I built ytalki.com where you can find foreign books according to your language level

ytalki’s feed with english books

🤔 How it works

1. People set the language level from A1 to C2 for the books they read.
2. Other people can choose foreign books based on the ratings from A1 to C2 given by other users.

For example, for the book “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”, 32 users consider that it is most suitable for reading in English if you have a B1 Intermediate level.

“Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” with CEFR levels of English

🤔 The problem

I like learning foreign languages and I spend a lot of time looking for foreign books for the intermediate level of the language.

If I started reading a book with a level above mine, it becomes tiring, if below, it becomes boring. Reading a book in your native language, and immediately taking it to read in a foreign one, is mega boring.

👨‍💻 Implementation

Here, I will provide a brief overview of the technology stack I used in the project.

• NextJS: helped me to build server-side rendering and static web applications using React for better SEO. (I had a headache when I was optimizing my previous pet project with pure ReactJs)
• NodeJS, MongoDB, Express: cause primary I’m a mobile dev and several years ago I chose this stack for building REST API, and so far it solves my task and I’m happy with it
• Google Book Api: this is the main source of all books
• Heroku: is a hosting service that allowed me to deploy my project and run it 24/7. It’s automated and very easy to use and I don’t need to waste a lot of time on deploy

🥳 Release

I think Reddit is one of the best free promotion platform.

In my case I published a post on the r/languagelearning channel that I made ytalki.com and It can help you learn foreign languages. I got my first users and feedbacks what’s to do next. Users liked my product and they started posting in other channels. Someone recommended me to post on the r/InternetIsBeautiful channel, it got me more traffic and reviews.

After publishing several posts on reddit, a Brazilian journalist from Nexo Jornal who liked my product reached me out and took an interview about ytalki and me. It really motivated me to continue!

ytalki’s google analytics

💰 Monetization

I implemented several monetization channels:

• BuyMeaCoffee — a donation service, anyone can click on the yellow button and buy me coffee (donate)
• Internal advertising by subscription via Gumroad— you can place banners, text. Embedded in code, manually.
• Google Adsense — connected this type of advertising, it is shown in secluded places so as not to annoy users.
• Amazon affiliate — each book has a link to amazon, amazon pays a commission for purchases of people who came through links from the site.

💭 Closing Thoughts

I will continue to create communities of people who love learning foreign languages by implementing new features on ytalki

After all, I hope my project inspired you and found it useful! I would love to hear your thoughts about ytalki in the comments and how it can be improved!