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Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

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Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#71

Post by ttoinou »

mxschumacher wrote: post #66
ttoinou wrote: post #40

Upwork (~$1000/month): Freelancers. I especially use Upwork because I don't have to think about all the billing stuff and time tracking, etc. The same for me, and they take a cut both sides (3% or 50 USD / month + 3% fees USD/EUR on my side and 5 to 10% on the freelancer side). I was wondering if there was an alternative to upwork for those who only need it for its automatic billing system + time tracking + weekly su…

given high hourly rates for engineers - what does $1000 buy you?

for 80 USD/hour, more than 12 hours of work :) ?

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#72

Post by juped »

swalsh wrote: post #47
danieljacksonno wrote: post #45

In the end I subscribed to so many digital services that I made a tool for collecting email receipts for bookkeeping... If you think it's worth one more subscription to cut down the work bookkeeping for all the other subscriptions, then check out receiptrunner.com

There's something to this. I recently changed my credit card number due to some fraud activity. Since the change there has been a number of services I no longer use, but that I had completely forgot about popping up asking me to update my info.

If you use American Express, they actually update things for you, or continue accepting the old number for specific recurring billings where they don't have the system in place to update the number.

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#73

Post by kotojo »

crazygringo wrote: post #18

Side note, but why on earth is the body text set to 35 px?! I need to zoom my browser down to 50% (a quarter of the pixel area) just to make it readable. This trend of gargantuan body text in blogs has been going on for a while, but this is the worst I've ever seen. When the size of each letter is something like six times the area of letters in my computer's menu bar, something is seriously wrong. Is it unreasonable…

I personally love this trend. It's one of the first sites I've been on in a while that I didn't have to bump up everything to a readable size.

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#75

Post by juped »

crazygringo wrote: post #18

Side note, but why on earth is the body text set to 35 px?! I need to zoom my browser down to 50% (a quarter of the pixel area) just to make it readable. This trend of gargantuan body text in blogs has been going on for a while, but this is the worst I've ever seen. When the size of each letter is something like six times the area of letters in my computer's menu bar, something is seriously wrong. Is it unreasonable…

An overreaction to the earlier, and still more common, trend of setting body text too small? (take the very website you're on, for example)

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#76

Post by pembrook »

inviromentalist wrote: post #30

My biggest concern is being dependent on these systems, the systems changing, and it breaking the process. I have the mentality of self hosting and diy, cheap, better understanding, and imo more reliable. Most these services have a learning curve anyway. Are the services really worth it?

The mentality of DIY and self hosting is the default for most hackers, and in my opinion its the number 1 thing holding back most engineers who build businesses.

I have a buddy who’s an amazing engineer, he takes pride in doing everything himself and spent years building a platform from the ground up. Elegant, fully automated, built in his favorite languages and frameworks. 3 years in it makes 50k a year.

I have another buddy who is non-technical, 2 years ago he built an ugly, janky platform off Wordpress and some plugins in a month. He does nothing himself, outsources everything. His business does $4mil a year.

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#77

Post by [deleted] »

inviromentalist wrote: post #30

My biggest concern is being dependent on these systems, the systems changing, and it breaking the process. I have the mentality of self hosting and diy, cheap, better understanding, and imo more reliable. Most these services have a learning curve anyway. Are the services really worth it?

[deleted]

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#78

Post by crazygringo »

kotojo wrote: post #73
crazygringo wrote: post #18

Side note, but why on earth is the body text set to 35 px?! I need to zoom my browser down to 50% (a quarter of the pixel area) just to make it readable. This trend of gargantuan body text in blogs has been going on for a while, but this is the worst I've ever seen. When the size of each letter is something like six times the area of letters in my computer's menu bar, something is seriously wrong. Is it unreasonable…

I personally love this trend. It's one of the first sites I've been on in a while that I didn't have to bump up everything to a readable size.

Serious question: why don't you increase the size of text on your OS as a whole? Or browser default zoom at a minimum? If you're having to bump up the size individually on most sites, it seems like the problem is that your computer is misconfigured, no?

Regardless, the point is that it's important for body text sizes to be roughly consistent across sites, so that you can find the zoom level that's right for you and stick with it, rather than have to adjust it for each new site.

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#79

Post by strogonoff »

I'm curious whether Upwork actually makes $1000 per month in fees from author's business. That'd be quite impressive, meaning upwards from $10k per month on contractor-related expenses (assuming Upwork takes at least 10%).

Alternatively, this could mean that actual contractor bills add up to about $1000 per month total, including Upwork fees.

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#80

Post by webmobdev »

pembrook wrote: post #76
inviromentalist wrote: post #30

My biggest concern is being dependent on these systems, the systems changing, and it breaking the process. I have the mentality of self hosting and diy, cheap, better understanding, and imo more reliable. Most these services have a learning curve anyway. Are the services really worth it?

The mentality of DIY and self hosting is the default for most hackers, and in my opinion its the number 1 thing holding back most engineers who build businesses. I have a buddy who’s an amazing engineer, he takes pride in doing everything himself and spent years building a platform from the ground up. Elegant, fully automated, built in his favorite languages and frameworks. 3 years in it makes 50k a year. I have anot…

One is an engineer, the other is a businessman (salesman and fund raiser).
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