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Don't Be A Free User

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Re: Don't Be A Free User

#51

Post by tnorthcutt »

todd3834 wrote: post #45

Based on their signup help page ( https://pinboard.in/help/fee/ ) the price is "number of users * $0.001". Now there is no telling when they started with that pricing but assuming it was from the beginning they have made around $50k. Since it was created 3 years ago that is an average of around $17k/year. I realize the archival accounts are $25/year and I have no way of knowing how many they have but assuming it doub…

I think he started off with the pricing at something greater than the multiplier... $4 comes to mind.

Re: Don't Be A Free User

#52

Post by flixic »

tnorthcutt wrote: post #51
todd3834 wrote: post #45

Based on their signup help page ( https://pinboard.in/help/fee/ ) the price is "number of users * $0.001". Now there is no telling when they started with that pricing but assuming it was from the beginning they have made around $50k. Since it was created 3 years ago that is an average of around $17k/year. I realize the archival accounts are $25/year and I have no way of knowing how many they have but assuming it doub…

I think he started off with the pricing at something greater than the multiplier... $4 comes to mind.

No, it was like that for as long as I can remember. I signed up for $0.17.

Re: Don't Be A Free User

#53

Post by maximusprime »

hassing wrote: post #49
maximusprime wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The terminology is not good. "Free website" often means "hugely profitable website"

That really depends on how far you stretch the term "often". I think the number of unprofitable free websites vastly outnumber the "hugely profitable free websites".

Apologies yes you're right.

Often in terms of websites that exist on the internet.

Rarely in terms of ones that are mentioned on hackernews.

Re: Don't Be A Free User

#54

Post by viscanti »

gkoberger wrote: post #16

This article operates under the very incorrect assumption that paid services never shut down and free services are never carried on by their purchasers. See Flickr or YouTube or PayPal or Skype or Picnik or Grand Central or Picasa or Siri or mySpace or FriendFeed or FeedBurner or even pinboard's biggest competitor Delicious for examples of the latter. As for the former, there's an unlimited number of examples (for a…

The article seems to be in response to the recent Gowalla acquisition. If Gowalla had been successful and still used, it may have continued on. Facebook isn't shutting it down because it was a free service. They're shutting it down because it's unpopular and unprofitable. To use the Gowalla acquisition as evidence that companies acquire other companies just to shut them down is silly. All it shows is that a company can be acquired even if they fail.

Re: Don't Be A Free User

#56

Post by _delirium »

morisy wrote: post #3

Seeing Pinboard's success was really helpful in getting over the sick feeling of charging a sea of free, and I think we're finally seeing a non-trivial amount of web users understand that if you're not the customer, you're the product (after they've been burned a time or twelve). Great post, and glad to see a lot of other Hacker Newser following suit.

Unfortunately, there's no way to guarantee that you're not the product without access to financials and inside thinking, even if you're paying. There are plenty of paid services where you're the product, because the people buying your usage data or access to you are paying so much more than you that your revenue is negligible.

With many magazines, the only reason they even bother to charge is to prove to advertisers that you're a "serious" reader: they don't care about your subscription fee, but about what it says about your value as a product. This has even led to a weird cat-and-mouse game where magazines try to give away free promotional subscriptions while pretending they charged you, and advertisers respond by demanding that subscription numbers be audited by third parties so magazines have to prove that you "really" paid (and this produces complex legalistic rules about things like whether paying with frequent-flyer miles counts as paying). That's because they really want the "paid subscriber" bit to sell to their advertisers, but don't particularly care about your measly $20.

Re: Don't Be A Free User

#57

Post by icebraining »

I prefer an alternative: use a free service, but assume it'll close next week; the key is to make them as close to a commodity as possible.

All services eventually close, free and paid, but as long as you control your data, you can move when it happens. Knowing how to script something up to push the data to the new service is important too.

For example, I use Google Apps for my email. I'm not worry that it'll be closed tomorrow, but for all I know, some glitch might kill my account and Google's support isn't. So I got my own domain, I use an email client and keep very regular backups on everything. If it closed, my only loss would be the couple of hours while the MX records update.

Re: Don't Be A Free User

#58

Post by DanielBMarkham »

This article brings up a good point: if you just found some super-cool free web application that you love? Odds are the only thing you're doing when you use it and recommend it to your friends is creating a nice resume for some large company to do a "talent acquisition" Large companies love this -- they find a couple of guys who are able to identify and engage audiences and then they kill their product and stick them on some other product that the company wants pumped. Web apps are about eyeballs, right? Start-ups are about teams, right? Well what's the logical conclusion then? Startups that gain eyeballs with income-free business models only have themselves -- the team -- to sell. And from some of these sales, it looks like there's serious money in "pump and dump" entrepreneurialism.

This also suggests that there is a pecking order. At the bottom we have start-ups that don't have traction. Then we have start-ups with traction but no income. Then start-ups who can mostly break even. Finally start-ups that have momentum (extra super bonus points for big momentum in a huge market)

The more I look at this model, the better bootstrapping looks.

Re: Don't Be A Free User

#59

Post by DannoHung »

bengl3rt wrote: post #37
cbs wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps thats a sign the webapp-for-things-that-don't-need-to-be-webapps model has flaws. Nahhh. That can't be it.

Maybe nothing should be web apps... maybe the pipe is for content and services, and native code is for layout and interaction...

So are you willing to have native code pushed to you with no control over it? Because that's the major logistical advantage of webapps that has Enterprises trying to use them.

Maybe when NaCL gets better...

Re: Don't Be A Free User

#60

Post by eridius »

viscanti wrote: post #54
gkoberger wrote: post #16

This article operates under the very incorrect assumption that paid services never shut down and free services are never carried on by their purchasers. See Flickr or YouTube or PayPal or Skype or Picnik or Grand Central or Picasa or Siri or mySpace or FriendFeed or FeedBurner or even pinboard's biggest competitor Delicious for examples of the latter. As for the former, there's an unlimited number of examples (for a…

The article seems to be in response to the recent Gowalla acquisition. If Gowalla had been successful and still used, it may have continued on. Facebook isn't shutting it down because it was a free service. They're shutting it down because it's unpopular and unprofitable. To use the Gowalla acquisition as evidence that companies acquire other companies just to shut them down is silly. All it shows is that a company c…

It's unprofitable, at least in part, because it wasn't a paid service. If it was a profitable service then it's far more likely it would have been kept alive when bought out (or maybe not bought out at all).
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