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2M users but no money in the bank

exercism.org

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Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#231

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

freedomben wrote: post #222
8bithero wrote: post #218

I was doing some Exercism tasks the other day and then saw this so if only felt right that I make a donation. Looking at some of the comments there seems to be a number of people who have also just made a donation. Given the state of every service becoming subscription based, I can definitely see a lot of subscription fatigue. Maybe an alternative route you could try is the annual wikipedia "We want to keep this free…

Personally, I think this approach of asking for donations is the right move for a non-profit. Subscription fatigue is real and is becoming a major problem. I am now at the point where I will go without software I would absolutely pay for one time, but because it is a subscription I refuse. I'm sure when all is said and done, there just are not enough people like me to make a difference, but I sure hope things swing t…

You could use the time value of money formula to convert between one-time prices and subscriptions. just multiply annual price by 30 to get forever price.

So my $6 per month VPS would be about $2,000 upfront.

And a $500 game console would be a $1.50 monthly subscription. (Obviously glossing over tons of differences in say, a PS2 and a Stadia subscription)

It feels easier to ask customers for $1 per month than $360 up front... Especially since I don't know if my service will be up forever

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#232

Post by insane_dreamer »

rammer wrote: post #220
zip1234 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another option is to make deals with universities or schools for access for their students where they pay a certain amount per year and the students can all have access

Uni sales cycles are horrendous. take forever and fickle

Yeah, that would be a __lot__ of overhead. Not worth it. I'd instead focus on trying to find sponsors ("$100 / month allows us to give a free account to 100 students in X countries!")

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#233

Post by insane_dreamer »

dmurray wrote: post #202
insane_dreamer wrote: post #117

Congratulations on a very successful platform! (Success should be measured in usage/reach, not $). You've probably thought of this, but it might be easier to charge a very small amount -- say $1/month, which most people even students, could afford, rather than rely on donations. If you get 1% of users paying that, it's still $20K month which is more than you're getting now. (Of course managing the payments themselves…

How does it not "poison the mission" if it means 99% of users drop the platform?

Fair point. I used 1% at the very low end -- if the amount is small enough (in the $1/month range) I think the opt-in rate would be much higher.

I would then give a free account to anyone who asks. ("We know that even $1/month is a big ask for some folks in certain countries or they may even have a method by which to pay it. If that's you, let us know and apply for a free account here.") Then basically auto-approve (with some bot-screening mechanism) accounts that apply. Sure you'll get some abuse and people lying, but not that many people are going to lie just to save $1/month.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#234

Post by pcthrowaway »

Lionga wrote: post #193
pcthrowaway wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm out of touch with how things have changed over the last year or 2, but 2 years ago you'd struggle to find 1 great dev with 10 YoE for that price ($90K/yr) Even if things have changed now, I can't imagine you'd find a great dev with 10 YoE for less than $80K/yr, and that's hiring globally (with the time zone issues that come with it). You can probably get 1 OK dev and 1 bad dev with 10 YoE for that price tho…

You are out of touch with most parts of the world. Average income worldwide is about $10K a year. So 90K it about 9 times average income and in many parts of the world hires the top 10% of developers of that country. But It will probably hire less then half of a US developer that then pisses all the other money away on overpriced AWS Servers, so that is right.

Average income is heavily skewed by unskilled workers who constitute the overwhelming majority of the workforce, as well as workers with less than a high school degree which constitute the overwhelming majority of the workforce.

I actually agree with you that 90K gets you top-10% of the developers in many countries, but you were saying that 45K would get you a great developer with 10 YoE.

Devs with 10 YoE are already probably less than 20% of developers, and there are devs with 10 YoE who aren't "great" developers. Perhaps this is my own western near-sightedness talking, but I'm under the impression that great developers may constitute fewer than 5% of developers in some of these countries in question (I assume due to a combination lower English proficiency which is important for working with Western employers, different cultural norms which cause many developers from some countries to adopt anti-patterns for working effectively with teams, and more limited access to reliable internet and better equipment, which could result in lengthened feedback loops during their learning process).

But my primary argument wasn't that you'd be unable to get a great dev with 10YoE, it was that you'd be unable to get two great devs with 10 YoE for 90K/yr, or 45K each, or as tpacek pointed out, more like 35K/yr take-home.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#235

Post by quesera »

PaulHoule wrote: post #171
Workaccount2 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything Wikipedia as an example of how unsuccessful a voluntary donation model is. 0.2% of people who use wikipedia donate to it. Unless you are doing tens of millions of unique views a month, it's probably not gonna be sustainable. People really hate paying for things. Even things they use and love.

Also it's a subtraction from the legitimacy bank account. It's well known that Wikipedia doesn't need those donations . Endless telethons for public television in America annoy 100 people for every one that donates. Despite that you see ads on public TV for the Archer Daniels Midland corporation all the time even though, allegedly, there is no advertising on public TV.

I don't know enough about Wikipedia, though I have heard this point made before.

I do know a lot about noncommercial broadcasting in the US though, and your comments appear superficial.

A sponsorship message is different from a call-to-action advertisement. The former is permitted, the latter is not. They are not different enough, in my opinion, but they are discernible.

Public TV and radio station finances are public information. Audience fundraisers are a meaningful portion of their operating budget (~25-50%), though it varies by market. As are program underwriting (up to 50% in strong markets), and often CPB funds contribute a few points (this is highly politicized and if you overindex on it, your news sources are likely polluted).

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#236

Post by jamwil »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #231
freedomben wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I think this approach of asking for donations is the right move for a non-profit. Subscription fatigue is real and is becoming a major problem. I am now at the point where I will go without software I would absolutely pay for one time, but because it is a subscription I refuse. I'm sure when all is said and done, there just are not enough people like me to make a difference, but I sure hope things swing t…

You could use the time value of money formula to convert between one-time prices and subscriptions. just multiply annual price by 30 to get forever price. So my $6 per month VPS would be about $2,000 upfront. And a $500 game console would be a $1.50 monthly subscription. (Obviously glossing over tons of differences in say, a PS2 and a Stadia subscription) It feels easier to ask customers for $1 per month than $360 up…

I don’t think a perpetuity is correct in this case. Software depreciates rapidly without updates and the norm was to charge the one-time price for each major version, which was always somewhat analogous to a subscription assuming you wanted up-to-date software.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#237

Post by tptacek »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #229
tptacek wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just meant, you'd be paying these supposed engineers less than $90,000/yr.

Oh you're right, the salary the employee would be getting in this hypothetical would be less than the fully loaded cost. So the person claiming you can get 2 "great" devs with 10 YoE for 90K/yr is effectively saying there are 2 "great" devs with 10 YoE somewhere in the world who are willing to work for like $35K/yr (or something in that realm less than 45K/yr). I don't think the market has gotten that bad, but again,…

Right, I would just bring this back to, the fact that we're even entertaining this discussion illustrates how these hosting costs have basically nothing to do with this person's economic problem. With 2MM active users, if $90k/yr is breaking the bank, you haven't figured it out yet.

That's not to say it can't be figured out! But people telling them that they should reduce hosting costs are doing a disservice.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#238

Post by paxcoder »

MrDresden wrote: post #219
dmurray wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does it not "poison the mission" if it means 99% of users drop the platform?

Does that even matter if the mission is dead?

It matters for integrity. They promised 100% free forever. But anyway, death and betrayal aren't necessarily the only options. As others have suggested, they can try soliciting donations more forcefully.

If that doesn't work, they could introduce premium features. Stuff that obviously has to cost money would make the pill easier to swallow, for example, features that depends on third party services (only LLMs come to mind right now), or human assistance (real-life instructors). Admittedly, this would be a compromise. One could argue it fails on the 100% part, but another could argue that 100% of existing features remain free.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#239

Post by nicbou »

8bithero wrote: post #218

I was doing some Exercism tasks the other day and then saw this so if only felt right that I make a donation. Looking at some of the comments there seems to be a number of people who have also just made a donation. Given the state of every service becoming subscription based, I can definitely see a lot of subscription fatigue. Maybe an alternative route you could try is the annual wikipedia "We want to keep this free…

Voluntary donations don't work. At least not for most things. The vast majority of users don't donate, and that includes the most demanding ones.

I offer a ton of free information online. I received raving feedback from people, including some that said I saved them thousands of euros. Just this week readers jokingly suggested giving me a Nobel prize or a statue. Still, donations are one percent of my revenue on a good month. They would not cover my groceries.

This is fine for me, but it's always on the back of my mind when people suggest donations as a funding method.

Re: 2M users but no money in the bank

#240

Post by [deleted] »

bux93 wrote: post #12

What does "I've lost faith in the nonprofit business model" mean? Non-profits have costs they pay. Many famously outlive their founders. Many, like co-ops or credit unions, don't depend on donations/endowments. They have revenue greater than expenses as a matter of basic accounting?

[deleted]
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