[toberoni]

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.

[MechanicalTwerk]

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.

[toberoni]

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...

[mlrtime]

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_]

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.

[duskwuff]

Them and "Avolusion", whoever that is.

There are only three vendors of hard disks: Seagate, Western Digital, and Toshiba. (HGST used to be a fourth, but they're now WD.) Anyone else is a shady refurbisher to be avoided.

[to1y]

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

[nerdponx]

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.

[ilrwbwrkhv]

Excel sheets as a service

[ethbr1]

Continually updated Excel sheets as a service.

The use case (buying cheap disks) requires currently-accurate information, which naturally maps to this sort of service.

[ilrwbwrkhv]

I'm sure there is something like this already right?

[plagiarist]

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.

[_the_inflator]

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]

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.

[kossTKR]

All business sans the most basic is based on schemes, theatre, magic.

It’s way more fantastical to believe in some supreme meritocracy.

Off course a good chunk is based on talent but the “there’s no conspiracies” seem like libertarian propaganda to me after a life in business where politics, marketing, law and nepotism were the real lessons.

The world actually runs on conspiracies - that’s how the human social mind works.

[andrewstuart]

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

[creer]

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.

[nerdponx]

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

[marginalia_nu]

Product discovery in general is a mess. It's not a particularly high bar you have to pass in order to build something that's better than your average online storefront when it comes to product search and comparison.

[amelius]

Always wondered why you can't find a pair of jeans of a particular brand and size using Google.

[steveBK123]

Jeans are probably top 3 worst products to shop for.

Mens sizes are literal measurements in inches, ostensibly. However when you look at the sizing chart on brand websites you realize they all have varying levels of vanity sizing - across brands, across fits within a brand, and across years within a fit.

Then you have all the confusing nomenclature for fits - skinny, slim, straight, classic, standard, relaxed, boot cut, baggy, flare, athletic, etc.. And then hybrid ones like "slim straight" or other nonsense. Finally, some brands offer different inseams/lenghts for a given waist, while others have fixed ones per waist size so you have to get them tailored after, etc.

The shopping experience for me in jeans is to trying multiple brands/fits/sizes every 5+ years, and then keep buying that exact model until it is no long available, then reset.

[mike503]

Also if you've ever done a deeper analysis of Lucky jeans, the same exact model is wildly different depending on where it got produced. Different material composition, fit, flexibility/softness (due to the difference in materials), different country it was produced in (and IIRC, it's not even consistent. Mexico is not always 100% cotton for example. There was no discernible pattern)

I try to find products I like and then buy a bunch of them (in case they stop making them, etc) and I wound up making a spreadsheet once after becoming frustrated with the inability to trust the same "model number" means the same thing there.

[veeti]

Not affiliated with them, but https://www.productchart.com/monitors/ is pretty sweet for finding a monitor.

[imagine99]

Unfortunately, it doesn't let you filter by aspect ratio, so you cannot get e.g. all 16:10 monitors which is something I'm always actively searching for and it's so difficult. The page also doesn't list the unique Dell U3023E and its predecessors which are 2560x1600, i.e. 16:10 monitors, and perfect for design & development both in portrait and landscape mode. If the developer of that website is on HN, I hope they can add a filter for aspect ratio and more 16:10 monitors as well.

[joshstrange]

It is, it was very useful in narrowing down exactly what I wanted (how Amazon fails to provide decent filtering is beyond me) but it doesn't work well on mobile which is a shame.

[sgc]

I don't understand Amazon either. They actively neuter their filtering and sorting. Obviously they think they make more money that way, but it is an absolutely insane choice to make if you have any self-respect.

2024. Everything is slow. Search doesn't work. Ad infestation is even more invasive than the popup spawning days of old. Product quality is rock bottom. We have done ourselves in. But it's no wonder third party sites with basic functions are on the rise.

[nerdponx]

Newegg is still decent. The actual product selection isn't the best nowadays, but the search interface mostly still works, and they aren't shoving ads in your face.

[amelius]

You can't select if the monitor can be placed in portrait mode.

[marklyon]

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

[prakhar897]

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]

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.

[spaceman_2020]

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