Build an aggregator — the best content in your category, in one place.
Aggregators win by reducing the cost of discovery. Instead of checking 10 sources, users check one. Hacker News, Product Hunt, and Reddit are aggregators. A niche aggregator for a specific domain owns the discovery for that domain.
Founder who wants to build a content or product aggregator for a specific category — curating the best from across the web into a single discoverable destination
Aggregators are powerful because they solve a real user problem: there's too much content and too little time to find the good stuff.
The engineering challenge in aggregators is ranking. What determines the order in which items appear? Time-based (newest first) is simple but optimizes for recency not quality. Upvote/decay algorithms (Hacker News, Reddit) balance quality and freshness.
Aggregator types:
- Link aggregators (Hacker News, Reddit): Users submit links, community votes
- Product aggregators (Product Hunt): Daily product launches with voting
- Content aggregators (Feedly): RSS/API-pulled content from selected sources
- Deal aggregators (Slickdeals): Price tracking and deal submission
Aggregator monetization:
- Sponsored placement
- Featured submissions
- Premium membership for ad-free experience
- Affiliate commissions on product links
Aggregator platform deployed — submission system, curation queue, ranking algorithm, and discovery interface
Submission system
user or operator content submission
Curation queue
admin approval before publishing
Ranking algorithm
configurable decay algorithm
Voting system
upvote with authentication
Discovery interface
browse by category, search, filter by date
RSS/API ingestion
automated content pull from external sources
One honest number to start.
Fixed-scope, fixed-price. The number below is the starting point — final scope is built from your brief.
Aggregator platform deployed — submission system, curation queue, ranking algorithm, and discovery interface
Three steps, every time.
The same repeatable engagement on every project. No surprises, no mystery, no billable ambiguity.
Brief & discovery.
We send you questions, then get on a call. Output: a written scope with every step, feature, and integration listed.
Build & ship.
Fixed schedule, weekly reviews. No scope creep unless you change the scope — and if you do, we reprice it transparently.
Warranty & retainer.
30-day warranty on every launch. Most clients stay on a monthly retainer for ongoing features and maintenance.
Why Fixed-Price Matters Here
Aggregator platforms have defined submission, ranking, and discovery patterns. Fixed-price from the spec.
Related engagements.
Questions, answered.
Configurable. Wilson score for binary upvote (correct for small vote counts). Hacker News-style time decay (score / (time since submission)^gravity). Reddit-style upvote/downvote ratio. Algorithm choice is a spec decision.
Yes. RSS/Atom ingestion with configurable source list. Content is queued for curation review before publishing.
Tell Ryel about your project.
Describe what you’re building and what outcome you need. You’ll have a written, fixed-price scope within the week.