[pcarmichael]

A bit over five years ago I posted an 'Ask HN' (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1883123) for my side project PCPartPicker (http://pcpartpicker.com). I received great advice and many feature requests that would later get implemented.

A few years after that post I left my job to work on PCPartPicker full-time. Then a year later I hired my first employee. Now we're a larger team working toward expansion.

The feedback I got from the original post was extremely helpful.

[elliotec]

Absolutely LOVE PCPartPicker. Honestly don't know what I'd have done without it. I think I was one of the first users and watching it grow to what it is now was amazing. Thank you!

[coolmitch]

Used it last month to build a new gaming pc -- amazing site. I was really impressed with the amount of useful data you guys have managed to collect, and the thoughtful UX. I've recommended it to several friends since then. Thanks!

[pcarmichael]

Thanks! Glad you liked it!

[chipperyman573]

Out of curiosity, how does PCPP make enough money to hire two full-time devs? Is the ad revenue really enough?

[pcarmichael]

Our revenue is primarily through affiliate deals with retailers that we partner with. (We don't run any ads.)

[chipperyman573]

So when I check the "Use amazon smile" option, you guys don't get any money?

[pcarmichael]

Amazon smile actually still generates affiliate revenue. (Amazon doesn't take the charity cut out of the affiliate side.)

[PeCaN]

PCPP is basically “Referral Links: The Website” so I think they probably make some decent money from vendors. I doubt the ad revenue is much since the target audience probably uses ad blockers.

[pcarmichael]

We don't run any ads.

[Arcsech]

I'm guessing ad revenue + Amazon/other vendor referral income.

[joshschreuder]

I had a similar idea a while ago to try and pair this with gaming benchmarks so you could say "I want to play games X, Y, Z" and it would give you hardware recommendations (affiliate linked to Amazon).

Looks like you've got a decent market sewn up, well done!

[i2shar]

I just used your very cool site to configure machines that we used for an in-house cluster. Would have been extremely difficult without it. Thanks a lot for building and making it available for free! (Recruit me for any feedback/usability studies).

[ZoF]

Keep it up, great work!