

Ask HN: Review my website - jaekwon
http://popbub.com/

======
MichaelApproved
At first glance I have no clue what the site does or what it's for. Can you
add some text to explain what's going on? What's a bounty (meaning how do I
put it up? Is it an arbitrary amount of points I decide? Is it something I
have to pay for in advance to be able to offer it to someone else?)

After looking a bit more at the site I have a slight clue but still very
little idea about the site and its features. As a user, I'm unwilling to login
with Facebook just to test it out and explore.

Is this similar to an existing concept that I don't know about?

~~~
jaekwon
OK, thanks for the feedback.

When you sign up via facebook you get 200 points. I'll add a feature where you
can create an anonymous account for less points so you can try it out.

It's completely free, so you don't have to pay for anything.

You can put up a bounty by creating a challenge. Hit 'Submit' on the top to
submit a new challenge. Yeah it's an arbitrary amount that you decide.

~~~
ams6110
What's a point? What can I do with them? Why would I want to accumulate them?

~~~
jaekwon
Assuming popbub had users, would you do it if you could buy adspace on the
front page to promote your startup?

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david_shaw
Okay, full disclosure: I'm not a web developer. I did, however, create
<http://sleepyti.me> last month and have gone through extensive research and
A/B testing to produce a nice, easy to navigate page. I get around 10k views
per day, and the site generously pays for more than the cost of its hosting.

First of all, as a couple of other users have said, I have no idea _what_ your
site is. Popbub.com doesn't exactly make the product obvious (although it does
have nice potential), and there is pretty much nothing telling me what to do.

Let's get some text in there! It astounds me that you expect users to "sign in
with Facebook. Do it now!" when you literally haven't explained the point of
_anything_.

I'm not trying to be harsh, as this is supposed to just be constructive
criticism. The design of the site is simple and although there are a few
typographic errors it's definitely not bad to read.

Get some descriptions in there, and maybe a screenshot or demo or SOMETHING so
I know why I'm staring at the page.

Good luck!

~~~
smalter
David, could you give me a sense of your customer acquisition strategy for
sleepytime? For instance, I googled "when should i wake up" and sleepytime
didn't come up. But I see you have a ton of facebook likes. I'm trying to
build an ad-based source of passive income so i'd be very interested to hear
your methods.

~~~
david_shaw
Sure.

I built Sleepyti.me as a free app, and did not expect to make money from it.
As such, I am not interested in acquiring subscribers (I don't offer a
service), or paying for traffic via AdWords. Startups with a product (for
example WakeMate, which has received considerable HN coverage this week) have
saturated this advertising space, and it's not really an area in which I'd
want to throw money.

In my case, the profit comes from sheer traffic. The more traffic I get, the
more people will click relevant ads in the single banner AdSense unit I
display after the information has been given to the user.

Since my profit comes from traffic, it does not make sense to pay for traffic
via AdWords in the traditional sense: the money would just go in a circle.

It's repeated a lot, but the best way to drive traffic to your website is to
solve a problem. Sleepyti.me is one way to solve the problem of waking up
tired (a common problem, I might add), but there are obviously infinitely many
problems to choose from.

Once the tool/site is written, it must be tested to provide an elegant
experience. Critique from other developers (some here at HN, but also over at
[Proggit](<http://reddit.com/r/programming)>) helped me a lot.

Once the site launches, it's imperative to provide users an outlet to express
their interest and show it to other people. Lucky for us, this no longer
entails "enter a friend's email address here to tell them about us!" A simple
Facebook like button allows the site to spread organically. Each time a user
"likes" the page on Facebook, his or her friends will see the notification and
have the opportunity to like it his/herself. Theoretically, this could spread
through all of Facebook's ridiculous userbase, which would provide more than
enough traffic.

HN, Reddit, and more recently StumbleUpon have provided great outlets for
traffic, and social media like Twitter and Facebook have allowed it to grow
quite nicely.

I'm (ambitiously) trying to launch similar sites at a rate of one project per
month, given leniency for interesting bugs or project changes.

Sorry if this post was a little exhaustive, but I wanted to make sure I
included the necessary background information to answer your question :)

~~~
smalter
Awesome, that's very helpful. Thanks, David. Can you give me a sense of how
much you're profiting?

~~~
david_shaw
Sure.

My most profitable day so far brought in about $30; I've had a few such days.
Average is somewhere around $14/day.

My goal is to earn $10/day or $300/month per site, which I think is both
achievable and a nice goal. December, being my first month with a payout from
Google, is on track with this goal (granted, with some residual from
November): I have $344.77 in unpaid earnings that will be sent to me at the
end of the month.

As I briefly noted in my earlier post, I'm trying to do one of these projects
per month--if my goals can hold, 300 * 12 sites is equal to a residual income
of 3600 per month or $43,200/year. Lofty goals, but that's not a bad salary
for residual income!

I'm still very new at this, with a _lot_ to learn, but I'd love to write up my
experience in a HN post. I know a lot of people are interested in making money
this way, and although I'm certainly not an expert, I'd love to lend any
insight.

~~~
smalter
Thanks, David. I think an HN post would be cool. I'm probably the only one
benefiting from your knowledge what with these comments buried deep in the
bowels of HN.

You've got a plan -- my only concern would be the upkeep of 12 sites. But who
knows, one of those sites could turn out to be a home run. Thanks for writing.

------
forbes
Facebook has something like 500 million users, but that doesn't mean that
everyone has an account. I don't and never will. Give people another option,
including 'yet another account' for your site. The majority of users will not
trust your site to connect with Facebook, Twitter, whatever. No one's dad
understands OAuth or OpenID.

And like everyone else mentioned, I have no idea what your site is for. Add a
big headline "PopBub will make you rich or get you laid or both" and then
explain how.

------
NathanKP
The biggest problem I see is that while I can log in with Facebook there is no
easy way to log out without manually revoking access. Other than that I would
be interested in seeing how the community progresses since each new member
will bring in bounty points, so the people with bounty points to spare will
end up being new members and old members who had won bounty points from new
members.

If you get a bunch of members it would be really fascinating to watch how the
bounty points flow.

~~~
jaekwon
Yeah I've been trying to fix that. Facebook isn't making it easy... if anybody
is familiar with the Facebook javascript SDK holler. 200 points :)

~~~
NathanKP
I can help with that. Basically you just need to show the login button. It
automatically turns into a logout button when the person is logged in. Or for
a prettier solution you can use the following JavaScript attached to an
onclick event handler on a custom logout button:

    
    
        FB.logout();
    

Edit: For reference I would recommend reading this page thoroughly because
there are some other cool things you can do with the SDK:

<http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/javascript/>

~~~
jaekwon
Thanks, I need some direction here.

I'm testing it out on my dev, and the login button is not turning into a
logout button even when I am logged in via facebook.

Also, FB.logout(); is logging the user out of facebook, which probably isn't
desirable.

Is this only happening on my end?

~~~
mileszs
Edit: Whoops. I didn't quite grasp what you were asking until I had already
responded. I think that is the intended behavior behind FB.logout() (as
opposed to only logging one out of your site and not out of Facebook).

If you want to only log someone out of your site, you've probably got a
session variable of some sort you want to destroy, right?

~~~
NathanKP
Yes, clearing the cookies on your domain will log users out of your site only.
You can accomplish that with some simple JavaScript. Just check the cookies
using your browser inspection tool to see which one is set by Facebook.

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Mithrandir
I like it, but will there be a way to create an account instead of having to
use Facebook to log in?

~~~
jaekwon
I can, but i'm curious as to why you wouldn't use facebook to log in.

~~~
andymoe
Because I don't trust you and I don't trust Facebook. (Nothing personal)

~~~
Mithrandir
or maybe because I live under a rock and don't have a Facebook account, with
no desire to get one?

~~~
jaekwon
ok if you're interested, send me an email at jkwon.work on gmail.com and i'll
send an invite out for people who don't have facebook accounts.

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lurkinggrue
I don't have a fecebook account.

~~~
jaekwon
ok. what do you have, openid? or just an email?

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mashmac2
So this is Mechanical Turk or Elance meets services bartering... i think?

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smalter
neat! i imagine that the network effect issue will be the most important. is
there a vertical where this type of economy makes particular sense?

~~~
jaekwon
Good question. I wonder if it will work in education, in particular in a
college setting.

