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Comment by pj1115 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I agree with 'minimal ads'. On a 27" monitor, 3 banners and an ads privacy pop-up don't take up much screen real estate, but visually some pages have as much ad as content. It's not a great experience when you're competing with other free (or OSS) products. If you're really only looking for feedback, you might have better luck if you aren't trying to monetising the people giving up their time!

Congrats on building this for yourself, I can certainly see the benefit of building writing tools to suit your own needs.

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I think the majority of the problem stems from the ads and I totally understand it — even if “minimal” sounds fine on a large screen, I see how visually some pages can feel crowded, especially compared to free or open-source alternatives. Google does sometimes adjust the number of ads depending on screen size, so I’ll look into optimizing that so it feels less intrusive.

Also, the privacy pop-up is actually the default from Google, and it varies by region — users in the U.S. see a slightly smaller version than in the EU. Still, I understand it can disrupt the experience, so I’ll explore ways to make it smoother.

I wish you the best, but you do not have a product to monetise yet.

IMO: if your goal is to attract users or to make money, you have too many strong free competitors to be using ads like this, especially if your audience read Hacker News. It's not the right business model. Any amount of time spent making these ads 'smoother' is better spent on the product, because you won't earn enough ad revenue to make it worth it.

If you need revenue to pay for hosting, you'd be better off making it open source or self-hostable.

If your goal is getting feedback, you have to recognise that people are doing it for you, not for them. Don't make them pay you to do it.

Thanks a lot for your kind wishes and detailed feedback! I’m a bit unsure what you mean by not having a “product” — I do have an online notepad and a Cornell notes tool; I just shared the homepage, not the specific tools (there are currently two, and I plan to expand gradually). Do you mean a large product or so?

I really appreciate your thoughts on monetization. I’ll definitely keep improving the notepad, Cornell notes, and other productivity tools to be added to the website to be as smooth and distraction-free as possible.

About making it open source or self-hostable, I might consider that later as more people suggest it instead of the current model.

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