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Ask HN: My GPT project has become a local hit but I can't afford the bill

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Re: Ask HN: My GPT project has become a local hit but I can't afford the bill

#131
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reads like you're suggesting to not even try. IME trying new things is a great way to learn. Also, if a dev can close a few sales, just the first few, then they'll know how to help their sales staff. Try a little, see if you can grow.

I wish people didn’t have such a knee jerk reaction to my advice, but for many years I too believed a dev should at least try to wear many hats. All it took was seeing how professionals always do the job far better to change my mind. It doesn’t matter if a dev picks up some skills, if you plan to be a dev then a dev is all you’ll ever be, focus on the development and let sales worry about sales. I see a lot of founde…

Context is important here, and while your advice it valid in some situations, it's not valid in all situations, and specifically its not valid in this one.

I get that once a business grows to a certain point it needs "professionals" to do some of the tasks. Ideally start by hiring people with skills you don't have. Sales is a skill.

That said many people have more the one skill. Context matters. I write libraries for programmers. I attend trade events where I talk to, and sell to programmers. I do a lot of marketing in this space. I have an authenticity that a non-programmer does not have, and I believe that is reflected in our sales.

In this case the developer is perfectly capable of picking up the phone. They may or may not maximise potential income (but that's not their stated goal). If there's enough demand then they can pivot to a sales person later on.

Incidentally, I would likely figure out who does the marketing for the local businesses you see. They buy the ads, not the business directly. They're easier to talk to (they -want- more exposure opportunities) and they may bring multiple customers to the table.

Re: Ask HN: My GPT project has become a local hit but I can't afford the bill

#132

Assuming this is GlasgowGPT (based on the timing of that bot taking off on /r/glasgow and this post, and your username), a challenge you'd likely have with advertising is that the content from the bot is, whilst funny, not very SFW. One option to get the costs down would be to use a local LLM. It isn't likely to be as fast/good as GPT-3.5 but at least would give you a fixed cost per month (hosting). If you had local…

> ... the content from the bot is, whilst funny, not very SFW.

Could be a feature rather than a bug? :)

Re: Ask HN: My GPT project has become a local hit but I can't afford the bill

#133

Assuming this is GlasgowGPT (based on the timing of that bot taking off on /r/glasgow and this post, and your username), a challenge you'd likely have with advertising is that the content from the bot is, whilst funny, not very SFW. One option to get the costs down would be to use a local LLM. It isn't likely to be as fast/good as GPT-3.5 but at least would give you a fixed cost per month (hosting). If you had local…

Not sure why you think local LLM would be fixed cost. Those things are very GPU heavy and you need to run multiple instances to serve multiple concurrent users, scaling up and down according to traffic.

Fixed cost in that if you host on a machine you know how much you'll pay a month. Obviously capping it out based on usage.

As opposed to API based where you pay more per use.

Remember this isn't a commercial service that OP is creating, it's an amusing Chatbot, they have no revenue, so fixed costs are likely to be a better model.

Re: Ask HN: My GPT project has become a local hit but I can't afford the bill

#134

Assuming this is GlasgowGPT (based on the timing of that bot taking off on /r/glasgow and this post, and your username), a challenge you'd likely have with advertising is that the content from the bot is, whilst funny, not very SFW. One option to get the costs down would be to use a local LLM. It isn't likely to be as fast/good as GPT-3.5 but at least would give you a fixed cost per month (hosting). If you had local…

> ... the content from the bot is, whilst funny, not very SFW. Could be a feature rather than a bug? :)

If you can find an advertiser who likes that. You will have a much smaller pool of potential partners for that kind of content, and I'd guess many of the mainstream ad services just won't cater to it.

Not impossible, but tricky.

Re: Ask HN: My GPT project has become a local hit but I can't afford the bill

#136
You should look at selling local advertising (and get creative at incorporating those businesses into the prompts for in-chat placements). $1500/mo to a local business to get 5,000 local eyeballs per day should be a no-brainer - and that's for a takeover-style ad that gives 100% of impressions to a single advertiser.

The smarter way would be to open up sponsor opportunities for certain categories, for example: restaurants, retail (tire shops, hardware stores, clothing stores), common service industries (plumbers, electricians, landscaping, website design, general contractors, computer/cellphone repair)- then sell those placements for $200-500/mo to whoever wants to have the placement for that.

Replicate this for other cities and you have a healthy business - you can hire people to sell these ad spots in their respective regions and you can actually scale it up. Billboards work in the same way. Those billboard companies might even be interested in selling their placements to your viewers.

Re: Ask HN: My GPT project has become a local hit but I can't afford the bill

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this sounds like better than insert randomly advertisment from internet. advertisements from local business are more friendly and familiar.

Especially if the bot could be prompted to drop testimonials about local businesses in a really self-aware way.

this sounds very interesting. imagine a new resident get advice from this website. ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯

Re: Ask HN: My GPT project has become a local hit but I can't afford the bill

#139

There will be local businesses with fairly aggressive marketing. Tons of billboards, on buses, local newspaper, etc. Should be easy to find because they're the ones advertising everywhere. Call them up one by one and say "hey I run [project] that everyone has been using lately, would you be interested in having your business name listed as a sponsor? It'll be shown on 1/4 page loads which is currently 5000 times a da…

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