ChangeThisText.com - Timeline
TLDR Changethistext.com was going to expire. Can I put the page online for the intended purpose to make enough money to save it? No.
16. April 2021 (less than one years ago)
My Brain: 💡 What if I had a webpage with a simple text message. Anyone can decide to change that message, but has to pay a small fee.
Me: This is the best idea I have had to date! I can implement this in a few hours, put it online and expect some 💰 and more traffic. Let’s buy the domain.
Looks for the cheapest place to buy changethistext.com domain and ends up buying it from Cloudflare for $9.06.
16. April 2021 plus more days
My Brain: Let’s try this new library I discovered on Hacker News called htmx with Java.
Me: Ah crap, it takes ages to bootstrap a project with Java. After a few hours, I don’t even have any interactions on the page.
What if I put the current version online.
After few hours of hacking and fighting with all kind of new and unknown error messages. I end up with a simple page.
First version16. April 2021 plus even more days
Life happens. Other ideas come and go. Procrastination is like air, and I forget about this project, or domain even existed.
11. March 2022 (almost one year later, close to today)
Cloudflare: changethistext.com is going to expire in a month and few days.
Me: Ah crap! Another wasted domain. I lost $9.06 and more time.
My Brain: Lets checkout Twitter.
Me: What If I take this as a challenge? Can I earn $9.06 or more? Only then I will keep the domain.
Great, another unused domain is going to expire in a month. 😭
— Kiru 🟩 mathlegame.com 🟨 reversle.net (@kiru_io) March 11, 2022
I had the following idea:
An empty page with a short text. You pay to change the text, which stays there for at least a day until someone changes it.
Bought domain and thought it was stupid. Forgot about it.
/1
12. March 2022 plus following days
For the last few projects (reversle.net and mathlegame.com) I have been using NextJS.
I started from scratch and rewrote everything in NextJS. Everything should be minimalistic, I don’t want to spend too much time on the project. I don’t know if it will pay off.
The result is very simple. A simple main page with a separate information page. The payment happens via Stripe link. I will change the text by hand for now.
Main page
Explanation page16. March 2022
Wrote this article, and published the project. On r/SideProject. On Twitter. On ProductHunt.
Dear reader,
— Kiru 🟩 mathlegame.com 🟨 reversle.net (@kiru_io) March 16, 2022
Let me introduce you my most stupid idea to date:https://t.co/BYjZGTBSwB
No more words needed. You pay to change the text. This is an experiment to answer the question:
Can I earn $9.06 net to keep the domain and the idea afloat or not?
Sincerely,
Kiru
17. March 2022
Published the project on Hacker News.
It seems someone already copied my project. They took the same questions-style information page as me, even the same durations (10minutes) and price:
Main page with all the exact same content.
The exact same questions as meLater
Since I did not make any money with this project, I let the domain expire. It was a stupid idea.