131–140 of 177 posts
Put a Flattr button on your free cool website. ( https://flattr.com/ ) Problem solved.
Ok, maybe I should have worded it: Another alternative in between paysite and freesite would be to give the user the opportunity to pay whatever they want. With Flattr or Kachingle.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> No one is ignoring advertising revenue, harvesting millions of users in order to bring in said advertising revenue is the problem. Why is it a problem? So they show me a few adverts... big whoop. I can just ignore them. The issue is, the vast majority of people will never pay for access to online websites/apps (Me included). If you restrict yourself to the business model "charge users", then you've just got rid of…
"I can just ignore them." Only if you block them. Advertising is not informative, it's coaxing you, and just because you don't consciously decide you're going to read an ad now doesn't mean you get to ignore it.
Walk down a city street. It's full of adverts for shops you might want to go in.
Google didn't always have such an indisputable business model. Who knew search was so profitable? Would it have been as successful if it started charging users right off the bat, or covering the results pages with (irrelevant) ads before contextual ads were developed?
I love Pinboard, but it's a one man operation. Maciej is extremely susceptible to get hit by a bus tomorrow, leaving me without my $9.23 and all of my bookmarks. You're telling me that if someone offered you $1-5 mil to lead a team at insert huge tech company here you'd turn it down? Bitch, please. That chart is overall correct, but it's not like paying is suddenly going to be a panacea. I give flickr $25 a year, but…
I think geeks have severely irrational expectations as to what they are "owed" by someone just because that someone has created something which they used or enjoyed.
Purely consumer oriented entertainment kind of apps may be a different matter, but for anything else consumers are very apprehensive when there is any talk of losing access to an app they rely on. Unlike geeks, they can't just take some CSV dump and move their data elsewhere. For them, the UI is the data.
You may be annoyed about the tone in which some geeks complain about free apps going away, but don't let that mislead you into thinking geeks are the issue here. There is a huge issue and it's not opinionated geeks.
I think geeks have severely irrational expectations as to what they are "owed" by someone just because that someone has created something which they used or enjoyed.
I couldn't disagree more. Startups just going away over night is _the_ major objection I hear from business users (small and large) against using any of these products. Purely consumer oriented entertainment kind of apps may be a different matter, but for anything else consumers are very apprehensive when there is any talk of losing access to an app they rely on. Unlike geeks, they can't just take some CSV dump and m…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It does make you a product. Google can take the millions of you searching for that term and say "hey you people related to that term", and sell them based on the fact that you searched for it an a small percentage of you will click that advertisments. I almost feel that we are lucky that advertisements are more profitable when they are more useful to us, god forbid if A/B testing showed that FULL PAGE FLASHING BANNER…
> No one is ignoring advertising revenue, harvesting millions of users in order to bring in said advertising revenue is the problem. Why is it a problem? So they show me a few adverts... big whoop. I can just ignore them. The issue is, the vast majority of people will never pay for access to online websites/apps (Me included). If you restrict yourself to the business model "charge users", then you've just got rid of…
Finding out that Trunk.ly, which I've grown to love, is shutting down...well it flat out pisses me off. Great post. Thanks for having the courage to state the truth, that most startup founders don't give a about users.
Is this a public secret. Do you think Steve Jobs was so obsessed with user experience because he cared about you personally?
I also don't think its the responsibility/right of the user to fix the business model of the company ("Make them charge you or show you ads.").
To me the "pump and dump" approach is perfectly legit. Just make sure nobody gets hurt. e.g. Allow customer to export their data. Companies aim to make money, not win a papal election.