What prompted dropping all links to supplements purchasable online? Because you guys are an unbiased source, did you still feel it was wrong to offer an affiliate link to the product?
I absolutely love Examine.com and have shared it with many friends, but I seriously questioned that move from both a business and helpfulness perspective.
1. From the user's perspective, it's helpful to click right out and get the product if you want it.
2. From the business perspective, that's a shit load of Amazon cookies to be dropping, and you're not compromising your message since you treat all supplements equally and back it with research.
While we linked to only the generic search from Amazon.com, it's easier to doubt the research when we still profit from the sales.
Examine.com is run as a lifestyle business. If we wanted to maximize revenue, we could easily 2-3x our revenue in the span of 6 months. Just not our approach.
Hey Sol.
I was getting into nutrition just slightly before Examine launched, and was completely incredulous that something like Examine.com didn't already exist. As you mention in the post, the incentives in this industry are totally perverse. We're taking an anti-supplement stance with MealSquares partially due to some of the research you've helped collate and rate (we've done a lot of our own too of course :). I've happily watched Examine.com grow and I wanted to say thanks for trying to improve the epistemic standards we have for nutrition. Keep fighting the good fight. P.S. would you venture an opinion on Soylent?
Thanks for the kind words, and good luck. We're thankfully at a stage now where we're well cashflow positive so we can just focus on what we do best.
> Soylent
Beyond the link that MDS100 posted, I personally think it's a bit shortsighted. Paring food down into some kind of overly simplistic "consume this" ignores all the social and psychological aspects of eating (not to mention the satiety considerations of chewing something versus drinking it).
As a replacement for food, I think it's foolish. As something to help you get to X macros in a pinch ... well, I'd rather take a protein shake and then mix whatever I was missing into it (need fats? Nuts. Need carbs? Tons of additions)
Congrats Sol, it's been a pleasure watching Examine.com go from an idea to becoming the destination for supplement knowledge. Especially seeing your posts on schwarzenegger.com!
Hey Sol. Now that you're moving into the range of revenue that you might be able to invest, do you or Kurtis have any designs around conducting your own research?
Maybe there's a supplement or interaction that you think might be interesting but can't find any solid research on?
Maybe there's something that has weak evidence / poor experimental design that you'd just like to get to the bottom of?
Not sure how you'd turn that into real money, but maybe there's stuff that just "gives you an itch"?
We _may_ eventually start looking into doing our own original research, but at this time, zero plans.
We do have plans to start publishing some of our research as meta-reviews, but give us a bit of time on that.
> into real money
Honestly, not concerned about that. That's the benefits of a lifestyle business - we're (quite) cashflow positive, so we don't obsess over a thousand here or there. It's just to get really solid research (especially in nutrition) is quite cost prohibitive. Maybe in the future we can be involved in some grants and study design, but nothing concrete.
Always a pleasure watching your success - congratulations for taking the long, hard road and grinding away.
I know we can't work together much due to your wise philosophy of non-affiliation, but I'll always look forward to working with you in any venture, whether it's this one or the next!
It definitely helped. But, I've been a redditor for 8 years now anyway - http://www.reddit.com/user/AhmedF/ - so it was just a natural fit.
In terms of generating revenue or people who spread the word ... reddit was honestly not a big deal.
Major traffic sources? We have about 25+ sites that send us 100+ visitors/day. For example, "garcinia cambogia" is one of Dr. Oz's favorite (bs) fat burners. Quite a few sites that rank high in the Googles for that phrase link to us as an unbiased source.
Lastly, every time there is a study getting a lot of buzz, people ask us to look into it. And once we do, it gets shared a ton. Our latest one - http://examine.com/blog/high-protein-diets-linked-to-cancer-... - got us roughly 100,000 visitors over the course of 3-4 days.
Lastly, our brand is pretty strong. Our top two referral keywords are "Examine.com" and "Examine"
You should start accepting Bitcoin on your site! It would let you increase profits ~3%. My company Moolah.io lets you do it for free, hit me up at jonathon@moolah.io
1. Well, I'd say my background is more in developing tools for myself and then making them usable by end-users.
With that said, SEO has not done much for us. On top of that, I've had enough experience with Google that relying on it is my last priority. At this time, Google generates < 50% of our traffic, which is uncommon for major sites.
2. It took time to build up the trust and reputation needed, AND for US to build up the knowledge base required to be able to monetize it.
We could have tried to sell guides right off the bat, but a lot less people would have used it, and its quality would have been a lot less.
Plus, supplements have been historically quite the shitshow (you should see all the gossip and innuendo that flies around on my facebook when it comes to health and fitness and supplementation). That meant it took longer for us to convince people we were legitimate.
I'm a big believer in career capital, and it takes time to build that up.
Hadn't updated WP a while ago, got a few stupid links injected (for SEO, not for phishing). Your company is likely just a bit slow in updating its filter list.
We have a wiki-backend, but the reality is that our subject matter is far too specialized.
The edits are not as frequent as you'd imagine - one of our guys does the lead research on our page, emails the editors, and then they all hash it over, partly via email/asana, and partly with online editing. Then when they are all happy with it, it goes to the copyeditor to clean up (another fittitor!)
You can also click on the "History" link to see how a page has evolved.
RE: SSL - yes. We are working on rewriting the entire code base from scratch, so that is one of the things on our massive todo list!
Hey man no question in mind, just wanted to let you know that examine is a lifesaver. I recommend it to all of my clients, friends and family. Some are ignorant to the truth but many listen, thankyou.
Also curious how the domain examine.com was acquired, was it something dormant that you or one of your team already own, or did you actually shell out 4,5 or 6 figures for the said domain?
One example of a successful generic domain is bodybuilding.com which I believe was bought for $30k a long time ago and then developed instead of sat on.
The Stack Guides greatly simplify the process. They are NOT for everyone. But for the layperson who doesn't have the time and/or energy to figure it out themselves, it's well worth the investment.
One thing that really stood out for me was the endorsements. Having perhaps the most prolific researcher of recent history Adel Moussa (Prof Dr Andro) vouch for you guys, and on the other hand one of the best prep coaches Matt Porter on the same page... That's big.
I absolutely love Examine.com and have shared it with many friends, but I seriously questioned that move from both a business and helpfulness perspective.
1. From the user's perspective, it's helpful to click right out and get the product if you want it.
2. From the business perspective, that's a shit load of Amazon cookies to be dropping, and you're not compromising your message since you treat all supplements equally and back it with research.
Thanks for creating an amazing resource!