Thanks for suggestions!

If it's too much hassle to cash potentially huge affiliate checks then you're rich enough, give the site to someone else that wants more money.

Seriously FB has 400Million active uniques. If you capture one-hundreth of a percent of those and then of those 1% convert and you make $1 on each conversion that's $400.

Even if it took me a whole day to organise cashing the cheque that would be worth it.

For Amazon though the problem is that they fragment their affiliate scheme (to create less opportunity for small sites to break the cash-out threshold presumably) so AdWords or whatever might be better.

Anyway, I've added Amazon affiliate links now, maybe I'll cash out with gift certificates.

Spent 5 minutes on Googling but didn't find the information.

2. On the results page, quickly create a form that asks for peoples email id. And then publish a newsletter that helps folks become better writers. Capturing email ids also give you a big base of folks with whom you can share your future apps with. Faster seeding.

The main thing you need to achieve is to make your site about a bigger theme. This feature will remain the core, but you need to be associated with something bigger. With Cornify, it's always been about happiness. Unicorns and rainbows are (almost) second to that, which gives me much more room to work with. Make your site about famous writers, becoming a better writer, or something like that. Use imagery that matches the theme.

The second big thing is to make your tool deep, while keeping it simple. People know it for this one thing and the one thing only. Make it so you can find something new every time you use it, make it smart so it learns with the number of times you use it. Surprise people. Tweak, tweak, tweak.

Third recommendation is to build a voice and talk to people. Get Twitter and Facebook accounts. Decide on how you want to relate to people and what they should get out of being interested in you. I've gotten so many "Oh, I can't believe Cornify is on Twitter" comments, it shows that you care about the site. A brand would also be a big help. Maybe you can look into using imagery of famous writers.

Find a way that people can create things on your site. With Cornify, people really like the photo uploader. Find something that people can create on your site and then share. This keeps people coming back.

Most importantly, keep things fun. This is not serious business, this is a meme. If things stop being fun or get cluttered with ads, people will not take your serious and won't come back. Be very careful about monetizing. A meme that people like is an incredibly thing to have in your resume and a great talking point. I worked on projects for MTV, Nintendo, EA, etc, but people get way more excited when they find out I created Cornify. This is a meme and you may be more proud of other things you have done, but in terms of public recognition, you should take this very serious.

And congratulations. It's very exciting to see a project blow up like this. Hope you have a great time with it.

It may be a good idea to turn this into a Facebook app. That way you have a user base to experiment with later, as well as, some further advertisement.

http://www.hotornot.com/

But once you've posted in a sample of your own writing, gone "Hahaha, I write like Mario Puzo, hey guys, guess what?", I find it hard to imagine anyone coming back time after time.

The newsletter addition was a good idea. I have a feeling many "writers" would be upset to learn they wrote like Dan Brown, no matter how many novels he's sold. Possibly a "From Brown to Updike: How to Improve Your Writing" course.

The OP's idea is darn viral, however. I love the success he's had.

I'm not quite sure what to think of that, but at least it was reasonably consistent for me.

I suspect the webapp is just suggesting random writers.

Also, NLP classification is a hard problem. I don't think doing it reliably over a weekend is possible. I think that had OP done any good work on NLP, he would have discussed it. I am more inclined to think the app is just giving random results.

I gave it a slice of Finnegan's Wake, and it told me it sounded like James Joyce. It would be a pretty bad algorithm if it couldn't identify James Joyce.

Then I got it to correctly identify passages from Dan Brown and Mario Puzo. Quite impressive.

One possibility is that it's just matching word frequencies. To check this, I tried a few strings of my own devising:

"mafia mafia don don mafia mafia" --> Mario Puzo

"vatican conspiracy vatican conspiracy vatican conspiracy" --> Dan Brown

"oh woe is me, life sucks, everything is crap" --> Chuck Palahniuk

Nope. It's just a Bayesian classificator :)

You might also connect with the people who try to identify students who turn in term papers and lab reports written by other people.

You could also add a game (who wrote the following paragraph? (Multiple choice)). That would be an avenue for return visitors.

You could also have "write like Hemingway / Dickens / Neal Stephenson / etc." contests. Kinda like painters going to famous museums and copying the works of famous painters, it's a way to extend and hone the craft of writing. I recall a good version of Twas The Night Before Christmas written as if Hemingway wrote it. Also, connect with specific writers' fanbases (especially Chuck Palahniuk), and with writers workshops, and fanfic groups. Poetry, too.

There are a lot of ways you could take this. Make sure your algorithm is effective, though!

You suggestions are helpful. Now that I'm interested in this topic, I may release something better. Thanks.

affiliate deals for the authors books

enjoy the seo :)

Congratulations on the traction though!

This would certainly increase the longevity of your app.

I'm not sure what this tells me about my writing, but it does stroke my ego. Sometimes that's just what a writer needs.

Disclaimer: I'm a former Lulu employee and still like those guys a lot, which is why they came to mind first. :-)

Also, if you're interested and need any help making a contact there, feel free to email me. I still have a few connections left over there, I think.

I think your first goal now should be encouraging users to return later.

I would definitely promise right on the results page that more writers would be added regularly and algorithms would be improved so that people had reasons to bookmark you or to subscribe to your twitter/facebook waiting for their favourite authors.

I would also make local pages for all writers you have. Link to Amazon in that place is unexpected.

You could also encourage showing off by enhancing badges. That could be percentages (e.g. I write like 7% of users) or cool portraits or even something like "I write like Stephen King - I could have written The Stand".

Regarding the spreading, a tweet from some real author will be great (how?). And what about publishing some real-time stats about the results? i.e. 30% of our users write like Dan Brown, 10% like xxx, etc...

EDIT: "Margaret Atwood, who is in our database of famous writers, tweeted about it (apparently, she doesn’t write like herself… oops :)" Already happened... enjoy the exponential growth in visits :)

Currently:

  facebook.com 20.75%
  tumblr.com   8.24%
  twitter.com  5.57%

I don't track any stats regarding results of analysis, I can only see which result pages get more visits.

BTW, the banner at the bottom of your site is taking ages to load.

Hmm, it's hosted on Rackspace Files CDN.

As far as monetary gain is concerned, immediately you can find some of the writers books on Amazon and link them up in the results page with your affiliate id. Long term you can capture email ids and send them offers on email.

Congratulations on your success!

P.S. You said you're in Montenegro but don't speak the language -- just remember "pivo" (beer) and "poshto?" (how much) and you'll be fine ;)

.... oh wait.... they do exist...

Umm ok... How about you use the regular icons for familiarity sake?

I also like the "bio" idea. Seeing a name I don't recognize makes the experience a bit hollow.