The goal of the original design was to just get something out there as quickly as possible and to start building up the community/content. The sooner you start, the sooner you finish.
You know the whole release early mantra.
This way there is no rush, and I can build something nice, since I now know that the site is something people want to use.
automatic video embedding, affiliate link insertion, ask question box on the homepage, modification of related posts search results, social media submits, a new option for logging in + text to guide, a few presentation tools, a few text adds/deletes
A lot of it is in the css though, since I had to pretty much customize every single field.
It seems like it would almost be easier to clone the functionality of SE and make additions to it NOT using javascript. To me, it seems like that much JS would be a bitch to maintain, no?
Sorry, I couldn't reply to the comment below. Guess PG doesn't want threads to continue off the page. ^^
I actually had the whole niche Q&A idea before(back when I heard about SO launching), and based on my calculations it'd take me 1-1.5 years to build something like SE on my own. Which just didn't make sense.
Yes it's easy to clone SE, there are like a dozen other solutions. But the reason I like SE, is because it's a turn key solution. I don't have to worry about servers or security. These have always been my achilles heel, and this way someone else who actually knows what they are doing, can take care of that.
More or less all the time I focus on asking good questions(those with keywords that hit decent traffic #s and have little competition in the long tail), I also make sure that any organic question gets answered within 10 minutes.
The others are more or less period wise...i.e. every 15 minutes check email, twitter, facebook.
I also focus on SEO, which involves emailing smaller bloggers to see if they'll write a quick blurb with a link. I try to get at least 3 links a day.
For the night coding period, it's mostly CSS, javascript and jquery.
Basically the goal right now is to build up traffic to a point where I can show to the more mainstream Fashion related sites/magazines, that we have decent traffic, in order to get coverage.
I started the site by hitting the female subreddit and getting a whole bunch of them to help out on the site. That's where I get the first couple of active users, who've stuck around and are answering most of the questions.
The term "sleeping on it" didn't just come from no where. Most of my breakthrough ideas come when i'm out with friends or doing something else. In "Blink" Malcom Gladwell argues our subconscious is way better at solving problems than our conscious.
The thing is, it's like different parts of your brain working. Most of my day activities, is just repetition, I just run through most of it on auto-pilot at this point.
At night on the other hand, it's more thinking work.
So it's two different parts of your brain working.
I know what you mean about ideas. For that I just use mixergy. I hate to sound like a fanboy, but listening to those interviews(and asking questions) is a great way to stimulate the mind for me. A guest will say something interesting, and then I go see if I can adapt that concept into my own site.
@vaksel - those are some pretty good numbers. Do you have tips for getting noticed? There's a good number of sites related to fashion, so to differentiate yourself is quite a feat!
My promotion budget is $200/week. It's a permanent giveaway, I figure $10K a year is a small price to pay to get hundreds of people to help grow the site.
In my promotions I focus on 3 things: 1) building traffic - points for twittering/facebooking 2) link building - points for blogging about the site 3) building content - points for asking/answering questions.
#1 - gets new people interested in promotions to come participate, and probably a few fashion people as well
#2 - gets new links to the site, which increases our inbound links, which gets us better page rank, which gets us better search engine rankings
#3 - creates new content, which can then be found through Google
36 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 91.0 ms ] threadWas originally doing a car related site, but it just didn't work out.
Am I the only one who had a hard time following text on this site?
The goal of the original design was to just get something out there as quickly as possible and to start building up the community/content. The sooner you start, the sooner you finish.
You know the whole release early mantra.
This way there is no rush, and I can build something nice, since I now know that the site is something people want to use.
Famous last words :)
Nice write-up, although in my eyes it has crash-and-burn written all over it, esp. the eating part. Also, doesn't it get lonely?
To tell the truth I've always ate like that, since high school really. So it's not really affecting me physically.
Doesn't get lonely part, I still talk to people through IM, twitter etc., and get out on the weekends. + there is always HN.
Basically I just lose my weekday nights(compared to a regular job)
I am curious as to what is different from the default SE install? What functionality did you add?
A lot of it is in the css though, since I had to pretty much customize every single field.
Sorry, I couldn't reply to the comment below. Guess PG doesn't want threads to continue off the page. ^^
Yes it's easy to clone SE, there are like a dozen other solutions. But the reason I like SE, is because it's a turn key solution. I don't have to worry about servers or security. These have always been my achilles heel, and this way someone else who actually knows what they are doing, can take care of that.
The others are more or less period wise...i.e. every 15 minutes check email, twitter, facebook.
I also focus on SEO, which involves emailing smaller bloggers to see if they'll write a quick blurb with a link. I try to get at least 3 links a day.
For the night coding period, it's mostly CSS, javascript and jquery.
Basically the goal right now is to build up traffic to a point where I can show to the more mainstream Fashion related sites/magazines, that we have decent traffic, in order to get coverage.
Curious about this one since I'm also working on a fashion related project.
The term "sleeping on it" didn't just come from no where. Most of my breakthrough ideas come when i'm out with friends or doing something else. In "Blink" Malcom Gladwell argues our subconscious is way better at solving problems than our conscious.
At night on the other hand, it's more thinking work.
So it's two different parts of your brain working.
I know what you mean about ideas. For that I just use mixergy. I hate to sound like a fanboy, but listening to those interviews(and asking questions) is a great way to stimulate the mind for me. A guest will say something interesting, and then I go see if I can adapt that concept into my own site.
Promotions are there to improve the SEO.
My promotion budget is $200/week. It's a permanent giveaway, I figure $10K a year is a small price to pay to get hundreds of people to help grow the site.
In my promotions I focus on 3 things: 1) building traffic - points for twittering/facebooking 2) link building - points for blogging about the site 3) building content - points for asking/answering questions.
#1 - gets new people interested in promotions to come participate, and probably a few fashion people as well
#2 - gets new links to the site, which increases our inbound links, which gets us better page rank, which gets us better search engine rankings
#3 - creates new content, which can then be found through Google
The thing is that I'm prepared to make sacrifices to get what I want. To me right now building a successful startup is more important than women.
:-)
For dinner, steak I usually eat 3 times a week. + 3 days of turkey patties. And 1 day of takeout.
I figure these guys know what they are talking about.