Comment by nfnaaron | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nfnaaron | Hacker News Reader

"I know he is not just advocating building made-for-adsense sites, it’s not the method, it’s the attitude that goes with it, that is the real issue. Lets not care about providing any kind of value, lets not worry about any sort of professionalism, all we want to do is scam some suckers out of $1 a day and believe you me there are plenty of suckers on the web."

I don't get this common reaction to the post? What's wrong with providing something for a dollar, if it's worth a dollar?

What's necessarily unprofessional about providing something worth a dollar?

What is it about online entities that make it necessary for them to be somehow more "worthy" than most peoples' daily slog in a cubicle or behind a register? Yes, the internet makes it more possible to make "worthy" entities, but why must they be worthy?

Just because some people associate their better instincts and identity with the internet doesn't mean that everyone should do the same. Otherwise we'd all be driving Priuses.

I think the matter of the method of the monetization is part of the problem here, Max never explicitly wrote how he intended to monetize the traffic. Selling something for a dollar is one thing, entering the SEO page space war in order to attract enough traffic to get $1 per day per web property is another.

I think I should state this a bit clearer - I don't know SEO, I've not done SEO marketing or generate pages or all that stuff. I have no idea how it works.

I make money with iphone + developer tools + web tool + code repackaging. I can follow the $1 principle using those and it works.

Of course, I started with $1 goal, but they are all making far more than that.

SEO stuff is just too competitive, I am not smart enough to go battle against people with years of experience. My next moves are going to be facebook, smaller social network apps. Then I'll face video and add-on tools for iphone.

Assuming niche sites is about SEO is thinking small. I specifically mentioned examples and said to build software around it, not to go make a landing page style stuff.

The journey towards 400 projects will give you the insight you need to make a lot of money. It's the journey that makes the difference, not the goal.

I think you completely set people on the wrong track with your 'owl' site example.

I got that from Patrick! He gave that example, so I used it also.

Oh, I thought you had posted first and it was the weirdest coincidence ever.

Your owl idea and my owl idea are quite different, Max. If you notice people criticizing your owl idea, they keep coming back to the fact that your idea exploits content already created by someone else and served by YouTube, and that the act of putting it on an owl video minisite monetized by AdSense does not create value.

In comparison, I paid to have my owl bingo cards created, I am unambiguously the moral owner of the content (both because I paid for it and because I made the software that made it possible), my cards enrich the Internet because they fill the "owls of Asia bingo"-shaped hole in the life of some actual user somewhere, the cards accurately demonstrate the operation of a software product which is actively supported, maintained, etc.

Anyone remember the $400K Parrot eBook?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516215

(what is it about birds and AdSense?)

I'm not advocating the method. I am not here to judge what anyone wants to do with their time. What I am saying is that if you put owls on a site and call it owlvideo, you will make $1 a day.

The context was about how difficult or easy it was to make $1 a day, and my samples there were made to demonstrate the required amount of work involved in making $1 a day.

I don't do such things (I tried with the ninja video site, did not work out). I'm pointing out that it can be done that way.

What I got out of your post is that the journey matters, not each individual app. If someone strives to make 400 apps that will make $400/month he will learn a ton along the way and be forced not to fall in love with one idea. When people fall in love with an idea they stop trying other things.

Using this approach you can reflect on all the different little projects you worked on and then pick out different ones where getting the $1/day was easier than for others.

Dude, you get it.

It boils down to Quality vs Quantity.

The idea and reality some people can be rich without developing something of value (as defined in the blog post) is offensive on a very primal level to most people. It just doesn't seem right and fair to most folks.

And yet we buy pet rocks.

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