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Ask HN: Monetizing a Supplements Dataset
1 points by lilouartz 13 hours ago | 1 comments

A few years back, I got obsessed with the idea of analyzing the entire supplement market. The first couple of experiments didn't go far, but as models got better, I was able to:

* Extract detail breakdown of every ingredient in every commercially sold supplement. I believe that today my dataset is the only data that could accurately answer questions like: which supplements contain the most X, which supplements would be the cheapest when seeking a specific ingredient, etc.

* Extract signals from every research paper about supplements about the effects of specific supplements in relation to different conditions (effect type [neutral, positive, negative], effect size [small, moderate, great])

I was kinda hoping that over time, the data that I've gathered will attract people who are into nutrition, researchers, value buyers, etc., but I am learning the hard way that the supplement space is hyper competitive [other websites in the nutrition space will not link to my project, but rather extract insights and use as their own] and that Google actively panalyzes anything that's even remotely related to YMYL (Your Money Your Life) category. So I cannot rely people discovering my website through search (Bing is driving steady traffic). I thought of even changing the domain name to start fresh, but that feels like a short-term fix that will just get me back to where I started a few months later.

So I am left wondering what are my options to monetize this project. Would appreciate anyone's advice.

lilouartz 12 hours ago | parent [-]

Someone on Reddit suggested to make this data available via API and license it. This is genuinely an angle I didn't even consider.