Ask HN: How to monetize a website that is making views?
I recently made an app that detects your baldness with ML from hair pictures. It is making quite a lot of views and I am thinking if I can earn some money with it (https://amibalding.co/).
I don't want to make a paywall or something annoying for the user. For the moment there is no monetization and the hosting is around $100 a month.
If it can make the $100 month back I would be really happy because I could still runs the website and show it to recruiter. It's my most successful project and I show it on my CV.
Thanks guys,
91 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 171 ms ] thread- Put ads on the site
- Force people to give you their email to see results, then sell the mailing list
- Collect as much information about the user as you can, compile it with the photos of them that they've given you, and sell it
- Add amazon affiliate links to anti-balding products (least immoral of the lot)
Not immoral, but won't make you much money:
- Paywall
- Beg for donations
I don't think this is immoral. Ads are a perfectly legitimate business model.
I agree it's not unethical to honestly sell ads though.
I contribute to open source and by experience begging for donations does not work much unfortunately.
"Good people" are supposed to give it all away for free and then feel bad about being "lazy" when they can't pay their own bills. ;)
If you can identify some quality resources for people who are going bald, you might reach out to those people and see if they'll buy an ad spot from you. That's how it used to work, and with a high quality site that's getting views, that approach might work.
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This site can’t be reached amibalding.co refused to connect.
Try:
Checking the connection Checking the proxy and the firewall ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED
The question is if it's "below your dignity" to deal with actual physical products and customers, because I've found that hackers usually have this weird hang-up.
- based on that, think about what products your audience would like
- reach out to the companies behind those products, asking for a brand sponsorship or some other advertising channel, and include your traffic metrics, audience demographic, and ballpark price in the email
- reach out to at least 100 companies (should be possible in a 40 hour week, although preferably space out your outreaches so you can learn and optimize future outreach’s from the initial ones
- if you don’t get interest, try google ads.
Or…
Charge for a human to adjust and certify the ML findings. I can see people paying a couple bucks to have “a hair expert” (anyone) score their level of balding.
Edit: Raising the stakes a bit. I can see people paying $10-20 for a balding report by a human, using the ML model as the initial/draft report. People may like (or want to disprove) to ML results and I think some people would be willing to pay for that.
Then develop an app to track balding over time and charge $9/mo :)
Could even just add it as an option to see if anyone would buy it, even before actually finding an expert and just say “not available yet” when checkout button is clicked.
Could also partner with one of those new internet based services where they have someone briefly meet with a doctor then prescribe them finasteride.
I'm sure they can strike a deal with the company behind Rogaine or something though, so it could be pretty lucrative after all.
And hair plugs, though it's kind of a nuclear option
Nice idea and implementation, though!
I want to say it is broken. =)
What I don't get is why you need AI here. The link at the bottom to the scale makes it easy to verify by looking in the mirror, and that is less hassle than trying to gyrate my head into different positions to get the shoots done.
I think AI could do more here? For example - what would I look like with treatment X, Y, Z. And in general what are the treatments and tradedoffs. Last time I looked into it there is some kind of pill that only works for some men and if it works you have to keep taking it or it all falls out again. And there are implants. Obviously there are also wigs etc. And the cheapest option - a number 2 all over.
Because many people are either in denial or overly anxious about it. Looking into a mirror isn't going to give you an objective judgement.
Use your tool to scan high-profile Instagram photos and for anyone with >n degree of baldness, market hair restoration products to them. I recommend the indirect approach: subtly comment on peoples' photos with stuff like "oh man, I remember when my hair started thinning..." Don't do this to people's wedding and engagement photos unless you're trying to be Evil.
Don't even suggest they are balding, just remind them that baldness happens to people of their age and let their own vanity and insecurity do the rest. Followers will see that as well and since so many fashion themselves after influencers, you'll appeal to their insecurities too. Engage a sibling comment or two for legitimacy and then steer people to your site to check for themselves. Then you recommend hair growth solutions.
You technically could just spam every account like this, but targeting accounts where baldness is an actual threat will keep the scheme covert for longer. Attempting this on anybody with a full set of luxurious locks will blow your cover.
You could also sell your own product. Private label some Latisse sourced from India or something. That stuff is marketed for eyelash growth but would probably make hair grow on a piece of sheet metal. The retail US price is exorbitant.
Sometimes it makes sense to have Amazon affiliate ads for countries where that's a thing, and maybe toss the rest to Adsense.
Big $$$$ in hair transplants, but ethical to vet your vendors.
The content is so light, if it even starts to take off, it should be inexpensive and worthwhile translating into other languages. Maybe do paid translations for more common languages. For others... there's always Google Translate. If you can translate it to target language and then back to English and it makes sense, it probably makes sense in the target language.
Remember, baldness is evolution. You don't see apes on the internet do you?
And is balding really all about hairline anyway? Personally while my hairline has not seen any noticeable recession, I have noticed that the individual strands of my hair have gotten thinner with age, to the point that my hair is a bit more difficult to style and scalp is sometimes more visible in certain hard lighting. I have seen older men with hair in all the right places but their actual hairs are so thin you can see quite a bit of scalp, so basically balding. I wonder if I am on a path to end up like these men or if I’m simply seeing a normal maturing of my hair follicles. Probably not something the AI is trained for.
With that being said, best wishes in your endeavors with this site!
I made the models on google colab and once done I add them on the backend
Hope it helps :)
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In the browser, the site rendered a white screen under the header.
I'm on Firefox 116.0 on Pop!_OS (a debian) 22.04.
Also I am balding and I hate it, I wish I could have kept my hair
Lean into it. Buzz your skull. It's a good look for an adult and people find it sexy. Stop hiding; make the weed-topped youth behold your cranium.
A poorly kept head of fuzz, sure, make sure to shave it well, but nobody I know thinks that you're "uglier" because you are a man and have a fully shaved head.
People with 'ugly faces' have that by genetics, and everyone judges them?
There are definitely some people who are less attractive when bald. It suits some people more than others. Especially people who had lovely flowing locks are going to suffer. For the average person with average hair though, I don't think it makes a huge difference.
I think we can all agree though, that lack of confidence (from hair loss) is far more damaging than the actual lack of hair.
In what context? If we're talking about dating, I would disagree. First impressions are mostly visual, a bald head is far more likely to be rejected outright before "confidence" even has a chance to show itself. On the other hand, if you happen to be attractive despite a bald head, a lack of confidence may disqualify you down the line, but not outright.
> we aren't hardwired by society and culture to see baldness as a unattractive trait
At least historically, baldness rarely occured before "peak mating age", so it's not a trait that was strongly selected for. That said, it is a trait that is strongly selected for in today's dating market.
https://hypebeast.com/2021/4/tinder-data-study-man-with-with...
> A poorly kept head of fuzz, sure, make sure to shave it well, but nobody I know thinks that you're "uglier" because you are a man and have a fully shaved head.
Nobody you know will tell you this. Like I said, people will lie about this to keep the peace. Experimentally, outside of the social context, the impact of baldness is quite substantial:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7037739/