Nate: [00:00:00] When you think back to marketing this, because you obviously were not telling anybody about it, how did you get, do you remember getting your first thousand users, like around that, like what was happening? Was it being shared? Was it word of mouth? what was going on then?
Slavi: I remember the exact probably month.
so it's
Nate: welcome to the Hey, good game podcast, where we chat with the creators of your favorite games that you secretly play in the cracks of your day.
Joseph: All right. That was a great interview. I enjoyed it more than others. And it had us thinking if you enjoy one of these interviews, please head to Spotify. wherever you're at, drop a comment and a rating there.
The comment would be your favorite question. No, your favorite game. What favorite game are you playing? And drop a rating there, to help other people find the game. And on this one, I [00:01:00] was most interested in, what random means and the fact that he didn't know one of his own questions, how about you, Nate?
Nate: That's right. fantastic interview. I really like that he was just so transparent about numbers, the amounts he makes, how many ads he runs to get things going. I think from a creator who's just building a, a game on the side and just being really helpful to anybody else who wants to do this, he just was an open book.
So I really appreciate that from Slavi. And we're excited to dive into this conversation on the pod.
I'm Nate Kadlac and I'm here with my co host Joseph Reuter. And today we are so excited to speak with Slavi Grozev, the creator of Random Trivia Generator. Slavi is an acoustic engineer by trade and has worked in the Ontario Ministry of Transportation and has recently become a senior noise Engineer at Arcadis.
I have to ask you about this in a second, but, one of the world's leading [00:02:00] companies, Arcadis is in delivering sustainable design, engineering, digital, and consultancy solutions for natural and built assets. But random trivia generator is a platform that generates random trivia questions with varying categories.
Each question immediately displays an answer, making it a short and ideal experience for those looking for a bit of brain food. Slavi, we're so glad you're here.
Slavi: Thanks guys, happy to be here.
Nate: we kick things off with the traditional, what is your favorite game to play?
Slavi: I'm gonna have to disappoint you, so it's a really old game.
it's called Heroes of Might and Magic, especially the third version, which came out in the late 90s. I Still play that game. I have every single version of it. That's come out since the nineties, every iteration of it, every, remastered edition. I have it on every device imaginable here. Just still remains my all time favorite game.
Joseph: That's amazing. Just quick wiki on this one. There's eight versions.
Slavi: Oh, the last ones are not that [00:03:00] great, but the nineties sort of the golden age.
Joseph: The golden age. It looks like one slated for delivery next year.
Slavi: I'm looking forward to it. I have all of them, but the 90s is where they peaked.
Joseph: The 90s. That's rad, bro.
And what about this game sticks out most? that's a captivating hook. First delivery in 95. Yep.
Slavi: I think a lot of it has to do with the nostalgia, but it's, I remember this being as one of the first games I ever got for a birthday in the mid nineties when I, I got a computer that's capable with the CD ROM.
And, I had never played a game like this. I'd never played something this sort of involved and, I was hooked from the first minute it's deep, but at the same time, it's very simple. So if you only have like half hour to kill. That's all you need. If you just want to have one turn, you can have one turn, one minute, [00:04:00] and you're done, and they'll just save, and you go away, come back 20 years later, it's still there.
It introduced the concept of hot seats. I don't know if you guys remember this from back in the day, but, you could play multiplayer games on a single computer, so Me and a bunch of my friends would get together and play on a single computer because not everyone had a computer at the time in the Mid 90s and they were expensive.
So we I remember we could play up to eight people on the same computer taking turns So those are the days it was
Joseph: Wow
Slavi: they were, but it's
Joseph: Friday night pizza and it was
Slavi: great. That's yeah, so it wasn't, I guess so much as the game is like the whole experience it created. That's it.
Joseph: That's fantastic. Thanks for sharing that. And now you wind forward and you're a noisy
Slavi: stumbled into [00:05:00] this. I'm chemical engineer by training. I worked as a chemical engineer, but then one day I remember one of the big bosses asked me, Hey, can you take care of this noise thing?
And then one thing led to another and I just stumbled my way into a number of opportunities. And, People started asking me questions. So I just made a career out of it.
Joseph: That's so fantastic. So I'm, ripping down the highway and you're mitigating my tire sounds.
Slavi: That was my, what they call the portfolio of work that I had at the ministry of transportation.
It's tire noise, just vehicle noise on highways. That's. Just randomly stumbled into it.
Joseph: How many times a year is there a conference for noise engineers? It's gotta be two or three.
Slavi: There's usually a couple in the States. sometimes they come, one of them comes to Canada. there's usually one in Europe, one in Asia.
And there's a lot more, with urbanization, you have a lot of people living in places like New York City, [00:06:00] L. A., Toronto, and you have rail running right through someone's house, for a decade, I lived in Toronto, right on top of a highway, so you can imagine. you wanna sleep in the middle of the night, right?
So noise is becoming more of an issue.
Nate: So if you're living near a highway, , and I just moved from LA myself. But, what are like the two things you would do to, help mitigate highway noise?
Slavi: Honestly, it depends where you are. So if I'm in la like a southern place in the States, surface is a great starter.
if you use like a. A different asphalt mix with the larger gap that can absorb some of the noise in the cavities. that's a pretty easy way of taking off a few decibels. Oh, I'm talking about,
Nate: I'm talking about me in the apartment or the home.
Slavi: Oh.
Joseph: Whoa, yeah. No, somebody already put a smooth surface down here.
yeah. It's not quite smooth. Yeah, the surface is nice. [00:07:00]
Slavi: Oh. This is the
Joseph: 405 now.
Slavi: All right. I got some bad. I got i'm gonna give you the real answer. You're gonna hate it it's Mass is what we call mass. Essentially, noise is unwanted energy. So you got to put a lot of mass on the surface that's between you and the highway.
So if you have a drywall, if you put a small air gap and like another layer of drywall, that's probably the best thing you can do.
Nate: Got it. It's so essentially say, you're just move away from the highway is a TLDR here. Pretty much.
Joseph: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Your 10 foot by 10 foot room becomes 10 foot by nine and a half.
Filled with air in the middle. It's
Slavi: yeah, air.
Joseph: It's just energy.
Slavi: You laugh at it, but when I, when we bought a place in Toronto on the highway a long time ago, I had one of my, A lot more experienced senior guys come with me and he was like measuring the [00:08:00] concrete walls and he was like, all right, this one's good.
You can get this one. The windows installed very well here. There's no gaps. You should get this one. it helps to have a guy.
Nate: Yeah. So there's a certain category that you would just kill on trivia night. And, it's noise.
Slavi: It doesn't come up very often. I'll tell you that.
Nate: So how did you, what kind of got you into trivia?
What was the backstory there?
Slavi: so I went to an engineering school, and we had a quiz bowl. So once a week we used to get together and used to come up with different engineering teams and used to compete against one another. And, There's always someone hosting it, someone coming up with questions, at the time they were all written down on pieces of paper.
We had spreadsheets, we had Word documents, but, we, I, went to school in Waterloo and Waterloo is the birthplace of the BlackBerry.
Nate: Great movie by the way, I've watched that twice. I still haven't
Slavi: seen it. It's actually good, I
Nate: [00:09:00] like it,
Slavi: I got to see, I want to see if they filmed it in Waterloo and they can recognize any of the, buildings, but yeah, that's so essentially we, I, wanted to have something digital because everyone started getting BlackBerrys and, I wanted to digitize it and I first, I created this private server, which essentially just gave you a random question and I put, I think it was four or five in the beginning.
So on your BlackBerry, you can see four or five lines. Of questions and then like a simple answer, like a one word. so yeah, it's, school that got me into trivia and the website became a place for us to have the trivia in one place, that's easier to carry and access. and back then we were using GSM signals, so it had to be like text based, very light, there's no graphics, nothing.
Like that. That's yeah, just school. That's what got me into it. And long trips with my wife. both of us [00:10:00] went to different schools. We were a few hours apart. Our parents were in different cities. So just visiting people for holidays meant like four or five hours of driving. And you're going through like parts of the country where there's AM radio.
And like nothing for 30, 40 minutes. So trivia cards to the rescue.
Nate: That's great. So before you built this, how did you get into, programming?
Slavi: I didn't, I, actually got into programming because I wanted to build this and, there was nothing like this at the time. This is going back like 20 years.
back then there were websites. So you can scroll through Lists and maybe create, someone created a page where it's like the top 10, fun things about Thanksgiving or something like that. But there's nothing that just gave you questions just right away. and I toyed around with the concept and for one birthday, ask my, wife.
could you get me a textbook on, it was PHP at the time, and that was my [00:11:00] birthday gift. And I sat down in the basement like everyone else and, I built this in probably about a week. yeah, that's how I got into programming, which I still use, actually I use Python for, on a daily basis right now.
a great intro to programming.
Nate: Does your, your, wife just changed your life. That's It's, remarkable. Like just a single book, just launch the trajectory in your life. That's pretty cool.
Slavi: I, still have the book. I still keep it here. Yeah, that's it. Just one book and a week's worth of work. That's it.
Nate: How did the website come to be? You, bought the domain and like where, how'd you come up with a name and yeah, a little bit more about the background there.
Slavi: Yeah, that's well, I, the first one I built the database, it was a private database, private PHP, HTML site. And then I. Wanted to share it with some more people.
at the time I was using just your generic [00:12:00] domain that was, I was using nearly free speech, that's how I started. So I had these like sub domains that are given to you for free. If you host a server and, I came up with the name because I wanted. Every time I opened that site, the first page, I wanted to be blasted with a bunch of random questions.
And, when I hit refresh, I wanted like another five or six random questions. And, that was it. Random Trivia Generator, just came to be.
Nate: There's some SEO sensibility in that name cause it's a older domain, right? And it just feels Oh yeah, RandomTriviaGenerator. com, like it's, that's what you're going to search for.
And Google used to rank those pretty highly back in the day, right?
Slavi: That's right. Yeah. For probably the first five or six years, I was always on top of the first page, top of the results. I never thought about this. I never expected this to become such a big thing. the only people who knew about this were, like, my wife and a few friends we played trivia with.
I still haven't really told anyone [00:13:00] else. I think my parents know and that's it. I don't go and tell people. Probably shouldn't. I probably shouldn't.
Joseph: That's fantastic. on the about page, it says RTG helps you fill your brain with useless information. And it lists 28, 810 questions.
Is that the total number of questions that'll, when you open a page, it'll overwhelm you with questions?
Slavi: That is the number of unique questions. That's right. Yeah.
Joseph: That's amazing.
Slavi: I think you're probably one of the first people who spotted this because no one has ever done it before. open the about page and ask me about that number, but that's, that is the total number.
Joseph: it's, a little tricky because you've also taken a design approach here where. It looks like an old school computer, right? Like you didn't just whip some questions alone. You also took time to set up the tone. Talk a little bit about what you're thinking is there like color coordination, simple [00:14:00] graphics, but.
Slavi: That's, you know what, I can't take credit for this. my brother in law is the one who came up with this. this website was like the start of his design firm. He was looking for a way out of the corporate world and I was looking for a way to refresh the website. We've been working together for eight, nine years on this.
So he started a whole company. I was his first client and then still his client to this day. Of course they have a lot more clients now, so I'm down at the bottom, but, It's, his idea, his and his partners. So there was three of them at the time. I can't take credit for any of this. they presented me a bunch of concepts and this is the one I liked the most.
And I feel like all of us agreed on this, cause it's a robot, a little old school, it's got some bright colors. It's a little bit more fun and playful. We're not taking ourselves seriously. and the theme is, you nailed it. So when we had the holding page, when we're launching the website, a number of [00:15:00] years ago, this design, it was actually an interactive robot.
I think it's those images are still floating on the internet somewhere, but I remember you can pull his, hand or something. And it will spit out a question while we're waiting for the website to launch. and we want to bring that back in some form because, it was a great concept. It was entertaining for people to.
To play with it until the whole website was launched with the design. yeah, it's, not me. I just said, yeah, I like this. It's his sort of idea.
Nate: yeah, it is well done. And that book keeps on giving, gave, your brother's first client. That's, great. That's gift. But, yeah, I agree.
it's really playful and I don't think. you just don't see a lot of people put this effort into design. And so I'm, thankful that you, worked with your brother on this and, it's really delightful. Even, some of the kind of the models that pop up are really nicely branded.
And so it makes me want to come [00:16:00] back, in terms of like, when you think about other trivia sites.
Slavi: Awesome. Yeah, that's, we've been putting design first and a lot of ways and functionality second, functionality as in, the backend functionality. We spent a lot of time on this and all the other simple features, like fun quizzes and stuff.
That's like last, we want to create like a fun experience that works well on the cross all platforms. It's fast. It just, you get that dopamine hit as soon as You come in no, no BS with other stuff.
Nate: What is the most popular trivia category?
Slavi: entertainment for sure. Entertainment followed by general history is probably one of the least popular ones, arts and history at the back.
Nate: How do you go about populating the site and getting. Questions and answers in here. And, what does that look like? Is it generated or is it curated?
Slavi: it's 100 percent human curated. I write most of the questions. [00:17:00] we do have a submission page. if users want to share questions, they get fed into a general database.
They don't get published right away. They have to go through a screening process. there was a period. Probably about 10 years ago where it was open to anyone. And, I'm sure you've dealt with people on the internet, you see all sorts of things that are submitted. So it's a statement, but yeah, the questions are mainly written by me.
Probably about 85 percent of the questions on the website are. Written by me, I had a developer design the backend where I can just quickly type in the question. We have a very simple dashboard on the backend, that allows me to pick a categories, subcategories and, a few other things that are coming up.
That's where the inputs in terms of how I come up with questions, gone through a number of different cycles over the life. think my favorite one to this day is Wikipedia, [00:18:00] just the random page on Wikipedia, just reading a random article, learning something new and then coming up with a few questions.
probably the top of my
Nate: list right now. So is that a daily process for you? Is this something that you tend to batch? what, how do you. How much time do you spend on this?
Slavi: It used to be a lot, but, I got little kids now. I got a very sort of a senior role with a lot of responsibilities.
unfortunately, I don't have as much time as I used to. And I would love to spend more time. this is it's still a hobby of mine. right now I probably spent about an hour a day, when everyone goes to sleep. sometimes a little bit more on weekends if I'm able to wake up early before all the kids are running wild and screaming at each other.
so it's shifted. It used to be, it used to be a lot more in the early days, easily 20 or 30 hours a week. But it felt like nothing. It felt like fun. That's incredible.
Nate: how many people are playing these days?
Slavi: right now with [00:19:00] uniques about 120, 000 a month, unique visitors. I think total visits are around like three, 300 something thousand.
so it's still a pretty small website, I think, compared to some of the other guests that you guys have had. It's slowly organically growing. I
Nate: might also add more than some of our other guests as well.
Slavi: typical humans, we focus on the, Oh, this is better.
Joseph: Typical human.
What, comprises some of the themes among audience. Maybe you hear from them contact us forums or so forth, but what are, The audience person's, saying they like, What's similar about them as.
Slavi: I would say the most common one is the delivery. people like that it's right on the main page.
They don't have to go looking for questions. They're right there. I'm not hiding anything. and it's, the accessibility to the questions is [00:20:00] made as, made it as simple as I can. That's it. That's the common theme. a lot of people, that's what they like. They come in, they look at some questions, they leave.
That's it. I'm not tracking them, I'm not doing anything. Just the simplicity.
Nate: I notice that you have, you can create your own game and Have a number of rounds and other things. Do you ever have like a contingent of teachers or I don't know, even bars or restaurants? is there like unique case studies, that you fulfill?
Slavi: absolutely. Yeah. I do have a number of teachers down in the States who've reached out over the years. I've had a number of students who have come up with certain, not come up with, but I've had some, Very interesting requests, that I'm more than happy to fulfill if I have the time.
and it's not really so much people asking for a very specific theme quiz or something they're asking for. Usually if I'm able to Put together X number [00:21:00] of random questions in like a spreadsheet that they can use for maybe to test like a school project they're working on or something to that effect.
I have a lot of students reaching out from grade 12, probably first or second year university who are getting themselves into computer science. And they're looking for a small set of data that can use for, usually, index cards or some sort of a little app that they're working on.
And I'm more than happy to put together a bunch of questions for them. Maybe they want a thousand questions and entertainment so I can filter my database, export what they're looking for and give them that. But not really like a theme request, but it is something in the works. I am Working on putting together some features that allow you to do this yourself.
So essentially come through the database and put together your own quizzes, for a bar night or corporate events. So that's coming up in the future.
Nate: Yeah. It sounds like, a great idea. When you think back to marketing [00:22:00] this, because you obviously were not telling anybody about it. How did you get, do you remember getting your first thousand users?
Like around that, like what was happening? Was it being shared? Was it word of mouth? what was going on then?
Slavi: I, remember the exact, probably, month. so it started growing very slowly when I made it public, of course, only the people in my school knew and, some random strangers who found it came across certain keywords, but, the day it got its first thousand users was, redflag deals. com that had a forum. And the specific posting was use this generator to generate. The name of fictitious music album. That's essentially, I have to use the answers of whatever first question came up. And that would be their album cover or album name. and I got a thousand hits in a day and they just, I think people found it and it just exponentially grew for probably about [00:23:00] a year or two years after that.
of course it was on the front page of Reddit at some point, I think 2011 or 2012, that of course helps. just, but, and each of these kind of events have gathered like a nice base of users. we have a lot of returning users, probably about. 30 to 40 percent are returning users on a regular basis and, the other 60 are new users.
yeah, redflagdeals. com in 2011, that was the, probably the moment that things spiked and it kept going.
Nate: I'm curious about any other inflection points was, I'm guessing the pandemic helped as well. what was life before and after that, for you in this game?
Slavi: The life of the website is, and I'm sure this, every, software, every website has an expiration date.
And, in the late 2000s, early 2010s, it was popular because, iPhones were a novelty at the time. Smartphones were sort of blackberries or people still had no kiosk. and then in those early [00:24:00] days, this was a very popular website. I remember. 2011, 2012, we're talking about like 1. 2, 1. 5 million users.
it was a huge number at the time, but as. Mobile applications became popular QuizUp and a bunch of the other ones that came on the market that took a huge chunk of the visitors because they're a little bit more interactive. I played them myself. Those are amazing. so the audience tapered off a little bit, it went down, the regulars kept visiting, and it kept chugging along.
I made some changes with the design that brought some users, probably the next biggest inflection point, yes, was March, 2020. it got picked up by, I think 50 or 60 popular websites like USA Today, Good Housekeeping, and a bunch of other ones. And all of a sudden it went from, your standard sort of, probably a hundred thousand users a month to like over 500, 000 pretty much overnight.
that was a [00:25:00] huge deal. And those, numbers kept up for a while. Probably for a year and a half. it wasn't just the traffic. What I really liked about that is a lot more people submitted questions and probably during the first of the pandemic, the first like six or seven months, I must've gone through two or 3000 questions.
People were like submitting by sometimes hundreds at a time. so not only did it help with the popularity, but also helped expand the database quite a bit. And since then I've taken it more, a little bit more seriously. So I use that kind of infusion of revenue put back into the website. So we completely redid the backend, the database.
we updated some of the graphics to be a little bit more sleek, to work across more devices. we introduced a few different features like tags and search features, the random quiz, That was probably the second biggest confliction point, or maybe a third one if you read it.
Nate: Yeah, that's [00:26:00] incredible. during that time, did you ever have any acquisition offers or anything like that come through?
Slavi: Oh, yeah, there is, up until the first lockdown or March 2020, there was probably like three, one of them was fairly serious. but the problem with the acquisitions is, was that they all came from people who are just building a portfolios.
And, speaking with some of the other acquisitions, essentially just like private equity, you will take away some of the assets, repurpose them, sell them off, probably get a quick return on your investment. I only have two ads on the website back then. They only had one. So the, probably the first thing I would do is put a video on the corner, like every other website now, just crank up the revenue.
you're going to lose some visitors, but who cares make a ton of money. So I didn't want to sell because of that. And, it wasn't like life changing amounts. like it was still really six figures, but was it going to change my. Day to day at all. So [00:27:00] yeah, I figured let's build it. Let's build it up.
Nate: First. I love that. I think investing back into this game is such a really unique thing when you think about the game itself is there a limit to how big it could grow?
Is it worth investing in more? Like, how do you think about it today?
Slavi: I'm all in. So I having seen what happens like during COVID when people are looking for these things, some of the emails that I get, from teachers or retirees, I had someone reach out who had a, Heart surgery and while they're recovering, that's all they did all day long.
just hearing these things, I really want to keep going because there are a lot of people, I'm not going to get rich off of this, but there's a lot of people who like really like this, just the joy that you get from hearing this and offering more features and essentially value for your time.
It keeps [00:28:00] me going. I more than happy to invest all the money I make from the website back into it, till it gets to a point where people no longer have any suggestions about what should be done with the website as in I've done everything people have asked for. I think that's, that, that's the end point that I see.
Nate: what's the next thing you would build that you haven't?
Slavi: So we have this path. the next thing is, and it's coming up in December, it's, curated quizzes. So essentially I want to use the database that, that I have to build. 10 question curated quizzes that are gamified because people have been asking for multiple choice, questions for years now.
and there'll be the fun gamified element where, you get a score, you're going to have a leaderboard, you're going to see the average global scores, so on. like another, Easy dopamine hits of you pressing buttons and seeing fireworks and whatnot, that's in the making.
I've already have [00:29:00] a whole set of quizzes that we're going to launch with in December. next year, we're going to do some unsexy things. So we're going to redo some of the functionality on the backend. There's some number of functions that kind of deprecated. to make sure the speed of the website keeps up, we have to make Not so fun things, but probably next summer is we're going to introduce member accounts so you can save quizzes people have been asking for years.
If I generate a random quiz, can I save it? If I find a question that I really like and I'll ask my friend, can I save it? So we're rolling that out next year. and then hopefully at the end of that year, so a year from now, You should be able to write your own private questions. If you have like maybe a family quiz that you want to create for Christmas, for your gathering, you can do that, keep it private.
that's in the books. people have been asking for a shop cause they want to buy like curated packages for their corporate events. that's also coming up, but [00:30:00] that's way up in the future. I don't have, unfortunately I don't have the capacity for that right now. but yeah, we have, the list is like four pages long of requests. It's, wild.
Nate: We can't get accounts out fast enough. Cause I'm just tired of hearing emails about saving stats. And
Joseph: I just updated a
Nate: new phone and I lost everything. Like that sucks. I want to fix that.
Slavi: People are asking, I'm like, I wish I could do it right away, but you know what? It takes time. I don't have the capacity, man.
Nate: those are great. also update the blog too. That's maybe my request. Okay. It looks like you have some good stuff in there.
Joseph: I was going to ask what the strategy was there.
It's running on a separate domain and linking back and then it kicks off to apps. And I was like, huh, this seems like I'm just going to go back the other direction.
Slavi: The blog was like a way to communicate with the audience at the time, at least that's how it was launched. people kept asking.
The same questions over and over again. And I figured let's create a blog where you can just [00:31:00] post these things. but since then, when we upgraded the backend system, especially this year, I have the ability to push notifications directly onto the website. so that's it's become a neglect neglected feature.
funny enough, a few days ago, I was actually thinking if, if I could turn this into a full time job, the blog is the first thing I'm bring it up to speed because it's been like, what, two years since I posted something, like that. it'll be free in December at the happy new year.
Nate: You're hitting on a really interesting, like, how do you, Talk to your players, right? and we always think about is it, is writing online the right thing? Is that an email the right thing? Do we open up a discord? what, what has gone through your mind in terms of, communicating and participating in that conversation?
Slavi: Personal emails and, during COVID, this was, I'm not exaggerating when I tell you this, 20 hours a week of just writing personal emails, In the first few months. it is a big [00:32:00] time commitment, but I just, I want to, I want the people to know that it's just like a single person behind this.
It's not a corporation. I take every email very seriously. If you send me an email, I'm going to read it. I'm going to think about it. I'm going to respond to it. If it's an interesting feature suggestion, I'm going to add it to my growing list. so I just want to make sure that if you're coming to the website, if you're spending your time That and you send me an email, you know what these days sending an email?
I know it's simple but it takes some time just to write an email so if you write me an email i'm gonna respond back and I honestly, I think it's my favorite way of communicating. I've tried Facebook, I've tried Twitter, but the quality of the messages that you get from both platforms is.
Not great. so I've haven't touched those in years people who are, who like the site and they're involved will send me an email and I'll respond.
Nate: Yeah, there's something about sending from your own email address that requires a little bit of, oh I'm a person [00:33:00] and you're a person. It's quite as anonymous as a Twitter post or something.
Slavi: The handle, yeah. Yeah, for sure.
Nate: so I'm, curious Slavi, I've read a few of your past interviews and you've been really, gracious and sharing numbers and things like that. And I'm curious, you monetize a site through ads specifically. Is that the only way that you monetize?
Slavi: yes, that is the only way. And If you go back through the archives, I've always had one ad for probably 10 plus years. The reason why I had to put a second ad, there's actually several reasons, but, I'm sure from your experience, you've noticed that sort of ad revenue has been quite diluted over the years.
so the reason we put a second ad is because I realized a number of years ago that I can't do everything. So I need help. And to hire good help. And I've interviewed and worked with many freelance developers and various other people. And to have good talent, you [00:34:00] have to spend a lot of money. And the only way, unfortunately, that I can afford this now is by having that second ad.
with that revenue. We'll have some amazing people working on the website. and that's really, those are the two reasons. if I want the website to grow, I got to invest and because one ad is not enough, I had to put a second one, but that's the only way that's the only way I monetize this for now.
people have asked for a paid membership. to be able to access certain features. I, really want to keep the website as free as I can, for as long as I can. of course, there's some benefits to developing very niche features for, example, trivia hosts, where you have, Complete access to the database.
You can modify a local instance of it to suit your purposes but ad revenue is the only one for now. we're going to open a Shopify page at some point, but as I mentioned, people have been asking for these sort of curated packages, but it's something I have to sit down and create [00:35:00] and it takes time as to create.
Good content. I wouldn't be surprised if it's going to take me like at least a few days to put together a single package that I can sell that I'm happy with.
Nate: In 2021, I think you mentioned the site was doing about 1200 a month. roughly has that kind of gone up with two ads since then?
Slavi: yeah, with the second app and I've tried a number of different platforms. now we're doing about 3, 500 a month. Roughly, obviously there's some spikes during the holidays, but 3, 500 is the average, monthly revenue now.
Nate: Yeah. And fortunately or unfortunately, like it's election season and that's, also has a pretty dramatic punch in those numbers too.
Slavi: Yep.
Joseph: You keep mentioning two ads, but there's actually three. Cause as you scroll, you've got, a dynamic ad in there. That will look like it's a question and you've coded it well. I think you've coded it well anyway, because it's [00:36:00] responsive to the page with where is it drawing from and so forth?
So that's not the smash and grab ad play, right? That's integrated to the experience,
Slavi: right? I forgot about that one. Thank you for correcting me. This is. It's something that we, yeah, we put in, I think in 2021, maybe 2022, it was, it's a simple AdSense, makes honestly, two or 3 a day, cause a lot of people just go through the first like couple of screens and they think on the third or the fourth one, you see it.
Yeah, it's, I forgot about that. I apologize. I
Joseph: no, it's okay. You don't have to apologize. I was like, maybe he doesn't call that an
Slavi: No, it's, hundred percent that this is, no, no.
Joseph: how about add, placement to like language, user language, or geographic position? Do you see some variation in revenue from different geographic areas? Have you thought about translating and running separate language pages [00:37:00] or anything like that? I haven't been advertised to from air Canada in a while, but I'm also getting very, hyper local. placements while I'm on the page. So this is why I'm interested in wait a second. It's super local and absolutely not.
Slavi: yes, the ad platform that I'm using now, PubLift, they use a mix of localized geographically localized, yeah. ads and the AdSense one that fills the gaps. Sometimes that's Not, it's local for some markets, but not for all.
So it will be a lot less, It depends who fills the ad space first, but if it comes through Publift, it would be more localized than AdSense, for privacy reasons, I just went back to the most basic AdSense, Publift has its own, Privacy policy. That's very well done. [00:38:00] my brother in law who is, now living in Switzerland, he was sending me, pictures of what it looks like on his screen.
Cause he, he has all the European, cookie warnings and like different ads is technically. Localized. So if you are in Indonesia or Malaysia, those are some of the probably 10 users, but they will see, their own local ads. the revenue from non US, non Canadian, non English speaking countries is a lot less, than English speaking countries.
But it's, it is localized in terms of ads, in terms of content it is on the list. And now with the AI, I feel like that's a lot easier feature to integrate than it was, five years ago where you could get there with some automation. But I think with AI is, we've tested this before with just certain questions.
It is so much simpler now. [00:39:00] I think. We ran an experiment with the developer recently, so if you put JI to the play and it translates the entire database, it's 10 to $20 per translation for the entire database. in a few days you can have this translated in, dozens of languages for a couple hundred bucks.
It is just wild. yeah. ,
Joseph: let's go .
Slavi: So at some point in the future, I can't tell you when, but this is. an easily implementable feature. and it makes sense. Once you have a membership area, you can change your language preferences. and you have access to this additional sort of a translated database.
it'd be a lot faster than having to translate this in real time. so it is a feature in the list.
Joseph: I have a one year long streak that I'm building on in Duolingo and, I don't think I'd take 20 for my time spent trying to learn a language. So yeah, [00:40:00] it's really fascinating.
These new variables will do to the process, right? Cause you can think about if this is in Spanish, if it's in Portuguese, if it's in French, if it's in, And maybe some of those questions end up being localized to whatever the top kind of trivia is in those countries. And suddenly you've got a platform that's multiple speakers.
Slavi: Yes, exactly. And That's key because a number of years ago when we tried to use the Google features to translate. It's more of a literal translation versus contextual. and contextual translation is just, man, I don't have the words to describe this. It's like mind blowing.
Nate: So looking back, there's a lot of, Game creators who listen to this. And if you had any, anything, that you would do differently, what would you tell the aspiring game creator, if they were building today,
Slavi: I would say you feel very strongly about a certain project that you have, fun little game, just go for it, invest your time and resources, take a few weeks off.
If you're. Able to, and [00:41:00] just be hyper focused on that delivery for until it gets out. Don't worry about little pickups. those can be worked out later, but if you feel very strongly about an idea that you have, do it and just get it out there. Just release it. I've done this many 20 or 30 different sites like this.
Obviously there's going to be a lot of failures. Don't be afraid of failure. Is probably the second thing I can tell you, out of all the ideas that you have, something is going to work out very well.
Nate: You've been living that, that lesson, dedicating an hour a week still, or a day still into this game, even today.
So really cool that you're, walking the walk there.
Joseph: And that across years and years of time here, scrolly wheel phones. I remember my first blackberry loads and loads of traffic to like, not a lot to, Oh, here comes the Pando. Boom. It takes off again.
It's like [00:42:00] really fascinating. To see the story arc on this one across 20 years.
Slavi: Yeah, it's been an adventure, but it's
Joseph: so fun.
Nate: if people want to find you online, where would you direct them?
Slavi: RandomTributeGenerator. com. That's, it. I've gotten rid of everything else. I've gotten rid of the mobile apps.
I don't, Follow the Facebook page anymore. I don't deal with X, random trivia generator.
Joseph: The blog might be gone someday. And then I got this last question. Last question. Is it really random?
Slavi: so computers don't do random. They do procedural.
We have, you have no idea how much time a very smart developer has spent creating as random of an experience as computerly possible. Computers go line by line. They don't do random.
Joseph: Okay. I was just checking. Maybe I thought you've had found the [00:43:00] real value here is the actual random generator.
Slavi: If it's not going to be me, but some smart developer, if they can figure out a random function, that's truly random department of defense, like governments are going to eat this up. This is Billions of dollars. But no, computers don't do that.
Joseph: Not yet. Not yet.
Nate: Love it. this has been great. Thanks so much for being here, Slavi.
Slavi: Happy to be here. Thanks for having me, guys. It was, it was a fun hour, and I wish it could be, can go on forever.
Joseph: Yeah, it was a pleasure. And then I have this last question, because I'm staring at it.
Which U. S. state has the least rainfall?
Slavi: Oh, is it Arizona? Ah, I
Joseph: see it! I think it's three electoral votes. Nevada. Back to the game. Sorry
Slavi: guys. I'm in Canada. I'm actually I'm not,
Joseph: in Canada. Yeah, whatever. You guys, you crazy people down there. actually
Slavi: I live in, I moved from Toronto.
I live in [00:44:00] Windsor now. I'm like. Less than a kilometer away from Detroit, like right over there.
Joseph: Oh, you're really, close. when I'm in Europe, I actually tell everybody I'm from Canada because
Slavi: I might
Joseph: as well be.
Slavi: No, I love the states. funny enough, Texas is one of my favorite states. They get dumped on, but man, I love Texas.
It's great. Yeah,
Nate: it's it's not bad.
Joseph: Barbecue. Wind down on the southwestern portion Unbelievable scenery to the west.
Slavi: It's very underrated at least from a canadian perspective
Joseph: All right. Thanks for being here guys.
Slavi: Okay. You have a great day. See
Joseph: you
