Ask HN: Is my project worth pursuing?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3027925

by dholowiski • 15 years ago

16 18 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I've been working on a project: localbeer.me - for just over a year (on and off). It started off with the idea of finding 'beer brewed near me'. The idea is if you are in a strange city you can pull up the site and find some locally brewed beer. There are many beer/brewery databases, but the foundation of my idea is that it geolocates you, and the brewery, and lots of cool things can happen because of that geolocation. Now I'm branching out into geolocated brewery news and even geolocated brewery tweets.

Traffic is at about 20 visits per day, and I'm about 1/3 through the massive data entry project of entering every brewery and beer in north america (then, the world) and I'm having serious doubts as to whether it's worth continuing. Pretty soon, I'll have to start spending money on graphic design, promotion and better servers. I'm not ready to start promoting the site until the brewery database has more data, but that's going to take months - months I could be working on some other project.

So I'm asking for HN's honest opinion. Graphics design and Data completeness aside, do you see some nugget of value in this project? What would you do if this was dumped in your lap? What have you done when you've been faced with a similar decision?

Pyrodogg• 15 years ago

> but that's going to take months - months I could be working on some other project.

Then get someone else to do it. Is there anyway you could automate the brewery discovery and addition process such that you could distribute the actual thought process work through something like Mechanical Turk?

It's just the first that occurs to me reading through your post. If you could offload that task to machines/other people you could focus on more value-add features, moving the project forward.

dholowiski6• 15 years ago

For sure... I could go the mechanical turk route, and have thought about it many times, but that is a $ investment. I could start scraping the other directories, but there is both an ethical issue there ('stealing' content?) as well as development time required to do that. It is set up right now so that anybody can add information, but without the critical mass of users that's just not happening.

And that's the thing. I have no problem spending the time or money needed on this project, if it's worth it. I'm just worried that I've gotten so mentally invested in it that I can't think critically about it's future. Of course I think it's an awesome idea, but a year of essentially flat traffic seems to be telling me otherwise.

mikeocool• 15 years ago

I like the idea of being able to figure out that beers are brewed near by. But the data entry piece sounds a little arduous for the result.

Have you thought about crowd sourcing it? Maybe make localbeer.me a giant google map with all the breweries you've entered so far on it and the have a super simple form that lets people add their local breweries and their beer offerings. I feel like I know some hardcore craft beer drinkers who'd totally be into dropping in their favorite local breweries.

In the long term, you're going to have keep all the data you've entered by hand updated, and it seems like crowd sourcing would be a good way to get that info anyway.

dholowiski6• 15 years ago

Yes, see my comment below. Users can already enter breweries/beer. Maybe it's just as simple as making it easier/more obvious.

rhizome• 15 years ago

I suggest a big red button that says "the location i am at is a place that sells beer" and then have a form where people enter a name and can easily associate beer brands with the location.

MPiccinato• 15 years ago

I have been working on Had That Beer, www.hadthatbeer.com/signup?c=earlyaccess to check it out, for about 8 months now. I am the sole developer, designer, admin etc. I know the pain of all the manual data entry that has to be done for beers and by the time you are done a new batch of something else has been brewed and you are out of date. I would go through select geographic areas, get as many beers in as you can and start promoting it in that area. Best way to get feedback is to get users, and some of those users might not mind helping add a few brews.

I think your project is definitely worth pursuing. If you don't think so then maybe we could team up.

dholowiski6• 15 years ago

Thanks. I just signed up and I'll give it a try. You might want to check out the Open Beer Database: http://openbeerdb.com/ - I just got ahold of the guy yesterday and we are discussing exchanging databases, it might be worth it for you to check it out too.

If I ever do decide to give up I'll get in touch with you, but I've gotten some great feedback (even a direct email from someone) and it sounds like it's worth pursuing.

I really like the graphic design on your web site - very simple - something I know I need to work on. I like the idea of a really simple rating system, that's what I've done too. I think most beer drinkers see the big sites like beeradvocate as too snobby (I know I do).

Thanks again for the feedback.

tg32• 15 years ago

I think it does have value, but a few things that struck me as "must dos":

- make it better for mobile, since that's likely the platform I'll use in a strange city. Maybe this is part of the graphic design piece that you were talking about.

- make it easier to see ALL the breweries/beers near me. I would think that would be the main page instead of one at a time (I hate refreshing the page)

If this project was dropped in my lap, I would do this:

- work on UX above all else (and before data entry). Make it easy and enjoyable to see what breweries are near me and to add breweries and beers.

- focus on a single geographic area for data entry. I'm in Chicago, so I would make this a killer website to visit if you're visiting Chicago. Promote it heavily in Chicago (Facebook ads is super targeted and great for something like this, you can target beer drinkers ages 21 - 40 in Chicago only, and might even be able to narrow it further).

- Let users add content for additional cities if it becomes popular in your homebase. Remember, we already made it really easy to do that in step 1.

- I might even look into signing up bars to be listed on the site as carrying a particular beer/brewery when a user is near their location. In exchange they put up your flyer. Free promotion if the functionality is there.

I think there is definitely value here, but I would devote some serious time to improving UX before data entry. As others have said, there are ways around doing the data entry, but not too many ways around good user design.

dholowiski6• 15 years ago

Thanks for the feedback. Mobile is a work in progress. Actually I had a working mobile version but it was not very good so I disabled it.

What do you mean, make it easy to see all the breweries near me? It should automatically show you all the breweries in a certain range. Do you mean that you had to increase the range, and didn't like the refresh - and that instead of refreshing I should do it via ajax?

Users can actually add beers, breweries. Since you're the second person to mention that, clearly I need to make it more obvious and easier. I did focus on adding California and New York first, they are very complete. Now I'm thinking I need to focus on my local area, and physically go to the breweries to get their help promoting the site, as you mentioned.

Great feedback. Up until now I have been focusing on data entry, but I do see the need for UX improvement.

I've actually done a couple of Stumble Upon campaigns, they're at least as targeted as Facebook ads, and very cheap. I might have to branch out but it seems a bit crazy paying for visitors when I'm not actually making money on the site.

chrisabruce2• 15 years ago

Meant Foodspotting instead of Spotify.

tg32• 15 years ago

Sorry for getting back to you so late. What I meant by making it easy to see the breweries near me is, instead of showing me a map with arrows on it, it would be more useful (for me at least), to give me a list of breweries/beers within a certain, reasonable radius (like 50 or 100 miles).

The "Featured Beer" is a prominent on your page, which is great as it highlights a specific beer or brewery, but I think it makes more sense to list ALL beers brewed near me, and have the location of the brewery available on a subsequent page if I'm interested, like the page of the specific brewery (which you already do).

Another thought: sort all the beers in my area by how high their ratings are. Maybe you could be the Yelp of craft beers?

Just my thoughts. I understand the hesitance to buy ads with no clear monetization strategy.

dholowiski6• 15 years ago

Just added Twitter signin/account creation, in an attempt to remove a barrier to entry. Facebook signin coming next week. Here's hoping...

sneak• 15 years ago

If your traffic is 20 visits per day, why on Earth would you need to spend money on "better servers"?

To answer your question directly, I don't think enough beer consumers care about that stuff.

dholowiski6• 15 years ago

Thanks for being honest. Obviously I don't need better servers right now, but someday maybe.

I disagree though - the stats show that beer sales from the huge companies are declining, while craft brewing is seeing a huge explosion (in the US anyway). I think it is a rapidly growing audience. It'll never be the size of Facebook's potential audience, but I do see tons of opportunity in the craft brewing industry, and many craft beer drinkers closely align with the high tech, early adopter startup crowd.

woodwysk• 15 years ago

I'm pretty sure an 8$/month VPS will be sufficient for a very long time.

chrisabruce2• 15 years ago

A little late in the conversation. I think if it is something you are passionate about, you should stick with it. Maybe you can find a partner that can do UX/Graphic design or whichever skills you need but lack.

I strongly agree with all the advice around mobile. I would even consider trying to use mobile to crowdsource some of the data entry. Maybe incorporating some game mechanics will help here. For inspiration, maybe you could make the "beer" version of Spotify, Forkly, or DishOnIt.

Consider creating an API around your beer database and promote that some, could be win/win as it sounds like a pain point for more than just yourself.

Additionally, you should try and get in touch with the users that use it every day and the ones that abandoned it. Try to determine why they stay/left, this could really help you focus on the important aspects.

Lastly, go learn about Dave McClure's AARR metrics, get them in place so you can experiment more with the Acquisition and Activation funnels. I am guessing if you had a lot more users, you would be much happier.

Hope this helps a little.

bragen• 15 years ago

Check out taphunter.com. They do something similar and, from what I understand, are getting pretty good traction here in San Diego.

It's at least one data point that users might want what you're building.

sathishmanohar• 15 years ago

Seems, I'm too late. Aside, Technicalities..

My suggestion is, Why don't you create some content like beer reviews, Preferably videos.

Gary Veynerchuck had been hugely successful, by his wine reviews. Good news for you is, he doesn't deal with beers.

I'd suggest two things: 1. Beer Reviews 2. Interviews with Beer brewers (who doesn't want to give interviews)

You can host videos on youtube, and embed them on your website. That way you won't have to pay for video hosting.

In my opinion, humans judge a lot by seeing other humans, than seeing text, statistics or beer pictures. If you can throw in some charm, fun and honesty, you can make it big. Just my two cents.

Ask HN: Is my project worth pursuing?

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