One of the problems I had was that the link to learn more about a project sends the email. I was curious, and there wasn't much (immediate) explanation of what the consequences of the link were, so I clicked.

Yes, one of the pages that's linked in the sent email is to the guidelines saying "don't click unless you're actually interested", but the consequences of clicking links isn't explained before the project list is presented.

(In much of the web, links don't have side effects. Things that do are typically buttons. Maybe this is a design issue?)

EDIT: Grammar, clarity.

You're right -- it was a big issue for folks, which is why I ended up scrapping it in lieu of the new process:

- you get the project email and click "learn more" - that takes you to a page w/ details and an "i'm interested" button - clicking that button tells the project owner - the project owner then chooses to initiate contact further (which is why it's helpful to have a URL on your account.) - that is what sends the first email

It was intended to both cut down on project owner email overload as well as fix the confusion around what exactly happens.

Also, I plan to let folks attach a blurb of text as to -why- they're interested in a project. Should be an interesting experiment.

To be honest I prefer the way it was before. Clicking the link would send the email. That was the beauty of it. Cluttering the interface with webforms all over the place will just make your service more like dozens of other out there. Of course, you would have to require good descriptions from the project owners.

But I still love the interface love the simplicity of the interface. Email, never gets old.

I hear you. I'm going to leave it as is for the next send and watch what happens. I think it's still sufficiently simple right now, since it only adds one click (which I think could be called a confirmation click) to the intro experience on the talent side. Time will tell, though.

I love how this is progressing. One bit of feedback, I would love to see more legitimately "tiny" projects become available-- most of those sent out every week are $500-$2000 and require multiple week commitments. If there's a market for smaller projects or libraries that need work in the $100-$500 range, I would snap up those in my spare time. Obviously those kinds of projects have to exist first to be listed, so not much of a feature suggestion so much as a general desire :)

This has been an interesting issue -- I want to encourage small stuff like that (perhaps a quick icon/UX analysis or whatever) that's only a few hours of work. Though, I found when I had the min. budget at $100, I got a -lot- of low quality stuff. Setting the min to $500 has staved that off somewhat.

I'm sure you will find no shortage of $100-$500 projects on sites like odesk. There's a threshold at which it seems to not be worth the time though.

Many of those projects are poorly defined and ask too much work for the payment. The OP is asking for projects at a lower cost and lower time commitment, not devalued work.

Hrm, what languages are you open to doing library work for? Any further constraints (e.g. only OSS, etc.)?

I absolutely love this project and I really hope that the momentum that it has found will be preserved. Anything that helps the web to become a marketplace, especially for labor will have a huge impact in the long run.

I'm thrilled to hear that. It's been really interesting to watch, and even though I only have a week of data to play with, I'm fairly certain there's something bigger at play here. Just a matter of tuning the product, continuing to grow on both sides, and start to figure out how to solve the biggest issue right now, which is helping people make sense of the tons of intros they get.

By the way, I'd be happy to do ten bucks off any approved projects that mention HN.

Looking forward to hearing back from some of the intros for work I've requested. I can't believe each project gets so much attention. Pretty competitive!

Seems like a fantastic resource though, I'm excited to see how it progresses, and I can't wait to get the next email.

Thanks a bunch. I'm amazed that the intros/project is averaging so high, too. I'm actually thinking of trying out some kind of VIP thing, where you could pay a few bucks a month to get the email a few hours early.

The guidelines sensibly mention to use a contract. Does tinyproj have anything to assist there? I've used 99designs once before and it was good that they took care of the contract between designer and client.

Actually yes. Working on this over the next few weeks. If it works as expected it will be a few clicks and out comes a contract.

Cool! Thanks for releasing your data. (We're playing in the same space at gun.io - I think they call this 'validating the market.')