Readit NewsOver the years I have run a few A/B tests on the landing page. I tried some variations I thought MUST improve the conversion rate. However, this one, which is basically the original one, is still the best performer.
If it ain't broke.
This site is extremely well done. You built it, and all of its content, in a couple weeks? That’s amazing.
The landing page is what I built over the winter break, including those first 7 lessons. Since then that page has remained largely unchanged.
However, when it started getting a lot of traffic I added a pre-order form for a full course. THAT took me 6 months to code up all the additional lessons. Building all the interactive pieces (drum synths for rhythm lessons, an ear training game for intervals, a virtual guitar, etc.) was really fun but a lot of work. For example, the interactive guitar uses samples I recorded note-by-note from my acoustic guitar in my bedroom. Afterwards I couldn't look at it for months. And then over the years I've added more.
So not quite an overnight success.
Thank you for the kind words though!
I just thought there had to be a more intuitive way to learn music theory than the very boring and jargon-heavy alternatives.
It uses Tone.js to include little interactive pianos, guitars, and other demos.
I've done no marketing, it hit the HN front page for a day, and after that initial spike in traffic has been fairly consistent over the past 8 years.
It uses Stripe for payments and for the first few years it was only Stripe. 3 years in I decided to add PayPal support... revenue doubled overnight, mostly from international customers.
I've often wondered what impact an "enhanced ui and interface" would have on the audience HN attracts. Would more people visit? What demographics? Would it change what gets upvoted (both in content and what's above the fold)? Would there be more comments? Would there be an impact on comment quality?
Poor UXs act as barriers to entry. Barriers to entry can be beneficial depending on the goal.
That being said, I've still changed the HN styles many times over the years to make it easier for me to scan.
It's a bunch of short, interactive lessons to help you visualize the concepts. Still going strong after about 3 years now.
If you check it out, I'd love to hear your feedback.
Using recordings from my guitar (of each and every note) I was able to build an interactive fretboard that could play guitar tabs/chords. Also the Transport API made it simple to build a drum looping machine very quickly.
Ableton has built something similar, also using Tone.js: https://learningmusic.ableton.com/make-beats/make-beats.html
Performance on mobile leaves a lot to be desired. I found there was considerable lag.
https://www.workfortime.com/investment-calculator/
https://www.workfortime.com/retirement-calculator/
I tried to show how age and length of investment really impact how much wealth you can create.
My goal was to create an interactive course to "show them what they're missing" and what they can do with photography at a very high level. In later lessons I'll dive deeper into the each of the topics briefly covered in this first lesson.
I'd love any feedback you might have on my first lesson! Is it engaging? Do you know people who would benefit from this? If you were starting over in photography do you think this would be a good beginner approach? Thanks in advance!
But every year around the holidays a bunch of folks request this. I tell them to buy the course, and then email me who they'd like to gift it to. Then I just manually create a new account and send an email saying so-and-so bought you this course with the login! nathan [at] lightnote.co