SoloX5

Honestly - we've been meaning to release an API once we get our new backend out. Of course that's been the hiccup - it's been almost ready for far too long :)

Ping me via www.examine.com/contact/ and lets see if we can make it happen.

That's us! Thanks for the kind words :)

Yup 100%. Worst case, I could have still turned it around and immediately sold it for 25k. If I was more patient, likely 35k.

To me, ignoring the opportunity cost of the cash itself, it was a ~10k risk. Worth it.

That's me!

We can only research and collate the existing research.

Very uncommon.

That's a bit simplistic.

Having "Examine.com" as our brand brought us weight - the domain is easy to remember, easy to understand, has a link to what we're selling, and so forth.

BUT - that 42k was never all we had. It was maybe ~25% of what we had. We decided that the brandability of the domain was more important than buying ads.

As you have a SaaS business, buying ads may work out. On the other hand, having a non-.com may backfire.

YMMV.

Have considered it. Problem is our audience trends older, and they may be confused by what bitcoin is (and checkouts are all about ease of use).

We did purchase it.

Hihi.

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!

And thanks for the kind words.

:-)

Thanks!

We've tried to be as non-condescending as possible. It's not hard being right, it's hard to teach/show someone the truth.

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 _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.

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)

Shiiiiiiit busted. I swear I asked about hylete pricing today!

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.

$50 is high if you just think of it as an eBook.

We think more along the lines of the Picasso Principle: http://www.psychotactics.com/blog/the-picasso-principle/

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.

It's easier and simpler.

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.

We sell a Reference (oriented towards professionals) and Stack Guides (oriented towards the layperson).

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"

It all adds up.

Jarema you live!

Wow it's been like ... 4 years since we had lunch?

And speaking of The Oak ... http://www.schwarzenegger.com/fitness/advisory-board scroll down :)

Hi, I'm Sol.

Any questions, just ask.