Tell HN: I grew Visa List to $5k per month in a year
But it didn't start making $5000 immediately, it started with $500 per month and grew slowly over the span of a year.
Initially I placed ads on visa list and was getting around 100K pageviews around a month. But the ads revenue was not that great at all. I tried to apply for skyscanner partnership because I knew that there would be good need after getting visa, but unfortunately I got rejected. I think the main reason was it was I was not getting a lot of traffic.
With a heavy heart I tried different ad networks like video ads, content ads but none of them improved the revenue. All this while, i never lost sight of my goal to increase the SEO and along the way get more users to Visa List.
Suddenly after a month I got an email from skyscanner from saying that they are interested in partnering with, this was another team. I was so happy and realised that things come around eventually. In a month I integrated skyscanner and it started a good stream of revenue from visa list.
After 5 month around june, people from iVisa contacted me. They provide visa service and visa assistance across the world which was perfect. I was very happy to partner with them as well and thus opened 3rd revenue stream.
Along the way I also learning AdOps so i could monetize the traffic I was getting and finally after 6 months things started working out. So my first channel also started contributing a good chunk to overall revenue.
After around 8 month i started an experiment with Visa List membership which i have been sitting on it for a long time. I was not really sure what was the most valuable information that travelers really need so they won't mind paying. Looking at Nomad list and starter story, i finally put in a set of features that i thought can be useful for Pro members. I'm happy that the experiment paid off adding to the 4th revenue stream.
So looking back, it was not a single thing but a lot of small things done right over a year.
132 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 182 ms ] threadVisa List makes money mostly from ads and affiliates. Most of the site is freely usable but to use some filters, community chat and visa advice, you need to pay. Users pay monthly, annual or once for a lifetime membership. Revenue ranges from $5,000/m to $6,000/m. It became profitable after 2 months of launch.
But it didn't start making $5000 immediately, it started with $500 per month and grew slowly over the span of a year.
Initially I placed ads on visa list and was getting around 100K pageviews around a month. But the ads revenue was not that great at all. I tried to apply for skyscanner partnership because I knew that there would be good need after getting visa, but unfortunately I got rejected. I think the main reason was it was I was not getting a lot of traffic.
With a heavy heart I tried different ad networks like video ads, content ads but none of them improved the revenue. All this while, i never lost sight of my goal to increase the SEO and along the way get more users to Visa List.
Suddenly after a month I got an email from skyscanner from saying that they are interested in partnering with, this was another team. I was so happy and realised that things come around eventually. In a month I integrated skyscanner and it started a good stream of revenue from visa list.
After 5 month around june, people from iVisa contacted me. They provide visa service and visa assistance across the world which was perfect. I was very happy to partner with them as well and thus opened 3rd revenue stream.
Along the way I also learning AdOps so i could monetize the traffic I was getting and finally after 6 months things started working out. So my first channel also started contributing a good chunk to overall revenue.
After around 8 month i started an experiment with Visa List membership which i have been sitting on it for a long time. I was not really sure what was the most valuable information that travelers really need so they won't mind paying. Looking at Nomad list and starter story, i finally put in a set of features that i thought can be useful for Pro members. I'm happy that the experiment paid off adding to the 4th revenue stream.
So looking back, it was not a single thing but a lot of small things done right over a year.
https://visalist.io
There was a Show HN a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18640880
No story about growth, or anything else I can see.
Android Chrome fwiw, old device
No?
Something like "Discover easy to visit countries" ? But maybe it is too long?
Maybe re-iterate the message on top or bottom, "Tell us where you from to discover easy to visit countries".
May I know your design process and how you improved the website design. What was your approach and any resources etc.
Thanks
Sorry for bothering you. But I lost my inspiration at the design step. My many projects struggle and lost motivation at design phase.
I also noticed that when I click on a country there's no info about my country's embassies and consulates which is something as a traveler is very important to know.
Additionally, I didn't see anything about membership
Usually it just seems to be common sense rules that you can bring something like $10k cash or large quantities of alcohol or tobacco, which aren’t practical concerns for almost any traveller.
Have you found rules that may trip people up that we should know about?
Norway, for example, allows only 2L of spirits or 200 cigarettes IIRC. If you're a heavy smoker that's less than a week. I believe Switzerland is similar.
I don't smoke or drink, but I'd imagine that would be fairly easy to get tripped up by if you were travelling around Europe.
Certainly if you're driving around in a camper.
It just happens to be the case that I don't drink or smoke. There are other restrictions like meat, plants, blah blah, the list goes on.
This isn’t necessarily true. Many great whiskeys and spirits aren’t necessarily available to purchase in other countries. Another commenter mentioned the case of Japan. Many great whiskeys and sake produced in Japan aren’t available to buy in other countries.
Apart from that there is a matter of taxes.
When I lived in Japan, I had access to very high end whisky and sake that was not available in the US. When I visited the US, I wanted to share some of this with my friends and family.
One good bottle of sake is 1.75 liters. One good bottle of whiskey is 0.75 liters. It doesn’t take many bottles to surpass the limit, and the items were definitely unique enough to warrant bringing.
If you start talking about things like Christmas presents, it starts getting nuts. All of your friends want you to being them the good stuff that they don’t have allocations for in the US.
Because it's a customs faff. That's the point of the thread.
So make it easy to look up and don't let guesses at what some random country in the world might object to dominate all your travel packing and planning (Guesses because until I checked earlier I wouldn't been sure an apple would cause problems anywhere, but apparently at least Australia objects to any fruit). Which was the point of the comment you replied to.
It wouldn't be if there was some nice website laying out all the rules in an easy-to-understand way...
Your logic is "nobody needs a site detailing customs rules because they shouldn't be traveling with the things that I personally already know might conceivably cause a customs faff". The point is the website would solve the problem.
Some common scenarios I have seen:
* bringing foods that is unavailable over for their friends that live overseas
* bringing home presents of food
* bringing over food that is far cheaper from one country
"A Vietnamese man carrying four kilograms of pork-filled mooncakes has been turned away from Australia after failing to declare he was carrying food.
African Swine Fever has spread to 50 countries and killed an estimated 25 per cent of the world's pigs
A Vietnamese woman was deported last month for failing to declare 10kg of food in her baggage including pork
Australian migration laws were amended in April to shorten or cancel a visitor visa, for biosecurity contraventions and the importation of objectionable goods."
How long did it take you to build and launch your initial version? How many hours per-week do you spend working on it now?
There has never been a better time to be an indie maker.
This is exactly the kind of project I would have thought of and then never bothered, thinking its already been done, its on wikipedia etc...Although you were fortunate with your partnerships, thats a bit of a jackpot, but in fairness you made the effort so well deserved. Good luck with version 2.
See i thought that too until I faced a visa related problem when I was trying to visit Philippine. Long story short I ended up cancelling my tickers as I didn't get the visa in time which I thought i didn't needed in the first place. So I decided to solve the information inconsistency, contradicting and confusing information out there.
Those new visas and conditions are likely to be different for different classes of people as well. E.g. EU citizens, non-EU partners of EU citizens, EU partners of UK citizens, non-EU partners of UK citizens who entered via EU treaty rights, non-EU partners of UK citizens in well paid jobs who entered not-via-the-EU (different rules and status apply to them), the same but in non-well-paid jobs, EU citizens in well paid jobs, EU citizens in poorly paid jobs, children of EU citizens, students, recently graduated students, etc. And it seems that quite a lot of people don't know, yet, what class they are in, or whether they will be allowed to stay in the UK, either in the short term, or the long term.
A huge number of people regularly travel between UK and EU for work, holidays and family visits. Travelling between EU countries is almost like travelling between states in the USA - a lot of people do it fairly casually, and some do it almost as a commute.
Because of the changes, a fair number of people are interested in rules around dual citizenship, changes of citizenship (either people whose home is in the UK but they didn't need citizenship before, or people from the UK settled elsewhere in the EU who are now deciding whether to apply for change of citizenship to continue where they are), what rights they may have based on ancestry or other family connections which they previously did not need to investigate, the rights of their children, how much they need to earn to obtain different rights, how long applications take and how much they cost, etc.
On top of that, travelling across the border can jeopardise a person's applications, because it creates discontinuities of residence and the institutions judge such things arbitrarily, some of the time.
So information on visa requirements, conditions, and how different rules apply to different people may be something people will really need starting fairly soon.
Just saying, as I think the information could prove useful to many if it's made presentable and accessible (and isn't misleading), and for your site there might be a lot of visitors if it's the place to find out.
This is not true. Johnson's victory in the election makes it almost certain the EU withdrawal agreement will come into force, so there will be no new requirements until at least the end of 2020, due to the transition period.
It would be a minor but noticeable improvement to UX, in my opinion.
https://ec.europa.eu/info/policies/justice-and-fundamental-r...
https://www.bmi.bund.de/EN/topics/migration/law-on-foreigner...
you are apparently not allowed to just move there if you aren’t self-sufficient:
> EU citizens have the right of residence for longer than three months if they
- are workers or self-employed persons in the host Member State or are seeking employment (for a certain length of time);
- are not in employment or are students or trainees and have sufficient resources and comprehensive health insurance cover;
- have the right of permanent residence (following legal residence of five years).
- Family members, regardless of their citizenship, accompanying or joining an EU citizen who satisfies these conditions also have the right of residence for more than three months.
> So the underlying idea is that in order to reside for more than three months in another Member State, EU citizens must have sufficient resources for themselves and their family members not to become a burden on the social assistance system of the host Member State.
You also mention fake accounts: I don't know what this site does (I wanted to filter on a field and it told me I needed to login for that, not sure how a fake account would help me defraud the owner using that) but I would hope that random website owners can't tell Google/Twitter/Facebook about how naughty I've been and get me banned from Google/Twitter/Facebook. Therefore, the site owner will still have to ban spammers that created a Google account, same as they have to ban spammers that created an email address.
Every time I've tried to implement a third party login, it has been quite a pain. "First party user system" is a fancy word for what is actually the simplest option. At least to me, as a developer, so I don't see the advantage from that perspective either.
I totally get it from your point of view, but whenever I make passion projects - if I don't have to build user management features in terms of passwords - it's a big load off my plate.
"Therefore, the site owner will still have to ban spammers that created a Google account, same as they have to ban spammers that created an email address."
Sure, but instead of trying to be better than Facebook/Twitter/Google at making it hard to create spam/fraud accounts you simply have to block the ones that get through the already best systems in the world. You don't need to track IPs, fingerprint patterns, phone numbers, emails, etc to try to filter out automated systems the 3rd party does it for you and is always getting better with 0 effort on your part.
It's also frees you from ever needing to ask for more information than needed. Don't need their phone number? Great, you'll never leak it because you don't need to request it from the 3rd party or user or account when requesting the token. Just have a token instead of a password? Great, if the user practiced poor password security Google/Facebook/Twitter are more likely to block suspicious logins than you ever were AND you don't have to reset their password and send them an email, the 3rd party will. Also tokens auto expire/renew as part of the app logic, down to minutes if you want, all without bothering the user.
If you've tried to implement 3rd party logins as additional steps to your already first party system you don't really gain any of these benefits . If it's all you implement it can save quite a bit of work.
In the end though nobody should be changing your mind, it's you that should explain why the developers should support a 1st party only system and turn away those that don't want to create yet another web account or why they should support both and the associated burden for the 1% that won't login via 3rd party.
I see google ads, are you using anything else? Adsense or dfp?
I was looking at your open startups page (love the initiative) and if you show the pageviews for the last year, you can see everything flat and then it pretty much explodes in December. What is the reason for this? Was this the ProductHunt feature?
One issue I noticed is it seems like line wrapping is messed up on mobile. The line breaks sometimes happen in the middle of words.
For example:
"
o Japan as tourist. The maximum duration of sta
y is 90 days. You can also find usful tips from fe
llow travellers.
"
This is in Firefox iOS.
I think there's a CSS attribute to fix this if I recall.