First of all.. congrats! It's always exciting to see something you've created grow and start to gain traction.
Second of all, please take all of the advice that you see here with a grain of salt. I think most of the ideas that people have shared are really good things to keep in mind for consumer-oriented SaaS platforms in general, however, IMHO the university / college student listings market is a completely different beast.
Speaking as someone who co-founded the largest student classifieds system (at our peak 4-5 years ago we had over a million students using our system at over 400 universities nationwide), I can tell you that a lot of the business modeling that people do for consumer software service businesses are not necessarily compatible with the market that you are in.
I couldn't help but notice from your site that you're in San Diego -- I'm actually in SD as well, and if you're up to chatting more, I'd be more than happy to meet up. From my HN profile you can link to my website -- the very bottom of the "With Whom" section talks about the startup I helped to co-found, and the "Where" section provides contact information if you want to get in touch with me further.
Second of all, please take all of the advice that you see here with a grain of salt. I think most of the ideas that people have shared are really good things to keep in mind for consumer-oriented SaaS platforms in general, however, IMHO the university / college student listings market is a completely different beast.
Speaking as someone who co-founded the largest student classifieds system (at our peak 4-5 years ago we had over a million students using our system at over 400 universities nationwide), I can tell you that a lot of the business modeling that people do for consumer software service businesses are not necessarily compatible with the market that you are in.
I couldn't help but notice from your site that you're in San Diego -- I'm actually in SD as well, and if you're up to chatting more, I'd be more than happy to meet up. From my HN profile you can link to my website -- the very bottom of the "With Whom" section talks about the startup I helped to co-found, and the "Where" section provides contact information if you want to get in touch with me further.
Best of luck!