti-B2C bias may be showing, but unless you've discovered a new
core interaction for people (Instagrammy) I'm betting the 6 million visits a
month is basically just a function of having a lot of content about Justin
Bieber (and a zillion other topics) which is beating Twitter because Twitter
has relatively poor SEO (for a reason). This sort of suggests that the
momentary attention of 6 million people is worth what people are willing to
pay for it.

You're clearly smart and connected. You've built sites this successful before
and probably will again. Why not make something which matters rather than
aggregating hashtagged selfies? There's more money in things that matter and
they are frequently more rewarding to work on.

~~~
dumbfounder
I will keep Twicsy going until it makes much less than no sense at all!!!!!!!

But, I am already working on the next thing and we have generated more revenue
in the last few months than Twicsy/Dumbfind/Searchles did in 10 years.

~~~
lubujackson
I agree with this perspective. Every idea can't be curing cancer, and many
innovative ideas are stumbled on while playing with something else - like
Feynman discovering quantum electrodynamics because he was curious about why
spinning plates wobble. You need to follow your instincts.

At a minimum, you're providing a service to thousands of people and sheparding
a product through its lifecycle. I don't know if working on Twicsy will have
any real influence on your future work, but following its story seems more
valuable than dropping it to "pivot" off in some random trajectory.

~~~
NovemberWest
There is also not much money in "curing cancer", unfortunately.

~~~
jonny_eh
That's non-sense, people (and their pets) will continue to get cancer, even if
a cure is found. The Nobel prize alone would be worth it.

~~~
NovemberWest
Please note that "cure cancer" is in quotes. I am speaking from (bitter)
firsthand experience about some other condition.

I don't expect to ever get the Nobel Prize. I mostly get called crazy.

~~~
danoprey
Well now you have to elaborate?

~~~
NovemberWest
No, not actually. But you can check my other comment, below, for a crumb more
info. I have mostly walked away from this topic. I am getting myself and my
son well. If the rest of the world wants to be openly assholish to me, hey,
their health issues are not my problem. Paying my bills and getting off the
street is my problem.

------
aresant
Sharing some of the analytics behind how you think people use the site would
probably make for a much more interesting discussion around monetization.

EG - I can't figure out how or why 6m uniques would show up here, or what
they're doing.

And that's not an insult, I am curious - are they looking for discovery /
trends? Are they looking to see all the latest pics of a user? etc?

Those are dramatically different user segments / values.

You've got a bit of a 31-flavors UX where I can do a lot, but as a result
wonder if you could massively pare this down, improve focus, and discover
monetization through understanding what people actually use it for.

~~~
dumbfounder
SEO is the largest feeder of traffic for Twicsy. People get there by searching
for a very long tail of things. But there are quite a few that return just to
browse around it seems, or check out the top photos.

Agreed, the UX/UI is terrible. One big problem is that I am a terrible web
developer, I am really just a back end data guy that knows enough to be
dangerous on the front end.

But that's part of the reason why I think it has much more potential. The site
gets a ton of traffic despite its obvious flaws. If I had the funds to do a
redesign and even execute well on the basics who knows what could happen?

~~~
ashraful
I'd love to do a free redesign for Twicsy. Email me (inlith@gmail.com) if
you're interested.

My portfolio is at madebyargon.com

~~~
slewis
I'm curious. Why free? Portfolio juice?

~~~
ashraful
Free because I think the project has potential but the developer seems to not
be interested in investing money on a redesign. If a free design can renew
interest in the project, I think its a worthwhile cause.

On a related note, I also do free designs for open source projects (eg. vlc,
ack). So if your have an open source project that you think could benefit from
design, feel free to get in touch with me.

Working on such project helps me not just get my name out there, but also lets
me learn a lot more than I can in commercial projects, since I usually get
more creative freedom when I'm contributing my time rather than being paid for
it.

------
wavesounds
This is proof of Marc Andreessen's idea[1] that if you obtain good product
market fit nothing else really matters. Despite ignoring this product for 4
years and having a totally outdated design the market is compelling this
product to exist none the less.

You've basically invented Instagram for Twitter here and don't seem to even
realize it.

Please do your users a favor and apply Twitter's Bootstrap to the site ASAP,
its really not that hard, you've been at this for 10 years, might as well
learn a little HTML CSS you've come this far.

1\. "Personally, I’ll take the third position – I’ll assert that market is the
most impor- tant factor in a startup’s success or failure. Why? In a great
market – a market with lots of real potential customers – the market pulls
product out of the startup. The market needs to be fulfilled and the market
will be fulfilled, by the first viable product that comes along. The product
doesn’t need to be great; it just has to basically work. And, the market
doesn’t care how good the team is, as long as the team can produce that viable
product."

~~~
chavesn
Well, not _nothing_ else. As the author said, it makes next to no money. And
it sounds like the traffic is almost entirely transient, which reduces its
value greatly. The site averaged less than 2 visits per unique visitor.

So, while I get your point that an interested audience propelled the site to
great use without much work at all, that's not the whole equation, not even
close.

------
programminggeek
The ad placement is basically terrible. You should place fewer ads, but put
them nearer the content and above the fold.

For example, get them out of the sidebar and make one banner in line with the
content between the navigation and the pictures. Basically get rid of the
rest.

Also, have you considered selling ads on BuySellAds.com? With that amount of
traffic you should make decent money on a CPM or monthly basis.

~~~
dumbfounder
I have very little ability to change the UI because I am a bad web developer
and every change I make seems to make things worse. But thanks for the
placement suggestion, maybe that is worth a try.

I contacted BuySellAds a while back and they passed on the opportunity. They
said their target audience doesn't line up well with Twicsy. Or some crap like
that :)

~~~
chriogenix
@dumbfounder how can i get in touch regarding buying space on your site?

~~~
dumbfounder
There is an email at the bottom of every page on Twicsy. Unfortunately you
need to jump through a hoop after that because I am trying to avoid spam, but
there you go!

~~~
pedalpete
This comment thread in particular may provide more information about your
challenge in finding monetary success than your entire wonderfully written
blog post.

Here, in quick succession you first suggest that you have very little ability
to change the UI because you are a bad developer, then quickly follow that up
with a confession to somebody who wants to give you money, that you've made it
annoying to contact you because you don't want spam.

I'm trying to be helpful here, not trying to be an a$$, and I understand that
you're frustrated with your current situation with Twicsy and your generally
long-challenging experiences making a mint with your startups.

However, take a deep breath and realise you've done 3 times what so many have
failed to do even once. You've launched 3 products which have seen some manner
of success, two raised rounds of financing, and the other has a good volume of
traffic. Give yourself a bit of credit on the positive.

Now the negative.

It is said time and time again, execution is everything. You should know that.
I just took a look at Twicsy, and honestly the design isn't that bad, but it
could use a touch up. If you aren't good at 'web development', get somebody to
help you. I'm sure you can find a local developer who would like to have
twicsy on their portfolio, or spend a few bucks and get it done.

Secondly, make it easy for people to advertise on the site. If you are going
through an ad network, you're not doing the work anyway or put up a contact
form on the site, or even put your e-mail in your HN profile. You want to be a
success, ABC/S/whatever. You're missing opportunities where people want to
give you money, and if you're missing those opportunities, I assume you're
also missing opportunities to sell.

The 'build it and the money will come rolling in' days are long gone. Nobody
is an overnight success, particularly those that make it look easiest. If you
want success, you'll have to work for it. Or else, you'll have to settle for
telling everybody about your 'almost successes'.

As I said, I hope this isn't coming across poorly, as I'm truly trying to help
you, this thread just made me make a bunch of assumptions about you, and if
I'm right, hopefully it will help you or somebody else.

You've struck a nerve with me here, which is why my writing may have a tinge
of hostility, but maybe a small crack of the whip will wake you up to your
current opportunities and how you can seize them. All the best.

~~~
dumbfounder
A. I contacted that guy directly, the response was really for everyone else.
All you need to do to contact me is send 2 emails, I was trying to be nice
with the hoops comment. I don't consider that a big deal and it makes the spam
manageable.

B. Getting somebody decent to help for equity is hard. I have been at this for
many years, of course I have tried that. Spend a few bucks and get it done
isn't helpful because I am broke.

C. I think I work pretty hard!

D. My email is in my HN profile. Many others have contacted me already.

E. You assume too much!

[I edited out my negative tone. I was originally annoyed by your comment, but
as you said, you are trying to help! Thanks for your feedback.]

------
diorray
Some monetization ideas:

* Follow the 4chan's method. Add captcha to search and offer captcha bypass for $15~ per year

* Make iOS / Android app, sell it for $1.99~ (you can make it with HTML/Javascript via PhoneGap)

* Offer API for affordable price

and please change current website design, make it simple and cleaner (Twitter
Bootstrap is nice for that job and it's easy to learn)

------
birken
A few comments from an initial glance:

\- Site could be improved a lot for mobile. If you get a lot of mobile
traffic, which wouldn't surprise me, I'll bet it massively underperforms
desktop traffic on site engagement and ad revenue.

\- You need to A/B test your ad locations a lot more. The locations do not
look particularly good to me, but then again this does depend a lot on how
most people interact with your site (which likely isn't starting at the
homepage).

\- More ad networks isn't always better. Are these ad networks actually
outperforming adsense? Are you banned from adsense?

Edit: Ignore these two below, thanks jim-greer. Twitter is in fact hosting the
images!

\- (ignore) You probably could compress the big images more to save bandwidth.
I don't know how big of an expense your edgecast bill is, but I'll bet you
could cut it down by a lot.

\- (ignore) Additionally, fix the cache headers on your images (change them
from max-age: 0 to cache forever -- they look immutable). This will
immediately lower your edgecast bill by a little bit and really help
performance.

~~~
dumbfounder
Agreed with mobile optimization, I have over 35% mobile traffic and I am doing
a terrible job of taking advantage of this. But I don't know the first thing
about how to do this. I have done some research and experiments but honestly
couldn't make sense of it.

Yes, I am banned from Adsense, and just about every top tier ad network. There
is a certain amount of porn on Twicsy (maybe 10% of overall traffic, nothing
earth shattering) that makes it unsavory to many advertisers. Despite
aggressive filtering in place to stop serving top tier ads on anything that
might possibly be objectionable, and removing 10's of millions of pictures, it
seems like every top provider has blacklisted Twicsy.

~~~
reasonnotreason
How much do these bannings hurt your profitability ? Any way to quantify it ?

~~~
lgas
The answer to this question determines how much you can afford to either
outsource or invest in internal deployment of porn detection. Also, hi Chris!

~~~
dumbfounder
Hi John! We do not download images so porn detection would be a huge endeavor.

~~~
cinquemb
Could you load the images from the urls into memory and try out open source
code[0] that detects porn (I'm sure there's probably something better out
there, but this was just a quick find on github)?

I'm not sure how helpful it might be (false positives and what not), but it
could help give you more numbers to quantify whats going on?

[0] [https://github.com/FreebieStock/PHP-Image-Pornographic-
Conte...](https://github.com/FreebieStock/PHP-Image-Pornographic-Content-
Detection)

------
tn13
This happened with me as well. After spending lots of money and time building
a complex tech I failed miserably. So on a boring day I wrote some crappy
android app. I published it and went to sleep. A week passed and I realized
that the app was in first 10 for a particular section in India.

I put Admob ads and suddenly revenue started zooming. My app will not scale
beyond a point. It is unfundable. It is really crappy technology (basically a
static website put as a webview) but it gets hundreds of installs every day
and touching "thank you emails" every day.

------
Axsuul
I can heavily relate to this with one of my early projects, Jellibug. It
aggregated celebrity pictures from Instagram, Twitter, etc and at one point
had 1M+ pictures and 250k+ visitors/month. Except it didn't make money and
became a "piece of shit startup I hate to love". I stopped working on it about
a year ago and finally shut it down last month. Almost all traffic to it was
organic, just like Twicsy. And it was mostly teenagers using the site which is
a very hard audience to monetize. I couldn't see it as a business anymore so
why bother wasting time even thinking about it? Sometimes things fall apart so
that better things can fall together. Since then, I've stopped chasing the
sexy and cool ideas with no business plan. Today, I run 2 unsexy and boring
startups that make money. My advice would be to ditch Twicsy and instead find
a problem and solve it.

~~~
AznHisoka
What are those 2 boring startups you run?

Also, a sneaky, probably short-term idea for making money is to have sneaky
affiliate links with misleading anchor text like "Click to see the image", and
point the affiliate link to an Amazon product page or something. Probably an
easy few thousand dollars per month.

------
cwe
Why does he say "really successful" in the title, if it doesn't even break
even?

EDIT: Must be the traffic, but these days that's not (that) impressive if
there's no revenue model around it. That said, I'd love 6 million users/month.

EDIT 2: downvotes? I guess funding = success still around here, huh?

~~~
jff
I'd hate to have 6 million visitors a month if they're viewing pictures (high
bandwidth) and I'm not actually making any money from them.

~~~
lsc
eh, I'd take it. Bandwidth is cheap... and I have the sort of ego that derives
a lot of pleasure from creating something that other people find useful and
use.

------
notlisted
Where does the traffic come from? I think I may know.

TRAFFIC

A brief glance at alexa (I know, I know...) shows the source breakdown of his
traffic:

[http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/twicsy.com](http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/twicsy.com)
USA (17.5%), India (13.4%), Indonesia (11.3%), Japan (4.1%)

More interestingly, it lists some feeder pages, and there's one interesting
one:

[http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090722010355AA...](http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090722010355AA7qGC2)

Which contains this answer:

"Bonus - This is an easy way to include pictures you have uploaded to Twitter
in an easy and automated fashion. Go to [http://twicsy.com](http://twicsy.com)
and type in your twitter username. You will see all of the pictures you have
uploaded through twitter. Now scroll to the right and click on the 'RSS'
button. Now you can use this automatically updated link of your tiwtter
pictures."

RSS FEEDS

So... since people can use twicsy to find all pictures on a certain hashtag
topic (
[http://twicsy.com/?search=%23cinderella](http://twicsy.com/?search=%23cinderella)
) or from a certain user (
[http://twicsy.com/u/onedirection](http://twicsy.com/u/onedirection) ), they
can include these in their own sites as RSS feeds, thus contributing to his
overall server traffic, but perhaps not actual visitors.

BANDWIDTH

He does not actually seem to host (all/any?) pictures himself (i.e. little
bandwidth), but wraps twimg.com files in his own RSS tags, adding links to his
site.

TRAFFIC 2

By the way, his assertion of 6MM visits a month is reflected in the quantcast
numbers:

[https://www.quantcast.com/twicsy.com#!traffic](https://www.quantcast.com/twicsy.com#!traffic)

DEMOGRAPHIC

Also, pretty interesting affinity sites and demographic (younger males, no
kids, not wealthy, college educated, more than avg african american and
hispanic visitors) with a strong affinity for O'Reilly Automotive (perhaps not
very similar to the audience of this site, hence virtually unknown)

[https://www.quantcast.com/twicsy.com#!demo](https://www.quantcast.com/twicsy.com#!demo)

GEO

Geo findings of Alexa seem to agree with Alexa, though strangely enough, India
is missing from the top countries. Quantcast claims only 56k unique cookies
from India. Perhaps someone one is using his site and responsible for a lot of
the Alexa 13.5% ?

[https://www.quantcast.com/twicsy.com#!geo](https://www.quantcast.com/twicsy.com#!geo)

MONEY MONEY MONEY

If my theory of above average RSS traffic is right, only he can tell, think he
could make more money if he inserted some adverts into his RSS feed. Not sure
how well this would go over with Twitter, since he's not doing (most of?) the
image hosting.

I also get the feeling something is amiss. The Alexa and Quantcast numbers are
significantly out of whack (13.4% of all traffic from India, yet only 56k
unique visitors) strikes me as odd. He may be spending a bunch of money on
servers whilst others save money on using them as a tool.

On a personal level I find the design very unattractive and out-of-date, which
may prevent the site from becoming much of a destination and could be linked
to the 60+% bounce rate. If I were him I would figure out what competitors do
( like twitpic, which according to compete is an actual competitor:
[https://siteanalytics.compete.com/twicsy.com/](https://siteanalytics.compete.com/twicsy.com/)
) and take it from there.

Access to actual analytics could provide more ideas for money-making (or
-saving).

~~~
dumbfounder
For those interested (notlisted appears to be!) here are some actual numbers
from Google Analytics for October:

Unique Visitors 6,461,357

Visits 7,592,870

Pageviews 28,461,178

Avg. Visit Duration 00:02:07

Geos

USA: 1.6m visits Indonesia: 687k Japan: 569k not set: 513k UK: 369k Mexico:
261k Turkey: 247k France: 232k Germany: 213k Spain: 185k

And an amazingly long tail from there. So that is definitely part of the
problem when it comes to monetization. There are 120 different countries that
had more than 1000 visits in October.

\-----------

I do not actually believe that rss produces a significant amount of traffic
for Twicsy. I don't see any evidence in the stats it has much of an impact at
all.

~~~
notlisted
I am. Like digging through analytics. Some people pay me for it (not a hint,
just a fact).

I feel something is missing in this story...

Google has very few sites linking to yours (~35 pages, mostly garbage pages),
reports a huge number of indexed pages, but actually shows very few. Why?
Hummingbird update or something else?

A search for Twicsy links in twitter finds hardly anything, except the site
name in combination with a link to [http://po.st](http://po.st).

You have 30k followers on Twitter, quite a few but not humongous, so your top
trend tweets won't generate major traffic. 24k on FB, but most status updates
get little or no comments, likes or shares.

I see a bunch of twicsy-'hosted' images on pinterest and tumblr. Most PG-18
search terms on your site are blocked, but when I do a google image search or
twitter search, quite a few, I'd say 1 in 20 are of an adult nature (which
perhaps doesn't help in terms of getting advertisers).

Is the real reason for your success & traffic really... pr0n?

Edit: One of the reasons I ask this is the source of your traffic. Would
visits to your site allow Indonesians to bypass their 1MM site pr0n filters?

~~~
brendonjohn
hmm, you've reaffirmed my suspicions. The image suggestions for a google
search of Twicsy was just adult material.

The TechCrunch article in 2009 criticised the website for being creepy
[http://techcrunch.com/2009/06/19/twicsy-is-a-killer-and-
kind...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/06/19/twicsy-is-a-killer-and-kind-of-
creepy-way-to-search-pictures-shared-on-twitter/)

"As you might imagine, this service pulls up a lot of slightly personal pics,
such as couples being all cutesy together. Since you don’t know any of them,
it’s slightly creepy. But hey, if they don’t want those seen, they shouldn’t
be sharing them over Twitter in the first place."

~~~
dumbfounder
I regularly review the most trafficked pics on Twicsy and my rough estimate is
that about 10-15% of the traffic is porn. But it is hard to know exactly
because there is such a long tail of activity. My theory for why the
associated words are usually porn is that there is less of long tail of
activity when it comes to porn searches than regular searches. It didn't use
to be this way, I think that 2 years ago roughly half the traffic was porn and
when I realized this I was quite disheartened. I started taking aggressive
steps to remove it and mitigate it and traffic suffered for a while, and I
thought that was the end of Twicsy. But it bounced back after a few months and
kept slogging on...

I would bet the top search on google is something simple porn related like
"sex" similar to Twicsy. But that doesn't mean google is a porn site that no
one should advertise on.

~~~
notlisted
I'm not blaming you in any way, nor do I have a moral issue with it. I suspect
the percentage is higher though...

As you indicate advertisers have a major issue with it. The site being what it
is, a search index of unfiltered twitter picture streams now hosted on your
servers, you probably can't prevent it either… Severely impacts your ability
to make money on it, unless you were willing to go over to the 'dark side' and
get 'content-relevant' advertisers… (don't ask me how they make money, it's a
mystery to me, I've never paid for it)

~~~
dumbfounder
Sorry, didn't mean to sound defensive :)

The problem with "going to the dark side" is that I would be serving porn ads
to all the Justin Bieber and One Direction fans in the world as well as the
porn hounds. That would just be plain wrong.

------
martinkallstrom
Make a Twicsy app, price it at a dollar, push it through the site and you're
set.

~~~
dumbfounder
I agree this idea has potential, and I have thought about it, but I am a bad
web developer, and an even worse app developer. I have been looking for a
partner to possibly do it with a rev share and I have contacted numerous
people, but no takers...

~~~
23andwalnut
Happy to help you with some of your web dev and design issues. Check out some
of my work at [http://www.duetapp.com](http://www.duetapp.com),
[http://www.getsoloapp.com](http://www.getsoloapp.com),
[http://www.23andwalnut.com](http://www.23andwalnut.com). Shoot me an email at
from any one of those sites if you're interested.

------
reasonnotreason
I don't understand if it has 6 million unique visitors a month, how can he not
monetize this? This seems to be more about how the revenue via advertising has
dried up. Can barely pay for the servers !?

~~~
krapp
6 million unique visitors a month are seeing nothing they can't see for free
on Twitter. The problem of how to make money on aggregated content is an
interesting one (and relevant to more than a few struggling entrepreneurs)

------
austenallred
You should be making a lot more than you're making. With a few tweaks to your
ad placement you should be making more than enough to live off of.

I only say this because your current ad placement is kind of annoying and
intrusive (especially on the content detail pages), yet they seem to be placed
in some of the worst places to actually generate clicks. Of course, I don't
have specific data or testing from your site to back that theory up, but if
your site follows the trends I've seen in other sites this is certainly the
case.

Feel free to reach out to me at the email address in my HN profile and I'll
help you get them placed right/help you test out placement to start generating
some real revenue. 6 million uniques is nothing to turn your nose up at, and
it should be enough for you to make a living off of quite easily.

------
WoodenChair
It was once told to me that after 2 years a startup is no longer a startup,
it's just a failed business.

------
jameszol
You have an awesome opportunity with your startup. I'm sure you'll turn
something around with the lively discussion you kicked off.

Have you considered non-ad-network revenue sources? What about running
affiliate offers?

I used to make 4 to 10 times more as a publisher with affiliate offers than
adsense or other ad network placements. I don't affiliate (or publish) enough
now to know if that would still happen or not.

A quick idea for an affiliate test, although you may have already tried this:

Given 6MM+ uniques/mo, and a somewhat adult-oriented audience, you may have a
decent opportunity to push native ads with affiliate offers toward dating
sites, event-themed sites (costumes for halloween trends), and more.

Native ads could be custom, animated banners you create and fill the first,
second or x picture spot in your search or tag results. Does that make sense?
Your banners would be 100px x 100px on your home page and fill a standard
picture spot or two or five instead of the images that might ordinarily go in
that space, 150x150 banner ads could fit in well in random places on your tag
image pages, etc.

Also, advertisers might like to participate in native advertising on your
website if the opportunity were available.

Good luck!

------
shawnreilly
I can tell you're frustrated with this Project, but I still think you deserve
some congrats. Good job! It's not easy to build something and get that much
traffic. I think the frustration stems from the platform it's built on, and
how hard it is to monetize on that platform. Since the content is basically
given away for free, advertising is your only option. And since they advertise
as well... it’s tough to pull it off. I can think of three basic options here
(and I'm sure there are many many more):

1\. Keep it running, keep it free, and use it as a "Bullet Point" project to
increase your perceived value on other projects that have the potential to
monetize more successfully

2\. Go the complete opposite and just start charging money for it, and see
what happens. Of course you risk losing traffic and/or the whole thing
imploding, but you never know until you try

3\. Just scrap it and re-use the Tech to build a different product that is
focused on a niche market that you believe can monetize better. Perhaps News
related businesses that would find value in an easy /easier way to find Images
for the stories they write

------
elorant
He could do something like the new Pinterest ads. You search for a pic on
Twitter and inside the results is a picture with an ad with a relative theme.

~~~
dumbfounder
Pinterest is so hot right now. Twicsy is so not hot right now. That makes a
huge difference when it comes to launching products like that. They also have
much better engagement.

------
lazyjones
It's full of (crappy - sorry) ads that probably don't pay much. Perhaps less
is more? I'm not really a Google advocate, but how about switching to text-
based ads only and focusing more on showing the user real content instead of
large, annoying banners?

~~~
dumbfounder
I have tried at least 50 ad networks and what I am using now seems to work the
best. But I am always willing to try something new...

------
corporealshift
No ads if you sign in with twitter? Maybe that's the problem, since it's a
search engine specifically for twitter...

I'd be curious to see some information regarding the number of ad
impressions/clicks too. The only ad on the homepage is way at the bottom (I
think).

------
msalazar
This is something that I have thought about a lot recently because I've been
wanting to start my own company as well. I don't plan on making money from it
right away. I would love to, but at the end of the day.. It comes down to what
is reality, which in this case for me is that I will not be making any/much
money off of my site. I've looked at alternatives to how I can change this and
will continue to do so. Kudos to you for managing to keep your idea going for
this long with little to no hope. Maybe I will have to be just like you and
just keep at it only because of the love and passion you have for your own
product. Best of luck to you on your new project(s)

------
laurencei
I don't use twitter much.

But recently there was a large tanker crash near where I live. The truck had
exploded, and there were lots of people killed and hurt.

I wanted to see some pictures, but one hour after the incident the story was
not (yet) on the TV news. So I turned to twitter, and using the standard
twitter search, I found a few ransoms photos of the incident.

What I needed was a better way to search twitter for photos, with a specific
tag or time frame posting, and perhaps even a geographical filter too (since
the incident was at a specific place).

I'm sure other people would find this useful, especially when large events
unfold live (I.e boston bombings, plane crash etc etc)

~~~
jackweirdy
Time & Geographically based searches would be a moneymaker, no doubt about it.
Could be something that Twitter would buy up themselves too

~~~
laurencei
Actually I just found this:
[http://nearbytweets.com/](http://nearbytweets.com/) \- seems someone has
already done it (for free). You can change the location to anywhere in the
world (not just 'near' you)

------
robomartin
And this, boys and girls, is what entrepreneurship looks like more often than
not. The "over the weekend" stories are rare corner cases. In the vast
majority of cases you have to be prepared to slog it out for an extended
period of time before you start to see success. And that's one of the huge
reasons for which most new businesses fail. Not everyone has the intestinal
fortitude to, in the face of adversity, keep pushing forward.

@dumbfounder

First of all, I wish you had chosen a different handle on HN. You are not dumb
at all. You are, in fact, a real asset to anyone who might want to launch a
startup or get behind a difficult idea. I don't know if you project will
ultimately succeed. Hard to tell. You, on the other hand, are an absolute
success.

I know that from your current perspective it might seem you wasted a decade in
this journey. I simply don't see it that way.

You've received plenty of design and functional advise on this thread with
regards to twicsy. The first thing I thought about was something that came up
in a discussion on HN a couple of days ago. Here's my short comment on that
thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6647818](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6647818)

In my view that still rings true for twicsy. In other words, you have to
deliver value that is not found elsewhere and that people are willing to pay
for. Im my post I speak of the fact that the vast majority of news websites
are regurgitated versions of the news item source, whereas there are a very
few who provide you with real incremental value by taking the time to research
and give you perspective.

If you are still interested in making twicsy a success perhaps you should
start thinking laterally rather than vertically. In other words, don't stay on
your current path. Explore other paths. I know that's easier said than done.
For example: How might corporate marketing programs be able to use your
service? Celebrities? Bloggers? How about a path to licensing some of these
pictures? Not through you, through whoever owns the rights with you making a
small percentage on the sale.

Don't give up. Pivot.

------
jsonne
Have you thought of doing in content ads when people search specific things?
I.e. If I look up "party" maybe there's an alcohol ad or an ad for a local
bar. I have so many ideas around this.

------
boonez123
More ads man! I had a site that had 1 million page views per day and we
generated about $1500-$3000/day off the ads. Placement of the ad is
imperative.

~~~
billmalarky
Can you email me? I've got a site that does high pageviews that I'm struggling
to monetize.

------
jjoe
Interesting... HN seems to be more responsive to stories of failed start ups
than _averagely_ successful businesses. Is this because most are reluctant to
tell the world they've failed? Doesn't this go counter to the failure-is-good
argument.

It's as if one comes out more genuine _iff_ bad news are shared rather than
good news. FYI, I don't personally see OP's app/outcome as a failure in
itself.

------
normloman
Finally, a website that lets me search twitters massive database of stupid
pictures people take of themselves. How are you not a billionaire?

~~~
DanBC
... It also lets you search for things like LAX, which might have been handy
the other day.

A quick search for "thinspo" shows Twitter has a lot of work left to do if
they want to stop people using twitter for pro-anorexia messaging.

------
photorized
Launch a contest, some folks would probably be willing to solve the
monetization problem for a percentage of the revenue. I'd love to work with
you on this, that kind of traffic isn't easy to build.

I'd also spin off a separate product for marketers (based on the same engine,
but without the global trend noise), make it useful (there are a few ways to
do that).

~~~
dumbfounder
Then I would have 50 ideas that I don't have time or money to execute on :)

~~~
photorized
idea being you let them execute for rev share :)

------
iblaine
I am unconvinced that traffic is all a site needs to be a real business. Sites
like pinterest & snapchat convince us otherwise. And those business operate at
a loss. Trying doing that as your side project...and you probably wont go very
far unless you have VCs with some deep pockets...or publicity from sites like
hacker news & tech crunch.

------
joshuaellinger
You are making me love my little enterprise startup.

10 years, no funding -> $750K/year.

Of course, that one company is AT&T. We help send about 1/3% of all direct
mail advertising in the U.S. (Sorry about that -- we are trying to get them to
switch to digital but it's a hard sell to when that's what they do for a
living.)

------
ringe
The real problem here IMO is that the focus is on the investors and making a
product that will attracted such.

There's something fundamentally wrong with the approach when the major focus
is on something else than earning money.

I know, I've been there too.

loop "Build something you can sell. Find a customer. Send a bill. Get money."

------
lazyeye
Its a cheesy video but if you can force yourself to watch to the end there
might be a couple of points to make your time worthwhile.

6 Ways To Make Money Online [http://www.shoemoney.com/6-ways-to-make-money-
online](http://www.shoemoney.com/6-ways-to-make-money-online)

(Yes I know its Shoemoney)

------
WaterSponge
You ever think to ask your users with a survey to see why they came there in
the first place?

Do you have some analytics to see what they are doing on the site? I mean is
60% of it searching for popstar images and then browsing from then?

Once you know this you can start to steer this firehose into a funnel.

------
cyrilg
The idea seems like a good one but you are not solving any problem, it is just
a cool way to discover photos on twitter. If you have 6 millions unique users,
can you charge businesses to feature their photo on the home page and charge
per follower you give them?

------
oddshocks
If you want some cricisim, the website style might be turning people away.
[http://twicsy.com/](http://twicsy.com/) The colours, contrast, and various
sizes/spacing of things are somewhat unsettling.

~~~
alexcroox
Yep, his first hire should be/have been a designer. People only care about
interfaces, they couldn't care less how great the backend is.

------
dorfsmay
Thanks for this post, especially for all the details. Been building a site as
a side project, mainly to get it out of my head and the incidental learnings.
Reading about your strugle and the hardship of moneytisation was very
enlightning.

------
amerf1
Honestly speaking I've used the website a lot, but only recently I started
thinking why doesn't the founder take it to the next level? It's an amazing
website!

------
cmac2992
Why would you need funding? Your product seems "finished" and you have a ton
of users. You just need to monetize better than crappy ads

~~~
dumbfounder
Because I have 2 kids and I can't afford to work for no salary anymore! And
the site needs a redesign.

~~~
cmac2992
I certainly understand needing to support your family. But I understand why
investors are so leery. Additional $$$ in the business and a redesign would
probably result in more users but probably not a substantial increase in
revenue. Your monetization strategy is not working at 6 million(impressive
btw) users then why would it work at 12 million users. There is a very small
ROI with the current strategy. Properly monetizing 6 million users would
result in alot more than just beer money.

what you've done is awesome. With a few tweaks to the business model you could
generate real revenue without needing to raise investment capital.

~~~
andrewhillman
As someone who is in "this space" and a product guy, @Dumbfounder, needs to
refocus then rework the design. Its not much many to edit a decent psd
designer then get it chopped off and ready for xhtml.I've done many Its a
cheap way to get a slick new design in no time at all. Refine later. I have
access to some who do high quality psd+css w/ good turn around time. You tell
them what you want, toss around ideas and you get yourself a final product
that needs little work. I

His pages have too much going on. Less is more. You should be able to clean
things up and drip one 250x250 px ad for say 10-15 cents. Once the ui is
reworked this will come to life. I like what he is going but right now he is
doing too much. If you want to chat him me up. I am a front end dev and we
could probably build some interesting things.

I am pretty sure I could bring its full potential out within 2 month of so
while not spending much month at all.

@dumbfounder. If passionate. Reach out to me today.I have some free time this
week to dicuss if you want.

~~~
dumbfounder
A redesign is only a piece of the puzzle, it will not make the site suddenly
fundable. I need the time to work on a few fundamental things to position the
site to be more attractive to both users and investors, and time is money.

~~~
andrewhillman
I just reread what I wrote. Yikes! Please excuse all the auto-correct typos.
Is this a "new" startup or is it part of your previously funded searchles
company?

I completely understand that a redesign is only a piece of the puzzle but when
dealing with visual site... design can be a huge piece of puzzle. It can also
make a big difference in revenue.

I dig your passion.

------
thenomad
Question: what CPM are you getting for your ads?

Depending on how much you're getting, I may know some people who would be
interested in beating that price.

~~~
dumbfounder
On average less than 10 cents.

~~~
aggronn
What CPMs are you getting in the US? If 17% of your traffic is US, even with
one ad per page, you should be getting ~4,760,000 pageviews per month.

have you ever tried to outsource your ad operations? that kind of inventory
could be worth worth enough to live on comfortably.

------
rjurney
Just keep growing the traffic however you can while you break even and figure
out how to turn it into something profitable long term.

------
lazyeye
Could maybe time-delay search results for free users. Premium users (news
companies etc) pay for more real-time service.

------
username223
Note to "10x founders": both "twitsnbieber.com" and "titsnbieber.com" are
still available.

------
realworldview
/bin/anothergreatidea < '$$$' > ~/Desktop/Trash 2> /dev/null

------
dmead
someone's bad at being greedy

------
bacheson
Successful? No ... Potential? Yes

------
badalyan
Find real problems first, then solve them by creating a Business™

------
johnkim
Just wanted to say love your post. It was fun and educating. ;)

------
nate
I sent this to the blog author, but then felt maybe someone else might get
something from reading it. My offer stands for everyone here. Most of us are
going through or have gone through this same struggle eloquently written in
this post. I'm here to help brainstorm or chew on any problems any of us are
working through. Just need to email me. nate.kontny gmail

\--------------------------

I really enjoyed your blog post on Hacker News today about the trouble of
running Twicsy.

Here's just a few spelling/grammar corrections:

[https://draftin.com/documents/168810/changes_to_savepoint?sh...](https://draftin.com/documents/168810/changes_to_savepoint?share_edits_token=_62uFf4NYzF_EGvtSBbRrcQXEGpSg616YEqRPZIEAxhK0rkmWZI07TJH405Iwdbu3-lLJgiTKPdtR8ewVs3jt2Q)

I definitely understand what you are going through. I had a successful attempt
at starting a business with Inkling
([http://inklingmarkets.com](http://inklingmarkets.com), which still runs
profitably today), but then wanted to try again. So we started a branded games
company where companies could stick there own brand images into a bunch of
games we made. For example, our version of Bejeweled but with pictures of the
latest sweaters at the Gap. And we did some revenue making deals. But the
deals were tough to get, and the investors didn't care.

I didn't have the passion for this project like I did with Inkling to see it
through. So I gave up relatively quickly. Took a break and worked on the Obama
campaign. But then I started Draft ([http://draftin.com](http://draftin.com))
about half a year ago, and that's been a considerably different project in
terms of success. It's surprised me how much people enjoy it.

One thing that's really helped me is Kathy Sierra's advice
([http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/0...](http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/08/why_marketing_s.html)):
to find something where I'm making people better at something. And let that
guide all my decision making.

For example, If I were trying to sell cameras, I'd wake up and just focus on
helping people become better photographers. With Draft I focus on helping
people "write better", and every feature or decision I make for the product
has to have that as its mission. And it continues to serve me well.

As I briefly look at Twicsy, I can't help feel there is something here about
helping people get better at something. Maybe it too is about getting better
at taking photos. You must have a lot of data (i.e OkCupid) about what types
of photos get traffic. Maybe with that data, you could make companies better
at sharing images of what they do to get more fans. You obviously have skill
getting SEO traffic, and managing a large image site. Maybe there is a kernel
there that you'd be excited to productize.

Anyways, I know the feelings you are going through. I'm not going to say just
keep going, because obviously you have. But I am confident, that eventually
there is something you are exploring here that could be turned into something
that can sustain itself.

I'm here to brainstorm or chat if you need me. Happy to be of any kind of
help. Please feel free to ask. No need to feel like you are toiling at this
alone.

-Nate

\-- [http://twitter.com/natekontny](http://twitter.com/natekontny)
[http://ninjasandrobots.com](http://ninjasandrobots.com)

------
rgonzalez
Best title ever.

------
ye
A few random ideas in no particular order

1) Paywall. Even if 1 out of 10,000 people agrees to pay, you will have 600
paying customers per month.

2) Sell analytics / data on what's trending.

3) Offer to make prints of the images.

4) Branching out #3 - not just prints, but fridge magnets, tiles, mugs,
whatever.

~~~
dumbfounder
You may be right about #1, that was to be my next attempt at monetization.
Right now you can only do keyword searches on the past month, I was going to
offer a service to let people search the full index for maybe $10/month. But I
am now involved with another startup that is taking all my time and I am not
sure when I will get the chance to try this.

I have talked to many people about #2 but was unable to figure out something
compelling to sell.

Tried #3 with Peecho for about a week, not one sale!

------
mumbi
You should make it look better, imo.

~~~
martey
How would that solve the issue of it not making money?

~~~
krapp
Depends on how he decides to monetize it I guess. But at the very least a
better designed site gives the impression of professionalism and security, and
users who trust you will also trust you with their money. Also a better
organized (I think less noisy) site would make the ads easier to see and more
relevant.

Although for me, the bigger issue is finding what Twicsy offers that's worth
paying for?

