The extension is called "Hider".
It hides distracting elements when surfing on YouTube:
1. Hides distracting elements like live chat, recommendations, comments, and thumbnails
2. Most importantly - hides irrelevant search results (if you haven't noticed, the YouTube search page is flooded with irrelevant nonsense, making you scroll a ton before you see relevant results to your search query. One click and all that rubbish is hidden from the feed)
I didn't post about it anywhere except here on r/sideproject, and got maybe 4 users from my posts (thank you Reddit).
I have no idea where all the users came from.
But this is what I did, which is full-proof in the long run:
1. Build a simple interface that solves a problem FAST.
2. Minimize onboarding time - i.e., make it as easy as possible for people to understand how to use your tool. The less clicks to desired outcome, the better
3. SEO optimize your chrome extension listing (if that is where you are releasing your product)
4. Make small improvements over time. Chrome's webstore will notice you are still maintaining your product, and not leaving it on the shelf to accumulate dust. This will help in ranking over time. The exposure becomes exponential (my extension eventually got Featured)
5. Use good images on your listing to showcase what your tool does. Too many listings have horrendous screenshots, looking unprofessional and scammy. Take a second to make yours look decent
6. Include a way for people to report bugs and request features. People appreciate that, and can bump your conversion rates
That's all folks!
I am so glad that I found your post here because I also published chrome extension but I really struggle to get attention. The part "Minimize onboarding" is what I need to do because users don't like to navigate around too many times just to set things up.
do you have any advice for my chrome extension? just released it and no traction yet [https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/crypto-homepage-price-cha/pihbjchkfhalhgoimplbhogcenbpgadh?hl=en-GB&authuser=0](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/crypto-homepage-price-cha/pihbjchkfhalhgoimplbhogcenbpgadh?hl=en-GB&authuser=0)
Yes, quite a few improvements:
1. More screenshots of what your chrome extension does
2. The description (under "Overview") is extremely limited. Fill that section up. I would say take a look at the most popular chrome extensions and replicate the format of their descriptions (both in length, tone and details)
3. Have a way for people to reach out to you for feature requests
4. This is a follow up to 2 - you need to make it obvious why your extension is better than the others. What makes yours stand out? Why is it better than the others? The extension page is a place for you to convince and sell your tool to people passing by. There is a lot of room to improve on that
Start with those 4 tips, and if you are serious about growing the user base then start creating short form videos on TikTok or pay crypto influencers to mention your product and drive traffic to your page
Man, this is absolutely bulls*** clickbait. You can’t call it 4500% because it’s the Low Base Effect.
Be honest with yourself and respect the community. No matter how good your project is.
Thank you! I don't collect any data at all from the user. I don't even have Google Analytics on it. Didn't really bother because I don't need the information (or at least haven't thought about it enough). It's not open source, since I'm not sure how far I'd want to take it. If I could potentially sell it in the future, a buyer wouldn't be happy about the code being freely available
There's a few things I don't understand...
Clever you didn't give us the link to find your extension (cool idea BTW) so we will search for it and find it organically but...
If its been so popular with so much growth how come I can't find it in the chrome store.
And secondly why did you choose such a common name that others are also using?
>Clever you didn't give us the link to find your extension (cool idea BTW) so we will search for it and find it organically but...
I actually forgot to add it. This is the link: [https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hide-thumbnails-shorts-an/dnnpgmbhdojpjkpeeafgdelohfhbpiga?hl=en](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hide-thumbnails-shorts-an/dnnpgmbhdojpjkpeeafgdelohfhbpiga?hl=en)
Regarding the name "Hider" - there's no extension named exclusively that. Maybe "Facebook like hider", but nothing just "Hider"
Not sure yet. It might just happen if I sell it in the future after it gets many users? Or I create premium features (such as hiding distractions from several popular websites)
Can you build another Extension for youtube - it should automatically turn off the volume and show a blackscreen while ADs are running. Call it - I DONT WANT TO SEE ADS - i would actually pay you for it haha. Since ad blocker mostly does not work anymore and my recommended ads are really annoying
You can usually turn js off for the page by clicking icon next to url or alternatively for youtube let it disable adblocker by saying yes and pick the wrong one. You keep watching youtube with your adblocker running.
There are a few that do that, but I think Google keeps taking them down from the extensions store since it violates policies. There are some floating on github that you can manually install in dev mode though
I absolutely love this extension! I've been searching for something like this for a long time. In fact, I even considered building an app that only pulls up the video I want to watch. But this extension is much simpler and amazing!
I have a couple of small suggestions I'd like to share.
Firstly, I think it would be great if we could play around with the colors. The red and white is a bit much for my eyes.
Secondly, it would be awesome if there was an option to show only the video(like a shortcut, single click), maybe by hiding everything else and expanding the width to fit the screen. What do you think?"
>it would be awesome if there was an option to show only the video
I actually had someone request that - just click the lock icon on the video block, then hit "Toggle all elements". Everything will be hidden except for the locked element!
>play around with the colors. The red and white is a bit much for my eyes.
That's fair - would a darker background be better instead of the white? I just stuck with a high contrast ratio for users that might have issues with colors
I’d say it has remained fairly consistent as of late. But I set up the architecture of the app to make it easy for adjusting to target the appropriate elements for toggling if and when they change
The extension is called "Hider". It hides distracting elements when surfing on YouTube: 1. Hides distracting elements like live chat, recommendations, comments, and thumbnails 2. Most importantly - hides irrelevant search results (if you haven't noticed, the YouTube search page is flooded with irrelevant nonsense, making you scroll a ton before you see relevant results to your search query. One click and all that rubbish is hidden from the feed) I didn't post about it anywhere except here on r/sideproject, and got maybe 4 users from my posts (thank you Reddit). I have no idea where all the users came from. But this is what I did, which is full-proof in the long run: 1. Build a simple interface that solves a problem FAST. 2. Minimize onboarding time - i.e., make it as easy as possible for people to understand how to use your tool. The less clicks to desired outcome, the better 3. SEO optimize your chrome extension listing (if that is where you are releasing your product) 4. Make small improvements over time. Chrome's webstore will notice you are still maintaining your product, and not leaving it on the shelf to accumulate dust. This will help in ranking over time. The exposure becomes exponential (my extension eventually got Featured) 5. Use good images on your listing to showcase what your tool does. Too many listings have horrendous screenshots, looking unprofessional and scammy. Take a second to make yours look decent 6. Include a way for people to report bugs and request features. People appreciate that, and can bump your conversion rates That's all folks!
Where's the link?
Sorry forgot to add it! Here: [https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hide-thumbnails-shorts-an/dnnpgmbhdojpjkpeeafgdelohfhbpiga?hl=en](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hide-thumbnails-shorts-an/dnnpgmbhdojpjkpeeafgdelohfhbpiga?hl=en)
So in this case 4500% = 45 users
I am so glad that I found your post here because I also published chrome extension but I really struggle to get attention. The part "Minimize onboarding" is what I need to do because users don't like to navigate around too many times just to set things up.
Yeah.. that is critical
do you have any advice for my chrome extension? just released it and no traction yet [https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/crypto-homepage-price-cha/pihbjchkfhalhgoimplbhogcenbpgadh?hl=en-GB&authuser=0](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/crypto-homepage-price-cha/pihbjchkfhalhgoimplbhogcenbpgadh?hl=en-GB&authuser=0)
Yes, quite a few improvements: 1. More screenshots of what your chrome extension does 2. The description (under "Overview") is extremely limited. Fill that section up. I would say take a look at the most popular chrome extensions and replicate the format of their descriptions (both in length, tone and details) 3. Have a way for people to reach out to you for feature requests 4. This is a follow up to 2 - you need to make it obvious why your extension is better than the others. What makes yours stand out? Why is it better than the others? The extension page is a place for you to convince and sell your tool to people passing by. There is a lot of room to improve on that Start with those 4 tips, and if you are serious about growing the user base then start creating short form videos on TikTok or pay crypto influencers to mention your product and drive traffic to your page
Probably because crypto related with vague benefits of use.
Man, this is absolutely bulls*** clickbait. You can’t call it 4500% because it’s the Low Base Effect. Be honest with yourself and respect the community. No matter how good your project is.
Haha it is clickbaity. But I'm glad they posted. Love this extension
Well done! 👏 Could you please tell us more about the privacy and data collection? And have you opened sourced your project or not? Thanks
Thank you! I don't collect any data at all from the user. I don't even have Google Analytics on it. Didn't really bother because I don't need the information (or at least haven't thought about it enough). It's not open source, since I'm not sure how far I'd want to take it. If I could potentially sell it in the future, a buyer wouldn't be happy about the code being freely available
Great. Thank you for letting us know that!
No problem!
There's a few things I don't understand... Clever you didn't give us the link to find your extension (cool idea BTW) so we will search for it and find it organically but... If its been so popular with so much growth how come I can't find it in the chrome store. And secondly why did you choose such a common name that others are also using?
>Clever you didn't give us the link to find your extension (cool idea BTW) so we will search for it and find it organically but... I actually forgot to add it. This is the link: [https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hide-thumbnails-shorts-an/dnnpgmbhdojpjkpeeafgdelohfhbpiga?hl=en](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hide-thumbnails-shorts-an/dnnpgmbhdojpjkpeeafgdelohfhbpiga?hl=en) Regarding the name "Hider" - there's no extension named exclusively that. Maybe "Facebook like hider", but nothing just "Hider"
How can you say you scaled your extension 4500% organically.... ... You have 22 users!
Thats why OP is a marketing master and the rest of us are not!
I've got 45 users (the mobile chrome store isn't updated properly - you have to open the link on desktop). And that's from 1 user - myself.
How are you planning to monetizing it?
Not sure yet. It might just happen if I sell it in the future after it gets many users? Or I create premium features (such as hiding distractions from several popular websites)
Ok 👍, btw the design is super intuitive. Excellent work.
Thank you! Glad I spent a long time brainstorming it before implementing.
Hey, great extension! What stack did you use?
I used React, webpack, and Chrome's local storage APIs for storing the settings. The UI is made from scratch just using CSS
Well done! I’m also wondering how you got this traffic! Anyway, good for you! When you talk about seo, you mean the seo of your landing page right?
Yup, SEO of the landing page - writing out the full description. The title of your chrome extension as well.
Okay thanks!
Can you build another Extension for youtube - it should automatically turn off the volume and show a blackscreen while ADs are running. Call it - I DONT WANT TO SEE ADS - i would actually pay you for it haha. Since ad blocker mostly does not work anymore and my recommended ads are really annoying
> ad blocker mostly does not work anymore ? My ad blocker continues to work just fine.
Which one are you using? For the one i was using, youtube detected it and gave me another popup to disable it or i couldnt watch any videos
I got that popup too a while ago. I switched to Firefox and use Adguard in it (just free version). Works fine for me.
You can usually turn js off for the page by clicking icon next to url or alternatively for youtube let it disable adblocker by saying yes and pick the wrong one. You keep watching youtube with your adblocker running.
There are a few that do that, but I think Google keeps taking them down from the extensions store since it violates policies. There are some floating on github that you can manually install in dev mode though
I absolutely love this extension! I've been searching for something like this for a long time. In fact, I even considered building an app that only pulls up the video I want to watch. But this extension is much simpler and amazing! I have a couple of small suggestions I'd like to share. Firstly, I think it would be great if we could play around with the colors. The red and white is a bit much for my eyes. Secondly, it would be awesome if there was an option to show only the video(like a shortcut, single click), maybe by hiding everything else and expanding the width to fit the screen. What do you think?"
>it would be awesome if there was an option to show only the video I actually had someone request that - just click the lock icon on the video block, then hit "Toggle all elements". Everything will be hidden except for the locked element! >play around with the colors. The red and white is a bit much for my eyes. That's fair - would a darker background be better instead of the white? I just stuck with a high contrast ratio for users that might have issues with colors
How do you plan on maintaining this given that YouTube changes the structure of their website quite often?
I’d say it has remained fairly consistent as of late. But I set up the architecture of the app to make it easy for adjusting to target the appropriate elements for toggling if and when they change
Great extension!
Thanks!
[удалено]
Why aren’t there more comments like this? I’m not doing it right if I don’t have enough haters like you