Show HN: What do you think of this website to convert PDFs

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4407955

by gssgss • 14 years ago

7 11 14 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Hi,

I have developed a site to convert url to PDFs http://www.webapdf.com. What do you think of it? Is there any feature you would like to see on such a site (there are a few of them). I am open to criticism and suggestions. Also, what does hn think is the best way to monetize such a site?

Cheers

ahi• 14 years ago

Nice and clean design. The wait for processing is a little long.

A similar service is currently selling on flippa: https://flippa.com/2793470-htm2pdf-co-uk Maybe you can steal some ideas from them. Considering they're PR6 and seeing only low 3 digit monthly revenue, you probably shouldn't expect great wealth to come of it.

To be honest, I don't really understand the benefit over just hitting ctrl-p.

bdunbar• 14 years ago

To be honest, I don't really understand the benefit over just hitting ctrl-p.

I may be mistaken, but printing a document to PDF is not something one can do with Windows. At least not without buying Adobe, or installing Ghost.

Unless things have changed with Windows 7?

gssgss3• 14 years ago

Yes, that's the same I had in mind. Some users may find it convenient and/or don't have the techincal knowledge to install a pdf printer on windows.

I thought it would be a big feature to let users transform many urls in one step. That should be an improvement over printing all the urls separately. Perhaps as a premium service?

shyn32• 14 years ago

There are a lot of free printers that you can install. CutePDF and several others.

siddharta• 14 years ago

There are various applications that do this by installing the PDF converter as a Printer in Windows. Eg, CutePDF is a free software that allows this. It is useful to print to PDF from private URLS, eg: payment confirmation receipts and so on.

Having said that, dont let it stop you because your site might be useful for the layperson who doesnt understand all this stuff about installing something as a fake printer and then printing through that.

mikecane• 14 years ago

I suggest not using light grey type in the URL input field.

Also, could it sense what country the requester is from and use English if from the US?

I tried this on three sites:

1) http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.4/oded_naaman_israeli_defen... -- looked perfect

2) http://www.freakangels.com/ -- formatting error at bottom text

3) http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/ -- it substituted the typeface

I think there might already be other services like this out there.

gssgss3• 14 years ago

Thanks for the tests. I'll check why it has these errors. I agree completely on the language. I had the idea in mind that the PDF websites were all in english and thought an spanish version would make some difference at least in that market. I should probably translate it in more languages.

mauriziopd• 14 years ago

what do you consider the use case of this service?

gssgss3• 14 years ago

I started it because I had the need to read articles offline in an e-book reader. Also I found it useful to study website in a field and archive them in a file you can send to clients to compare ideas.

antonwinter• 14 years ago

A mate of mine tried creating a biz out of this a few years back. it had a lot of competition and it was hard to monetize. it shuttered after a bit.

I've seen a few others take up the gauntlet with webbased pdf converters including developer api's.

The only one that i know that is surviving is http://www.nitropdf.com/

they seem to have quite a few government/big companies using their product.

shyn32• 14 years ago

Maybe implement an API of some sort or a batch URL option so that they can create a book.

Or something that I can click from my rss reader and it can create a book so that would be e-mailed to me so when I am on the bus I can open the .pdf and read all my news.

I don't know just thinking out loud.

Show HN: What do you think of this website to convert PDFs

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