alt Hacker NewsAsk HN: Spent thousands, got no customers. What's wrong with my site?
With the recent surge in AI-generated content, I built a website called Voloshow that generates images and videos using AI. However, it has been live for almost a month and still hasn’t attracted a single user. I’m not sure what I did wrong. website is called Voloshow (https://voloshow.com/).
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There is also the name of the site / product that is reminiscent of a Russian placename or surname, say Voloshov (which happens to be both). It's the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the URL. Take that as you will.
I entered a prompt, was then asked to sign in, signed in using Google, then had to choose a completely different prompt which I couldn't scroll through on mobile, for it to tell me I have no credits. I then opened a tab to Gemini and entered my prompt to get an image for free.
I’m not sure why I’d use any of the AI wrapper sites instead of just going to the source. They all feel like cash-grabs to me.
Why would I use this instead of going directly to the provider?
It’s like you’re selling apples for $1 directly outside the grocery store. Why wouldn’t I just go inside and buy them from the same place you just got them?
First, the sign in with Google prompt. Go away. Enter my prompt, then hit with another sign in. Can’t use email, because that gets clipped on mobile. But in the spirit of community, I soldiered on to help a fellow HN user. So, I used Google sign-in, only to then get hit with “insufficient credits”.
<closes tab, and regrets not closing it earlier>
Look at your analytics, I’ll bet real money that part of your problem is the high friction website you’ve built. I entered a prompt, and after a non-trivial bit of effort I was told to fuck off (“insufficient credits”). I don’t see any great mystery here.
You’ve built a generic, be all for everyone product while requiring your user to be technical enough to understand what model to pick and why. This basically means your target audience is the exact same person who’s willing (and likely prefers) to do this on their local machine. They’re not going to be sold to, have their data resold, or have to worry about a rug pull on their local machine.
It’s almost like you’re offering a taxi service to people who want to own cars. Now, here’s the thing, even when people own cars, they still outsource driving in certain situations: taxi home from the bar, limo/party bus for evens, rides to the airport, group tours, long distance, etc, etc.
Instead, of general, focus in on a specific use case and make it as simple as possible to get good results with that specific use case.
Even, then, I’m doubtful of the ability to get traction in this space. People don’t really appreciate AI generated art. The only place obviously AI generated art seems to get traction is terrible FB ads and NSFW content.
Even though on closer inspection the site is about more than just image generation, at first glance, it seems like its just an AI image generator. That's not a novel idea these days.
My interaction was, try to generate an image, get hit by a sign in screen, my enthusiasm has gone, close tab.
Is it even Google indexed?
„Voloshow“ just comes up with this hn thread not the site
You need a chrystal clear usp. The site looks like it is for everybody, it is for everything, all at once and without any specialty compared to the thousands of other ai websites and service. The generic questions always are, who should use it and why.. That needa to be answered within the first 3 seconds. E.g. Animation Artists use it for getting from idea to clip in 5 minutes instead of 5 hours...
How did you spend thousands on the website if you have no users?
I can't even register, it tells me "Something went wrong on our side. Please try again later.".
And from a quick scan of the website, I don't see how yours is different from the million other websites that generate AI videos and images. Except I have to register to even try it, which is already a huge point of friction that many other websites don't have.
Yesterday's post on nearly the same topic:
If it's any consolation, I got 500+ people to use my similar site (a bit more niche, telegram bot that generates photoshoots from a selfie) but not a single one converted to the $5 upgrade so I just spent some money on Gemini credits for nothing.
https://flash.getgai.com/ if anyone else wants to join
non user of stuff like this, in fact I am completly outside of the target demographic, BUT of course I recognise the genre which works on me as an instant repelant and I flee, this unfortunatly for you, is so monumentaly derivitive as to barely trigger me, and I speculate that my dwell time would be the same as your target audience, but for exactly the opposite reasons.
I added https://voloshow.com/ to your text above. If that's not the link, please let us know!
SEO
Take what I saw with a grain of salt but …
Who is this product for? And for what use case?
This is why people recommend niche markets.
E.g. This is for B2B marketers who need a tool to create social content.
Congrats though for launching. 99% of people don’t even do that. But now the hard work starts, and 99% of user adoption is now marketing (not the product itself).