1,484 karma · joined December 22, 2010
https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=itsprofitbaron
It looks like this is pulling the GoDaddy DNS (since none of my domains use the GoDaddy DNS) rather than if the domain is actually registered at GoDaddy or not.
If your app/site is good then here is a good article for you to start with: http://jasonlbaptiste.com/featured-articles/how-i-pitched-te...
Remember TechCrunch coverage does not mean that your startup will be successful and if they don't cover you it doesn't mean you won't be successful either. What is important is building a good app/site that people want.
With regards to offering them money etc... NO. Daniel Brusilovsky was fired from TechCrunch over a bribe attempt - http://venturebeat.com/2010/02/05/techcrunch-daniel-brusilov... - and this isn't a route you should be looking to go down. Although, if you are looking for paid reviews of your website/app which does not mean they will be nice about your app and they are also disclosed that they are a paid review - there are several websites that will connect you with bloggers that will do this for you.
Remember the important thing which is building a good app/site that people want and if you do that, not only will you get coverage but you will get users.
Nevertheless, have you considered offering "2 versions" of your app?
As you could offer a "Lite" Version which has 1-2 features missing and Ads (including offering to upgrade to the "Paid" version) and a "Paid" Version which has the 1-2 missing without Ads. What is important however, is that the 1-2 features that you remove are essentially bonuses and not core to the operation of the app but rather a nice feature/addition to the app.
With regards to the user experience, just ensure the ads are incorporated into the design/experience of the app when you are creating it rather than making it feel as if they were just added at the end in order to make revenue from the application as this will reduce the affect upon the user experience from a users point of view - Although don't make the ads so integrated that they don't annoy users to pay to remove them (i.e. from your "paid" app) - they still need to be slightly annoying as you will get people paying for your app just so they no longer see the ads.
With regards, to building more apps, in my opinion it is easier to build 1 app/site that makes $100/day than it is to create, manage, operate 10 apps/sites that make $10 each per day however, this is hard to say without knowing your existing apps.
There are several factors for the fact that 1 is better than 10+ in my opinion including, the fact that they will all require maintenance, management, promotion, support etc and this is time consuming especially, if you are operating 10+ sites/apps. I have seen people attempt to do this and they have managed to a certain point but then it becomes problematic, even on small scales with 100 sites producing $1 each/ day and have eventually merged them all into one since, it is far easier to manage 1 bigger site/app.
However, if you are really determined to build 10 apps that produce $10 each/day then there are loads of ways of doing this but, it depends which route you would rather go down i.e. FREE apps which are monetized with ads & even in-app purchases or PAID apps which can also be monetized with in-app purchases.
Likewise, you should have a look at PhoneGap - http://phonegap.com/ with regards to a framework etc since, you can build and easily deploy your app to multiple platforms (increasing your revenue streams) since it would be easier for you to launch your existing apps onto Android, Windows Platform and BlackBerry's etc.
Again, without knowing your existing apps, I can't really say if you should solely focus on scaling these up to producing more revenue and expanding them or launching a "bigger" type of app which can make $100+ per day since, whilst I have highlighted in my opinion that it is easier to have one core focus there are also certain aspects which can limit their expansion strategies.
Note: I am not affiliated in anyway to Yipit
Looking at your website (Applingua), I have noticed a few things which can be done to solve this.
First of all, your pricing strategy is wrong and part of the reason is what, you yourself admit that you don't charge enough as a small project is costing you money and a large project costs you time.
To fix your pricing strategy, I would implement the following changes:
First of all, I would implement a set fee for a certain amount of words and then $0.xx per word afterwards. This would instantly prevent "small projects" costing you money as for example you can decide upto 500 words = $xx then $0.xx per word after so words under this amount would be "profitable" for you so to speak since you're getting paid for more words than you are actually translating.
Additionally, I would also offer an "express" service like PSD to HTML services offer with premiums being charged on delivery times. Many small teams/single devs use these and pay for the "premium" feature of express service - you definitely should implement this into your service.
For example, turnaround time would be offered to all customers for instance at 5 working days, and then they can pay an additional fee for the express service i.e. $10+ for 3 days, $20+ for 48 hours , $35+ for 24 hours and even $50+ for the same day (providing it is before a certain time) - Obviously, these are example express pricing fees and turnaround times so you can edit these to suit your needs.
Upon, doing all of this I would also slightly increase your prices slightly by a couple of pennies on each of your offerings.
This would mean that you would have a new pricing structure, that would give you an inital set fee for your work and even more money for certain jobs than you would initally receive as well as, additional revenue from your express service. Likewise, the slight increase will also help your profitability and help solve the fact that you don't charge enough.
With regards to being able to take on more work via employing someone then, there are a few methods and options available to you for this.
First of all, you could employ a student on a part-time basis (since you can't guarantee a full time position) meaning you could take in more work as well as, provide them with relevant work experience especially if they are a language student.
Secondly, you should focus on automating as much of your service as you can - even more than you are already doing. This may mean having to refer to vWorker or Automated tools etc for various aspects and using your language/freelancers language skills to "tidy" up the work so to speak whilst, maintaining the quality.
Moreover, you could also employ a Virtual Assistant as well to automate/scale-up some of aspects of your work. You can hire some VA's for $250/month and they'll work pretty much full-time for you - and you can "train" them to do various tasks for you - whether thats focusing on the marketing etc to take some burden off your shoulders and automate/scale up other aspects of your business.
Hacker News is a startup community which, and more recently users seem to be forgetting this. .
Which is why, I believe that along with the ban on "fluff" as highlighted in PG's Essay there should also be the same ban on Political Submissions. There are several reasons for this but just going into one of the reasons as to why there should be a ban on these type of submissions is because, if you go to any political thread you will see that they all eventually turn into flame wars and because there has been an uprise in the political submissions around HN recently and as a result of these flame wars, they have been spreading out into other areas of the site which have been reducing the comment quality.
Likewise, I think people should stop saying "This." - I'm not going to fully go into this as it has previously been covered - http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3153377 but its really of annoying when people just comment for the sake of commenting. I think that, if you are going to comment, then you should be commenting because you want to add your 2 cents and not because, you're commenting to say that you agree with someones comment yet don't add any other value because, this is what the "up vote" button is for. Maybe, some text could be added above the Add Comment button which says "Does Your Comment Add Value? If So:"
I might not have enough karma to do this, or it might be not available to users but like the down vote (which I do have access to) I think there should be an option to flag comments which are deemed unnecessary by users (this could be implemented via a certain amount of karma) to remove some of the unnecessary comments in particular the "This." comments and the ones involving flame wars between users.
Likewise, I also think there should be an "infraction" system used on Forums. I think there is already a system like this in place, as I know if you get a certain amount of downvotes then, the post will get deleted etc but, on Forums the users are clear of their infraction points and it encourages "good behaviour" on the site after they rack up infaction points - making them be more considerate etc. The infraction system could work in the sense that - if you submit something that is "fluff/banned on HN" then you would get +2 infaction points likewise, a bad comment would get +1 infraction points.
Infraction Points would last 30-45 days and if you get 10 infraction points simultaneously then depending upon your karma you would receive a punishment such as:
Under 200 Karma - 24 Hour Submission/Commenting Ban
Under 500 Karma - 24 Hour Submission/Commenting Ban + Loss Of Header Colour Change
Under 750 Karma - 24 Hour Submission/Commenting Ban + Loss Of Header Colour Change + Loss Of Downvote.
ETC
Users would be allowed to earn the ability to have the header colour change and downvote button back via the Karma System.
Likewise, repeat offenders of Infractions would get more severe punishments. Such as having a script which shows for certain users, where the site keeps messing around whenever they try to do an action for a duration of time they are on the website.
Whilst, there are other smaller aspects which could be improved around the site, I think if these were tackled then Hacker News would have its strong community over the long haul and we won't see, flame wars/poor comments off users as often.
What is the process of getting publicity for a startup without any connections or investors to help?
users are needed first
However, if you want a TON of publicity then just do something that will get you noticed for instance, just look at how Richard Branson does publicity for some of his brands - http://www.businessday.com.au/small-business/smallbiz-market...
Likewise, if you want a users then there are loads of methods of doing it and although you don't want us to mention it "word of mouth" is the BEST form of publicity & user signups
Nevertheless, if you can clarify which one you would like answering I'll gladly help and I'm sure the rest of HN wouldn't mind helping either. Moreover, if you can mention what your startup does or even the industry its in, we can be a little more specific because, there's no point telling you to reach out of X, Y and Z if they won't get you the users you need :)