What to do with a site that accidentally got popular?

[mrspeaker]

4 few years ago a friend and I made www.turntubelist.com to scratch a personal itch. We've never tried to advertise it or push it anywhere but overtime the users slowly climbed from 50 hits a day, to 100, to 150... but then 6 months ago something happened. I dunno what, but it happened from Brazil, and then Japan then kind of everywhere - 6000+ visits a day for weeks. It's settled down now - about 1500 visits a day... but the people who use it have a REALLY long average-time-on-site: 26 minutes, according to Google Analytics.

There's no ads up there at the moment, which would be the obvious thing - but because it's all client-side it would be hard(er) to get relevant ads (like for the songs the user is searching for etc).

Anyhooo.... What would you do with it?

[jacquesm]

1500 visits per day is not 'popular' by any stretch of the imagination, not to rain on your parade but that's still very small fry.

What you do have is validation that you have something going on there, now you need to analyze what that something is and if there is a way to get it to grow to a substantial multiple of what you have today.

So, what I would do with it is analyze the crap out of it to see if it has (autonomous) potential for further growth.

You also need to figure out why it dropped again.

[peteforde]

If you didn't build it to make money and you're making 1500-6000 people a day happy, then perhaps that's the end of the conversation. Why not just keep it as a fun side project that doesn't demand much of your time?

Not everything you do has to have a revenue model. I know that for me, that's what I miss about the early days of the web.

[sliverstorm → peteforde]

On the other hand, what if running this site is costing him something? I'd certainly want a little return if other people's use of the site is costing me (bandwidth charges perhaps)

[peteforde → sliverstorm]

If it's less than $25 a month, I'd say "who cares".

I don't know the OP's financial situation, but I think the idea of cost recovery on two digits is so short-sighted. I shudder to think of all of the missed opportunity costs of not providing awesome things to people.

The majority of my "luck" in life has come from doing things just because I enjoy them.

The OP is already getting paid in reputation, whether he acknowledges it or not.

[_b8r0]

Ads would be a knee jerk reaction. Try to find out how users are using it, what they're using it for (e.g. household playlist or live performances?) and what features they would pay for, then offer a pro version.

I could see this being a great tool for VJ mashups, especially at 720p.

[pjmurray → _b8r0]

I think this is a very good point. You may find that there is more to be made selling songs/albums/playlists via affiliate channels, or like stated, offering pro features. DJ's may even be using it to trial new vinyls before they buy. If nothing else understanding the use should allow you to better tailor the site to drive up traffic if you do decide to roll out ads.

[sahillavingia]

I would get ads on it right away - money is always nice. I would also use it to send traffic to my other sites and my twitter account.

Start pitching it to news sites and the like, because there's a very high chance it'll turn into something bigger than just something to scratch an itch. Create a Facebook page; start gaining fans. Same with Twitter. Increase the presence of your site.

Very cool product, good luck! You can always email me if you need help. :)

[iworkforthem]

You could show ads targeting the playlist. One way you could do it is to sell relevant VCD/DVD, possibly with Amazon Associate. Another way could be to collect & sell playlist data, people love data. If you are keen, I'm starting a small advertising network, maybe we could work together, my contact detail is on my profile page.

[evo_9]

You could try selling it using something like this site: http://flippa.com/

[PaulJoslin → evo_9]

This is good advice, however most prices on flippa are a multiple of existing profit ~ 12-24x monthly profit.

I would suggest potentially growing the market for the product. I've made a similar thing before when the youtube api first came out, but not quite as polished. I like the concept, but you could take it further.

You only have to look at youtube doubler to see how popular some of these sites can get.

[CGherb256k]

I wouldn't worry about ads. Why did it suddenly get popular? Why are people visiting your site? How are they using the site? What features would they want?

[pbhjpbhj → CGherb256k]

Why not add a little box "find this song at:" and iTunes/Amazon/whatever affiliate links?

[babyboy808]

Why are there alot of people not using the ASK HN or Tell HN: anymore?

[RyanGWU82 → babyboy808]

Nearly everyone does use the "Ask HN" prefix. Based on http://news.ycombinator.com/ask, 87% of all self-posts start with "Ask HN" or something similar. And the prefix's use is trending upward over time.

More to the point, why does it matter?

[evo_9 → babyboy808]

New users really have no idea that is the typical protocol on HN; I know it took me a week or two to notice things like that and then dig up the posting guidelines.

Might be worth having a quick FAQ show up when a user creates a new account to cover the basics like this.

[mrspeaker → evo_9]

Ooops. Yeah, I went looking for a FAQ - but I figured it must automatically add the "Ask HN" when there was no URL. Sorry!

[Tichy → babyboy808]

I think it is implicit by the item not having an attached URL.

[Gdgfgdgd]

How much money could you hope for from 6000 users through ads?

[nolite]

a viral meme probably introduced it to the masses