Diskprices.com makes $5k/month with affiliate marketing

https://medium.com/@petervoica/how-an-ugly-single-page-website-makes-5-000-a-month-with-affiliate-marketing-c4974a8d1d69

by nomilk • 3 years ago

153 116 3 years ago

medium.com

https://web.archive.org/web/20231224124818/https://medium.co...

nomilk• 3 years ago

Archived version of article: https://web.archive.org/web/20231224124818/https://medium.co...

The website making $5k/month: https://diskprices.com/

tonystubblebine2• 2 years ago

Also, here's a friend link that bypasses the paywall. https://medium.com/@petervoica/how-an-ugly-single-page-websi...

cranberryturkey3• 3 years ago

i love these simple little money makers.

politelemon• 3 years ago

with total disrespect for the user experience

Be careful not to confuse user experience with UI aesthetics and pages with padding.

Swenrekcah• 3 years ago

The site where they put up this blogpost has less respect for user experience than the simple and functional website they called ugly.

vdaea• 3 years ago

I can't even read the whole post without registering and he has the nerve of calling other websites disrespectful.

jcpst3• 3 years ago

I thought what they called ugly was pretty clean.

unnouinceput• 3 years ago

Exactly my point as well when I went to the site. Fast, click here, uncheck there, kaboom, instant change. No gazillion nested divs, precisely to the point of what it says it does. I guess Peter Voica, the article's author, cannot comprehend pages without having blank spaces at edges.

Gualdrapo• 3 years ago

I know the HN hivemind despises white space and padding and medium width paragraphs and deem them unneccessary and atrocious for some reason, but the design on the site is not that "functional" - on a window with width of 1035px or less, the main table moves all the way down below the filter column - I can imagine someone opening this with a tablet or something like that for the first time wondering where are all the articles until they scroll all the way down.

Robotbeat• 3 years ago

It works fine in landscape orientation on an iPhone SE if you zoom out to 50%.

I prefer to view websites like this as if my phone was a desktop, and I tend to hate it when that desire is fought by aggressive attempts to reflow everything into a “mobile” format with no way around it. So I think it’s better than many modern websites as far as usability goes.

abtinf• 3 years ago

Lot of people out there buying enterprise hard drives on their tablets?

Or are these kinda of purchases most likely being made during work hours sitting in front of a nice screen?

Retric2• 3 years ago

1035 is really low resolution for a tablet. Held vertically a 2012 iPad and initial 2013 iPad Air are both 1536pix wide and 2048 tall.

Even a kid targeted 100$ Amazon fire tablet held horizontally is 1200 pixels wide these days.

spaceman_20202• 3 years ago

If you really want to learn good modern UI design from a business perspective, you need to look at websites that absolutely need to retain users and depend on high conversions to survive.

Example: Stake.com. Somehow manages to show a ton of information without feeling slow or sluggish. Isn’t pretty but has basic respect for legibility and whitespace.

nayuki• 3 years ago

He created a website that looks like it was made in HTML with total disrespect for the user experience

I find that the filtering on diskprices.com works way faster than the typical search filters on Newegg, Canada Computers, and pretty much every e-commerce site I've ever used.

Disk Prices is definitely respecting my user experience by being snappy and not wasting CPU cycles and network round trips.

theosp• 3 years ago

Simple, beautiful website that serves its purpose.

secondcoming• 3 years ago

His amazon.co.uk data seems to be missing

toberoni2• 3 years ago

The website isn't the money maker.

It's the backlinks that allow it to rank. Getting them requires a lot of knowledge & work, like publishing articles on Medium or receiving links on HN.

Unsurprisingly, it looks like the creator is an SEO-expert with years of experience and dozens of projects.

andrewstuart• 3 years ago

So I can't just jump in and copy cat?

nerdponx4• 3 years ago

Do the same for RAM or monitors or just about any tech product that can be hard to shop for.

creer3• 3 years ago

People mention other products where that might work. So yes, jump in.

The issue with sites like this, I feel, is staying power. Even with some reasonable SEO awareness and legitimate presence on the corresponding technical forums, it still takes years to accumulate links (but perhaps mostly bookmarks) to your product discovery site. Including organic HN mentions - if that's the right audience. Same for any other old-style web site. And people want a quick buck. So that they get impatient and give up the entire thing, or they give up mentioning the site in the right places. Or so that they sell ads or product placement - which then kills the organic effort.

MechanicalTwerk• 3 years ago

This seems to be the creator: https://synack.me/projects/. Looks like a lot of hardware and software projects rather than SEO. He’s an infra/systems eng: https://www.linkedin.com/in/synack.

toberoni2• 3 years ago

I found this info:

When it comes to Weird Niche Sites, the co-hosts really capture the weirdness of the web. Spencer reveals his ‘90s-looking website, Disk Prices[link to the site], which is essentially a list of hard drive prices and their different characteristics.

https://www.nichepursuits.com/apple-gets-36-of-google-ad-rev...

to1y• 3 years ago

it seems a lot of the backlinks are natural. Meaning people find it useful or consider it an authority.

plagiarist2• 3 years ago

I'm looking for disks and this is exactly a tool I'd like to have, bookmarking this one. If this is an SEO play, good job. If all SEO linked to treasure, it wouldn't be so reviled.

nerdponx4• 3 years ago

Diskpriced has a lot of organic popularity because it actually is extremely useful. The lesson here has nothing to do with UI design. There is real value in aggregating, cleaning, and providing structured access to information that helps people make decisions.

_the_inflator• 3 years ago

I like your reasoning and think you got a point.

We only see the tip of the iceberg without really knowing what’s going on behind the scenes.

Some sort of marketing is always involved.

jauntywundrkind• 3 years ago

I dislike these lines of thinking, because they seem based on conspiratorial thinking. Our imagination lets us always think something is lurking, something is deeper & scarier than we imagine.

This site is popular because it's organic & good & a fine service, one without peer or equal. It asks nothing of the user, and helps them make good informed decisions effectively.

Imagining there's some secret agenda is all too popular in way too many areas in the world. Fear Uncertainty & Doubt (FUD) can have some basis, but letting it get in the way, letting it obstruct or out shadow simple good as it comes lets us miss out on understanding value and positivity, and with those basis undermined we (society) are screwed.

spaceman_20202• 3 years ago

Honestly if you create something really, really useful, the internet finds a way to link to it.

mlrtime• 3 years ago

It is a good site and I've used it before to purchase a drive or two.

However... What I've found is that it is not always 100% accurate and if you really want the cheapest TB/$ (and you can wait) you should be setting up alerts on slickdeals or another deal website.

As a data hoarder, I try to just wait for deals and not use this site.

dsr_• 3 years ago

The other thing is that they consistently allow MDD / Max Disk Deals or whatever their name is to occupy the New disk listings, despite every Amazon review of them being full of "this disk is lightly used". So if you're buying new disks, avoid that whole vendor.

prakhar897• 3 years ago

Can anyone specify how the author approached this with respect to SEO. Paying for backlinks is tough, and writing your own articles seems tedious. Any hidden tactics in use perhaps?

elorant• 3 years ago

How's writing articles tedious in the era of large language models? I'm not a SEO expert, far from it, but for my understanding you can just rewrite any article out there by having an AI focusing on specific keywords. Rinse and repeat.

marklyon• 2 years ago

I've had good luck with https://shucks.top. Hopefully he's made a bit of lucre from the links as well.

Zetobal• 3 years ago

> He created a website that looks like it was made in HTML...

assimpleaspossi2• 3 years ago

I noticed that, too

mahesh_rm• 3 years ago

The website the article is reporting on is a work of beauty. On the other hand, the website the article is hosted on..

jamghee6• 3 years ago

I think the columns could use some basic sorting, but otherwise yes

tremarley2• 3 years ago

It's remarkable

assimpleaspossi2• 3 years ago

This is what happens when a web site, or any business, is actually useful for visitors. Too many sites now only focus on selling someone else's product through marketing. This site focuses on being helpful.

throwaway63467• 3 years ago

Honestly that site has great UX/UI. Mobile view could be improved but it doesn’t have any distractions and a clear user interface with all the relevant information, so it’s ahead of most over designed “beautiful” websites.

crabmusket• 3 years ago

Just a few little tweaks would go a long way, akin to the small difference between https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ and http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/

bazil376• 3 years ago

Some might say “ugly” but others would say “functional.” It’s getting the job done.

arter42• 3 years ago

Look, I'm no businessman, but clearly if you manage to attract the right audience and find a way to get paid, you make money.

People asking for disk prices probably have looser standards in terms of UX. That's why it works. Backlinks and an audience who actually doesn't care about UX that much. Doing the same stuff in the fashion industry may not work.

II2II• 3 years ago

People asking for disk prices probably have looser standards in terms of UX.

Perhaps the opposite is true. A site like this works because Amazon is poor at finding products, never mind for comparing prices. Even e-commerce sites that filter data in a similar manner (and typically do a better job since they have more complete product details), this site is both faster and makes product comparisons easier.

While it is probably possible to tweak to UX to make it better, I would suggest the success of this site is due to providing a better UX for its target audience.

arter42• 3 years ago

I mean from an aesthetic standpoint. People interested in disk details and prices may not care that much about material design, responsiveness and carousel with disk pictures. They want to get what they want.

For that kind of audience, the simple UX of that website is attractive enough.

p0nce• 3 years ago

Well UX is not aesthetics. The linked website _has_ good UX.

creer3• 3 years ago

looser standards in terms of UX

This site has an outstanding UX for its audience and users. This audience cares about UX. They/ we are not shy to tell you that most current web site's user experience sucks. So it's not a question of "looser standards". On the contrary it's a question of paying attention to your users.

WhereIsTheTruth2• 3 years ago

I'm pretty sure this website is not compliant WRT affiliate links, you need to disclose them and be upfront about them

cranberryturkey3• 3 years ago

he does that in the sidebar

WhereIsTheTruth2• 3 years ago

Oh looks like i missed it, thanks!

alvah• 3 years ago

The few words far down the sidebar don't comply with either Amazon or FTC affiliate disclosure requirements. They may have complied when the owner built the site, which appears to have been decades ago.

volemo• 3 years ago

But the site has the "This site is supported by paid affiliate links. Learn more" plaque. Isn't that enough?

halayli• 3 years ago

At least I can fully access the page content and doesn't ask me to register to read the rest of it.

pdehaan• 3 years ago

Yet another example that being "ugly" has little impact on utility. This looks right in line (if on a smaller scale) with the masterpiece that is McMaster-Carr https://mcmaster.com/

ilrwbwrkhv3• 3 years ago

What I really like is the solidity of the whole website. Like things don't shift around and move around. There is no JavaScript moving the element when I'm trying to click on it. No fonts loading with a flash after I already see stuff on the page. Once I see it, it's there for me to click it if I choose to and that gives me a whole lot of trust and faith in the website.

xnx2• 3 years ago

I love the simplicity, but would not be surprised if there's another $X still on the table because there are no accomodations for mobile devices.

pratnala• 3 years ago

Why do I not see the 990 Pro on this?

plagiarist2• 3 years ago

I'm seeing a few 990 entries under the .com if I select only M.2 NVMe.

jamghee6• 3 years ago

I'm a bit surprised Amazon allowed this page to do affiliate marketing like this. I had a similar page but much more generalized to laptops and they told me my site had to have some other content: it couldn't just exist to promote the amazon products. If they've changed their stance on this then great!

cranberryturkey3• 3 years ago

i think as long as you say that they are amazon affiliate links its ok

jamghee6• 3 years ago

That wasn't the issue I had at the time. I had the required disclaimers but they still rejected me because the sole purpose of my site was to sell their products.

PaulRobinson• 3 years ago

This has "content". The filters and columns are different to those offered by Amazon's own search experience (the $/TB, for example). Did your laptop selection site just replicate the data from Amazon, or did it try and do something novel?

"Content" is not alway descriptions, reviews and the like. It can be aggregation, statistical and calculated.

jamghee6• 3 years ago

Did your laptop selection site just replicate the data from Amazon, or did it try and do something novel?

I thought it was novel. It was basically a guided questionnaire that asked you about your needs and price point and then spit out a laptop recommendation at the end

faet• 3 years ago

Chances are he had a blog or something with content/pages and got approved. Then just re-used the codes/keys for the affiliate links on this new site. Once you start making money Amazon doesn't care.

Source: Me. I had a comparison tool for products with similar layout to this. They originally denied it citing 'lack of content'. Made a 2nd website with some blogs/reviews, it was approved. Re-used the code/api for the comparison tool and closed the other website. They haven't complained in 12 years.

jamghee6• 3 years ago

Ah, that is an interesting tactic. I think I'd be worried there's some 0.0001% chance Amazon would find out and ask for all the money back.

notzane• 3 years ago

Where was your site?

The following marketplaces have threatened or suspended our accounts and are unlikely to return to diskprices.com without clear policy changes from Amazon: amazon.jp, amazon.nl, amazon.it, amazon.sg.

stepbeek• 3 years ago

Interesting that this site makes money despite pcpartpicker existing. Gives me hope that there are a bunch of opportunities to build something like this for other hobbies.

jamghee6• 3 years ago

I assume this is using some kind of amazon pricing API under the hood. Does anyone know how to get access to that kind of API without already being a successful affiliate?

ProcNetDev• 3 years ago

Anyone know what Amazon's policy is on allow api access?

They shut down shucks.top.

xnx2• 3 years ago

Sidenotes:

I'm a huge fan of this type of well-done advanced filtering-faceting. Is there a standard/popular library/tool for this?

It's a shame the link to the parent organization on https://diskprices.com/faq.html is broken. I'd love to see more sites in this style.

ayewo• 3 years ago

This web page for comparing EC2 pricing using filtering https://instances.vantage.sh/?region=us-east-2 is open source https://github.com/vantage-sh/ec2instances.info

stevesearer• 3 years ago

This is interesting to me because I recently made a website for a niche type of product and was denied Amazon Affiliate.

“We want an associate site to be one that adds value to the customer by giving them insight on a subject or product they might not get easily.”

Listing all of the products available (Amazon and elsewhere) in one place (there are like 20 total ) so a shopper could compare features seemed liked it would suffice.

Perhaps I should reformat the website to be like Diskprices and try again.

paxys• 3 years ago

The author's description of diskprices.com:

He created a website that looks like it was made in HTML with total disrespect for the user experience [...]

As I try to read more of the post:

Create an account to read the full story.
The author made this story available to Medium members only. If you’re new to Medium, create a new account to read this story on us.

Please tell me more about this "user experience" and "disrespect".

geor9e2• 3 years ago

It's free and one click on the Google or Facebook SSO, just in case you thought that was a paywall. If you're refusing on principle, noted.

tremarley2• 3 years ago

You pay with your data

hartator• 3 years ago

I have signed in though Google and in the app, there is no way to avoid the paywall.

Makes me questioning all the blog posts I posted on Medium.

null_point• 3 years ago

Setting something like this up would at the very least be a fun little project.

mthoms• 3 years ago

I don't think all that info is available via Amazon's API so the site owner must be scraping Amazon page listings. Surely this isn't allowed? What am I missing?

kossTKR2• 3 years ago

I don't know what's going on here but Amazon normally shuts stuff like this down in 1 second because you're not allowed to make "affiliate sites with no other content" like much of this space.

Really not applicable for anyone else than this dude.

mromanuk• 3 years ago

Brilliant, the site does what I do myself every time I research something to buy. Basically a spreadsheet, where I gather all the data points myself, it's tiresome. Capitalism to work, it's supposed to be done by rational agents. This removes all the emotionality from choosing a product.

peter_d_sherman2• 3 years ago

This site is a good example of a simple, ethical affilate marketing site.

Of course, as other posters have alluded to, setting up a site like this does not just involve creating the web page itself -- it also necessarily would involve SEO and backlinks, etc., etc.

Again, as other posters have alluded to.

But that being said -- this web page still ranks pretty high in my book for simplicity (and elegance from that simplicity), in a money-making website.

It could be argued, successfully, that any website these days, any website at all -- would need visitors -- and if those visitors aren't coming from social media and/or Google ads -- then getting visitors there would necessarily have to involve SEO and backlinks.

Unless of course, you have some other creative and/or good way to get visitors to your website...

So, an excellent example of what a simple website can do -- if, if and only if you can solve the problem of getting visitors to your website, by one or more ways...

peter_d_sherman2• 2 years ago

Another great example of an ethical affiliate marketing site (although this one is a bit more complex): https://octopart.com/

nullbyte808• 3 years ago

I like how it looks. The only thing I would improve is create a table for the data, with alternating colors per row.

Diskprices.com makes $5k/month with affiliate marketing

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